The road to the Jungle

 Calais

On Sunday evening a British motorist, Abraham Reichman, 35, from Stamford Hill, north London, hit two Eritrean migrants who were trying to block the A16 outside Calais. They had leapt in front of his car, he says, as he slowed down to avoid dozens of migrants on the motorway. Terrified, Mr Reichman drove off at speed to the police station, where he later found out that one of the Eritreans had died. The police released him after several hours but he is under investigation for homicide involontaire.

It is not difficult to meet migrants so determined to get to the land of milk and honey on the British side of the English Channel that they are prepared to risk their lives and put those of drivers in mortal danger. You just have to wander around — as I did the other day — the illegal shanty town on the outskirts of Calais known as ‘The Jungle’. Dusk was falling. Loud music came from a sound system powered by a generator. Some kind of open air party was going on in a muddy circle surrounded by a large group of Africans. In the middle, 30 or so young men were dancing as if in a trance. They were Ethiopians, Eritrians and Sudanese mainly. A handful of women — the only women I saw all night, more or less — sat around the circle but did not dance. I got talking to a young Nigerian called Endurance Idahosa, who spoke good English, and he agreed to tell me his story. He got us some beers from somewhere for a euro each and a couple of chairs and we sat down next to a row of portable toilets. He is one of dozens, maybe hundreds, of migrants from the camp who each day or more usually each night try to stop traffic on the approach roads to the port — often armed with iron bars, knives, even chainsaws — and get inside the lorries which are held up.