Fury at the volunteers who pull drowning people from the sea isn’t patriotism. It is the polar opposite.
Sometimes, perhaps increasingly, don’t you feel embarrassed, ashamed even, of the amoeba-level stupidity of some of our fellow Brits?
When I was still cutting my journalistic teeth I covered a story in Newport, Wales, where a slack-jawed mob had attacked a paediatrician because they were literally too stupid to know the difference between a medical professional who treats babies and a child sex offender.
Fast-forward to now and Britain’s thick-as-mince brigade is back with a new enemy: the RNLI.
Yes, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a body of selfless, courageous men and women which has spent more than 200 years voluntarily risking their lives to save ours. In an age with so few real heroes you may see them as the real deal, the very best of Britain.
Not to the thick-as-mince gang. They see them as “traitors” and have bullied, threatened and attacked volunteers and their families.
The latest disgrace followed Sunday’s extraordinary Channel operation, when volunteer crews from Bembridge and Yarmouth were scrambled to help a grotesquely overloaded migrant “mega-dinghy” which had made the perilous journey from the French coast.
None but the craziest of Lefties thinks letting people smugglers dictate who comes into the country is a good idea and successive governments have utterly failed to get control of our borders.
But lifeboatmen do not make immigration policy.
They didn’t wave the migrants off from France, take money from the people-smuggling gangs or issue anybody with an invitation to Britain. They were called by the Coastguard because a dangerously overloaded boat full of human beings was at sea.
So they went, because that’s what lifeboat crews do.
What followed was an exhausting operation lasting the best part of 12 hours. After taking the migrants aboard, the crews faced the additional farce of being unable to land them at either Southampton or Portsmouth before eventually being directed to Eastney.
There, they encountered an ugly protest, with many demonstrators dressed in black and hiding behind balaclavas. (One wonders what the views of these selfsame gutless masked men might be on the burka.)
Police faced serious disorder. Bricks and other missiles were thrown, officers were injured and vehicles damaged. Then the poison turned on the RNLI.
Volunteers have been branded “traitors”. Photographs purporting to identify crew members have circulated online. Personal information has reportedly been shared and threats directed at volunteers and their families.
The situation has become so poisonous that police patrols and private security have been deployed around lifeboat stations, while volunteers have reportedly been told they need not wear RNLI-branded clothing if they are worried about being identified.
Today RNLI said it was reviewing its security procedures to protect the very people whose only crime is volunteering to save lives. Stations and shops can be closed if staff or volunteers feel unsafe and crews have been given advice about avoiding confrontation.
And they’ll need it.
Around 50 protesters gathered outside the RNLI’s headquarters and training college in Poole on Wednesday, with demonstrators calling on the public to stop donating to the charity. The protest took place amid a substantial police and private-security presence.
And Patriot Platform, whose supporters have been prominent at anti-migrant demonstrations, has made clear that the protests are not over. Its founder Daniel Thomas has defended protesters wearing masks and balaclavas and declared: “This is only the beginning.”
Furious though we should be at Britain’s out-of-control illegal immigration it is nonetheless hard not to see this lot as pond life.
There was one glorious detail amid all this stupidity.
When some of the protesters themselves ventured into the water at Eastney, RNLI lifeboats stood by in case they got into difficulty.
Think about that for a moment.
The people being abused were prepared to risk their lives to save the people abusing them. If that’s a traitor, then I wish there were more of them in Britain.
There are plenty of legitimate targets for public fury over the Channel catastrophe.
The repulsive people-trafficking gangs who make fortunes cramming human beings into dangerous inflatables. The French authorities who, despite receiving hundreds of millions of pounds from British taxpayers, still seem wholly unable to stop the boats leaving their coastline. Then, of course, there is the succession of governments which promised to stop the boats and then failed to do so.
But the RNLI?
Last year, its lifeboats launched 9,058 times. Just 109 launches – around 1.2 percent – involved small migrant boats in the Channel.
The rest involved the sort of people lifeboat crews have been saving for generations: fishermen, sailors, swimmers, paddleboarders, children and ordinary families whose pleasant day beside the sea suddenly became a fight for survival.
Tomorrow that person could be you, or your family, or your friends.
And when that familiar orange lifeboat comes crashing through the waves towards you, its crew won’t ask your politics, your nationality or whether you gave a few quid to the RNLI collection tin.
And they definitely won’t ask whether you “deserve” saving.
They’ll just save you.
So protest against illegal immigration. Demand secure borders. Demand the boats are stopped before they leave France. Demand the trafficking gangs are smashed and those with no right to remain here are removed.
But directing your fury at the volunteers who pull drowning people from the sea isn’t patriotism.
It is the polar opposite.
It is attacking one of the institutions which represents Britain at its absolute best.
The RNLI aren’t traitors.
They are heroes.