RNLI volunteers have been advised to stop wearing branded clothing when it could place them in danger, as far-right groups step up their intimidation of lifeboat crews involved in rescuing asylum seekers in the Channel.
The charity has also told volunteers they can close shops or lifeboat stations if they feel threatened. Police and private security guards have been deployed around several RNLI sites on England’s south coast, while barriers have been erected at the charity’s headquarters in Poole.
The increased security follows the RNLI’s involvement in rescuing a dinghy carrying asylum seekers and bringing those aboard into Portsmouth on Sunday. Staff at the Portsmouth lifeboat station have since been confronted by members of the public demanding that they justify the rescue.
RNLI workers have also faced physical and online abuse. Images of crew members apparently involved in Sunday’s operation have been circulated on social media, accusing them of participating in an “invasion” of Britain.
Sussex police are investigating “offensive and threatening commentary towards RNLI volunteers”, while Dorset and Hampshire police have been involved in protecting the charity’s staff, volunteers and buildings.
The threats show where years of ruling-class agitation against migrants inevitably lead. The British state, its press and politicians have worked relentlessly to present desperate people crossing the Channel as a hostile force. The far right is now applying that logic to anyone who refuses to let them drown.
From the standpoint of the anti-migrant movement, saving human life becomes an act of treason. Lifeboat crews who would once have been praised as national heroes are branded collaborators because they don’t first determine whether a drowning person possesses the correct papers.
The RNLI has said it will continue rescuing asylum seekers despite the intimidation. Its chief executive has nevertheless written to volunteers informing them that security procedures are being reviewed. Volunteers have been told to challenge people near lifeboat stations who don’t have identification and to avoid engaging with members of the public when they feel uncomfortable.
At the RNLI headquarters, a public viewing platform has been closed. Barriers have also been placed around a memorial to volunteers who lost their lives and a rose bed created to mark the charity’s 200th anniversary. The fact that even a memorial to dead lifeboat crews requires protection demonstrates how quickly manufactured nationalist hysteria turns against the very people it claims to honour.
The charity has described as “baseless” rumours that it housed asylum seekers or transported them to secret locations after bringing them ashore. Such stories don’t need evidence because their political purpose isn’t to inform. They create an atmosphere in which refugees are treated as enemy combatants and anyone offering them basic assistance becomes a legitimate target.
About 50 protesters, including members of Poole Patriots and Hampshire Resistance, demonstrated outside the RNLI headquarters on Wednesday. Organisers handed rape alarms to women, claiming they were endangered by men rescued by the charity, and urged the public to stop donating to it.
This cynical use of women’s safety follows a familiar far-right pattern. Sexual violence is treated as useful propaganda when the accused can be racialised as foreign, while the social conditions that leave women vulnerable every day are ignored. The rape alarm becomes a political prop, used to turn fear of violence into hatred of migrants and to present intimidation as an act of protection.
Behind the rhetoric about invasion lies a class operation. Migrants didn’t privatise public services, suppress wages, raise rents or impose years of austerity. Those were decisions made in the interests of British capital by the same ruling class now encouraging workers to see people in an overcrowded dinghy as their enemy.
Nor can migration across the Channel be separated from imperialism. Britain has spent centuries extracting wealth from other countries and continues to participate in wars, sanctions and economic domination that displace people across the world. Yet when a tiny fraction of those driven from their homes reach British shores, the consequences are presented as an inexplicable foreign assault.
The far right takes the contradictions produced by capitalism and gives them a racial target. It redirects anger away from landlords, employers and the imperialist state and towards some of the most vulnerable members of the international working class. Now even lifeboat volunteers are being threatened for refusing to complete the process by leaving those people to die.
Photo provided by Bingar1234 under the Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence
