The truth about smuggling
A Radio 4 series will shatter your assumptions about those behind illegal immigration into Britain
- Radio Times Staff
The Smuggler is on Radio 4 at 1.45pm, Monday-Friday. Add it to your collection now
Ad
We often imagine a smuggler is not British, some undesirable ‘other’, rather than someone born and bred in this country, who uses his white Britishness as a way to bring migrants in,” says journalist Annabel Deas who, through a mutual acquaintance, met “Nick”, a convicted people smuggler, for her current series on Radio 4.
A chance to expose the workings of a criminal underworld that is driving national debate doesn’t come along often, but Deas couldn’t have imagined the extent to which the man she met over a number of one-to-one interviews defied popular assumptions about the criminals behind Britain’s trade in migrants.
The man who steps out from behind the headlines in Deas’s series The Smuggler, which continues this week (the first five episodes are available on BBC Sounds), is a cocksure, former soldier from the Home Counties in his early 40s, who still talks of his smuggling ventures as if they were a test of skill and military nous.
“I was shocked when he said he had been in the British Army and also by the ease with which he had got into smuggling,” says Deas, who won the Orwell Prize in 2021 for her podcast Hope High, about the recruitment of children into drug gangs. “But I was also intrigued that someone of a similar age and background to me could have led such a radically different life.”
I was shocked when he said he had been in the British Army
Nick, a drug user, was initially drawn into working with an Albanian smuggling ring in 2009 because he needed money and they were looking for someone who wouldn’t arouse suspicions at the border. They reassured him they were only bringing in small numbers. “Nick justified his actions – which were committed in two phases, first with lorries on ferries and then with boats sailing into private harbours – by saying he had worked hard to make it safe for the migrants in the sailboats,” explains Deas. “But they didn’t have enough life jackets. He distanced himself from the people he brought in. His attitude was that it was happening anyway, so why not? He was immoral and pretty greedy. There had clearly been a lot of danger at the time, doing this horrific thing, but he was an immature man who didn’t give it much thought. Listening to Nick, I felt he genuinely wanted to understand how he ended up being that person.”
Early on, Deas asked Nick why he wanted to talk: “I needed to know, because it’s so extraordinarily rare to speak to someone with such incredible honesty about such a horrendous crime,” she recalls. “His cockiness, I think, is actually some kind of defence mechanism, because he told me he was trying to make sense of all that he had lost. His crimes took up a fair chunk of his life, with pretty catastrophic consequences.” He served two prison sentences for people smuggling – five months in France, eight years in the UK – and lost contact with his family and friends.
Despite being imprisoned twice, Nick’s ego is still evident. Did Deas have qualms about offering him a public platform? “No, because I wanted others to know about the range of people doing this kind of thing out there. The real point for me isn’t demonising Nick but revealing his practices and some of the wrong assumptions we make.”
Making the series unveiled unexpected complexities of the trade for Deas. “I learnt the many ways people can penetrate our borders, because people smugglers are extremely adaptable. The sums paid are so high that, for them, it’s worth it, even though it’s an endless cat-and-mouse game.
“I have a huge empathy for the migrants, who are often just being conned by smugglers who promise them things that don’t turn out to be true.”
Ad
Deas spoke to Nick alone in safe settings, with back-up support from producer Hayley Mortimer and series editor Matt Willis. “Nick admitted to me that he believes his life would always have had a difficult trajectory, simply because of the kind of person he is. I don’t think he’ll ever go back to smuggling, but the methods he used are still wide open. This is a story with Nick at the centre of it, but it’s not really about him.” VANESSA THORPE
Authors
Radio Times Staff
Ad
Ad
Get the Christmas double issue
Too much to watch at Christmas? Let Radio Times do the choosing to find something the whole family will enjoy.
Loading...
Ad
Loading...