My Blog Space News: British lorry driver in Calais: 'I question whether it is worth doing this job'

By Henry Samuel, Calais 24 June 2015

Rob Henderson, 34, a truck driver who has been waiting six hours to reach the Channel tunnel, says migrants are getting more aggressive, carrying knives and "smashing their bloody hands on the window"
Hundreds of migrants continued to roam around slow-moving lorries who had been queuing for as long as eight hours to board Eurotunnel trains to Britain on Wednesday.
For Rob Henderson, 34, a truck driver from Oakham near Rutland working for the haulage firm Knights of Old, the pressure to stop migrants entering vehicles and increasing delays has become a terrible burden.
“It’s getting to a stage where personally I question whether it is worthwhile doing this job because we’re in a Catch 22 situation,” he said as a dozen or so migrants hovered around his vehicle seeking a way in.
“If I get out here, I might face confrontation, if I don’t do anything I might get fined back in the UK if they find migrants on board.”
But he said he had no intention of getting out of his cab.
“It’s got to a stage where, given that these guys carry knives on them, and are slashing curtains and stuff like that, nine times out of ten you’re better staying in your cab - it’s just not worth the effort,” he said.
“The migrants are definitely getting more aggressive. If you clap your horn to warn the driver in front, they start smashing their bloody hands on the window, making insulting signs with their hands, smack your wing mirror.”
Mr Henderson had been waiting six hours to reach the Channel tunnel when he spoke to the Telegraph.
He has been trucking for the past three years. He said it was commonplace to see migrants climbing under the axles of lorry trailers and the driver “having to get out and drag them out", but the situation over the past 24 hours had been particularly dire.

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“What we’re seeing is the backlog from yesterday,” he told the Telegraph. “Normally you can get in virtually straight away, but given the strike issue the day before with trains cancelled, we’ve got this build up.”
Rob Henderson in his cab (Laurent Villeret/The Telegraph)
“This is not normal. The tailback is at least 12 or 13 miles. I’ve got another two or three hours to go. With a bit of luck I’ll be home for dinner.”

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“At the end of the day, we’re just trying to make a living and shouldn’t have to deal with all this.”
He said drivers tried to help each other by driving bumper to bumper in slow traffic. “We try to get up really close to the vehicle in front to stop migrants opening the back door, and you hope and pray that the guy behind you will do the same,” he said.
Migrants sit and wait near Mr Henderson's lorry (bottom left)
Mr Henderson said he and colleagues were angry and frustrated that more was not being done on both sides of the Channel to keep migrants away from the lorries.
A man attempts to open the back doors of a lorry (Laurent Villeret/The Telegraph)
My concern is that I pay my taxes, the government gives up the money or passes it to the French government, and nothing is really happening. We’re like sitting ducks here. They are quite able to freely walk around, have a look at the vehicles, where are the police, where is this money being given across?”
Climbing over boxes in the back of a lorry (Laurent Villeret/The Telegraph)
He said he was not optimistic about the future. “I think it’s a vicious circle now and can’t see any easy win or solution going forward.”