The European Union is a "single market"; since 1992, goods have been able to move freely from one country to another. But this has not stopped the ancient tradition of cross-Channel smuggling! For almost a thousand years, the cross-Channel trade in contraband has been a lucrative business, often involving criminal gangs; but in recent years, its nature has changed

       March 28th 1690. It is dead of night; in the small creek near Dymchurch, a village on Romney Marsh, a dark boat ap­proaches a well-hidden landing stage. It moves noiselessly across the water, slows down, and ties up. Immediately, but without a sound, some thirty figures emerge from the bushes and approach the water. A horse and cart appear from nowhere, and the work begins. In the space of quarter of an hour, the boat's cargo is totally unload­ed, carried up the bank and loaded onto the cart, and onto another one that follows it. Twenty minutes later, the boat, with dark­ened sail, is turning round and heading back out to sea whence it had come. Its cargo, a hundred barrels of finest cognac, is on its way to a hiding place, for later dispatch to London.
      The smugglers have succeeded again; as they usually do. For in this part of south east England, smuggling is a lucrat­ive business, and has been so for centur­ies. In fact, in the seventeenth century, it is one of the most profitable professions in the region.
     From the eleventh to the eigh­teenth century, cross-Channel smuggling was a busy activity, providing a living for hundreds of people round the English coast. It began in serious shortly after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when William the Conqueror brought over thousands of his men from France. They brought with them a taste for French wine and other continental products, and these tastes soon spread among the English population.   
    To supply their own tables and those of their courts, the Norman kings im­posed a duty on imported products, taking a percentage of everything that came in. It was to avoid this loss that smuggling first developed.    
    Long before the seventeenth century, smuggling had become a major industry; and indeed, until this period, there was virtually nothing that could be done to effectively stop it. Tax collectors, or re­venue men, were not generally well res­pected people in those days, and whole communities, from the local priest to the ordinary folk, would work together to outwit any officials who came along
     The eighteenth century saw the climax of the smuggling trade; it also saw its worst horrors. During this century, when Britain really began to expand as an inter-national trading nation, the rise in imported goods was spectacular; so too was the rise in the number of different products on which the government imposed taxes. Tea,  coffee, silk, spices, tobacco, and other luxuries from round the world; all became subjected to sometimes very high dues.
    With so much at stake, it was not surprising therefore that smugglers went to great lengths to ensure that their oper­ations ran smoothly. Armed gangs of men were paid to keep the King's officers well away from what they were looking for. They did not hesitate to beat up, or even torture or kill those who tried to get in their way; and customs officers soon realised that it was not in their interest to intervene, unless they wanted to come to a sticky end.
    It is estimated that three quarters of the tea imported into England at one stage was brought in by smugglers.
    It was Napoleon, in the end, who brought the great age of English smuggling to an end. Fear of invasion from France led the government to establish a permanent watch round the south east coast of Eng­land, a watch which later developed into the Coast Guard service. Confronted with this alert and respected force, smugglers were no longer able to go on ruling the roost as they had done for so long; and subterfuge and cunning came to replace force and threats. From then on, organised smuggling became a minor activity, per­ceived more and more as a criminal activity like any other.
    Of course, smuggling has never stopped, and today there are still active smugglers in operation; their methods, how­ever, have changed. From time to time, the odd small boat still comes in furtively to a small English harbour, to discharge a cargo of brandy, or more likely drugs or arms; but most contraband now comes in hidden in personal luggage, or in legally imported consignments of goods; contain­ers from Columbia, or trailers from Turkey, forinstance. 

    But in the event, the worst form of modern smuggling across the Channel is the smuggling of people; or "people trafficking" as it is often called.  The last twenty years have seen a massive increase in the number of people from distant countries trying to enter Britain illegally. They come from Africa, from Iraq, from China, from Afghanistan, from all over the world.... they speak a couple of words of English, and imagine that a life in Britain will be their Eldorado. But these are people who have no visa; often they have paid lots of money to criminal gangs, who have promised to smuggle them into England. Occasionally, the people-traffickers succeed, but for most of the would-be immigrants, the journey to England ends in disaster, sometimes death.  Customs and immigration officials are increasingly vigilant in their fight against this kind of contraband, and "illegal immigrants" as they are known cannot hope to live a normal life if they reach England. At best, they will live a life in the shadows, hiding from the authorities, hoping that no-one will discover them. At worst, they will end up in a life of misery, exploited as virtual slaves by the gangs that brought them to England in the first place. The men will be used as cheap labour, little paid, and living and  working in bad conditions.  The women will be forced to work as prostitutes, if they are young, or work and live in miserable conditions if they are older.
     The coming of the Single European Market has changed the nature of smuggling, and  the cust­oms men still remain vigilant. So do the coast guards. The fight against smugglers may not be the same as it once was; but if the coast guards ceased to exist, the door would be open to the new age of smuggling. It is certain that a new generation of smug­glers would quickly make the most of it!
 
WORDS: 

smuggle: to import/export contraband -  landing stage: small jetty, place where people can get out of a boat - unload: discharge - dispatch: send - lu­crative: profitable - supply: provide - duty: tax - climax: highest point - stage: point - watch: guard - cunning: clever, astute - the odd: the occasional  - Eldorado : land of gold - would-be: hopeful, wanting-to-be - labour: workers - 

Updated 2009 from an article originally published in Spectrum magazine, 1990.  © Linguapress 1990 - 2009