MATTHEW Goodwin has coined a new label – the ‘charity industrial complex’ – a luxury belief class who have no problem with open borders and illegal immigration. In his view such people, awash with a sense of moral superiority, have nothing to feel superior about. No, indeed, but they do give us much to worry about.
There is no better example of this than the ‘passionate, talented and kind’ Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) who, in their new would-be woke incarnation, are doing a wonderful job of expediting illegal migration into this country. Thus its CEO Mark Dowie applauds the volunteer crews involved in the response to ‘vulnerable people risking their lives crossing the English Channel’.
‘Imagine being out of sight of land,’ he says, ‘running out of fuel, coming across incredibly busy shipping lanes, when you’re frightened . . . We do not question why they got into trouble, who they are, or where they come from. This is humanitarian work of the highest order.’
So that’s all right then?
Well, no. First, the RNLI as a registered charity should not allow political activity to become the reason for its existence. Second, Mr Dowie’s zealotry risks jeopardising normal lifeboat missions – the very purpose for which the charity was founded all those years ago. Furthermore, although the massive increase in call-outs due to the illegal small boat crossings is sanctioned by the Government, it is paid for by unsuspecting donors. David Wimble, a former crew member at Littlestone, near Dungeness, explained when he spoke to the Express in 2023. ‘Some weeks last year the boat was out every day,’ he said. What’s more, he added, ‘it’s getting harder for the [volunteer] crews to justify giving up their time to act as a taxi service for the Government.’ Then there’s the increased wear and tear on the lifeboats adding to repair costs, and vessels needing more frequent replacements.
Founded in 1824 to save lives from shipwrecks, the RNLI was typified by Henry Blogg, the coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat for 37 years. He represents the experienced sailors and fishermen of his day: brave, strong, skilful and unselfish, ready to drop everything to save their friends. They were aware it could be their turn the next time a storm blew up. Today by contrast, the RNLI volunteers spend their time saving people who are far from being friends or hapless victims, but migrants, themselves the currency of international people-traffickers: criminals who care nothing for their ‘passengers’ but are only too happy to exploit the generosity of the Luxury Belief Class running the RNLI.
Thanks to this, the risks and penalties are worth it. Eduard Mucaj, who crammed a consignment of Albanian migrants with no life jackets into a yacht with a faulty engine, was jailed for two years and eight months on Monday. He was one of the very few to date not to evade arrest. A two-year sentence is no deterrent. For the ‘victim’ cargos, there is no punishment. The number arrested on suspicion of committing the new crime of illegal arrival is negligible. Instead they are welcomed ashore to the Land of Benefits-a-Plenty, to ‘streets paved with gold’: free phones, hotel accommodation, access to free health care, education, and legal aid. This as our own ex-servicemen are left destitute to live rough on the very same streets. On this occasion, the migrants were picked up and ferried in by Border Force officers. Increasingly, however, this kind of operation is delegated to the RNLI.
Since 2018, the RNLI has contributed to the safe arrival of approximately 110,000 cross-Channel illegals, thus encouraging ever more would-be migrants to pay an estimated £5,000 each to people-smugglers who are laughing all the way to the bank on the back of such an accommodating free ferry service for their clients (well-advertised on social media).
The RNLI boasts of the ‘great work being done towards being fully inclusive’ in its corporatist governance mission statement. This seems not to be directed at those ‘victims’ who deliberately put themselves in peril on the sea, but about recruitment of their volunteer teams, dealing with claims of racism, bullying and sexism and associated ‘rifts and breakdowns’.
Saving seafarers from drowning is eclipsed by the navel-gazing culture of complaint – a naked woman mug that led to to two volunteers being sacked, accusations of ‘a lack of opportunities for people of colour’, ‘racist’ language, and that hoary old favourite, ‘a toxic culture’.
‘The RNLI, sitting in their plush head offices in Poole, are ruining the institution with their latest woke crusade,’ a whistleblower said. ‘The sea doesn’t care about your feelings. You need a solid boat, a strong pair of hands, and a belly for it!’
Yet putting diversity ahead of seamanship training has hardly saved the charity from trouble. There have been allegations that it has used donations as ‘hush money’ to silence the ‘victims of this toxic culture’. Now, the recently completed £8million lifeboat station at Pwllheli is closed because of a ‘serious breakdown in relationships’ amongst crew.
Like many other old-established organisations, the RNLI has fallen victim to woke insanity; succumbing to pressure from government and globalists to embrace diversity and inclusion, open borders, and mass immigration, at the expense of its original purpose. Providing a free cross-Channel ferry service for illegal immigrants who deliberately put their lives at risk to game the system is emphatically not a matter of the RNLI ‘hearing us, when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea’. The organisation’s boss Mark Dowie is deluding himself. Henry Blogg must be rolling in his grave.