EDL man is people-smuggler

A prominent member of the English Defence League is a convicted people smuggler.

Ex-serviceman Allan Hetherington-Cleverley, 55, [pictured, left] is a regular at protests for the far-right group that advocates kicking Muslims out of the UK. But the Daily Star Sunday can reveal he spent four years in prison for smuggling Chinese immigrants across the Channel in an inflatable speedboat.

The former Grenadier Guard was paid £20,000 by an Albanian gangster to ferry the illegals from Calais in France to Newhaven in East Sussex in 2004. In two dangerous night-time trips across the world’s busiest shipping lane he helped to sneak 20 Chinese into the UK. The ex-soldier – who has changed his name from Allan Gallup – made the first trip alone but enlisted soldier pal Marcus Wakelin for the second a month later. But both missions were tracked by police from the air. The men were arrested and charged with facilitating illegal entry to the UK. Hetherington-Cleverley was sentenced to four years in 2005.

During their trial the court heard the pair showed little concern for the safety of the immigrants, who had paid £7,000 each to Triad gangsters.

Hetherington-Cleverley, who was in the Army between 1971 and 1977, is now good friends with EDL leader Stephen Lennon and has made speeches at their events. And the smuggler, who has also worked as a mercenary in Africa, has no regrets about his past. He said: “I am not ashamed of what I did. I did not steal anything, I did not hurt anyone, it was not a drug or sexual offence. It has nothing to do with my beliefs or my support for the EDL.”

A spokesman for anti-fascist website 1millionunited, said: “The public will not take kindly to a group who invite people-smuggling, self-styled soldiers of fortune to represent them at their public events.”

Star on Sunday

Migrants 'deceived and exploited'

Migrant workers are being lured to Britain by deception and are forming a new exploited underclass, a BBC investigation has discovered.

Undercover Lithuanian journalist Audrius Lelkaitis discovered a new form of people trafficking, systematic underpayment and exploitation. Human trafficking experts said the conditions suffered by some migrant workers was "modern-day slavery". All companies targeted by the investigation deny exploiting workers.

Mr Lelkaitis, working as part of the BBC News investigation, posed as a migrant worker seeking a job in the UK. He paid hundreds of pounds to agencies in Lithuania and London in return for the promise of a job in Hull which did not exist.

After being offered work with licensed gangmasters Focus Staff Limited in Hull he was paid below the minimum wage two weeks in arrears. After three weeks, he received £97 for 20 hours' work in his first week, although £50 was deducted for accommodation costs. He also had money deducted for accommodation without it being shown on his payslip, which is illegal, and was forced to live in overcrowded accommodation.

Mike Wilson, chief executive of the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority said the withholding of wages when workers were already in debt sounded "suspiciously like a bonded labour situation which certainly we would not agree to at all".

Mike Dickenson, director of Focus Staff Limited, denied any illegal practices. "I don't underpay my workers," he said. "Everything I do is legal and above board," he said.

'Bonded labour'

Deputy Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell, programme director of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, said the opening of Europe's borders had brought with it a new kind of people trafficking. He said: "This quite clearly is labour exploitation. Certain elements are there; there's a deception and there's a movement of people with an expectation of being paid a reasonable and appropriate wage. This is a kind of forced or bonded labour. This is modern day slavery."

Aidan McQuade, director of campaign group Anti-Slavery International, said trafficking to exploit labour involved a number of factors.

These included the use of deception, intimidation, the removal of documents, excessive charges for accommodation and transport, the exploitation of someone's irregular immigration status or the fact they are in debt, in order to force them to work in conditions they do not agree to, he said. He added: "Some of these mechanisms are reported in this BBC News investigation."

You can watch the report here.

BBC