Near the gates of Downing Street last Saturday, a rally was held with earnest-looking speakers shouting through megaphones.
It was watched by 250 supporters, from pensioners to bobble-hatted students, waving placards bearing the heart-tugging slogan: ‘Jesus was a Refugee.’
The event was organised by unlikely bedfellows – the apparently gentle charity Care4Calais (C4C), which feeds and clothes thousands of ‘desperate’ migrants waiting to cross the Channel, and Stand Up To Racism (SUTR), an organisation championing open borders. It has unashamedly close links to the Marxist-aligned Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
A garish online poster advertising the rally made it clear that the charities are aligned. It declared defiantly: ‘Don’t let the far-Right divide us at Christmas.’ It was signed by both C4C and SUTR, which boasts former Labour MP Diane Abbott as president.
But the event, however well-meaning, was unfortunately timed. The Home Office had just, sensationally, accused an Iraqi-Kurdish trafficker of ‘working’ for C4C while scouring migrant camps for £10,000-a-head customers he could smuggle to Britain.
And it came amid ever deepening concern over uncontrolled mass immigration and the disturbing consequences – including a succession of shocking court verdicts in which recently arrived migrants have been found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of girls, and predatory sex attacks on young boys.
What is certain is that C4C, founded ten years ago by Clare Moseley, a middle-class Liverpool mother and accountant, appears to have morphed into a highly organised political force that stands accused of encouraging migrants to travel here illegally, helped by an army of up to 600 willing, but naive, volunteers.
An investigation by the Daily Mail has discovered that Moseley runs a successful company staging anti-racism music festivals along with a man called Weyman Bennett, who is also a central committee member of the Socialist Workers Party and a co-convenor of SUTR.
Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, in their warehouse near Calais in France. The middle-class mother appears to have morphed into a highly organised political force
Weyman Bennett (pictured), a central committee member of the Socialist Workers Party and co-convenor of SUTR, also runs a successful company staging anti-racism music festivals with C4C’s Clare Moseley
Their lives have been intertwined since they first met in Calais and, according to official Government land ownership records, set up an office together in a smart Manchester apartment. It seems a far cry from C4C’s original roots when, one Saturday morning in 2015, Moseley realised a crisis was unfolding in Calais. A million people poured into Europe as borders opened for Syrian refugees, with many heading to the French coast hoping to reach Britain.
As she explained to The Guardian: ‘I remember it vividly. I sat up in bed, browsing the internet… and an article caught my eye: it was about the refugee crisis. Men, women and children were risking their lives to get to Western Europe, and many were dying in the process.’
‘My husband came upstairs to find me crying,’ she told the paper in another interview. That day, she said she spotted a charity on the web called Stand Up To Racism which she hoped would help her.
‘It was sending supplies to Calais, where thousands of refugees were staying. Before I knew it, I was making plans to drive to Dover and use my car to help transport clothing across the Channel,’ she said.
Moseley set up a ‘distribution’ warehouse for food and clothes at the French port, calling the operation Care4Calais, leaving her husband Benjamin and teenage children back in Britain. ‘It’s been hard for my family. I can’t imagine going back to my normal life… restaurants, parties, without thinking how people need help,’ she added.
Yet in France Moseley ran into problems. She had a year-long affair with Tunisian migrant Mohamed Bajar, which ended in tears when they parted and he tried to burn down the charity’s warehouse.
She later faced stern criticism from the Charity Commission, which said C4C had broken financial rules, that some £300,000 of donated money had been found in a personal bank account, and that complaints from whistleblowers had been ignored.
The watchdog also reprimanded C4C for becoming a central cog in the successful legal battle to quash the Tory government’s plan to send migrants in the UK (many of whom had travelled through Calais) for asylum processing in Rwanda.
Suella Braverman, Home Secretary at the time, declared that ‘some charities are actively undermining efforts to curb illegal migration into the UK.’ Soon afterwards, Clare Moseley left Care4Calais.
The C4C founder had proved a skilful publicist and promoter. Nine years ago, at her invitation, the US rapper and record producer will.i.am spent six hours in The Jungle, a migrant shanty town near Calais, with the charity’s volunteers. He called them ‘angels’ in a tweet to his 12million followers before flying home to Hollywood (never to return).
Pictured: Ms Moseley outside the Royal Courts of Justice at a demonstration against the Government’s Rwanda scheme in September 2022
The tweet is reputed to have turned C4C into a money-making machine. It now has an income of £1.8million a year, largely from individual donations, but also through selling T-shirts and jumpers for Christmas bearing the legend ‘Jesus was a Refugee’.
The French government said The Jungle and the charities working in it were luring migrants to Calais and bulldozed the place soon after will.i.am’s visit.
But other tented camps sprung up and the boats kept coming. Tens of thousands have arrived in Britain since the Rwanda plan was abandoned by the Labour Government last year.
Last week, streaming channel Talk TV aired a documentary anchored by journalist Isabel Oakeshott called The Undercover Migrant, which showed a Rochdale builder masquerading as a refugee while mixing with Care4Calais and French charity volunteers, hardened people-traffickers and those waiting to cross the Channel.
After a fortnight, he concluded: ‘I truly think the charities are”aiding and abetting” the whole process. That is my belief… they are on at every single corner of the migrants’ journeys across continents… giving them food, clothing, everything. I think they are culpable.’
So does his observation have a flavour of the truth?
A telling article by freelance journalist Charlotte Gill said this week: ‘Everyone from successive prime ministers to the Home Office can be blamed for the growing number of attacks by foreign (migrant) men. But the charity sector is substantially fuelling open borders.
‘Many present themselves as caring, and even fighting the far-Right, but are enabling unvetted men to arrive in their thousands.
‘Charities wanting to help refugees is not the problem per se. The issue is their refusal to accept that arrivals also bring considerable risks to the public.
‘They appear to advocate a system where there are no limits to who can settle in the UK.’
The Daily Mail asked migrants in the UK if Care4Calais influenced them to come here. One, who came in by boat 11 weeks ago and is now in a Home Counties hotel, said: ‘We learned about Care4Calais in Italy when we arrived in Europe.
‘By word of mouth, we were told that it would feed us, give us coats, free mobile phones. Of course, we headed to Calais because of that. Everyone does.’
He produced an Arabic C4C leaflet, copied on his smartphone, which is distributed by the charity in feeding stations on the French coast and in the camps. The Daily Mail has seen images of the leaflets printed in 16 other languages, including Aramaic and even Russian.
The leaflets give phone numbers for UK human rights and welfare organisations which, in turn, advise migrants where to find lawyers to fight deportation and accelerate their asylum appeals once here.
Another migrant, an Iranian who avoided traffickers and kayaked across the Channel – and has since won asylum – told me: ‘The C4C volunteers are ordinary British people wanting to help. They don’t realise that some in the food queues are pretending to be refugees.
‘They are traffickers out to make money from crossings, or even terrorists or dangerous men who have done terrible things, rapes or murders in other countries.’
C4C is the most prominent British charity in Calais and has survived many controversies. Videos emerged a few years ago of female volunteers dancing with migrants in the camps.
There were rumours of relationships between charity workers and migrants and – under pressure from the Charity Commission – safeguarding rules were introduced.
They protected ‘vulnerable’ migrants and the volunteers, often young women, who were told only to work in pairs, never be alone with migrant men and not to embark on romances.
The Daily Mail investigated C4C three years ago. Then, we pictured their volunteers cheerily ‘meeting and greeting’ migrants as they arrived from France in Dover’s main port and on a Kent beach before any Home Office security checks had been carried out.
This autumn, I watched as C4C’s army of vans swept around Calais to help migrants at feeding stations. No questions were asked about whether those forming long queues for chicken and rice were genuine refugees or not.
Then came last month’s extraordinary Home Office accusation against C4C and its suspected Iraqi-Kurdish people trafficker.
The claims, made at a court hearing, centred on two suspected Calais traffickers, both described in court as inveterate liars, fighting to stay in Britain. At the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (a type of hearing normally used for cases linked to terrorism), Home Office barrister David Blundell KC named Halo Rashid, 38, who, he said, was part of an organised trafficking gang while he simultaneously ‘worked’ for C4C.
He said Rashid, a former migrant with British citizenship, used C4C as a ‘cover’ to find migrants in Calais, who could then be hidden in a lorry crossing the Channel on a ferry to the UK.
The Sunday Times approached C4C, which denied that anyone called Halo Rashid had ever worked for them.
‘The idea that a charity involved in distributing items such as pants and socks is in any way involved in the global displacement of refugees is for the birds,’ a spokesman for the charity said dismissively.
Whatever the case, it puts the spotlight on C4C – and brings us back to founder Clare Moseley.
She has emerged as a central figure in a panoply of powerful Leftist organisations fighting to open our borders, then bring migrants to Britain.
We have discovered an enduring link between her and Weyman Bennett, a pillar of British Left-wing activism, not only because of his Socialist Workers Party role, but as a leading light in Stand Up To Racism, which spurred Moseley to visit Calais in the first place.
Both the SWP and SUTR have masterminded dozens of anti-racist protests. Hundreds of followers waving ‘we welcome refugees’ placards have been stationed outside migrant hotels over the past 18 months.
These two organisations, one a political party, the other a charity, are ‘intertwined, interchangeable,’ an insider who organised a protest in east London said recently in a revealing social media exposé about how the two groups march in lockstep.
Bennett is also a director of Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR), a hugely successful anti-fascist events company, which has showcased top rock stars in the UK including Ed Sheeran and Pete Doherty.
In 2018, John McDonnell (then Labour’s shadow home secretary under the leadership of hard-Left Jeremy Corbyn) signed a statement calling for support for both LMHR and SUTR. And if we turn to the official records of the former, we find a name we recognise. The secretary of LMHR is Clare Moseley herself.
Moseley and Bennett are currently listed by Companies House as sole controllers of the outfit.
The two have spoken together at trade union conferences and other Leftist get-togethers to highlight their fight against ‘far-Right’ criticism of migrants.
Curiously, links between the two go back further. Companies House records for LMHR show that not many months after Moseley departed for Calais, the correspondence address for Bennett was at that smart apartment in Manchester.
The title register of the property, also the first British headquarters for the then fledgling Care4Calais, reveals it was owned, as it is now, by Clare and her husband Benjamin.
It seems that C4C has travelled a long way politically since a well-meaning housewife from the north of England decided to abandon her old life to befriend Calais refugees.
