UP THE SMUGGLERS
Andrew McKie has been to Ostend to look
for tobacco importers — the new heroes of freedom-loving Britons
AT the top of my street in south-east London there is a hoarding which, until a couple of weeks ago, displayed posters advertising Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. The most recent boasted of the recruitment of 1,000 extra officers, and offered an aerial view of them arranged, as if by some demented, confiscatory Busby Berkeley, in the likeness of a giant, filter-tipped cigarette.
An earlier poster showed the face of a man whose eyes were obscured in the manner that newspaper photographs of unconvicted or uncieraged criminals once were — but by an enormous fag rather than by a block of black. It presented the information that one in five cigarettes sold in Britain was smuggled, and announced sternly, 'The chances of getting caught are rising.' For the life of me, I couldn't see why. The estimate of one in five cigarettes being smuggled (many think it an underestimate; one in three has been given as a possible figure) surely suggests that your chances of getting away with bringing in hooky smokes are pretty good. Nor could I see how posters of this kind were likely to do anything to meet Customs' objective of reducing smuggling.
For one thing, almost everyone I know regards tobacco smugglers as public benefactors. Even those who recognise that the main players in this business are probably nasty pieces of work who have diversified from other criminal activities take the view that the level of duty imposed by the government makes smuggling more or less inevitable. But the main reason was that this hoarding is sited on the gable end of a pub in which — like thousands of others, particularly those in traditionally working-class areas — a fair number of the regulars tuck into, and indeed buy, their illegal tobacco.
Several times a week someone arrives with plastic carrier bags filled with rolling tobacco, which are then sold to those he knows. After the round of deliveries, there is a post-mortem among those who have bought half-a-dozen 50g packets of Golden Virginia or Old Holborn and their friends. Anyone who has been foolish enough to pay £3 a packet is advised to transfer his custom to the man who sells it for £2.85. Rolling tobacco provides the strongest illustration of the level of smuggling, and of the futility of current duty levels. The British price is almost £9 for 2oz; in Belgium it is £2.08. A product manufactured in Bristol or Nottingham and shipped to Ostend can be brought back to this country and sold at a 100 per cent mark-up at comfortably below half the official British price.
I had last sailed to Ostend — the favoured route for independent smuggling of rolling tobacco — in December. Golden Virginia was then £1.80 in Belgium, and many of those on the boat, clutching laundry bags full of baccy, were forthright about their part in what one described to me as 'international tobacco transportation'. When I travelled on the same route last week to see how Customs' new regime was affecting this industry, I was surprised to discover that very few of the foot-soldiers who had previously made up twothirds of the passengers were in evidence.
When I arrived at Ostend, however, a notice explained that day foot-passengers would no longer be permitted to travel with large holdalls, since Hoverspeed was committed to co-operating with the excisemen. If leaning on the small-scale smugglers, who are paid £40 or £50 to bring across tobacco for men with white vans, and on the ferry operators has succeeded in reducing the visibility of this cottage industry, it has done so by criminalising — at least in the eyes of Customs — nearly everyone else on the boat.
One tobacconist in Bruges, who reckoned to sell 20 or 30 ten-kilogram boxes of Golden Virginia a day, looked baffled when I asked how many were bought by British visitors. 'All of them, of course,' he said. Johann in the Ostend Tobacco Warehouse also thought that he sold at least 200 kilos of rolling tobacco on an average day, but had noticed a marked change since Customs began its zero-tolerance campaign. 'It used to be common to get sales of £1,500 or
£2,000, but now it's more likely to be £100 or £200. The small-scale traffickers have been replaced by huge operations, but ordinary visitors are certainly buying more than they used to.' That was an understatement. During the 15 or so minutes I spent in his shop, Johann served at least 30 customers. Nearly everyone spent at least £150; several more than £500. One customer asked for ten Golden Virginia, then explained that he meant ten ten-packs (nearly £1,000 worth at British prices). He bought 5,300 Silk Cut, 3,000 Superkings and a box of cigars as well.
A couple who introduced themselves as Guardian readers bought a similar amount. Everyone insisted that his purchases were for his own use. Since gifts to friends and family fall under this designation, most of them were probably telling the truth. But Customs and Excise's new approach is to adhere strictly to the 'guidelines' that they themselves have introduced, in apparent breach of European law and to the displeasure of Frits Bolkestein, the commissioner responsible for the single market. He was recently reported to be considering taking the government to court. 'EU law lays down indicative levels,' his spokesman said last week, tut the burden of proof is on Customs.'
But Customs officers have the power to judge — without any evidence beyond quantity — whether the tobacco being brought in is for personal use, and to confiscate goods and impound the vehicles bringing them in on no one's authority but their own. In a radical extension of their already ruthless practice, Nadine Smith, a Customs spokeswoman, proudly announced in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that they can also impound the goods and cars of tourists who have brought in fewer than the permitted number of cigarettes.
'Just because the guideline is 800 cigarettes does not mean that people will be allowed to bring that amount in,' she said. 'They will have to prove to the Customs officer that it is for personal use.' This reversal of the presumption of innocence — which Customs shares with the Inland Revenue, which also has considerable powers to invent rules without reference to any other body — has resulted in the confiscation of hundreds of vehicles every month.
At Luton magistrates' court last month, a man who had had 20,000 cigarettes taken from him on his return from Spain won his case to have them returned. Customs has refused to do so, claiming that the tobacco has been destroyed. Instead, they have offered to pay the cost of the cigarettes — at Spanish prices. The tobacco industry has produced a graph showing a catastrophic decline in official sales of rolling tobacco in this country during the last few years. It is accompanied by a graph showing a remarkable rise in sales of cigarette papers. As long as it is possible to roll on, roll off and roll up at a saving of more than 70 per cent, it is hard to imagine that changing.
Andrew McKie writes for the Daily Telegraph.
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