Calais locals pledge to block port with 'human chain' until Jungle migrant camp is demolished

“What we want is a date for the dismantling of the northern part of the jungle,” said Frédéric Van Gansbeke of le Grand rassemblement du Calaisis, a group representing local Calais residents. “We will not move until we get a date [for its removal],” he told La Voix du Nord, the local newspaper, calling the blockage 'indefinite'.

Starting on Monday at 7am, the different groups will unite to block the A16 motorway in a 'snail' operation to block traffic. They have called on local Calais residents to join them to form a 'human chain' starting at the Epopée stadium and moving to the A16.

Mr Van Gansbeke said they were 'changing tack' after the state showed it was 'safeguarding the migrants and not shopkeepers, port workers, hauliers, tourists and farmers'.

The group called on locals to 'take the day off' and join them. 

“We haven’t slept for the past six months due to migrants crossing our properties," said Xavier Foissey, a farmers’ representative.

David Sagnard, local head of France’s national haulage federation, said: “Must we risk our life on the motorway just doing our job of haulier, by being a tourist or simply a Calais resident or policeman?”

Alliance, the French police union, said its officers were no longer able to cope with increasing disorder in the migrant camp. “The French police are not the gate guards of the English,” said Jean-Claude Delage, head of the Alliance.

“Our force is just receiving blows. This has to end,” he told Le Figaro newspaper.

Gangs of armed people-smugglers operating around Calais have started systematically forcing lorries to stop before they reach the port so migrants can break in. Philippe Mignonet, deputy mayor of Calais, has described the main route to the port as a 'no-go area' between midnight and 6am. 

The motorway is regularly blocked with felled trees and debris by masked smugglers, often brandishing large sticks and sometimes knives. French police responded to mounting political pressure by rushing 140 additional officers to the area this weekend.

The threatened blockade came amid growing tensions between Britain and France over whether border controls should be shifted from Calais back across the Channel.

Britain is reportedly threatening to review security co-operation with France should it try to renounce a 2003 deal under which British border checks take place in Calais.  Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, is in Paris on Tuesday for talks with Bernard Cazeneuve, her French counterpart, to discuss the situation. 

Under the 2003 Le Touquet accord, migrants caught trying to reach Britain illegally from Calais can appeal only for residency rights in France or leave the country.

Many remain illegally in France and police say they can no longer cope with the growing numbers, despite government attempts to bus them elsewhere in France.

The leader of the northern France region said that the border deal should be scrapped unless Britain agreed to the changes. Xavier Bertrand, president of the Hauts-de-France council, called for the creation of a so-called hotspot in the Calais area where migrants could apply for asylum in Britain.

While the Socialist government has insisted it will not touch the deal, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Right-wing former French president who hopes to run for re-election next year, has said that Britain should be forced to handle on its soil the asylum claims of migrants who have no wish to remain in France.

About 200 migrants from the Calais area are being smuggled into Britain in lorries each week, French officials and security sources said over the weekend.

The estimate - equivalent to more than 10,000 illegal migrants arriving each year - represents a surge in the number of so-called 'lorry drops', when migrants hiding in the back of goods vehicles jump out after safely reaching the UK.