Iain Hollingshead

Mail on Sunday, 14 December 2003

HEADLINE: How I was deported for demanding a vote

BYLINE: IAIN HOLLINGSHEAD

BODY:
IN THE early hours of yesterday morning I was deported from mainland Europe. I had been arrested, held for six hours in a Brussels police station, threatened with fines, prison and even being marched over the French border with no money and nothing but the clothes I was wearing a suit and tie.

This is how Europe treats its citizens when they do not agree with it.

I had gone to Brussels to campaign for a referendum on the European constitution. I work for Vote 2004, a group reflecting the political spectrum from Shadow Foreign Secretary Oliver Letwin to ex-Labour Minister Frank Field and many Liberal Democrats, who all believe the EU constitution is too important to be nodded through. My job as European language researcher is my first since graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Last week I went to Brussels to try to get our message across to Tony Blair at the EU summit. On Friday, I went to meet three giant poster vans displaying pictures of Tony Blair with the words 'Nine out of ten Britons want a vote on Europe' going in one ear and out the other.

But within ten minutes of the vans setting off, I got a call on my mobile.

It was one of the drivers saying police had pulled him over. Five minutes later the phone rang again and a Belgian police officer told me that the vans were being taken to a police station. They said they would send a car to pick me up.

I hung around waiting. I had no sense of alarm. I was a law-abiding EU citizen. I had nothing to fear.

But my feelings changed when a police van pulled up and I was bundled inside. No one spoke to me.

Finally we pulled up outside the police station. I was greeted by the officer I had spoken to earlier.

I relaxed when he reassured me that we had been stopped because we did not have the right permit to drive our vans in the city. He said that all could be resolved at the city police headquarters, so myself and the three van drivers were taken there. But once we arrived, the mood shifted once more.

We were taken into a small, windowless office and were left to stand by a wall while six uniformed officers sat at wooden desks. Then in walked a man in plain clothes. He was 6ft 3in and muscularly built. He said nothing to us at first, talking intently in Flemish on the phone and occasionally glancing at us and playing with the pistol tucked in his belt.

Finally, he told us our actions were very serious. He warned that it could lead to a heavy fine, a night in jail or even being taken over the border with France without money and left to find our own way home.

Then the phone rang. The officer's demeanour suddenly changed. He became friendly and mentioned that he had relatives in England. He said we were to be released, but our posters would be confiscated and we had to leave mainland Europe.

We were being deported as a threat to public order.

Before leaving, I asked how long my ban would last since I was, I pointed out, a European citizen. I was told not to come back to mainland Europe for at least a week.

This experience makes me reflect that the case for a referendum is even more pressing. We need a real debate on what the constitution will truly mean for Britain in the EU.