A FLOTILLA full of tents, food and games sets sail for France today in a display of solidarity with refugees stranded at the port of Calais. 

Over 20 people and five vehicles full of donations worth over £1,000 will cross the Channel as part of the United Kingdom Humani­tarian Intervention Party (UKHIP) convoy to migrant camps.

UKHIP is the brainchild of several groups and individuals who want to dispel the “toxic attitude towards migration promoted by Ukip and the Daily Mail.”

Spokesman David Charles told the Star that it was an honour to stand by migrants and refugees.

“The reason why we are going there is, on the one hand, to raise awareness, but it’s also to meet with the people who are living in Calais,” he said.

“Because we are all really just the same. We are all trying to make our lives a bit better. 

“It just so happens that they come from a situation that is genuinely horrific and life-threatening on a day-to-day level, just really by a fluke chance of where they happened to be born. 

“Whereas for me improving my quality of life might be trying to earn a bit more money, my job or whatever, for these people to improve their quality of life they have to leave their homes and their families and travel across the Mediterranean — across the Sahara — in the hope of a better life for themselves. 

“And they get to Calais and that’s it, they are stuck.”Volunteers will take tents, sleeping bags, food parcels and games to distribute in the camps, where over 2,000 people live in what Mr Charles described as “bleak” conditions. 

A separate set of donations of women’s sanitary products will also be carried over by the group.

A Strike! magazine spokesman, who will travel with UKHIP, said he was hoping to help “those who are suffering as a consequence of UK border control.

“We want to put the human back into humanitarian intervention.”

The convoy will return later in the day after playing a miniature cricket “world cup” against Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Rest of the World teams.