THERE are men, women and children living in broken tents on a bog seamed with human waste.

At this disease-ridden swamp in Dunkirk they are bedding down at night in wet sludge which is doomed never to dry in the winter cold. 

There’s no electricity, no light at night, a bare supply of medicine, hardly any shelter beyond ripped tarpaulins, and nowhere to wash their clothes or themselves. 

It is eerie for any visitor to see the youngest children play in the pungent mud without sanitation as if it is a natural way of life.

No wonder then that even hardened relief workers, who have seen the desperate conditions at refugee camps the world over, are beginning to consider this field, or this former field, to be witness to some of the worst conditions they have seen. Save the Children has urged governments, and the media, to pay speedy attention to the crisis unfolding there.

In the weeks over Christmas and New Year, Dunkirk, this historic town an hour or so from Camden by rail, became home to the second refugee camp to grow on the coast in northern France, as a result of the largest movement of people in modern times. 

Many have moved up the road from Calais, where the first camp, the so-called “Jungle”, has proved too much, with its tear-gas deterrent against the desperadoes making nightly attempts to breach the razor-wire fence protecting the port, the would-be ferry stowaways and the tunnel runners.

Between the two camps, around 10,000 people wait and wonder whether they will make it to the United Kingdom, often claiming they have relatives who they could be reunited with here.

Many have crossed the continent after leaving Syria in fear of their lives from the threat of Isis or the Assad regime, or Afghanistan, where their persecutors in blown-out towns were the Taliban.

Joe Friday, an events organiser from London, came to France for a few days at the end of last summer and has ended up staying here for months with friends and strangers to maintain a production line of shed-like shelters from reclaimed and donated wood that have housed half the 6,000 people at Calais.

Joe Friday explains how the camps are operating to Sally Gimson, Katy Thorne and Keir Starmer

He is part of a small group who are more or less all the refugees have in the way of support, but they have been prevented from doing the same at Dunkirk by French authorities who won’t allow the structures there, for fear that the camp – an ugly and squalid contrast to the middle-class housing development that stands opposite – will become permanent.

The theory goes that by making it as uninhabitable as possible, people will move on. But they haven’t. The gendarmes with guns simply check that nobody is stealing in with building materials.

“These people feel they have no choice, nowhere else to go,” says Mr Friday. “People say they should go back, but, seriously, there’s a reason why people would rather live like this. Nobody would choose this if they didn’t have a reason to. Who would choose to live like this?”

This has led to the conundrum where expert observers say it is time for the United Nations to declare Calais and Dunkirk the scene of a humanitarian crisis and to view them, officially, as refugee camps, which could then be properly monitored. Such a step, however, could lead to the permanence that France fears.

At the same time, France does not want the United Kingdom to simply say that it will accommodate everybody in the camps, fearing this would simply lead to a new rush of people who’d see it as the way to secure entry.

In the meantime, volunteers, mainly young English men and women, have set up advice – or therapy – centres in tents, offering boiled lemon water and a hug when all other ideas of help have failed. 

A couple of miles away, a warehouse is populated by 30 or so more volunteers sorting out donations, bundles of clear-out clothes which range from the woolly and warm to the unsuitable; a glittery pink ballgown hangs on the corrugated metal wall, not much use to someone desperate for a jumper. In the background there’s the whirr of saws making frames for Mr Friday’s shelters.

Back at the camps, the refugees, in the main, ask not to be photographed, even if they welcome the world’s media shining a light on the conditions, and their desperation. The story has it in Calais that the British government has its eyes on social media and newspaper photographs to identify people who might try to reach its shores illegally.

That photo-combing seems to represent a lot of time and effort to people who gathered in a wigwam in Calais on Friday to tell Holborn and St Pancras MP Keir Starmer their stories. 

“I’d rather cut all my fingers off than stay in France,” said an Iraqi man, who said he was driven out of his country after Isis took over his computing company. “They have left people to live like this. I’d rather die than stay in France, and I can’t go back to Iraq – never. 

“We know that the UK sees things differently. They want to help people in the worst trouble – and we are not looking to go there for benefits. I have qualifications from my job in Iraq but in England I’d happily work all day as a cleaner. Just give me some food to live on, you don’t have to pay me. I’d rather that than go back to Iraq or stay in France.”

A 15-year-old Afghan boy is trying to reach England to reunite with relatives. He said he did not know whether his mother or father were dead or alive after being sent on his way when the Taliban bombed out his neighbourhood.

The tales went on for more than an hour. “You end up having mini-breakdowns yourself every day,” said one of the volunteers at Dunkirk, another young Londoner, as she took Mr Starmer around the bog. It is the sight of children running, playing and falling in the toxic brown sludge which often triggers the tears.

She adds: “You have to ask yourself whether this is really happening, whether people are really living like this. We have had people coming to help in different ways, but some have come to Dunkirk and it’s just been too much. They knew it was going to be bad – but not this bad, and they just haven’t been able to take it. It is too, too much.”