Daily Mail, 28th September 2016

For 76 years it has been the resting place of scores of RAF heroes who gave their lives defending the nation in the Battle of Britain.

Now their remains face destruction – as giant dredgers prepare to move on to the Channel sandbank where they crashed to dig out cheap building material.

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition to stop the Dover Harbour Board dredging Goodwin Sands for gravel to expand cargo facilities and build a marina at Dover port.

Actor Mark Rylance, star of hit film Big Friendly Giant and Wolf Hall, is among those behind the SOS (Save Our Sands) campaign.

Last night he urged developers to ‘respect the graves’ and asked: ‘Would they dredge an ancient graveyard or battlefield

Rylance is joined by Miriam Margolyes, whose home on top of the white cliffs of Dover overlooks the Goodwins.

The Harry Potter actress said: ‘Battle of Britain planes and pilots could be disturbed and war graves desecrated. I am profoundly disgusted at this plan.’

The Goodwin Sands is a notorious ten-mile stretch of shifting sandbanks off the Kent coast, near Deal. During the bitter aerial combat of 1940, at least 60 British and German aircraft plummeted into the sandbank from the skies.

The Goodwins has also seen more than 2,000 shipwrecks – in the Great Storm of 1703, on one night alone 1,200 men were lost on its banks.

SOS campaigners warn that the plan to remove 2.5 million cubic metres of sand and gravel will not only disturb the wrecks but will cause coastal erosion, endanger delicate ecosystems and wildlife, including a large seal colony.

But it is the threat to the graves of RAF pilots that has caused most anger. David Brocklehurst MBE, curator of the Kent Battle of Britain Museum at Hawkinge, spent two months searching war records to identify the locations of aircraft that came down over the Goodwins.

He said: ‘I can tell you with my hand on my heart that there are missing airmen out on the Goodwins. We must commemorate and protect the last resting place of our heroes.’

His list of 60 lost planes and their crews includes Spitfires and Hurricanes, as well as German Messerschmitts, Dornier Do 17s and Junkers Ju 88s, all shot down and never recovered between May 29 and November 14, 1940.

SOS director Laura Evers Johns said yesterday: ‘The Goodwins contain a staggering number of wrecks and the graves of many thousands of servicemen, mariners and fishermen. The plan to dredge them is immoral and unscrupulous and would result in the desecration of countless graves. It’s displaying a total disregard for the law and lack of respect for the servicemen who gave their lives for this country.’

The petition will be presented in Parliament by Dover MP Charlie Elphicke, who says: ‘It is critical to ensure that no war graves are disturbed and that no ecology is damaged.’

The body deciding the fate of the Goodwins graveyard is the Marine Management Organisation, which has until October 13 to make up its mind whether to grant a dredging licence. SOS is hoping that the Ministry of Defence’s department responsible for human remains, the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre, will back its campaign.

The Goodwin Sands is owned by the Crown Estates, which in 2013 produced an environmental report which stated: ‘Military air crash sites are automatically subject to legal protection through the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.’

It added: ‘No [dredging] licence will be allowed if there are human remains present, the intention being that such remains be left in peace where they lie.’

Dover Harbour Board denies its plans could cause problems, saying that no known military wrecks or aircraft crash sites are within the proposed dredge area.

Port of Dover spokesman Chris Talbot said: ‘Experts have surveyed the dredge areas and identified exclusion zones for known archaeological sites.’

In 2013 a German Dornier Do 17 emerged from the sands for the first time since it was shot down with its three crew on August 26, 1940.

The well-preserved twin-engine aircraft was recovered for restoration and eventual display at the RAF Museum in Hendon, North London.

THE PICTURE POST HERO LOST OVER THE SANDS AGED JUST 19

One of the most famous Battle of Britain pilots lost over Goodwin Sands was 19-year-old Keith Gillman.

His portrait appeared on the cover of Picture Post magazine, left, in 1940. But unknown to readers at the time, his Hurricane of 32 Squadron had been shot down on August 25 – the week before the magazine was published – within sight of his Dover home, plummeting on to the sandbank.

Neither he nor his aircraft were recovered. His great-niece Amanda Lomas, 47, of River, near Dover, said: ‘Our family has always been immensely proud of Keith and kept his memory alive over the years.

‘I’ve been out to the Goodwin Sands by boat at low tide and it’s a magical place. It makes me very uncomfortable to think that war graves there could be disturbed.

‘Those pilots, like my great-uncle, were heroes. They deserve to be treated with respect.’

ENDS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3794712/Battle-Goodwin-Sands-Fury-plan-dredge-sandbank-remains-RAF-heroes-laid-76-years.html

Creative Review, 10th August 2016

Richard Evans’ Goodwin Sands campaign highlights Dover dredging fears

The proposed dredging has become a hot local issue in Kent. As The Guardian reported in January, Dover Harbour Board is considering dredging for sand and gravel from an area around six miles out from Deal, to expand cargo facilities and build a marina at Dover port.

However, groups including the Kent Wildlife Trust, Marine Conservation Society and British Divers Marine Life Rescue have all raised concerns that the work might damage habitats and endanger marine life. The area is also home to a war grave.

Creative Richard Evans, who lives in Deal, had been following the issue via the Goodwin Sands SOS protest group on Facebook. “When they started to get more organised and called for people to help out I volunteered,” he says.

Evans created a campaign of press ads which highlight some of the alleged dangers of the proposed dredging, including disturbing the wreck of a U-Boat and damaging the breeding grounds of grey seals.

The ads all ran in the July 7 issue of the East Kent Mercury, which serves the Goodwin Sands area. “The ads countered a DPS Dover Harbour Board had been running, which I was pretty pleased to see run again in the same issue,” Evans says.

Actress

BAFTA Award winning actress with a multitude of film and TV roles, including two Harry Potter films, Blackadder and The Age of Innocence (1993).

Miriam Margolyes, who owns a house in St Margaret’s Bay, has written directly to the DHB to plead for the board to stop this “dangerous enterprise”.

She said:

I own a house on the cliff top at St Margaret’s Bay and we already have to face terrifying cliff erosion.

It seems you have no sense of what damage your project will cause to local people and to the environment.

I would like to place on record my profound disgust at this brutal application and urge you to drop the whole idea.

I’ve always believed in the harbour board until now and have defended the docks and the people who try to earn their living here in the depressed South East, but this is a dangerous and appalling project, which will threaten the whole coastline.

You have become destroyers of what makes this area so wonderful.

She said her objections were based on the sea life that could be destroyed or negatively affected, including 350 grey seals that would be disturbed by the noise and vibration and the impact on their food source.

She claims lowering the seabed could cause coastal erosion and leave sea defences less effective.

Ms Margolyes also said that the buried wrecks of the Admiral Gardner and possibly a German U12 submarine and the remains of Battle of Britain planes and pilots could be disturbed and desecrated.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.

Deborah Moggach’s work includes writing “These Foolish Things” (2004) which was adapted into the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and script for the 2005 version of “Pride and Prejudice” starring Keira Knightley.

Author and screenplay writer Deborah Moggach, who has a holiday home in Kingsdown, has appealed to the Marine Management Organisation, which is reviewing the application to dredge.

She said:

Myself and my family would like to make the strongest possible objection to this application, to dredge from this very fragile and special ecosystem. There is nowhere like the Goodwin Sands, and to disturb it would do huge damage to the wildlife there – the colony of seals, the spawning fish and the marine life in general.

This site has been recommended by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a Marine Conservation Zone and must be protected for future generations.

Dredging on such a scale would further add to the erosion along the coast, by altering the sea currents. The knock-on effects could be calamitous.

Please, please turn down this application. This wild, unique and magical place would be ruined.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.

Actor, Theatre Director and Playwright

Oscar and BAFTA winning star with recent roles including Dunkirk, Bridge of Spies, The BFG and Wolf Hall. He was knighted for services to theatre in 2017.

Statement from August 2017

During the filming of Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk, I was at times at sea a few hundred yards off the actual beach of Dunkirk. I was very aware that we were reenacting a real and horrific tragedy for tens of thousands of brave young men who never made it home but died and fell to their resting places in the sand beneath our little boats. The memory of their all too brief lives was almost palpable in the shallow waters surrounding the beach of Dunkirk.

I wondered what the outcry would be in England if it was announced that France was going to dredge the sands of Dunkirk to make concrete and other construction products. Outrage I imagine.

Yet, here we are still fighting to defend the last resting place of many such brave young men who perished off the coast of Dover. I have to ask, What is the problem with us, that we are so disrespectful of these honourable souls who perished in the English channel defending the rest of us from fascism? Who is responsible for this insulting ongoing enquiry? Let it conclude as soon as possible and let there be apologies from all involved for the poor behaviour towards our fallen youth.

Statement from July 2016

Dunkirk, BFG and Wolf Hall star Mr Rylance, who was born in Ashford, said:

My great-grandfather was a resident of Dover. He was the captain of a cross-Channel ferry.

On one occasion he even sailed the king across the channel. My grandmother grew up in Dover.

I am sure they would have supported the campaign to save the Goodwin Sands from dredging for all the very good reasons that the campaign has argued. I support it too.

It is particularly important today that we honour our past and ancestors as part of what we truly are now.

We are an island and our coast and shore is as important an aspect of our landscape as any green field or hill. Would they dredge an ancient graveyard or battlefield?

Our historical relationship with ships and the wide oceans of the world is a vital part of our culture and our connection to so many other different cultures.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.