Drunken day-trippers posed threat to Anglo-French relations

Drunken behaviour by day trippers "high on cheap liquor'' in Calais became such a problem in the mid-Sixties that the British ambassador in Paris feared it would damage Anglo-French relations.

British embassy staff in the French capital asked colleagues in London to put pressure on the ferry company running the most notoriously rowdy trip after a café owner in the port was badly hurt by British tourists.

The proprietor, a Mr Del-dyck, who ran the Pingouin bar in Calais, petitioned the Queen for help after he was left with potentially permanent injuries from an attack in June 1965. In response, British embassy staff in Paris began looking for ways to persuade the ferry companies to rein in their rowdy customers.

Documents released by the Public Record Office yesterday show that Harold Barham, the British ambassador in Paris, told Foreign Office officials in London in 1965 the preferred solution of authorities in Calais was for a cut in opening hours on board the MV Royal Daffodil. Its weekend trips were held responsible for most of the trouble. "Many of the excursionists taking advantage of cheap liquor were already pretty high by the time they arrived in Calais,'' after the four-and-a- half-hour crossing, he warned.

Mr Barham recommended that the ferry operator, General Steam Navigation Company (GSNC), should be asked to "improve discipline'', take out insurance to cover bar owners in Calais and make a goodwill payment to Mr Deldyck. But his request was given short shrift in the Foreign Office Consular Department, whose officials took the view it was a problem for the French.

They could stop the disturbances by banning the excursions but they would not do that because they are "making a great deal of money'', wrote one official.

Ferry companies were thought unlikely to cut opening hours because cheap drinking on board was part of the attraction of the trips.

The excursions, for which passengers did not need a passport, were growing in popularity to the dismay of some Foreign Office staff who believed they had provided, "extremely liberal (too liberal) facilities for foreign travel''.

After discussions with the Home Office and the Board of Trade, consular staff agreed to approach GSNC about cutting drinking hours and to make the point that incidents involving rowdy day trippers in Calais, "didn't help either Britain or the company''.

The firm agreed to cut opening times by one and a half hours on the way out but made clear the bar was open as normal for the return trip.