Hundreds of balaclava-wearing demonstrators blocked roads and clashed with police in southern England on Sunday night after a small boat carrying migrants came ashore, marking the second major anti-immigration demonstration in Britain over the weekend.
Footage from the scene in the coastal city of Portsmouth showed protesters, mostly dressed in black, chanting “stop the boats” and “England till we die”.
A group of far-right agitators first tried to block lifeboats transporting migrants to land, before staging road protests to try to block buses transporting asylum seekers to processing facilities.
The standoff between police continued into the early hours of Monday morning.
The protest appears to have been organized by a group called Patriot Platform, led by Daniel Thomas, a former associate of anti-Muslim far-right political activist Tommy Robinson.
The group calls itself an “army of Christian patriots,” and Thomas said they are protesting for “love of our children, our country, and most importantly, the future we leave for our children.”
Thomas, also known as Danny Tomo, was jailed in 2016 after pleading guilty to attempted kidnapping, British media reported.
HOPE Not Hate, a British advocacy group against far-right extremism, is tracking Patriot Platform. HOPE Not Hate said the incident “demonstrates that a growing trend of anti-immigrant vigilante activity is gaining public attention.”
“Patriot Platform and the small groups it associates with promote an ideology on the basis that they are providing a public service in the form of public safety in a UK that is more dangerous than ever. Mr Thomas has little hope of convincing others that Patriot Platform is a safety-first community group, when in fact its members are marching in the streets wearing balaclavas and having heinous criminal histories exposed,” it said.
The Home Office condemned the “coercive and violent behavior” in Portsmouth.
“The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of democracy, but it must not cross the line into disorder,” the group said in a statement.
A similar protest took place in Dover on Saturday, with video posted on social media from the busy port showing a group of men, also masked and dressed in black, standing arm in arm across a highway and shouting “stop the boats”. The men cut off the route to the port, which is serviced by ferries between England and France. The protests caused a four-mile traffic jam Saturday morning, according to the National Highway Administration.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said no arrests had been made in Portsmouth and that an investigation had been launched to “identify those responsible for assaulting a police officer, criminal damage to a vehicle and other criminal activity”. Kent Police said no arrests were made in Dover.
Immigration remains one of Britain’s most heated political issues, despite the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats falling to its lowest level since 2020, according to the Home Office.
The far-right Reform UK party, which saw a surge in support in England’s local elections in May, has rallied around the issue of small boat crossings in particular, with leader Nigel Farage slamming asylum seekers as an “invasion” in a speech on Friday.
Mr Farage told GB News on Saturday that “nobody feels as strongly about stopping boats as I do”, but condemned the “disgusting” tactics used this weekend.
“Showing up wearing a balaclava is not the way to go,” Mr Farage said.
Labor MP Mike Tapp, who represents the constituency in parliament, called the protesters “idiots who came to Dover to cause chaos”.
“If you asked any of those ‘protesters,’ they wouldn’t know that small boat traffic is down by 40%. We’re working hard to fix this mess,” he said in a Facebook post Saturday, adding, “Go home, enjoy your weekend, and get a job.”
