Why are far-right masked men protesting at British ports?

By Kara Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Hundreds of balaclava-wearing protesters blocked roads and clashed with police in southern England overnight Sunday after a small boat carrying migrants landed on the coast, marking the second major anti-migration demonstration in the UK over the weekend.

Footage from the scene in the coastal city of Portsmouth showed the protesters, wearing mostly black, shouting “stop the boats” and “I’m England ‘til I die.”

The group of far-right agitators had first attempted to stop lifeboats from bringing the migrants onto land before they staged a road protest where they sought to block buses from taking the asylum seekers to a processing facility.

The standoff between police continued until early Monday morning.

The protest appeared to be organized by a group called the Patriot Platform, led by Daniel Thomas, a former associate of the anti-Islamic, far-right political activist Tommy Robinson.

The group calls itself a Christian “army of patriots,” who Thomas says are protesting for a “love for our children, country and most importantly the future that we are leaving for our children.”

Also known as Danny Tommo, Thomas was jailed after pleading guilty for attempted kidnapping in 2016, British media reported.

HOPE Not Hate, a British advocacy group that opposes far-right extremism, has been tracking Patriot Platform. HOPE Not Hate says the incident “shows the growing trend of anti-migrant vigilantism coming to a head in the public eye.”

“Patriot Platform, and the smaller groups united by it, promote their ideology on the basis that they are providing a public service in the form of security in an ever-more dangerous Britain. In reality, Thomas has little hope of persuading others that Patriot Platform is a safety-first community group when its members march through the streets wearing balaclavas and have been exposed for their violent criminal records,” it said.

The UK Home Office condemned “the intimidating and thuggish behaviour” in Portsmouth.

“The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but it must never cross a line into disorder,” it said in a statement.

A similar protest unfolded in Dover on Saturday, where video posted on social media from the busy port showed groups of men, also masked and dressed in black, linking arms across a main road and shouting “stop the boats.” The men blocked routes to the port, where ferries connect England to France. The protest caused a four-mile traffic jam on Saturday morning, according to the National Highways agency.

No arrests were made in Portsmouth, according to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, which said that an investigation had been opened to “identify offenders responsible for any assaults to officers, criminal damage to vehicles, or other criminal offences.” No arrests were made in Dover, Kent Police said.

Migration remains one of the most heated political issues in Britain, 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 hard-right Reform UK party, whose popularity surged in England’s local elections in May, have particularly rallied around the issue of small boat crossings, with its leader, Nigel Farage, branding the asylum seekers “an invasion” in a speech on Friday.

Farage told GB News Saturday that “nobody feels more strongly about stopping the boats than me,” but said he condemned the “disgusting” tactics taken this weekend.

“Turning up in balaclavas is not the way to do it,” Farage said.

Mike Tapp, a Labour party lawmaker who represents the constituency in Parliament, called the demonstrators “idiots coming to Dover to cause disruption.”

“I bet if you asked any one of those ‘protesters’ they wouldn’t know small boat crossing are down by 40% and we are working hard to fix the mess,” he said in a Facebook post Saturday, adding: “Go home, enjoy your weekend/get a job.”

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