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

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.”

周日晚间，一艘载有移民的小船在英格兰南部海岸登陆后，数百名头戴巴拉克拉法帽的抗议者封锁了道路，并与警方发生冲突。这是周末英国发生的第二起大型反移民示威活动。

来自沿海城市朴茨茅斯的现场画面显示，抗议者们大多身穿黑色衣服，高喊着“阻止船只”和“我至死都是英格兰人”。

这群极右翼煽动者先是试图阻止救生艇将移民送上岸，然后又组织了一场道路抗议活动，试图阻止公共汽车将寻求庇护者送往处理中心。

警方与警方的对峙一直持续到周一清晨。

这场抗议活动似乎是由一个名为“爱国者平台”的组织发起的，该组织由丹尼尔·托马斯领导，他曾是反伊斯兰极右翼政治活动家汤米·罗宾逊的同伙。

该组织自称是基督教“爱国者军队”，托马斯说他们抗议是为了“热爱我们的孩子、国家，以及最重要的，我们留给孩子的未来”。

据英国媒体报道，托马斯（又名丹尼·汤姆）在2016年承认企图绑架罪后被判入狱。

英国反对极右翼极端主义的倡导组织“希望而非仇恨”（HOPE Not Hate）一直在追踪“爱国者平台”（Patriot Platform）的动向。“希望而非仇恨”表示，这起事件“表明反移民私刑行为日益猖獗，并逐渐在公众视野中爆发”。

“爱国者平台及其下属的小团体宣称，他们在日益危险的英国提供安全保障，以此作为公共服务，并以此宣扬他们的意识形态。但实际上，当其成员戴着巴拉克拉法帽在街头游行，且暴力犯罪记录已被曝光时，托马斯很难说服其他人相信爱国者平台是一个以安全为先的社区团体。”声明中写道。

英国政府内政部谴责了朴茨茅斯发生的“恐吓和流氓行为”。

“和平抗议的权利是我们民主制度的基石，但它绝不能越过界限，演变成混乱，”声明中写道。

周六，多佛港也发生了类似的抗议活动。社交媒体上发布的视频显示，一群同样戴着面具、身穿黑衣的男子在繁忙的港口内手挽手，横跨一条主干道，高喊“阻止船只”。这些男子封锁了通往港口的道路，该港口是连接英格兰和法国的渡轮码头。据英国国家公路管理局称，此次抗议活动导致周六上午出现了长达四英里的交通堵塞。

据汉普郡和怀特岛警方称，朴茨茅斯警方未逮捕任何人，并表示已展开调查，以“查明任何袭击警员、故意损坏车辆或其他犯罪行为的责任人”。肯特郡警方称，多佛警方也未逮捕任何人。

尽管英国内政部表示，乘坐小船穿越英吉利海峡的移民人数已降至 2020 年以来的最低水平，但移民问题仍然是英国最激烈的政治问题之一。

在五月份英格兰地方选举中人气飙升的极右翼政党“改革英国党”尤其关注小型船只偷渡问题，其领导人奈杰尔·法拉奇在周五的演讲中将这些寻求庇护者称为“入侵”。

法拉奇周六告诉GB新闻，“没有人比我更强烈地希望阻止这些船只”，但他谴责了本周末采取的“令人作呕的”策略。

“戴着巴拉克拉瓦帽出现可不是正确的做法，”法拉奇说。

代表该选区的工党议员迈克·塔普称示威者是“来到多佛制造混乱的白痴”。

“我敢打赌，如果你问那些‘抗议者’中的任何一个，他们都不会知道小船过境人数下降了 40%，我们正在努力解决这个问题，”他在周六的 Facebook 帖子中写道，并补充说：“回家吧，享受你的周末/去找份工作吧。”