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Two coordinated demonstrations organised by Daniel Thomas, known online as Danny Tommo, blocked port roads in Dover and disrupted the transport of asylum seekers in Portsmouth over a single weekend, highlighting the growing tactical sophistication of Britain anti-migrant movement and its closer ties to right-wing evangelical networks.
Early on Saturday morning, a crowd of up to 500 black-clad, masked men arrived in the Kent town of Dover and blocked the main roads leading to its port.
The protesters chanted the well-worn mantra of the UK anti-immigration movement: Stop the boats. For several hours until noon they succeeded in their aim, albeit the boats they stopped were mostly passenger ferries going in the other direction. The non-violent protest was highly organised and caught police off guard.
The organisers claimed to have lawyers ready to speak over the phone to police on the ground, while the masked men, who were accompanied by their own contingent of social media streamers, carried paperwork spelling out their legal rights. Police officers were deployed across the area as demonstrators disrupted access to the critical ferry terminal, which serves as the main crossing point between Britain and France.
On Sunday evening in Portsmouth, 190 kilometres west along the coast, another, more spontaneous protest erupted. A dinghy carrying 140 migrants arrived at the Hampshire port, which rarely sees small boat arrivals as it is a much longer crossing than to Dover. British border officials tried to take the migrants on coaches to an asylum-processing centre in Kent, but were met by an impromptu crowd of protesters, many of whom were masked as those in Dover had been.
There were scuffles between police and protesters as authorities attempted to move the newly arrived asylum seekers away from the beach. Officers eventually loaded the group on to buses bound for Kent, while demonstrators shouted objections and tried to block the vehicles. Both protests were organised by a well-known British anti-migration agitator, Daniel Thomas (37), who styles himself on social media as Danny Tommo.
Thomas has been prominent around Britain hard-right activist scene for the past decade, following his release from prison after a two-year sentence for attempted kidnapping in 2016. Thomas says he became religious after prison. He operates in the growing nexus between Britain political hard right and the highly politicised right-wing Christian evangelical movement with which it has become allied in the past two years.
The Dover protest was carried out under the banner of the Patriot Platform, which he launched this year. He has warned in recent months that his fellow right-wing activists would increasingly engage in the sort of direct action that has been more closely associated with some activists on the fringes of the hard left for years. He said the Dover protest was a warning to authorities and a message about what could come next.
Barely 36 hours later, Thomas filmed himself confronting police near Portsmouth, not far from his Hayling Island home, as they loaded the newly-landed asylum seekers on to buses to take them to Kent. He told officers, panting from running, that he had organised Dover and warned that if they did not stop, he would call 1,000 men to the place.
For 10 years Thomas has been viewed as personally close to Tommy Robinson, Britain best-known hard-right agitator, whose birth name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Thomas has acted as Robinson bodyguard. He was seen in a private area backstage at a right-wing political and religious event organised in London by Robinson last December. He was seen by Robinson side again in May for another of his Unite the Kingdom marches down Whitehall.
Robinson does not appear to have had direct involvement in the protests in Dover or Portsmouth, however. He spent much of Saturday morning suggesting online, apparently incorrectly, that more masked protesters would arrive in shifts to replace any who left. Robinson still sought to amplify both protests on the social media platform X, commending those involved as real men and defending Thomas from criticism.
Robinson remains its most prominent figurehead, but the Dover and Portsmouth incidents show that Britain hard-right, anti-migrant movement is becoming more organised. Its activists are more willing to take direct action on specific issues, albeit official figures from the UK government show the numbers of small boat arrivals are actually in steep decline.
The incidents also confirmed that although much of the media attention on voter attitudes towards immigration focuses on working-class strongholds in England north and midlands, the movement most burgeoning activism is often found on the south coast, where migrant crossings have become a persistent and visible feature of local life. Analysts note that the ability of activists to mobilise hundreds of supporters within hours points to a new phase of grassroots coordination, raising fresh questions about how police and border authorities will respond to future flashpoints along the coastline
Anti-Immigration Protest Dover Portsmouth Daniel Thomas Danny Tommo Patriot Platform Tommy Robinson Far-Right Activism Small Boat Crossings South Coast
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