Downing Street condemns far-right activists blocking asylum seeker boats in Portsmouth and Dover

Downing Street has condemned the “thuggish and intimidating behaviour” of far-right activists who blocked roads in Portsmouth when a boat carrying asylum seekers arrived in the city, two days after similar scenes in Dover.

Hundreds of men, some dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, tried to stop the arrivals from being transported for processing until 3am, when police removed them with threats of arrest.

Hampshire police said later that a number of police, coastguard and Border Force vehicles had been damaged, and a few officers had suffered minor injuries. It said the force was investigating possible offences of assaults on officers and criminal damage.

The crowd was seemingly organised by Daniel Thomas, a far-right agitator closely linked to Tommy Robinson, the longtime anti-Islam and far-right figure whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Thomas was also behind the scenes in Dover on Saturday, when crowds of people dressed in black and wearing balaclavas blocked the road around the port.

Andy Burnham’s official spokesperson said: “The intimidating and thuggish behaviour we saw over the weekend in Dover and Portsmouth is absolutely unacceptable. We condemn it unreservedly. We’ll always respect the right to peaceful protest but not where it crosses the line into disorder.”

On Monday night, Burnham said Labour had a “solemn responsibility” to stop the “politics of poison seeping into our streets”.

Speaking to the parliamentary Labour party at a closed-door meeting in Westminster, the prime minister said there was “a lot at stake” and that the party must “counter fear with positivity and hope”.

Thomas, who uses the name Danny Tommo on social media, was recorded telling the crowd that Portsmouth was “now ground zero” for the arrival of asylum seekers on boats from France, saying “enough is enough” and “Dover was a dummy run”.

Later on Monday he interrupted media interviews in Portsmouth with Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK home affairs spokesperson, to tell reporters that the use of balaclavas and masks was not intended to intimidate, but to stop supporters of his self-styled Patriot Platform group from being targeted by leftwing protesters.

Thomas was jailed in 2016 for the attempted kidnapping of a man connected to claims of drugs being sold, but now describes himself as a committed Christian.

The government had come under some pressure to condemn the events in Dover and Portsmouth as de facto vigilantism.

Nick Lowles, the chief executive of Hope Not Hate, which charts far-right activity, told the BBC: “To have 300, 400 people with balaclavas marching down the streets, stopping traffic. You know, it’s not just good enough. We need to call these people out for their politics and for the type of Britain that they want to see.

“We’ve got different ways to register our protest. We do not go on the street. We do not burn people out of their houses. We do not cause trouble and threaten to fight the police.”

Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, condemned the use of masks and paramilitary-style black outfits, but said the road blockades showed the UK was “on the edge of serious civil disturbance” over small boats carrying asylum seekers, even though the number arriving has fallen by more than 40% compared with the same period last year.

“Masked marches on the streets of Dover, and a huge, spontaneous protest on the streets of Portsmouth last night,” he said in a video posted on X. “You’d be right in thinking that this country is now on the edge of serious civil disturbance.

“But let me please say this: people wearing masks, dressed up in a similar type uniform to a paramilitary, is not going to solve this problem … Remember, peaceful protests good, uniforms and masks bad.”

Despite the fall in small boat arrivals, ministers will be alarmed by the apparent use of different routes by people smugglers, moving beyond the Dover area.

Donna Jones, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, said a boat carrying 140 people left somewhere near Cherbourg in France at about 1am on Sunday morning, before entering the Solent, near Portsmouth, about 10 hours later.

She said the town did not have the infrastructure in place to process arrivals, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My big concern now is that Portsmouth does not become a destination of choice for the people traffickers who are trying to bring people across to Britain.”

She did not condemn the far-right activists, saying: “Largely they were peaceful. They were there making their point, but they don’t want Portsmouth to become a destination.”