Britain isn’t too soft on migrants; it’s too soft on Patriot Platform

At 7.30am on Saturday, hundreds of black-clad masked men took to the streets of Dover, blocking roads and traffic around the busy port. They were followers of Patriot Platform, a new far-right vigilante group created by Daniel Thomas, aka Danny Tommo, Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man.

Wearing black balaclavas and black jackets, 300 so-called “protesters” caused hours of disruption, in effect stopping traffic to and from Britain’s busiest port while chanting “Stop the boats” and “I’m England ‘till I die”.

They had gathered in three separate locations, presumably to ensure maximum chaos. While the main entrance to the port attracted most attention, a smaller group gathered at the Western Jet Foil facility, used to process incoming asylum seekers, where they defaced the road outside the entrance with the slogan “Blood is on your hands”.

Patriot Platform was created in June by Tommo who, since then, has been busy holding meetings around the country to attract new supporters. The first event was at Black Dam and Crabtree Nature Reserve, Basingstoke, on 19 July, and the second, which attracted over 300 people, was on 22 August in a country park in Warwickshire. Other events have taken place in Kent, Essex, Leicester and the north-west over the past week.

While Patriot Platform has attracted new supporters by this means, it has also strengthened its number by collaborating with anti-migrant groups that have emerged around the country over the past 18 months, among them the Kent Patriots, Watford Patriots, South London Patriots, South-East Patriots, Essex Patriots, Watford Patriots, North-West Patriots, Surrey Patriots and Chertsey Patriots.

As my colleagues at Hope Not Hate have written, Patriot Platform is a self-professed Christian “army of patriots” formed to “reclaim our borders, restore order and send a clear message: Britain belongs to the British”. In theory, the group functions as a vigilante unit which aims to combat immigration and revive Christian values, ready to spring into action across the country at Tommo’s word. Although the true spirit and values of Christianity seem to be of zero interest to this group, they are no doubt hoping to annex some of its moral authority in the cynical expectation that it will whitewash their bigotry, hatred and racism.

These anti-migrant vigilante groups claim that their intention is to protect women and children. This is manifestly false. They are understandably reluctant to acknowledge the fact that many of their leading activists have a history of violence against women, as Hope Not Hate revealed in August.

And Tommo himself also has a dark history. In my book Tommy, I recount how he slept with a Telford survivor of sexual abuse while claiming to help her.

Over the past two years, Tommo has become increasingly militant and confrontational in his approach. Despite claiming that the Patriot Platform’s goal is peaceful protest, his recent history and pronouncements suggest precisely the opposite.

During the height of the anti-immigration riots in 2024, he posted a video online in which he called for British men to rise up:

“Every city has to go up.

Get prepared. Be ready. We have to.

It has to go off in different cities.

We have to show them we’ve had enough …

I’m ready to go. I know that a lot of you are. I’m speaking to other people at the moment.

We’re ready to go. We are, literally, ready to go.”

Pure incitement, a serious criminal offence. He followed this up with a demonstration in Downing Street which resulted in considerable disorder and dozens of arrests.

By early May, as he made his final preparations for the launch of his new group, he declared that demonstrations and rallies were a waste of time and had never changed anything. He reiterated this view after Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man, was convicted of the murder of Henry Nowak.

In a recent interview with former GB News presenter Dan Wootton, Tommo explained the group’s purpose: “What we are looking at here is taking control of this country”. He went on to say that it was similar to the English Defence League, Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon)’s far-right, anti-Islam, anti-immigration group. Not a great role model.

What is perhaps most worrying about the Dover protest was that it seemed initially that it had caught police by surprise. When they did finally arrive at the scene, there were so few of them that they were easily pushed aside and ignored by the protesters.

There are even more worrying possibilities: that the police were cowed by the presence of these men or, even worse, perhaps failed to see such activity as a potential threat to public order. This was a situation where hundreds of threatening men wearing masks and black uniforms descended on the port of Dover, blocked traffic and caused massive disruption, and yet there was not a single arrest. At the very least, the police were empowered to insist that masks be removed. They did nothing. Compare this with the arrest of climate protesters who blocked roads, or the imprisonment of elderly people protesting against the unimaginable horrors unfolding in Gaza.

Kent police defended their inadequate response by claiming that it had been a “spontaneous protest” of which they had had no prior knowledge.

Hope not Hate has since exclusively revealed that Kent police were tipped off about their intentions on the day before.

We have spoken to two residents of Preston-next-Wingham, a small village of 900 people, who told us that hundreds of men had started to arrive in the village last Friday afternoon. “There were hundreds of them,” one told us. “They took over the place.”

So small is the village that they left their vehicles wherever they could, indifferent to the interests of the villagers. “They were literally parking everywhere,” our contact told us. “They parked in the recreational ground, in the butcher’s car park, in the primary school, on the roads and even on junctions.”

Some of the men congregated in the local pub, where locals were able to overhear some of the plans for the following day.

Hope Not Hate spoke to one person who was so disturbed by these plans that they contacted counter-terrorism police. But the information that they passed on – that these men intended to go to Dover on the next day and attack Muslims – was apparently of no interest. The caller was told to ring 999. They did.

Other villagers seemingly did the same, many with complaints about the careless and illegal parking in the village. A crime number was allotted, but the case was closed with no further action within 24 hours, much to the annoyance of locals.

The local MP, Sir Roger Gale, who lives in the village, confirms these accounts are accurate. “It was a bloody nightmare,” he told me.

When asked about the police’s claim to have no knowledge of the far-right protest, he scoffed. “It was not spontaneous, it was coordinated.”

Danny Tommo and Patriot Platform used the village as a launchpad for their assault on Dover because Jamie Hamilton, one of the group’s founders, lives there, and his father has a sizable local business which was the chosen venue for that evening’s partying.

At 5.30am on the Saturday morning a fleet of vehicles arrived, each of which could accommodate a couple of dozen people. Videos later showed the protesters disembarking from the back of these vans in the port of Dover.

Apparently it had been intended that the men would stay a second night in the village, either for a social event or because they planned a second day of protests. In the end, that did not happen – they left the village after they had returned from Dover.

When they had been given clear information from multiple sources that hundreds of far-right activists were planning to descend on Dover on the following day, why did Kent police fail to act? And why did they apparently not alert anyone at the Home Office, who have also denied any prior knowledge of the protest? Why were so few police officers on duty when the protesters descended on Dover and why did Kent police lie to the public about their lack of foreknowledge?

Counter-terrorism police also have questions to answer. Why were they so dismissive when notified about the proposed activities of a large group of far-right activists, even though a caller revealed the name of the group? Given the history of such groups, in this case with the claim that the group was planning to attack Muslims in Dover, surely it should have raised alarm bells and a vigorous response –  rather than merely telling callers to ring 999.

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police and Home Office seem to be incapable of an appropriate response to the threat of far-right activity and violence. While there was no violence in Dover on this occasion, the presence of this gang was threatening, and they have undoubtedly been emboldened by the feeble police response. As a result we can expect more confrontational and intimidatory tactics in the future. The black uniforms and balaclavas should have been a sufficient clue to cause the police to intervene. There is no doubt that they would not have gone on to challenge the RNLI in Portsmouth on Sunday evening if the Dover event had not been regarded as a success.

Violence and intimidation are becoming ever-increasing features of far-right protests, but the national press rarely report such incidents. Last week, 28-year-old Jake Holder, of Ashford, was charged in connection to an arson attack at the Stanwell Hotel in Stanwell, Surrey. The BBC was the only national media organisation to cover this. Again, the brutal stabbings of five Muslims in Edinburgh in late June received little national media attention.

I fear that this isn’t mere oversight. I worry that the Home Office is so obsessed with being seen to be tough on migration that it has neglected its duty to protect the very same immigrants being targeted – often people who have lived here for two or more generations. Their “small boats” rhetoric only reinforces an anti-migrant narrative, and gives strength to these far-right agitators. 

This obtuse failure to publicly defend those targeted has an impact far beyond the immediate protest area. Asylum seekers and people of colour feel unsupported and isolated and, as a result, are voicing diminished trust in the will or ability of the authorities to protect them from these mindless and dangerous assaults. As we saw last summer, the hotel protests and flags have augmented their fear.

Against the background of the relentless narrative of civilisational conflict and civil war, promoted heavily by the likes of Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson, this country is entering a very dangerous time. The police and the Home Office need to get a grip on the situation, both to rein in these thugs and protect the public. To do this, they need to properly understand the threat we face and the dangers that lie ahead. Tensions are rising in our communities and if we do not want a repeat the appalling riots of 2024 or the outbursts of violence that we saw in Southampton and Belfast this summer, when people – whose only crime was the colour of their skin – were literally driven out of their homes through intimidation and violence, then the government needs to take the issue of cohesion far more seriously.

Tommo described Saturday’s stunt as a “warning”. We should take that as a literal threat, a shot across the bows, and ensure that we take anti-migrant violence seriously and properly understand the fragility of cohesion in so many of our communities. The police must be better prepared when his band of thugs come out on to the streets again, and our politicians need to broadcast a more positive narrative about migrants and people of colour more generally. The events in Dover, the feeble police response and the Home Office’s mealy-mouthed condemnation, their nonsense about the right to “peaceful” protests and the public’s “frustration”, will most certainly have encouraged the mob to continue their intimidatory stunts and next time they might not be so peaceful.

Britain needs a better approach before it’s too late.

Nick Lowles is the chief executive of Hope Not Hate. This is an edited version of two articles published on his Substack newsletter. Nick’s most recent book is How To Defeat the Far Right (Harper Collins).