A cabinet minister has condemned the blocking of Dover roads by dozens of masked and black-clad people on Saturday.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said that although peaceful protest was an “essential part of British life”, this differed from “dressing up in costumes like this and disrupting people’s lives”.
He told the Sky News Sunday Morning programme: “So I would condemn it, but I’d condemn the disruption it caused for local people as well.”
Adding that the situation had been resolved, he said: “Clearly, that’s not something we would want or expect to see on the [streets] of Britain.”
He declined to comment “on the security and policing side of it”, but when pressed on the apparent unpreparedness of the police, he said he thought that “on the whole, the police handled it very well”.
Responsibility for the demonstration appears to have been claimed by Patriot Platform, an anti-immigration group with links to the far right which styles itself as having a “fierce love for our homeland”.
Kent police attended and engaged with the protest on Saturday, which the Port of Dover described as a “public order incident”. Protesters had dispersed by lunchtime, and no arrests were made during the incident.
Traffic in and out of the port on the A20 was stopped, causing delays of up to 45 minutes and four miles of congestion, according to National Highways. Videos shared online showed masked people in black marching on the road in a group as lorries waited in traffic next to police cars. The number of people involved was not immediately clear, and police did not give an official estimate. One livestreamer estimated that he was marching with hundreds of people.
Social media videos showed demonstrators linking arms in a blockade across the A20, chanting “stop the boats” and “England till I die”.
Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal, posted on X: “A clearly coordinated protest is not ‘spontaneous’ as described by Police. We can and must do better.”
He noted that Kent police appeared to have had “little advance warning”, and questioned whether intelligence had been missed. “I will be asking why,” he wrote.
“Concerns around illegal migration are not racist. I’ve said that many times. But what we saw today in Dover is against our laws and not fair on residents.”
In a piece for the Mirror, Tapp suggested that he would like additional officers, including mutual aid from forces such as the Met, mobilised quickly if Dover is targeted again.
He wrote: “The Port of Dover is not just another road junction. It is critical national infrastructure, handling around a third of UK trade in goods with the EU and huge volumes of roll-on, roll-off freight. When Dover stops, Britain feels it.
“And the law matters. Wilfully obstructing a highway can be a criminal offence. New legislation also means police can designate protest areas where concealing your identity with a balaclava or other face covering becomes an offence.”
A government spokesperson said: “The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but we condemn the behaviour in Dover and the travel disruption it has caused.”
