Police were told the night before far-right agitators blocked roads into Dover that those involved had converged on a village 18 miles away and planned to use it as a launchpad, it has emerged.
People in Preston-next-Wingham told of how hundreds of men had started to arrive in the village of just over 920 residents on Friday afternoon and in effect “took over” the village.
At least one person is understood to have sought to pass on details to counter-terrorism police after people heard the far-right activists boasting in the local pub that they intended to go to Dover and “attack Muslims”.
The information was passed on to police but little or no interest was shown in the tipoff, according to the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, who spoke to the person. Others reported careless and illegal parking to the police but no action was said to have been taken.
The claims have raised fresh questions about Kent police’s handling of the protest, in which hundreds descended on Dover at 7am and which the force described as “spontaneous”. No arrests were made during the action, which involved hundreds of black-clad masked men standing in the middle of roads and led to access to the port of Dover being blocked for several hours.
Kent olice admitted on Tuesday that an initial review of its handling of the protests found that the force had received non-emergency information late on Friday evening that a protest could take place in the town the next day.
“This information was not fully assessed. If it was, it may have allowed the force to consider its resourcing,” it said in a statement.
“However, this information would not have prevented the lawful protest from taking place, nor the disruption experienced by the town, port and wider community.”
Roger Gale, the MP for Herne Bay and Sandwich, who lives in Preston-next-Wingham, said the unrest in Dover on Saturday was clearly not “spontaneous”.
He said that the village in Kent was unusually full of cars on Friday night and that a local car park and the recreation ground was still full of vehicles on Saturday morning, prompting him to call 999.
Gale said: “A local councillor took photographs of the number plates and they should be able work back from those to establish who owns the cars. I called 999 at around 9.30am on Saturday and two officers came over quite quickly.
“I am going to write to the chief constable to ask what they are going to do with this information. There were roughly 50 cars in the car park and the recreation ground and more on the road. [What happened in Dover] was not spontaneous. It was carefully coordinated. Those participating were transported from the village to Dover, most likely in Luton vans.”
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Gale was not aware of calls being made to the police on Friday but he added that he knew that conversations among participants in Saturday’s unrest had been overheard in the village pub on Friday night.
The action was organised by Daniel Thomas, a long-term associate of the far right activist known as Tommy Robinson. Thomas, who has established an umbrella grouping called Patriot Platform, was also linked to a blockade in Portsmouth the following day.
One person who lives in Preston-next-Wingham told Hope Not Hate: “There were hundreds of them. They took over the place.
“They were literally parking everywhere. They parked in the recreational ground, in the butcher’s car park, in the primary school, on the roads and even on junctions.”
A fleet of vehicles is understood to have arrived at about 5.30am on Saturday in the village. Video footage later showed men who took part in the protest disembarking from the back of the vehicles in Dover.
