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Shortly before 7am on Saturday, the shutters rolled up on several lorries arriving at Dover from the Midlands. Out spilled up to 500 far-right activists, all wearing black clothes and face coverings, who proceeded to blockade the entrance to Dover port for four hours, chanting “stop the boats”.
No arrests were made by Kent Police, who called this a “spontaneous protest” despite clear evidence the group had been building towards this event for weeks. This was a well-organised show of strength from Patriot Platform, a new group keen to test the limits of street vigilantism in the UK.
They have since called Dover a “dummy run”, and the light-touch response they received from Kent Police appears to have buoyed the group; by Sunday night they had arrived in Portsmouth to block roads in an attempt to stop recently arriving asylum seekers being transported for processing. So what is “Patriot Platform”, and what are the aims and potential future tactics of this group, which promises to “send a clear message: Britain belongs to the British”?