They arrived under cover of darkness from towns and cities across England. By morning, hundreds of men dressed in black, many wearing balaclavas, had gathered at ports along the southern coast.
At dawn on September 5, a group estimated at up to 200 people occupied roundabouts leading into Dover, Kent, home to Britain’s busiest cross-Channel port.
The masked demonstrators caught police off guard, bringing traffic on the main route to London to a standstill for roughly four hours and disrupting one of the country’s most important links with continental Europe.
The following evening, tensions shifted to Southsea near the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The confrontation followed the arrival of a British lifeboat carrying 140 migrants who had crossed the English Channel from France in an overloaded small boat. Local protesters separately obstructed coaches used to transport migrants to government-arranged hotels, while the masked group clashed with riot police late into the night.
They returned to the Hampshire shoreline on September 21, where demonstrators pressured authorities to send rescue vessels to Dover instead.
The next day, Danny “Tommo” Thomas, the group’s leader, and several associates went out onto the water in an attempt to intercept two boats carrying migrants across the Channel.
“This is England!” Thomas shouted as he used a knife to cut into one of the small boats, according to accounts of the incident.
The activists call themselves Patriot Platform, presenting themselves as a new generation of English vigilantes opposed to the government’s handling of irregular migration.
For decades, Britain’s southern ports have been central to debates over border control. Migrants crossing the English Channel from France and Belgium often arrive with the help of smuggling networks before seeking asylum in the United Kingdom.
Rather than automatically returning those who arrive, the British government places them in the asylum system while their claims are assessed. Critics say that policy has deepened public frustration, weakened confidence in political institutions and created an opening for extremist groups such as Patriot Platform.
New arrivals may receive publicly funded accommodation, financial support and legal assistance while their cases are reviewed. Critics also accuse the government of withholding or failing to publish data they believe would clarify the relationship between migration and serious crime, claims that require careful examination rather than assumption.
Some asylum seekers arrive without passports or other identity documents, making it difficult for officials to establish their nationality and background. Cases can take months or years to resolve, and applicants may remain in hotels or reception facilities while they wait for a decision.
For opponents of the policy, the combination of smuggling operations, public spending and accommodation pressures represents a failure by the state to protect citizens and manage the border effectively.
They argue that successive governments have damaged the social contract by failing to meet what they regard as the basic responsibilities of democratic leadership.
In their view, Britain has allowed international obligations, legal challenges and administrative bureaucracy to shape immigration policy while neglecting effective border enforcement and public accountability.
They also allege that policing is applied unevenly—describing a system in which some forms of political intimidation are tolerated while members of the majority face prosecution for protesting against rapid social change. Such “two-tier policing” claims remain fiercely contested.
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The danger, critics warn, is a cycle of declining trust, street disorder and increasingly organized mobilization along ethnic, religious and ideological lines.
England’s political unrest already includes masked anti-fascist protesters, far-right activists and Islamist demonstrators, with confrontations on the streets often amplified by inflammatory rhetoric and social media.
The rise of Patriot Platform reflects a broader pattern: when identity-based politics becomes more prominent, rival groups can respond in kind. The movement portrays itself as an English nationalist force taking to the streets.
Patriot Platform leader Danny “Tommo” Thomas is a 37-year-old father of four and a former tank driver with the King’s Royal Hussars. After leaving the Army, he was imprisoned for taking part in an attempted armed kidnapping involving a drug dealer. He later became a born-again Christian while in prison.
When Tommo got out, he connected with English nationalists including the popular hero Tommy Robinson. He set up Patriot Platform in June.
“The time for polite silence is over,” Patriot Platform’s website says. “Stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow patriots who refuse to let Britain fall.”
Patriot Platform harnesses the organization and strategies of the radical Left and the Islamists to the goals of white identity politics. Its membership, which Tommo numbers at 40,000, is cellular and decentralized. It uses online secrecy, flash mobs and masks to outsmart the police.
Previous nationalist groups such as Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League were shambolic. Like the Islamists, Patriot Platform is against drink and drugs. Like Antifa, it affects paramilitary style. And while Robinson’s followers bellowed soccer chants, Tommo’s echo the MAGA war cry “Christ is King.”
Tommo calls for discipline and “coordinated lawful action.” Patriot Platform, he says, is building “the practical infrastructure” for a national movement that will document and confront the state’s complicity with illegal immigration.
Britain has seen nothing like this since the 1930s, when Oswald Mosley and his “blackshirts” marched for fascism.
This is the nightmare scenario that Britain’s security services have long feared.
In Hampshire, Tommo’s men beat the mighty British state. The county police commissioner, Donna Jones, said the burden on her officers is now “unsustainable.” She and local leaders called on Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary in London, to stop the landings in Hampshire.
The next skirmish will be in Piddington, near Oxford. The government plans to dump over 1,250 illegal immigrants at a disused military site next to a village of little more than 350 people.
Shabana Mahmood promises to use “the full force of the law” if Patriot Platform marches on Piddington. But Mahmood of all people should know that Britain has already crossed the Rubicon of ethnic mobilization. How else did she win her seat in Parliament?
Dominic Green (@DrDominicGreen) is a Wall Street Journal Free Expression columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
