Tommy Robinson Ally Leads Masked UK Port Blockades
Tommy Robinson Ally Leads Masked UK Port Blockades
The News
A convicted kidnapper turned anti-immigration organizer has put hundreds of masked men on British streets in two days, blocking roads at the port of Dover and on a Portsmouth beach where 140 migrants came ashore.
Daniel Thomas, 37, who goes by "Danny Tommo," founded the group Patriot Platform in June and says it exists to protect "our women and children" from illegal migration.
Every mainstream British party has condemned the protests. On Monday Thomas interrupted a live interview with Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf in Portsmouth to warn that party leader Nigel Farage needs to be "very careful with his words."
Timeline
Thomas is jailed for two years after being convicted of attempted kidnapping. Portsmouth Crown Court heard that he and two accomplices went "mob-handed" to a man's home after wrongly accusing him of stealing drugs. Recorder William Mousley QC told them: "Go and serve your sentences, learn the lesson and for God's sake don't get involved in anything as stupid again."
He is pictured alongside Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, at a planning event for a UKIP "Brexit Betrayal" rally. He had earlier worked as Robinson's bodyguard.
Thomas launches Patriot Platform, calling it an "army of patriots" and one of the biggest "pushbacks" since the Second World War. It splits into regional units including Swindon Patriots, Coventry Patriots and Black Country and Staffordshire Patriots.
Around 300 masked demonstrators appear in Dover on Saturday morning, chanting anti-immigration slogans and blocking roads and access to the port. Police appeared to be caught by surprise.
Less than 48 hours later, Patriot Platform members descend on Portsmouth after roughly 140 migrants are rescued off the Hampshire coast and brought ashore by RNLI vessels at Eastney Beach. Thomas live-streams himself running along the beach trying to stop the arrivals from boarding coaches, shouting at emergency workers: "You know who I am, my name is Danny Tommo, you saw what I did in Dover and if you don't stop right now I'm calling 1,000 men to come to this place." The crowd disperses only after police impose a dispersal order lasting until Monday evening.
Thomas confronts Yusuf on camera in Portsmouth and tells him Patriot Platform intends to become an electoral "voting bloc."
Reactions
Farage called the Dover protests "disgusting." Thomas threw that back at him, accusing Farage of having called demonstrators at a London rally earlier in the year "knuckle-draggers."
"I understand Nigel is going to be prime minister one day and I understand he has to set a standard," Thomas told Yusuf. "But Nigel needs to be very careful with his words."
Yusuf said he had come to Portsmouth to listen, told Thomas that "nobody has done more to raise this issue, and taken a load of flack for it, than Nigel Farage," and promised to carry the message back. He also drew a hard line on the police: "There is never any excuse for violence against police officers who are doing their job."
A UK government spokesman said: "We condemn the intimidating and thuggish behaviour. The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but it must never cross a line into disorder."
Writing in The Guardian, Joe Mulhall of the campaign group Hope Not Hate argued that Dover and Portsmouth revealed a new and dangerous development — a network of vigilantes mobilizing because politicians and police have failed to act — and that the authorities were caught out.
What's Next
Thomas says the movement is building toward the ballot box, not the street. "In 12, in 18 months' time, we convert into a voting bloc, and that voting bloc will go to the most suitable candidate and to the most suitable party that is able to bring this country back into order," he told Yusuf, warning that if Reform's leadership "slanders me, they're going to push us into other parties."
The Portsmouth dispersal order ran only until Monday evening, and Thomas has been staging recruitment speeches to large groups of men in Essex, Leicester and the North West — so the immediate question is where the next blockade lands.
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Why the masks
Asked why his men wear black clothing and balaclavas, Thomas said they fear being identified and targeted. "We have working-class men who are bricklayers, who are roofers, who are carpenters," he said. "The reason they're covering their faces is because we know they're going to be targeted." He later added that "the only reason they've done that is because no one wants to be labelled far right." He insists there was no violence in Dover.
The group
Thomas describes himself on social media as a "devoted Christian, proud dad and entrepreneur," and says Patriot Platform was started by a group of church-goers in London with rules banning alcohol, drugs, shouting and flag waving. A fundraiser page for the group has taken in almost £10,000 and lists boats and buses among the equipment it needs. Its national website carries the slogan: "Together, we will take our country back." He is reported to be a former tank driver with the King's Royal Hussars who was medically discharged before active service.
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