Labour MP for Dover Mike Tapp has said he will be asking police questions after hundreds of balaclava-clad men descended on the port town, with many chanting "stop the boats".
Writing in the Daily Mirror, Tapp said protest is fine "but not like this". Hundreds of men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas blocked roads into Britain's busiest ferry port, stopping ordinary people getting to work, disrupting businesses and holding up families trying to start their holidays.
Dover's front-line experience
Tapp said Dover knows better than most the pressures immigration and border disruption can bring, having lived on the front line of the small-boats crisis for years and endured queues and gridlock caused by changes to cross-Channel travel. He said the last thing Dover needs is another group deliberately blocking its roads.
The Port of Dover 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," Tapp wrote.
Law and policing questions
Tapp noted that wilfully obstructing a highway can be a criminal offence, and that new legislation means police can designate protest areas where concealing your identity with a balaclava or other face covering becomes an offence.
He said policing depends on preparation, and that this was clearly organised, yet Kent Police appear to have had little advance warning. He said he will be asking why, whether intelligence was missed, and whether additional officers - including mutual aid from forces such as the Met - can be mobilised quickly enough when Dover is targeted again.
Small-boat arrivals down
Tapp pointed to an irony: small-boat arrivals this summer were down 46% compared with last year. He said government action is starting to work, citing stronger cooperation with France, more disruption of smuggling gangs, more arrests and more returns.
People have every right to protest about immigration and demand stronger borders, he said, but intimidating a town in balaclavas and blocking one of Britain's most important ports is not the way to do it.
