‘Thuggish’ far-right protesters descend on Dover and Portsmouth – The Latest

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1:20Something is happening behind the scenes and new tactics are being employed. It's a step up and a step on from what we've seen from the far right in recent years.

1:32I think the interesting thing about this actually is that they're learning lessons from the left and from others. Everybody wearing the same clothes, black, a black block. It's something taken from anarchism. This is the far right learning from its opponents, learning from its enemies. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Half. This weekend we've seen some really shocking and ugly scenes with demonstrations by far-right activists in Dover and then Portsmouth. Ben Quinn, you're our political correspondent. You've been deeply reporting into the far-right for some time now.

2:11Let's start with Portsmouth last night. What happened? Well, Portsmouth last night, we had Portsmouth being used for the first time, perhaps for the first time in a long time, as an area where some migrants who'd been crossing the Channel on quite a large dinghy, a large vessel, they'd been brought ashore for the first time and they were going to be brought out of Portsmouth and then be processed elsewhere. And the far right, this far right group, which we're talking about, seized on that as a choke point. OK, OK, so trying to stop the coach from leaving Portsmouth and therefore allowing these assignments.

2:51Yeah, exactly. Blockading and preventing the coaches from leaving to go to be processed elsewhere. And it turned into a standoff. Obviously, the police were there as well. And Ben, this comes off the back of scenes that happened the previous day in Dover, where a similar group of activists dress head to toe in black, many of them with their faces covered by balaclavas, who were attempting to block roads around the port of Dover. What seems to be really odd about this is how little the police knew about it and how off guard there were, because there were no arrests made, were there? Yeah, there weren't no arrests made.

3:29And Dover, you know, you had these really vivid images, as you say, of hundreds of men, mainly men, in black, black balaclavas, black clad, largely silent, but chanting as well. And while the police had described it as spontaneous, this was clearly a coordinated flash mob. Yeah, yeah. And extremely well organized in terms of both locations. What do we know about how this action was organized? Like how did police not have any sense that it was coming? Yeah, I mean, people are asking the question why police were not aware this was coming because many other people probably could have told them. hope not hate the anti-far-right organisation had a sense that this was coming.

4:14Yeah, people who've been watching this over the summer months would have said something was building. I mean, it's instructive, though, at the same time, there was no counter-demonstration at Dover. So it did catch a lot of people on the hop. And the people who are behind these protests or these assemblies appear to have managed to pull them off in a very incognito way. Thus far, it's a big departure from previous demonstrations or protests of this sort where they're announced with a fanfare on Twitter. You're given a time to turn up. In this case, something is happening behind the scenes and new tactics are being deployed.

4:52And this is this is it's a step up and a step on from what we've seen from the far right in recent years. Yeah, it feels very different to say the Unite the Kingdom rally organised by Tommy Robinson, where it's very clearly announced, you know, it happens in very public spaces. But this, you know, these black outfits, the fact that the people involved were wearing balaclavas, there was a sort of military quality to the way that this was being carried out. Is that deliberate? And if so, where's that come from? Yeah, I mean, look, certainly there was discipline. I mean, people were told, don't talk to the media, don't talk to the cameras.

5:29And you could see the camera crews trying to talk to people in Dover on Saturday and being told by men who are chaperoning the others, nothing, stay silent. And yeah, well, there is a paramilitary and military heritage, shall we say, on the far right. I think the interesting thing about this actually is that they're learning lessons from the left and from others. So, in fact, the notion of everybody wearing the same clothes, black, a black block, it's something taken from anarchism. You know, we've seen anarchist black blocks in this country, you know, in recent decades, organizing in a similar way.

6:03And actually, I was speaking to someone who researches the far right and they are an activist themselves. And to them, this was this shades of extinction rebellion as well, where you sign up to an event, you sign up, you then are contacted at a later date via signal or another platform and you're told to turn up. So this is the far right learning from its opponents, learning from its enemies and also wising up as well. And the other thing which has happened in recent months is we've had these terrible race riots in Belfast. Yeah. And again, the thing about the Belfast race riots is that young loyalists were told, leave your mobile phone behind at home and on the streets where they were burning people out of their homes.

6:46They were they were chastised when they took their phones out. So very much it's a pivot back to something analogue. But at the same time, they're clearly making the most of encrypted digital chats and other sort of platforms to organise. Yeah, and also the scale of the number of arrests that were made in Southport in the wake of the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class. And people there, many of them did not cover their faces and a huge number of people were arrested. So it feels like this is about sort of wrong fitting the police and not being identifiable. Who is behind this?

7:23It's this figure, Daniel Thomas, right, who has links to Tommy Robinson or Stephen Yaxley-Lenlin, the far-right activist. Yeah, I mean, Daniel Thomas or Danny Tomo, as he likes to be known or is known, is a long-term mackalite of Tommy Robinson. And obviously they go back a long way. What we understand is he's someone who had a military background, however briefly, And he is also someone who's been in the background for some time, but he's really emerged now on the back of these last few events in a way that puts him at the forefront of the British far right. You know, he's somebody who, you know, he's constantly on Twitter and other social media.

8:06You know, he'll record little segments from the seat of his car and he's been giving constant updates to followers about how this project's been coming to fruition. And actually, people were ridiculing him earlier this year. People were saying, people on the far right were saying, oh, you're all talk and no action. This is not happening. And you had some Christian nationalists sort of splitting from him. And for him, now this will be a big feather in his cap. And it sort of very much puts him in the front foot. But at the apex of this, it's very much him. and Tommy Robinson clearly has been given support to this as well.

8:49We've heard Danny Tomo saying that he's been given money as well from the US for this. Well, if we can take his word for it, but he's talked about a US think tank getting in touch and saying, what do you need? And he said, oh, I need whatever you can give me. And I think he mentioned a figure of 30 ,000. But as always with these things, it's difficult to, you have to detach the bluster and the propaganda from the fact as well. Yeah, yeah, interesting. And worryingly, he said that this is just the beginning of this type of action. As you say, he will be emboldened given that he faced criticism earlier this year that this type of action should continue.

9:29Interestingly, over the weekend, I mean, Farage had a difficult weekend over the Reform UK conference, as we covered in Friday's episode. But he has been very strong in condemning the protests, which is striking. I mean, he's made his dislike of Tommy Robinson or his desire that Tommy Robinson not be allowed to join Reform UK very clear. But this involves immigration, small boats. So why do you think he's condemned it so strongly? Yeah, because he wants to be in government and he wants to break into middle England and get particularly wavering conservatives to vote for reform. So he's always officially run a mile from the far right.

10:10And one of the things Nigel Farage says consistently at press conferences, and when you meet him and ask him about this, he'll lay claim to being the man who killed off the BNP, the British National Party. And that was through UKIP. And that was, you know, there was a period some decades ago where it looked like the BNP were going to emerge as the standard bearer of this sort of form of populist far right politics. Farage claims to have killed them off. and actually restore Britain, the sort of hard right rival to reform which has emerged and which he's licking over his shoulder at, that's been a place where a lot more of those far right street activists have been able to find a home.

10:51Having said all that, at the Reform UK conference in Birmingham on Saturday, it was quite notable that you had the presence of someone called Ryan Bridge, who is one of the co-founders of the Raise the Colours movement, which if you're familiar with them they're the people who've been hoisting union flags and crosses of St George over the past year to around particularly England so you had this contradiction where on the one hand you had reform condemning what was happening in Dover but on the other there was a clear thread from the reform conference through to that street movement as well Gosh, fascinating and very alarming Ben, thank you so much.

11:32You're welcome That's it for today, my huge thanks again to Ben Quinn, The Guardian's political correspondent. You can keep up with his reporting and our coverage of this story over at theguardian.com. And I'd also really recommend, if you haven't already, listening to the second series of The Guardian's chart-topping Black Box hosted by Michael Safi. I've spent all weekend listening to it and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The new season is exploring people's relationship with AI chatbots and how they're quietly reshaping our lives. All episodes are out now. Search Black Box wherever you get your podcasts.

12:05Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was produced by Angus Neal. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch and it was presented by me, Lucy Hopps.

12:27You drop brilliance casually to see who picks it up. An AI chatbot goes from telling you you're brilliant to saying it's conscious. You didn't summon me, you grew me. And I went, holy s***. Black Box, The Chatbots, a new series from The The Guardian investigates about the strange things happening between AI and us. The whole series is out right now. Search for Black Box wherever you get your podcasts. This is The Guardian.