Protest is fine. But not like this. Hundreds of men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas descended on Dover and blocked roads into Britain’s busiest ferry port.
They chanted about small boats while stopping ordinary people getting to work, disrupting businesses and holding up families trying to start their holidays.
They rather missed the mark.
Dover knows better than most the pressures immigration and border disruption can bring. We have lived on the front line of the small-boats crisis for years. We have also endured queues and gridlock caused by changes to cross-Channel travel.
So the last thing Dover needs is another group deliberately blocking our roads.
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The Port of Dover is not just another road junction. It 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.
And the law matters. Wilfully obstructing a highway can be a criminal offence. New legislation also means police can designate protest areas where concealing your identity with a balaclava or other face covering becomes an offence.
But policing depends on preparation. This was clearly organised, yet Kent Police appear to have had little advance warning. I 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.
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There is another irony.
Small-boat arrivals this summer were down 46% compared with last year. Government action is starting to work: stronger cooperation with France, more disruption of smuggling gangs, more arrests and more returns.
People have every right to protest about immigration. They have every right to demand stronger borders. But intimidating a town in balaclavas and blocking one of Britain’s most important ports? That isn’t the way to do it.