Protests by groups of masked men on roads around the English port of Dover, the main hub for ferries crossing to France, disrupted traffic yesterday, police and port authorities said.
The demonstrators, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, chanted ‘Stop the boats’, the BBC said, in a reference to asylum seekers arriving on the south coast of England from France.
Major roads to the port were blocked in the morning, but access to the port had been restored and those involved in the ‘spontaneous protest’ had been dispersed by midday, Kent Police said in a statement on X.
No arrests were made, police said.
Successive British governments have struggled to curb the flow of asylum seekers, often coming in overcrowded, inflatable boats.
However, the number of arrivals this year until September 1 was 16,513, around 43 per cent lower than the same period in 2025, according to government data cited by the BBC.
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