Hundreds of balaclava-wearing protesters blocked roads and clashed with police in southern England overnight Sunday after a small boat carrying migrants landed on the coast, marking the second major anti-migration demonstration in the UK over the weekend.
Footage from the scene in the coastal city of Portsmouth showed the protesters, wearing mostly black, shouting “stop the boats” and “I’m England ‘til I die.”
The group of far-right agitators had first attempted to stop lifeboats from bringing the migrants onto land before they staged a road protest where they sought to block buses from taking the asylum seekers to a processing facility.
The standoff between police continued until early Monday morning.
The protest appeared to be organized by a group called the Patriot Platform, led by Daniel Thomas, a former associate of the anti-Islamic, far-right political activist Tommy Robinson.
