LONDON — A British far-right activist who has led protests against migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats was charged Thursday after allegedly slashing a dinghy in the water.
The incident came as agitators against immigration adopt a confrontational new tactic of trying to stop the boats landing on England’s shores, clashing with police and rescue workers in the process.
A video posted Tuesday on social media appears to show Daniel Thomas, 37, taking a knife to an inflatable boat, which was empty of migrants but had a rescue services member aboard, while shouting, “You’re in English territory.”
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said a 37-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life and endangering the safety of a vessel. The force said Thomas was charged Thursday with one count of criminal damage and one of failing to disclose the PIN to his phone. He was ordered detained until a court appearance on Friday.
Several hundred of Thomas’ supporters gathered outside a police station where they believed he was being held, chanting “Free DT.”
Thomas, who goes by the nickname Danny Tommo, is a longtime associate of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson. Patriot Platform, a group Thomas founded, is behind recent protests in which masked, black-clad men tried to stop migrants reaching the U.K.
Earlier this month, masked demonstrators blocked the port of Dover, in southeast England, and tried to stop migrants being taken ashore in Portsmouth on the country’s south coast.
On Tuesday, hundreds of activists gathered at a marina in Gosport, near Portsmouth, as Thomas filmed himself going out to sea to try to intercept a dinghy carrying dozens of migrants across the Channel from France. Police said three people were charged with assaulting an emergency worker during the demonstration.
Some anti-immigration activists have targeted the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a 200-year-old volunteer force that rescues people in distress at sea, because it is often called out to meet the migrant boats.
Some lifeboat crew members have been abused online and had their names and photos published, and the RNLI’s Portsmouth station closed temporarily after the protest in the city earlier this month.
Successive U.K. governments have struggled to stop people — more than 41,000 last year — making the dangerous journey across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The issue has been depicted as a crisis by politicians including Nigel Farage of the hard-right party Reform UK, and has been used as a rallying point by anti-immigration activists.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s center-left government says stepped-up law enforcement cooperation between Britain and France has helped reduce the number of people making the crossing so far this year by more than 40% compared with 2025.
Burnham’s government has condemned the “intimidating and thuggish behavior” of recent anti-immigrant demonstrators.
The U.K. has seen a wave of sometimes violent anti-immigrant demonstrations in the last two years. Protesters clashed with police last year outside hotels housing asylum seekers in London and several other cities. In June, masked men in Northern Ireland set fire to several homes in Belfast they believed to house immigrants after a Sudanese man was arrested over a stabbing.
Lawless writes for the Associated Press.
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