Image shows birds eye view of Bibby Stockholm Barge, used to house up to 500 asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims. Picture: Paul Nash/Shutterstock
Independent local news website Dorset Eye has won a legal dispute after being sued by a group protesting about the housing of asylum seekers on a barge.
Alex Bailey and the group No To The Barge [NTTB] filed a defamation claim over five articles published on the website between 2024 and 2025.
Dorset Eye is a member of Impress and the case was heard by an arbitrator under the regulator’s low-cost disputes resolution scheme (which is offered to publishers and claimants as an alternative to expensive courtroom litigation).
NTTB was set up in response to the decision to house up to 500 asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm Barge at Portland Port in Dorset in 2023.
The asylum seekers stayed there while awaiting decisions on their claims. The barge contract ended in January 2025, and the barge was towed away.
Claimant alleged ‘considerable toll’ on mental health
The Dorset Eye’s articles detailed how some residents had responded negatively to the barge at the time, and the right-wing political agenda of those involved with NTTB (including Bailey).
Bailey said the articles were likely to cause him serious reputational harm, select parts were also untrue and that “he has endured a considerable toll on his mental health as well as that of his family”, the arbitration decision said.
Dorset Eye said its reports were in the public interest and based on evidence.
Clive Thorne, the independent arbitrator who adjudicated on the case, found Dorset Eye to have a public interest defence for four articles and a defence of honest opinion for one article.
Bailey accused of ‘fearmongering’
The first article, headlined Fear, Grievance and Hate; How A Community Became Radicalised, said the NTTB Facebook group “is based upon fear and the spreading of fear”.
“The fearmongering is amplified by numerous people including … campaign leader Alex Bailey,” the article reads, also making references to “far right supporters”.
Bailey denied the article’s implications that he has far-right political beliefs and that he is a campaign leader of NTTB.
The second article included a reference to Bailey as “Herr Bailey”, which Bailey claimed compared him to Hitler. The tribunal rejected this claim but said the name was “used as a somewhat sarcastic nickname suggesting a firm Germanic way of operating”.
The third article referred to a “small group led by Alex Bailey” causing protests to coincide with the docking of cruise ships in Portland Port. Dorset Eye reported that the cancellation of these cruise ships visiting cost the local economy an estimated £400,000. Bailey alleged the Dorset Eye falsely accused him “alone” of triggering the losses.
“Alex actually seemed to enjoy watching those of us who challenged the hate speech get attacked and he was very smug about it,” it added.
Bailey denied “mocking and belittling” the Dorset eye writer, but this article was determined by the tribunal to be a “statement of opinion”.
The fifth article made reference to Bailey having “anti-migrant agenda”, which he said was untrue. The tribunal found there was evidence for this.
Read the arbitration ruling in full.
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