LONDON, Sept 8 \u2014 British Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged his Labour Party lawmakers to stop the \u201cpolitics of poison seeping into our streets\u201d after demonstrators tried to block the arrival of migrants, a media report said yesterday.<\/p>\n
The protest took place in a part of southern England that authorities fear is becoming a new route for small boat crossings.<\/p>\n
Speaking to parliamentarians in a closed-door meeting, Burnham said the party\u2019s mission must be to counter \u201cfear with positivity and hope\u201d, the PA news agency reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a responsibility in the times that we\u2019re living in. It\u2019s a solemn responsibility to prevent the politics of poison seeping into our streets,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
Thousands of asylum seekers have crossed the Channel on rudimentary vessels in recent years, usually between Calais and Dover where the distance between the French and English coasts is shortest.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Britain\u2019s coastguard rescued a boat carrying 140 people that French authorities said had departed from Baie de Seine in Normandy, a couple of hundred kilometres southwest of Calais.<\/p>\n
Later, some 200 demonstrators, many dressed in black and wearing face coverings, disrupted the disembarkation of the migrants in Portsmouth, Hampshire, far west of Dover.<\/p>\n
They blocked roads while police officers equipped with riot shields formed a security cordon around buses intended to take the migrants to a processing centre, footage on social media showed.<\/p>\n
The crowd dispersed around 4am (0300 GMT\/11am Malaysian time) and the migrants were successfully transported, officials said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn the intimidating and thuggish behaviour we saw in Portsmouth last night,\u201d a spokesperson for the UK interior ministry, known as the Home Office, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy but it must never cross a line into disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunday night\u2019s demonstration was the second significant anti-migrant disorder of the weekend after large crowds of masked men blocked access to the Port of Dover for several hours on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Both gatherings were organized by a group called Patriot Platform, started by Daniel Thomas, also known as Danny Tommo, an associate of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.<\/p>\n
Thomas filmed and livestreamed both events on social media.<\/p>\n
\u2018Not equipped\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arrivals of small boats in the county of Hampshire are rare.<\/p>\n
\u201cExtremely concerning to see an illegal migrant crossing this far west,\u201d local Conservative lawmaker Joe Robertson wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to know exactly what happened and if new routes are being used for mega-dinghies by people smugglers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donna Jones, police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight police, said in a statement that Portsmouth \u201cis not equipped to receive and process people entering the country this way\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government needs to ensure the southern coast of Britain is secure to prevent this from happening again,\u201d she added, saying that Sunday night\u2019s scenes had \u201cput pressure on resources, particularly policing\u201d.<\/p>\n
A UK government official told reporters there was \u201cno evidence\u201d at this stage to suggest that smugglers running the crossings had changed their strategy.<\/p>\n
Britain has been grappling with how to curb the perilous small boat journeys, which have seen tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving annually on southeast England\u2019s coast since in recent years.<\/p>\n
The crossings, often of people fleeing war and famine, have been seized on by the hard-right Reform UK party, which has made gains since breaking through at the 2024 general election.<\/p>\n
The Labour government insists it is making progress tackling the issue, in part because of co-operation deals with the French government and a tightening of the asylum system.<\/p>\n
According to Home Office data, 16,513 irregular migrants have crossed the Channel since the beginning of the year, down about 40 per cent compared to the same period in 2025.<\/p>\n
Last week, Burnham announced the deployment of 45 additional officers to French beaches to help combat an increase in the number of passengers per boat.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of migrants to Britain arrive via legal routes, government data shows. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Sept 8 \u2014 British Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged his Labour Party lawmakers to stop the \u201cpolitics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73961],"tags":[28914,98132,79893,98131,26300,51876],"class_list":["post-219399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-andy-burnham","tag-andy-burnham","tag-british-coastguard","tag-channel-crossings","tag-patriot-platform","tag-portsmouth","tag-tommy-robinson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117233823694865259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}