{"id":760986,"date":"2026-09-05T16:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760986\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T16:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:16:11","slug":"masked-anti-migrant-protesters-block-uks-dover-terminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760986\/","title":{"rendered":"Masked anti-migrant protesters block UK’s Dover terminal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of masked people blocked traffic at England’s port of Dover on Saturday as part of an anti-migrant protest, halting ferry traffic between France and the UK.<\/p>\n

Video footage showed demonstrators in balaclavas chanting “stop the boats,” in a reference to refugees and migrants who attempt the dangerous English channel crossing<\/a> in a bid to reach Great Britain.<\/p>\n

This came despite the fact that crossing dropped 40% between January and August 2026 compared to the previous year. However,\u00a0the perceived threat of migrant boats has become a rallying cry for the far-right Reform UK party.<\/a><\/p>\n

Police said that they were “engaging” with protesters and that normal traffic had resumed at the port after several hours.<\/p>\n

Government condemns ‘travel disruption’<\/p>\n

“The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but we condemn the behavior in Dover and the travel disruption it has caused,” said a spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham.<\/a><\/p>\n

Under Burnham and his predecessor Keir Starmer, migrant crossings have been greatly reduced in part due to closer cooperation with French authorities.<\/p>\n

Dover is the UK’s biggest international ferry port, handling some 15,000 passengers a day during the summer and welcoming more than a\u00a0third of the UK’s trade goods with the European Union.<\/p>\n

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of masked people blocked traffic at England’s port of Dover on Saturday as part of an anti-migrant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}