{"id":768490,"date":"2026-09-12T16:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T16:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768490\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T16:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T16:26:09","slug":"rival-protests-in-portsmouth-as-face-masks-banned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768490\/","title":{"rendered":"Rival protests in Portsmouth as face masks banned"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city centre protests come after disorder on 6 September<\/a>, when police attended Eastney Marina as hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads in an attempt to stop coaches carrying 120 migrants, who had crossed the Channel in a dinghy, from leaving the city.<\/p>\n

Up to 500 anti-migrant protesters held Union and St George flags while some wearing Portsmouth Patriot branded clothing gathered outside All Saints Church on Commercial Road shortly before midday on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The crowd chanted “stop the boats” as they marched to Guidhall Square.<\/p>\n

About 300 people joined the counter-protest.<\/p>\n

Both sets of demonstrators were kept apart by police when they arrived at the square.<\/p>\n

Speaking before the march, Simon Magorian, of Stand up to Racism Portsmouth, described the demonstrations in Eastney as a “horrible spectacle”. <\/p>\n

He said: “Portsmouth is actually a good functioning multi-cultural city.<\/p>\n

“We are now organising to have the broadest possible opposition to what we see as a fascist street movement and we’re not going to allow them to get a grip on Portsmouth or any other town – this is quite terrifying.”<\/p>\n

Among the anti-migration protesters, Pete Davies, from Portsmouth, said he had also taken part in the demonstrations at Eastney.<\/p>\n

“They should be having them turned back to France again. It’s a safe country, there’s no war in France.<\/p>\n

“They want to stop the benefits, stop the free housing… they don’t give nothing back to the people of the country.”<\/p>\n

Officers earlier said the powers were aimed at preventing violence, intimidation and disorder following protests in the city over the past week.<\/p>\n

A separate order also allowed officers to require people to remove masks and other items used to conceal their identity.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Friday, Assistant Chief Constable Paul Bartolomeo said: “It is important to stress that this power will apply to any groups that attend the protest and will be enforced equally and impartially.<\/p>\n

“Let me be clear, these powers are not being implemented to prevent protest but they are being used to help prevent crime and disorder, while making communities feel safer.”<\/p>\n

Hampshire Police said several of its vehicles, alongside those of the coastguard and Border Force, were damaged during the disruption, which lasted until the early hours of Monday.<\/p>\n

It added that a small number of officers were treated at the scene for injuries but no-one in attendance was seriously injured.<\/p>\n

RNLI volunteers involved in the operation to bring the migrants to shore were also targeted on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The disorder in Portsmouth followed a separate anti-migrant protest at the Port of Dover the day before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Staffordshire Police said earlier it would also ban the use of face coverings at a protest in Tamworth, where Britain First had planned a so-called March for Remigration. <\/p>\n

Shortly before 15:30, the force said the protest activity had ended without incident and no arrests had been made.<\/p>\n

Northumbria Police had a similar ban in place in Newcastle city centre on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city centre protests come after disorder on 6 September, when police attended Eastney Marina as hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-768490","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\/768490","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=768490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}