LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) – British minister Emma Reynolds condemned hundreds of protesters who blocked streets in the English coastal city of Portsmouth late on Sunday to try to stop the arrival of migrants from France, calling them “thuggish”.
The gathering was the second anti-migrant demonstration in two days, after masked men disrupted traffic in the port of Dover on Saturday, chanting “Stop the boats”, a reference to asylum seekers arriving in England from France.
“Perhaps the scale of the protest was something that we hadn’t seen before, but the police have brought this under control,” Reynolds, who is chief secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News when asked about the protests in Portsmouth.
The protesters, who responded to calls to protest from some far-right groups, were reacting to the arrival of 140 migrants who had crossed to England, the BBC reported.
“This is thuggish and intimidating behaviour,” Reynolds said.
When asked about how the protests seemed to be organised very quickly she said that was “a concern”.
Successive British governments have struggled to curb the flow of asylum seekers, often coming in overcrowded, inflatable boats, although Reynolds said the number of arrivals was 43% down on last year to about 17,000.
Yet the number of asylum seekers arriving on each boat has been increasing as people smugglers change their tactics.
The arrival of a small boats in Portsmouth represents a change from the usual route taken by the dinghies which tend to come ashore near to Dover.
(Reporting by Sarah Young, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
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