LONDON (AP) — A British far-right activist who has led protests against migrants crossing the English Channel pleaded guilty Thursday to slashing a dinghy while a rescuer was still aboard.
Daniel Thomas,
37, pleaded guilty in Portsmouth Crown Court to criminal damage.
Social media video of the Sept. 22 incident showed Thomas taking a knife to an inflatable boat, which had no migrants aboard but was occupied by a French rescue services member.
“This is what needs to happen to everyone in these boats," Thomas said. "This is England. Get off the boat, you have time to get off the boat. This is not France. Take them back.”
Successive U.K. governments have struggled to stop people — more than 41,000 last year — making the dangerous journey across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The issue has been depicted as a crisis by politicians including Nigel Farage of the hard-right party Reform UK, and has been used as a rallying point by anti-immigration activists. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s center-left government says stepped-up law enforcement cooperation between Britain and France has helped reduce the number of people making the crossing so far this year by more than 40% compared to 2025.
Thomas, founder of a group called Patriot Platform, has taken a leading role in a new tactic to confront police and rescuers in an attempt to try to stop small boats from landing on English shores.
The confrontational protests have drawn large groups of masked men in black who blocked the port of Dover, southeast England, in September and days later clashed with police as they tried to stop migrants being taken ashore in Portsmouth on the country’s south coast.
The U.K. government has condemned the “intimidating and thuggish behavior” of anti-immigrant demonstrators.
After Thomas' arrest following the slashing of the dinghy, several hundred of his supporters gathered outside a police station where they believed he was being held, chanting “Free DT.”
Thomas, who goes by the nickname Danny Tommo, is a longtime associate of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.
Thomas has pleaded not guilty to a charge of failing to provide police with the passcode of his phone.
