Police were told night before Dover unrest that far-right agitators had converged on village

Police were told the night before far-right agitators blocked roads into Dover that those involved had converged on a village 18 miles away and planned to use it as a launchpad, it has emerged. People in Preston-next-Wingham told of how hundreds of men had started to arrive in the village of just over 920 residents on Friday afternoon and in effect “took over” the village. At least one person is understood to have sought to pass on details to counter-terrorism police after people heard the far-right activists boasting in the local pub that they intended to go to Dover and “attack Muslims”.

The information was passed on to police but little or no interest was shown in the tipoff, according to the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, who spoke to the person. Others reported careless and illegal parking to the police but no action was said to have been taken. The claims have raised fresh questions about Kent police’s handling of the protest, in which hundreds descended on Dover at 7am and which the force described as “spontaneous”.

No arrests were made during the action, which involved hundreds of black-clad masked men standing in the middle of roads and led to access to the port of Dover being blocked for several hours. Roger Gale, the MP for Herne Bay and Sandwich, who lives in Preston-next-Wingham, said the unrest in Dover on Saturday was clearly not “spontaneous”. He said that the village in Kent was unusually full of cars on Friday night and that a local car park and the recreation ground was still full of vehicles on Saturday morning, prompting him to call 999.

Gale said: “A local councillor took photographs of the number plates and they should be able work back from those to establish who owns the cars. I called 999 at around 9.30am on Saturday and two officers came over quite quickly. There were roughly 50 cars in the car park and the recreation ground and more on the road. [What happened in Dover] was not spontaneous.

It was carefully coordinated. Those participating were transported from the village to Dover, most likely in Luton vans.” Gale was not aware of calls being made to the police on Friday but he added that he knew that conversations among participants in Saturday’s unrest had been overheard in the village pub on Friday night. Kent police have been approached for comment.

The force said this week that the unrest on Saturday involved about 200 people and had “developed rapidly”. It added that the protest was treated in line with national guidance as spontaneous based on the information available to the force at the time. The action was organised by Daniel Thomas, a long-term associate of the far right activist known as Tommy Robinson.