Small boat arrivals at Gosport tonight - huge police motorcade

[PassMeTheInternet]

This is the police escort for the latest small boat arrivals at Gosport tonight.

What on earth is going on with this country?

I don’t know how to link a video from Twitter. The videos show the full extent of the operation.

I live in Gosport (hence name change) and one set of protestors were are the bottom end of my road.

Having seen it for myself this is what I saw

6pm - More police in one place than I have ever seen before. Due to the way I drive home after work, I usually go across Haslar bridge but it was blocked off. I saw 8 police vans and at least 20 police officers just at the junction of South Street & Haslar Road. People who live a bit further up behind the cordon were struggling to drive into & out of their homes & a car park was completely blocked (people were trying desparetely to get their cars out to go home after work).

At the either of Haslar Road (the end where I live) I saw no fewer than 10 police vans around this entrance. Plus another 3 a bit further down the road blocikng off Dolphin Way which is where the IRC is being 'modernised'. Again around 30 police officers.

I went for a dog walk, as usual, when I got home & wandered around where the protectors were to see what was going on. Up until 7.30pm when I went home, I saw approx 150 people, of all ages, in the area around the bottom of Haslar Road and on the sea wall. Most of the people I saw were in mixed, or family groups. There were very few in groups just of men. There were people with children of all ages there, some waving flags etc. I saw 1 group of 4 young men who were wearing balaclavas (& I reported them to the Police on my way past).

A sizable amount of the people I saw there at that time did not seem local at least this part of Gosport as they were stopping people & asking how to get somewhere, or where the road/path led to etc. This doesn't mean they weren't from Gosport or the local area just that they didn't know this specific part (which you wouldn't do unless you frequently went there).

There was no trouble or even chanting at this point. What happened later is not something I saw but plenty of videos posted on facebook this morning show some of those who have been arrested are possibly 'innocent' of what they been arrested for - we wont know this until they are charged or not though.

What I would say about the illegal boat crossing is that the Government were incredibly stupid to choose this place as somewhere to land any one. Gosport is a naval town, with strong links & history. A lot of the population are employed by the Navy, BAE, or other defence contractors. Gosport is on a peninsula with literally 2 roads in and out (can take over 45 minutes most days in rush hour to travel by car 10 miles to the motorway). And this part of Gosport where they wanted to land them is a peninsula on a peninsula. With literally 1road that takes you north to the town centre or south to a residential area. To get out of Gosport at either end takes you through multiple built up residential areas - there is no dual carriageways or 40mph roads here, just lots of houses.

The residents south of Haslar are already suffering with the government plans to increase the agreed size of the IRC from approx 200 beds to 600 with no planning or consultation with the local council, residents etc. The residential area is built up & local house building projects have been banned from using those roads to transport machinery etc as they roads cant take the traffic. Yet, the government thought it was a good idea to choose this area to land the boat, send 8 coaches too and all the rest of the services.

The council, police and other local services had already gone on record after the Portsmouth landings to explain that Gosport was completely unsuitable to land any boats like this but they have been completely ignored. And the government never responded to their repeated letters, contacts etc.

People who live here are fed up - they are taking their share of illegal immigrants by having the IRC built on there doorstep with all the difficulties etc that that has posed so far.

It was entirely predictable that any boat landing in Gosport would attract protestors (in fact the police & crime commissioner, the local council etc all predicted it) and that Gosport is in no way a suitable site to land them.

I hate to think how much the entire police operation cost, and I'm paying for it via my council tax, and it was a complete waste of police time, money & resources. Why someone in the government thought it would go any other way is beyond me.

Im hoping that they never try to do it again as the protestors wont stop as it isnt a suitable place to land anyone. There is no infrastructure for it, no desire from any 'official' body to have it here & it will continue to cause issues.

Whether you agree with the protectors or not, what happened last night was predicted & someone in Government needs to listen & just get all boats to go to Dover where the infrastructure etc is already set up to deal with the illegal boat crossings.

I don't agree with Donna Jones, police & crime commissioner on much, but she summed it really well in her statement this morning - any boats that leave Normandy & head towards Hampshire/Sussex etc, need to be intercepted by the Border Force boats, the illegal immigrants taken on board their boats & then brought to Dover via water rather than landing them and coaching them to Dover anywhere. Cheaper of all and safer as these protests will just continue otherwise.

Somebody likened what is happening to a party.

You have a party. Five extra guests from Pontirovia turn up - all good. New blood, they mix well and add to proceedings. You all get to know each other.

You have another party. 50 extra guests from Pontirovia turn up. They stick to themselves, put on their own music, order in their own food and it’s now their party.

From the Spectator article posted above: The chambers have recently been in the news as the home of Franck Magennis, a proudly communist barrister who is acting pro bono for Hamas in its quest to overturn the government’s decision to classify it as a terrorist group. (Garden Court said in a statement last month: ‘The barrister concerned has chosen to undertake this application and publicise it in his individual capacity. This in no way indicates that Garden Court Chambers supports his client.’)

Magennis’s social media posts offer illuminating perspectives on contemporary issues. He extended ‘full solidarity’ to the Irish Republican rap group Kneecap after they proclaimed ‘Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!’ at one of their concerts. He celebrated having some time off from work over Easter so he could catch up on essential reading, Marxism and Transgender Liberation – Confronting Transphobia on the British Left by Red Fightback.And he shared with his online followers the request from his mother that they ‘watch an anti-Zionist film tonight’, adding: ‘Any suggestions gratefully received.’

The irony of deprecating transphobia and acting for Hamas may be lost on Magennis, but he is far from the only barrister at Garden Court whose radicalism is either out in the open or is otherwise thinly disguised.

One barrister suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’

Several of the chambers’ lawyers simultaneously work as barristers representing asylum seekers in immigration tribunals and as judges sitting in those same tribunals. There is no doubting the skill or zeal of Garden Court’s advocates when it comes to securing the continued presence in Britain of a variety of intriguing individuals. But the question remains as to whether lawyers who advertise their determination to prevent people being deported should also be the judges deciding on deportation cases.

Among one of Garden Court’s most accomplished barristers is Rebecca Chapman. She has three decades of experience representing clients with asylum claims, with a particular focus on unaccompanied minors and those facing persecution on account of their gender or sexual orientation. She also has substantial experience in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), claims based on family life, and Article 3, claims based on health and medical conditions. In 2021 she co-authored A Practical Guide to Health and Medical Cases in Immigration Law.
Chapman, however, also works part-time as a judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal, where she recently granted two Albanian lesbians the right to stay in Britain on the grounds that Albania is a patriarchy and homophobia is rampant in rural areas, even though the country’s law forbids discrimination against people on the grounds of sexual orientation.

One of Chapman’s colleagues, Greg O Ceallaigh KC, is another barrister-cum-judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal. He gave a sense of the thinking he brings to that responsibility when, prior to his appointment, he reposted on LinkedIn a demand by the Asylum Aid charity for the repeal of the Illegal Migration Act. In another social media post he suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’.

Other Garden Court barristers have displayed signal success in ensuring that convicted criminals can stay in the country.

Patrick Lewis managed to ensure a Jamaican rapist avoided deportation on human-rights grounds, since the crimes the man committed in this country meant he was not eligible for witness protection in the Caribbean. Eva Doerr helped an Albanian offender to stay in Britain because sending him back to the Balkans would mean he could only communicate with his 15-year-old stepson via Zoom, which would be unfair on the boy.

The main tool used by Garden Court’s barristers to keep criminals in the UK is an inventive interpretation of the right to a family life. Well-meaning clauses written into the ECHR in 1950 have been stretched by lawyers to challenge governments that try to tackle illegal migration.
Garden Court’s housing team is led by Liz Davies KC, who was deselected as a Labour candidate for being too left-wing. She briefly chaired a Trotskyist umbrella organisation called Socialist Alliance. One of her protégés in Garden Court is Nick Bano, whose polemic Against Landlords makes the case for driving ‘landlords and house price speculators from the face of the Earth’. He proposes, among other things, a 100 per cent capital gains tax on property and cites Das Kapital as his principal influence.

In addition to its housing team, Garden Court has an entire protest rights team who act for climate-change activists causing obstruction or criminal damage. Although they don’t always win, they can often find enough sympathetic jurists to extract perverse verdicts. Garden Court barrister Michael Goold did not deny that six Extinction Rebellion activists had used an old fire engine to spray red paint over the Treasury in 2019, but convinced the jury that ‘anyone who knew the full scale of the climate crisis would have consented to the damage’ and that therefore this ‘provided them with a defence of lawful excuse’. In other words, I can damage your property if I think you ought to share my beliefs.

You really believe this? Why on earth would this government (or any recent one, to be fair) want to go to war, except in the case of an invasion or a direct threat? Is it because you think the government wants to get rid of "far right", etc. men by having them die on the battlefield? If so, that really would be taking a sledgehammer to a nut!

Wars are bloody expensive. And any government that took the UK into a war which was not triggered by a direct threat - well, it just wouldn't survive as a government.

Has that got anything to do with this thread?

‘The council, police and other local services had already gone on record after the Portsmouth landings to explain that Gosport was completely unsuitable to land any boats like this but they have been completely ignored. And the government never responded to their repeated letters, contacts etc.’

I think you’ll find that every single area thinks that They are unsuitable for thousands of asylum seekers, landing or not. I can’t think why.

I regret to inform you that we have been told that a new cultural identity has been imposed on not just Britain but all of Europe. There are no areas unaffected by mass uncontrolled immigration. We are no longer allowed to read Austen or Shakespeare or learn about British history. Just take the red pill.

Life is substantially worse now than it was 20 years ago

Well yes. Do you know what happened in 2008? Followed by 14 years of Tory austerity plus Covid plus Ukraine plus Truss plus Trump's insanity. Is any of that the fault of immigrants?

You think the romans and vikings were “immigration”?

It’s so funny when people repeat this old “we are a nation of immigrants so we must allow unlimited immigration” nonsense. Usually within thinking it through for themselves first.

Refugees/asylum seekers in total (this includes people who arrived by boat last week as well as refugees from Vietnam who have had permanent residency for decades) make up 0.7% of the total population. For your analogy of the 50 people suddenly showing sense to make up your party would have had to be very large- about 10,000 strong already at which an additional 50 people rocked up.
I'm not even against people having issues with immigration/asylum seekers. But your analogies don't make sense and you used the police providing protection to UK bus drivers as the kick of point for your complaint. There may well be justified reasons to be angry/concerned but based on your own arguments you are angry about nothing.

Gosh, good luck arriving in Gosport. I'd turn right back home.

@namechange10113 - thank you for your on-the-spot report!

I’m glad I haven’t bought one of the fancy apartments near Haslar. Gosport and Portsmouth are proud naval towns; just look at the war memorials and weep. Thousands of men killed in two world wars (including dh’s gf and ggf) and now random men are being ferried in.

We wish they would.

Doing whatabouttery on proven domestic violence by the very worst people in the country is not a good look.

I hope you are pointing this out yo those making sweeping and untrue claims about the protestors too.

The thing is that the boat didnt dock at Gosport or was ever going to dock there. It was escorted by Border Force vessels to Dover.

You are correct that not all people showing up were local

"Hampshire police said two men from Salisbury, aged 19 and 36, had been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass; and four people from Gosport – two men aged 33 and 67, and two women aged 31 and 32 – were held on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker."

"The 67-year-old was also held on suspicion of careless driving."

Didn't we have freedom of movement across Europe 20 years ago?

I haven’t seen one post on this thread doing A. Have you?l

eta There have been some deletions so maybe I’ve missed these comments.

Exactly. I think the Dublin Regulation isn’t quite the magic solution people make it out to be.
I just read an article about Germany and how they are struggling to return migrants because frontline states like Italy simply refuse to take them back, completely stalling transfers.

@CoventryCitybut Dover DOES have the facilities and infrastructure to have them land there (whether the locals want them or not) so they'd be best keeping them landing there & not pushing them to places where there is no facilities or infrastructure to support it.

No, it's always made up.

I feel the same as @BIossomtoes and others. Where I live has a long history of immigration.

For all those banging on about young men coming across first. This is exactly what happened with my legal immigrant family. The men came across first so that they could find stable work and a place to live, then their wives and children followed. It was a very hard time for them, my grandmother actually came across before her child (who stayed with his grandparents in their home country) because she wanted to make sure things were ok for him to come here, she missed him desperately. It's a very natural and understandable thing.

We did!

Sorry we aren't buying that all these men are going to be doing the same. Decent people don't mind and welcome immigration. What we don't welcome is being ignored by successive governments about the major problem with the influx of these undocumented men.

Thousands of men died in World War 2 to stop the Nazis and their hateful, divisive ideology.