Dover unrest exposes serious flaws in Britain’s handling of far-right extremism

To anybody watching the videos of a group of masked men, all wearing black, descending on the port of Dover last weekend, it was immediately obvious that something novel and disturbing was happening: a mass intimidation in uniform not seen in Britain since the 1930s.

Yet to the police and the rest of the UK’s intelligence apparatus, the arrival of the men chanting “stop the boats” was a surprise, despite the fact that residents of a village 18 miles away tried to report that dozens of men were congregating there on the Friday, threatening to go to Dover and “attack Muslims”.