Mayor ‘prepared’ to disrupt migrants being taken to Bibby Stockholm once more

A Labour mayor who led a bus-blocking protest to stop migrants being taken to the Bibby Stockholm barge has called for more disruption.

Rob Yates, the Mayor of Margate in Kent, said: ‘We are ready to do this again.’

Mr Yates organised a group of demonstrators to block a Home Office coach trying to transport asylum seekers from a Margate hotel to the floating hotel in Dorset.

His protest came ahead of Thursday’s stand-off in London that saw fierce clashes with police and 45 demonstrators arrested after they successfully blocked a similar coach for more than six hours.

Mr Yates’s protest in Margate on Sunday was less dramatic, but it prevented the coach transporting 22 men from Afghanistan and Pakistan who had been living in the town for seven months. Not only was the coach blocked on the day, but the Home Office has now abandoned attempts to try again.

It has written to the migrants at the hotel in Margate saying: ‘The formal notice to quit the property is now withdrawn.’

Labour and co-op councillor for Margate Central, Rob Yates (undated)

A protester is detained by police officers protesting outside a hotel in Peckham, May 2

Mr Yates, a former wind farm worker, said: ‘We tried to avoid shouting or disrupting traffic while blocking the coach, resulting in no police involvement and hopefully helped to make the men in the hotel feel safe.

‘Going forwards, we’re ready to do this again. Community activism is a valid tool when it comes to protecting asylum seekers.’

He was backed by the Bishop of Dover. The Right Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the former chaplain to the late Queen and the House of Commons, thanked the local people who had blocked the bus and said: ‘Our Lord showed compassion for the most vulnerable.’

The Home Office chartered the Bibby Stockholm as temporary accommodation for 500 male asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their applications.

They sleep in cabins and have three hot meals a day in the canteen, with free buses laid on to the nearest town.

The Home Office said: ‘Accommodation is allocated to asylum seekers on a no-choice basis and asylum seekers can make representations if they believe they are unsuitable to be moved to the Bibby Stockholm, which are considered in full before any decision is made.’

Activists are using social media to tip each other off when a new batch of migrants are due to be driven there. Well-organised protest groups are mobilising hundreds of ‘comrades’ to surround coaches before they can drive off.

Asylum seekers had been told they would be collected on Thursday morning by coach to relocate to the Bibby Stockholm moored at Portland in Dorset

Police try and stop protesters forming a blockade around a coach which is parked near the Best Western hotel in Peckham, south London, to prevent the removal of migrants from the temporary accommodation

On Thursday, outside a hotel in Peckham, south-east London, they threw electric hire bikes under the wheels of the bus and slashed the tyres, before brawling with police during an eight-hour stand-off.

A Corbynite Labour MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, reposted a message by a group called SOAS Detainee Support yesterday morning calling for reinforcements of ‘comrades’ to join the human chain around the Peckham coach.

If Labour wins power it will overturn the 2023 Illegal Migration Act, which bars asylum claims from those arriving in the UK illegally after it became law.

Rishi Sunak has warned of Labour’s ‘soft touch’ on migrants.