Far-right flash mob try and fail to charge into Canary Wharf migrant hotel

Dozens of balaclava-clad young men appeared to attempt to storm a hotel housing refugees in central London.

A group of around 30 people arrived with smoke bombs and charged into police lines guarding the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf on Sunday evening.

The police line guarding the 4-star hotel held firm despite their jostling and chants of ‘let us through’.

Soon after the group turned around and dispersed.

Police served agitators accused of harrassing the hotel occupants and trying to break through the fence a Section 42 order banning them from returning to the site for 28 days.

Setting off red and white flares and chanting ‘England’ and ‘Keir Starmer is a wanker’, the group struggled to break through police lines to join the other peaceful protesters, including local mothers and children listening to God Save The Queen on boomboxes.

Moments after, a takeaway delivery driver was forced to cancel an order for refugees living behind a police barricade after a booing mob surrounded him.

The Uber Eats rider was given a police escort to try and get through the protesters.

But the baying mob stood in his way and he was forced to turn back with the Five Guys order.

He needed police protection as the anti-migrant protesters chanted ‘shame on you’.

Police told one angry man to move out of the e-bike rider’s way as he was just ‘doing his job’. The irate protester shouted back: ‘That’s what the Nazis said, they were just doing their job’.

Chants of ‘send them home’ broke out while one man rattled the metal fence outside the hotel in full view of police officers.

One guest at the hotel could be seen in a facemask sitting on the front steps, staring at the angry mob on the other side of a chain-link fence.

A group of women, all dressed in pink, adopted a Just Stop Oil-like sit-in protest in the road outside the hotel.

Protesters booed others going in and out of the building as eggs were reportedly dropped from surrounding towers on them forcing the group to briefly flee.

At least one man was detained after an angry confrontation with officers.

Onlookers chanted ‘shame’ as he was carried away.

Some right-wing commentators spread rumours that protest had been banned outside the controversial hotel.

But a spokesperson for the Met told Metro: ‘We have not banned protests outside the Britannia International Hotel.

‘Officers policed a protest for a considerable time today but a group remained who were harassing occupants of the hotel and staff, trying to prevent people accessing the hotel to make deliveries and making concerted efforts to breach the fencing and access the hotel.

‘Their actions went well beyond protest to harassment and we used powers under the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 to order that specific group to leave and not return for 28 days.

‘If a different group wishes to protest in the vicinity of the hotel they are not banned from doing so, providing they do so lawfully.’

It is the latest in a series of demonstrations over the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police made nine arrests after rival groups gathered outside the Thistle City Barbican Hotel in Islington, north London.

A protest and counter-protest also took place in Newcastle outside the New Bridge Hotel and four people were arrested on suspicion of public order offences, Northumbria Police said.

Scotland Yard said plans were in place to ‘respond to any protest activity in the vicinity of other hotels in London being used to accommodate asylum seekers’.

One asylum seeker allegedly flashed protesters the finger as he entered a migrant hotel in Dorset.

He was being escorted by a police officer into The Chine Hotel in Bournemouth, Dorset, when 40 protesters stood outside the premises hurled abuse at him.

The hotel guest turns around to give the man the unsavoury hand gesture as tensions erupted outside the late 19th century seafront hotel. The Chine was once a favourite of celebrities including Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Vera Lynn.

In Epping protesters led police on a wild goose chase as they kept u-turning their march away from officers as they blasted the Benny Hill theme tune on their speakers.

Essex Police had placed a number of restrictions on a planned protest in Epping on Sunday evening.

But the march broke out of police lines on to a field as they chanted ‘let’s go f*****g mental’.

The force ordered that the demonstration should finish by 8.30pm and must take place in designated areas outside the Bell Hotel, which has been the focus of a series of protests over the last few weeks.

Police have also placed requirements on the removal of face coverings until 3am on Monday and have the power to direct anyone committing or suspected of committing anti-social behaviour to leave the area until 8am on Monday.

A Met spokesperson said: ‘Officers are deployed in the vicinity of the Britannia International Hotel in Canary Wharf this afternoon where a protest is taking place.

‘At one point, officers intervened after flares were let off in the crowd. Several people were searched. No further flares were found.

‘One man was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker after an officer was pushed. He was taken into custody.

‘Officers remain in the area to provide reassurance to local residents and businesses, to ensure that any further protest takes place peacefully, and to respond to any incidents.’