It is a clear September afternoon on the edge of Dover.
At the church of St Mary-sub-Castro, where a salty continental tang is on the wind, and weathered chalk cliffs suggest continuity, I have come to meet Danny Tommo.
Among day trippers, skiving schoolchildren, an elderly woman solemnly fastening a dog waste bag to a tree, there is Tommo. Dressed for a different kind of pilgrimage, he’s difficult to miss – black tactical trousers, black boots and a black sweatshirt bearing the insignia of his movement. It’s as though Bunyan’s Christian acquired a merch line.
Tommo – the artful alter-ego of Daniel Thomas, 37, framing the church as a redoubt of ancient culture, “under siege from the illegal invasion happening on the beaches below” – is just finishing a live stream.
He tells YouTube subscribers who pay £4.99 a month to watch men in balaclavas stab dinghies with steak knives: “We’re doing this under Christianity. We’re doing this with Christian British and English men. We’re not doing this with thugs; we’re doing it with patriots.”
The stream is a watchfully staged hybrid of penitence and militancy. It concludes with the unintended comedy that often attends his performances: retching from exertion after a beach sprint, threatening to drown himself if approached, or wading into the Solent while shouting his name at police officers: “You know who I am, my name is Danny Tommo.”
We enter the building.
“I attend church weekly,” he announces, while kneeling before the narthex at the west end of the church.
“The altar is that way,” observes our photographer.
“It’s not in other churches.”
Tommo found God after a two-year sentence for kidnapping a man at knifepoint, an episode arising from a bungled drugs dispute and a case of mistaken identity that the judge said was “marked by stupidity”.
Born on Christmas Day 1988, he grew up on Hayling Island. In an early departure from the working-class mythos he tries hard to project, he attended a fee-paying school in Hampshire.
Medically discharged from the King’s Hussars before seeing active service after he dislocated a kneecap during bayonet training, subsequent work as a bricklayer, sales manager and abductor gave way to full-time activism.
Following stints as Tommy Robinson’s bodyguard he branched out into flag-raising campaigns and #OperationOverlord, which involved Tommo and his associates filming themselves disabling the outboard engines of dinghies in Calais and Dunkirk.
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More recently, between crowdfunding the replacement of a boat for Channel “interceptions” after his first one sank under bungling circumstances near Littlehampton, he founded Patriot Platform, a movement that calls for direct action against immigrants. Merging the imminent threat of violence with Christian chanting, its meteoric rise – 45,000 battle-ready sign-ups in three months – is as predictable as the rhetoric that spawned it.
“Is there a tension,” I ask, “between Christ’s injunction to welcome the stranger, and your determination to sink them before they get here?”
“Not at all,” he replies. “I have repented my sins, and under Jesus Christ, I am a new man.”
Fuelled by the same algorithmic currents that privilege performance over reality, his followers are drawn into a permanent state of siege, an illusion carefully nurtured by the offshore billionaires who profit from the division.
Like the scone lovers who bicker over the optimum sequence of assemblage, Tommo’s fans often reproach one another for their ignorance of the real Danny Tommo. To some, he’s their last chance to reckon with the infidels. To others, he’s the reluctant showman, whose callouts for “working class hardmen” are a kind of Churchillian performance art.
To still more, he’s the devotee of ethnonationalism that’s been suffocated by decades of legal migration. Tommo himself identifies, improbably, as a devoted Christian, proud dad, and entrepreneur.
During our time together, he invokes the culture he is trying to defend from the “men of fighting age”.
“Couldn’t you also call them men of taxpaying-age?”
“They don’t pay no tax. That’s the point,” says Tommo.
“How much did you earn last year?” I ask.
“Everyone here earns twelve-five,” interjects Kevin Jones of the Thanet Patriots. It is the exact threshold of personal tax allowance.
“Pie and mash. 3pm footy on a Saturday. Dad’s Army. Dickens. Jim Davidson. Teletext. That’s what we’re protecting,” continues Tommo.
“Edmund Spenser?”
Tommo looks blank.
“The Fairie Queene?”
“I ain’t no woofter.”
I try to explain Spenser’s Redcrosse Knight, a man of flawed virtue who must endure spiritual collapse before defeating his dragon. Tommo nods along.
“Yeah. Yeah” he replies. “He sounds decent. But in my one, the dragon is the RNLI, yeah?”
Tommo’s defence of British culture by sinking refugee dinghies is in fact a defence of the oligarchal interests playing divide and conquer – but this is of no consequence to a man whose business model relies on clicks. A phone rings. Jones reports that a migrant dinghy is being towed to shore.
“See!” he shouts, vindicated. “Let’s fucking have it.”
Before I know it, we are sprinting towards the beach, to protect Britain’s border.
As we arrive at the tideline half a mile later, it is clear that at least in terms of fitness, Patriot Platform is an inclusive organisation. It is certainly true that the chants of “I’m England till I die” are battling with wheezing for the mariners’ attention.
The boat is being shepherded by the RNLI.
“Protect are women,” screams Kevin Jones, who pleaded guilty to the wounding and assault of both his mother and partner.
“It’s like that bit, ‘Once more unto the beach,’” shouts a giddy Tommo, as the RNLI rib lands on the Dover shingle and he gets several aspects of Henry V wrong at once.
“You like Shakespeare, Tommo?” I ask.
“Yeah. Proper British culture.”
“Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage…”
“What prick wrote that?”
Before I can answer, the atmosphere flattens as it becomes clear that the stricken boat is from a dolphin-watching tour, and the infidels are from the Tunbridge Wells branch of the University of the Third Age.
The dejected rabble then turns to discover the blue lights of Kent Constabulary waiting for them, here to arrest Tommo on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life. Tommo looks excitedly for his cameraman, thrilled by the prospect of a livestreamed martyrdom.
“The state are arresting me for protecting England’s borders. I didn’t stab that boat for myself. I stabbed it for all men who don’t have access to see their kids.
“Stay calm. Get organised. As my fellow martyr St Alban once said, ‘I would prefer to die in a category B prison than rule over a country of licence-fee paying nonces.’ Link is in the bio. Like and subscribe. Christ is king!”
Dover has always been a threshold. Tommo’s invocation of it as a bastion against contemporary migration reduces the story to a single defensive posture. The contortions required to do that demand the erasure of earlier waves, and elevation of the present one to a status of unique catastrophe. For the men who watch videos with yellow subtitles, this is not difficult.
I look back to St Mary-sub-Castro. Its stones speak of layered occupation: the Roman Pharos repurposed as a bell tower, the Saxon church rebuilt under Norman and later patronage, Victorian restorers imposing their own view.
In the breeze, the green bag of dog waste swings among 20 more; the thuribles of a cheap new liturgy, and the culture Tommo has come to defend.
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