Britain’s seaside resorts never look better than during a heatwave, and this week Bournemouth was no exception. The rippling waters of the English Channel sparkled in the early evening sun and tourists and locals alike took refuge in the shade offered by the groves of pine trees planted by the Victorian entrepreneurs responsible for developing the town in the 19th century.
But I had little time to admire this idyllic scene because, within ten minutes of arriving at 6.30pm on Tuesday, I had been spat at, punched in the jaw and forced to fend off a barrage of blows aimed at my face.
I have no photographic evidence of this shocking display of violence because my colleague – photographer Jamie Wiseman – was under attack, too, and ended up with his shirt ripped to shreds and a bloodied knee.
All this took place within a stone’s throw of Bournemouth’s fabled golden sands and just yards from a memorial to Red Arrows pilot Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging, who died in a crash at the Bournemouth Air Festival in 2011.
As appalled bystanders made frantic calls to the police, we were subjected to a lengthy attack by a man and a woman who’d emerged from the undergrowth on the resort’s East Cliff, between the road and the beach.
He looked to be of Mediterranean extraction and maybe in his 30s, barefoot and clad in nothing but a pair of nylon shorts.
She was English and in her 20s, wearing leggings and a strapless top, with her hair in a topknot. Her most distinctive feature, however, was her teeth: they were just blackened stumps.
Their assault was accompanied by a volley of foul-mouthed abuse, and nothing we said could persuade them to stop. Only after an extended onslaught did they suddenly give up and run off, giving us a chance to catch our breath. I was left with a scratch to my neck and a jaw that has ached for days.
The rippling waters of the English Channel sparkled in the early evening sun and tourists and locals alike took refuge in the shade
The recent arrival of hundreds of migrants, accommodated at Bournemouth’s nearby Britannia and Roundhouse hotels, has indeed coincided with a rise in the crime rate
Looking back, it’s clear the attack had been sparked by our decision to send up a drone to survey the immediate area. For we had come to Bournemouth to investigate an online claim by embattled Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, that read: ‘Illegals have taken over a seaside beauty spot in Bournemouth for the third summer in a row. This is what an invasion looks like.’
His claim was prompted by three-week-old photographs taken by a local news agency of what appeared to be a small encampment set up in the undergrowth that lined the cliff just below where we were subsequently assaulted.
The pictures showed it consisted of two tents, a generator, and – incongruously – a white leather sofa, on which sat two men, who appeared to be black.
In his post on social media, Farage added: ‘The camp is visible to thousands of beachgoers . . . They are about 200 yards from a Britannia hotel which houses over 100 illegals at the taxpayer’s expense. A Reform government will have no tolerance for this. All these men will be detained and deported. Simple as.’
Except, as we discovered, it really is not ‘simple as’. Far from being in full view of thousands of beachgoers, the makeshift encampment is, in fact, screened by thick undergrowth and trees, which render it virtually invisible. It was only by using a drone that the picture agency had succeeded in catching it on film.
So we did the same. The couple who attacked us evidently believed they were being spied upon, while they were getting up to something private in the bushes.
One of the onlookers who called the police – who finally arrived only after everyone had left, including us – subsequently told us that ‘undesirables’ had increasingly been gathering in the area.
But we soon established that, contrary to Mr Farage’s claims, this wasn’t really a migrant problem.
While the recent arrival of hundreds of migrants, accommodated at Bournemouth’s nearby Britannia and Roundhouse hotels, has indeed coincided with a rise in the crime rate – including grave offences such as rape and an infamous 2022 murder – the majority of the problems being experienced by this once genteel resort are caused by homegrown troublemakers.
The encampment we stumbled on, which is said to have been around for three years, is believed to be largely used by British drug and alcohol abusers.
Ever since the covid pandemic, local business owners say Bournemouth has been plagued by an annual influx of such low-grade ‘tourists’, who come to sleep rough and blow their benefits on booze and drugs. The internet is awash with shocking videos of them fighting and conducting drug deals in plain sight.
Ed Watts, the owner of the Flirt Cafe, in Bournemouth’s Triangle shopping area, is among those calling for the authorities to get a grip on the issue.
‘It’s not a migrant problem here – it’s a drug problem,’ he says. ‘It’s nationwide, it’s not just Bournemouth, but it’s been getting progressively worse here over the past five years, since I opened. And this year has been the worst.’
Astonishingly, Mr Watts, 45, and fellow local business owners have even come to anticipate the arrival of summer – traditionally the very lifeblood of a seaside resort – with dread.
Anti-social behaviour is a year-round problem but it peaks when the sun comes out. ‘There’s always an undercurrent of these sorts of issues – but when summer comes we know it’s going to get worse, with drug users outside and sitting opposite my cafe,’ he says.
‘If they’re going to take drugs and get up to mischief, they’re going to do it in the sunshine. And if you’re going to sleep rough, why not do it on the beach? So they catch the train from London, or wherever, and come down here.
‘Bournemouth’s population swells hugely in the summer – and Dorset Police, whose officers on the street are wonderful, are underfunded. Central government should sort it out.’
He said he is in favour of ‘surge funding’ for the local police force, so they get more resources when they most need them.
Among Mr Watts’ fellow campaigners for a more energetic approach to public disorder is Jonny Spencer, who runs an adult store called Easy Tiger, across the Triangle from Mr Watts’ cafe.
Quite what Bournemouth’s founder Captain Lewis Tregonwell, a veteran of the Dorset yeomanry during the Napoleonic Wars who started it all by building a house on 8.5 acres of the then-uninhabited Poole Heath in 1810, would make of his resort being championed by a sex shop proprietor is anyone’s guess.
Yet over the past 17 years, Easy Tiger has become a local success story and Mr Spencer is a leading light of the business community. He has been busy collecting evidence of drug dealing and other criminal behaviour, while campaigning for hard-working police officers to be given the increased funding and council support they need to tackle the issue.
He has little doubt about the causes of the anti-social behaviour. ‘Everyone talks about homelessness being behind the drug use here – but it isn’t,’ he says. ‘Many of these people have got houses but come down here and sleep rough over the summer.
‘I got angry with a bloke last year over the rubbish he was leaving everywhere. He argued back, but then we got talking. He said he had a council house, all paid for, somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool, but he comes down here over summer.
Local news agency pictures showed it consisted of two tents, a generator, and – incongruously – a white leather sofa, on which sat two men, who appeared to be black
Ever since the covid pandemic, local business owners say Bournemouth has been plagued by an annual influx of such low-grade ‘tourists’
‘He gets his lunch free from a charity who hand it out in Bournemouth Square, and he goes to a soup kitchen at St Peter’s Church in the evening.
‘At the same time, he’s getting his benefits and PIP payments [the controversial Personal Independence Payment disability allowance of up to £778 a month] and he just uses them for booze. He was one of the ones who is only a drunk.’
Mr Spencer continues: ‘And about three weeks ago there were two women down from Liverpool. They’d only been here for 24 hours when they overdosed on GHB [a drug popular with ravers that comes in the form of a clear, odourless liquid]. They had been giving each other doses all day from pipettes.’
Sadly the ‘Costa del Dole’ substance-abusing holiday-makers don’t even treat the town library with the respect it deserves. ‘A couple were recently having sex in the middle of the day right in the library entrance,’ said Mr Spencer. ‘With old dears walking past them as they went to get their books.’
Bournemouth’s beautiful Central Gardens, established in the 1870s as a ‘green lung’ in the centre of the resort, also haven’t escaped the scourge of the drug tourists. When another businessman, who asked not to be named, took us on a tour, we were appalled at what we saw.
Amid the villas on the edge of the Gardens was a nondescript house said by police to be a known ‘meth house’, shorthand for a location used for the smoking of highly addictive crystal meth.
And just yards from it, on the steps to the Central Gardens’ Jurassic Play Jungle for children, we passed a pair of young men who appeared to be smoking crystal meth from an improvised pipe.
After my colleague Jamie took a photograph from afar, the smokers took exception and he narrowly escaped his second attack in Bournemouth in 24 hours.
Back at the Triangle, we went to the grim alley behind Easy Tiger where the shops store their commercial bins. It’s also a magnet for substance abusers.
Our anonymous businessman, whose testimony is backed up by pictures and videos provided to the police and authorities, says: ‘They came here to sleep in basement stairwells and do drug deals, which have been caught on security video. We have even found what seems to be a drug-dealing accounts book revealing thousands in profits – as well as them having sex and using the back alley as a toilet.
‘A shopkeeper came down here to throw some rubbish away the other day, and these people were all moving bins so they couldn’t be seen taking drugs, or whatever, by the security cameras. They all kicked off . . . One had a headscarf wrapped round him, like a terrorist.’
Our source offers another explanation for the rise in local crime. ‘Some of the businesses in the area aren’t genuine – they’re fronts for drug-dealing,’ he claims. ‘They pay over the odds for rent, and these people coming here feel comfortable knowing they’ll be able to buy their drugs from them.’
Police and council officials last week attended a meeting with a large group of local business owners and shopkeepers in the Flirt Cafe and, according to owner Mr Watts, were alarmed at what they heard about the extent of the degenerate behaviour taking place in broad daylight.
The force’s officers would also have been alarmed if any had taken an evening stroll along the beach this week – the stench of ‘skunk’ cannabis was ubiquitous for at least a mile, including the area below the cliff ‘encampment’.
Approached by the Daily Mail last night, the Lib-Dem leader of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, Millie Earl, insisted ‘most of’ the millions of visitors each year ‘have a fantastic time’.
She said a recently-installed six-foot fence on the cliffs had made the illegal camp harder to access, amid plans to ‘clear it as soon as it is safe to do so’.
Dorset Police Chief Superintendent Julie Howe, Commander for the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area, added: ‘Like most large, urbanised areas, we do have crime, which we are tackling and reducing. The added influx of visitors during peak periods can lead to additional demand and we have extensive policing plans in place to ensure we proactively deter offenders.
‘This summer, our Good Safe Summer initiative sees us deploy enhanced visible patrols in key areas of tourist activity, such as the seafront, town centre and Lower Gardens. These patrols are also undertaken alongside our Town Team, deployed by BCP [Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole] Council.
‘Furthermore, our officers conduct regular foot patrols around hotspot areas where anti-social behaviour and violent crime has been reported. This includes The Triangle. Earlier this year, Dorset Police welcomed an additional 11 officers to the neighbourhood policing team covering Bournemouth town centre, and the increased visibility and engagement of our officers has seen positive results.
‘In the town centre, comparing the year 2026 to the previous 12 months, anti-social behaviour has reduced by 5.7 per cent, total crime by 3.2 per cent, violence against the person by 1.8 per cent, and public order incidents by 13 per cent.’
It pains me to say it, but this week Jamie and I experienced ‘violence against the person’ up 100 per cent.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login