The Guardian reports that RNLI staff and volunteers have been put in the spotlight over the charity’s involvement in a rescue on Sunday in which a dinghy carrying asylum seekers was brought into Portsmouth, triggering protests by far-right agitators and others.
‘Peter Sparkes, the RNLI chief executive, said that for more than 200 years the RNLI had rescued people without judgment, fear or favour. “Yet [staff and volunteers] and their families are being threatened by those who would hide behind a balaclava or a keyboard. Their action, in contrast, is wholly unacceptable in a civilised society.”
Sparkes said rumours that the RNLI housed asylum seekers on its premises, or that there were RNLI missions to move migrants to secret locations were “completely baseless and untrue”.
The charity said RNLI lifeboats launched 9,058 times in 2025 but only 109 of those launches were to small boats in the Channel, representing 1.2% of its rescue work.
The RNLI also said almost 95%, of those who crossed the Channel in small boats last year were picked up by the UK Border Force.
One of the testimonies on the RNLI’s small boats webpage came from Dan Sinclair, a volunteer helm at Walmer lifeboat station in Kent. He said: “One thing I would like people to understand is that these people genuinely need our help.”
Speaking about one rescue in the Channel, he said: “We launched to an overcrowded, unseaworthy small boat that was taking on water. One family was so scared. They were screaming. Their boat was sinking in front of their eyes. It was a horrible, horrible situation.
“We managed to rescue that family. We stopped them from drowning. There was a little girl on the boat. She looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘I love you, thank you.’ As a father, that went straight to my heart. That rescue cemented in my head that what we are doing as an organisation is exactly the right thing.”’
International maritime law stipulates that all seafarers have a duty to rescue anyone in peril at sea
Yet RNLI volunteers, including the volunteer lifeboat crews, have faced repeated abuse and challenge from balaclava-wearing demonstrators and others, and the charity has advised them not to wear lifeboat-branded clothing nor to open local museums or gift shops if they feel threatened. Demonstrators outside the RNLI HQ in Poole included members of the Poole Patriots and Hampshire Resistance.
However, the RNLI has reported a huge surge in donations since the charity has faced criticism from far-right groups.