A group of farmers used tractors to block the roads into Britain's largest shipping port in the early hours of Friday, as part of a major new protest against inheritance tax changes and cheap imports.
Police were at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk as farmers arrived at around midnight. Farmers began the protest by blocking two gates at the port.
The demonstration was planned by the East Anglia Farmers Unite Group, who posted updates on the protest on Facebook, against "cheap lower standard imports and inheritance tax".
At the event, one protestor's sign read: "Since I could walk, my passion and purpose is farming. Don't take our livelihoods! Save British farms."
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Another said: "Save our farms, save our future, fight the tax", while a third read: "Back British farming".
The group moved to blocking just one gate at around 4am due to safety reasons, as they confirmed on social media: "After many hours covering both port gates, we have made the decision to move to just continue our presence at gate two, in order to maintain public safety on the roads as the quantity of lorries was causing such an obstruction.
"We allowed lorry and dock workers to leave the port after their shift to get home to their families. We allowed a medical container to leave the docks also."
By 7am, the farmers had left and the obstructions were cleared, with the port saying in a statement there had been "some minor inconvenience to landside operations".
A group of farmers used tractors to block the roads into Britain's largest shipping port in the early hours of Friday, as part of a major new protests
|"A long night but worth it we stand together even all night in the cold," the group posted on Facebook.
A port spokesman said: "We were made aware of the proposed protest and worked with port users to mitigate its impact.
"The protest caused no disruption to shipping operations but some minor inconvenience to landside operations.
"We would like to apologise to any of our customers who were affected."
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The protestors brought signs demanding 'save British farms'
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The demonstration began at midnight, lasting until around 7am
|Suffolk Police said it liaised with organisers and other agencies to facilitate a peaceful and safe protest.
Adam Searle, owner of haulage firm CP Transport, based near Ipswich, said the disruption was "frustrating", though he is "still working through what the damage actually is".
He confirmed the farmers initially blocked both gates to the port, but from about 4am allowed vehicles to come and go from one of them.
Mr Searle said he believed the port had been notified on Thursday because "at around lunchtime yesterday they removed all the vehicle booking slots from midnight onwards".
It had been "cloak and dagger," he said, but "had the truth been released, I appreciate that might have caused more unrest and efforts from our community to stop it happening, which could have caused fisticuffs and all sorts of other trouble".
One farmer involved in the demonstration explained there had been an increase in the number of low-quality but cheap fruit that had been imported into the country.
This means UK farmers must compete with products that do not have to adhere to higher welfare standards and therefore costs in Britain, the farmer said, essentially undercutting them.
Farmers also said plans to tax inherited farmland had been a stress on finances.
The Government had said it would impose a 20 per cent tax on inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1million from April 2026, in turn ending the 100 per cent tax relief that had been in place for four decades.
Following months of intense protests by farmers, the government then increased the threshold from £1million to £2.5million, in a move that was widely welcomed.
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