A picture of tractors along a beachfront shows farmers blocking small boats from arriving at Dover.
This isn’t what the image shows. It is actually of French farmers staging a protest on a beach near President Emannuel Macron’s second home.
An image of tractors lining the shoreline on a beach is being shared with misleading claims it shows farmers attempting to block small boats from arriving in Britain.
The picture, which is being shared on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), depicts a sandy beach on which dozens of tractors are lined up along the edge of the sea.
Text over the top of the image says “Farmers blocking boats”, and it has been shared on social media with captions claiming it shows: “Farmers blocking boats in Dover.”
However, the photo was not taken in Dover, and doesn’t show an attempt to stop people from crossing the Channel in small boats.
It is actually a screenshot from a video, which also appeared on TikTok in January, which states it shows the moment that “French farmers line the beach at Le Touquet in the Pas-de-Calais region, where Macron’s second home is located”.
The protest was also reported by local French media, which stated 100 tractors arrived on 26 January 2024 in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, where the president and his wife live for part of the year. This formed part of widespread protests by farmers in France, often involving tractors, and led to highways to Paris being blocked.
A video posted by French radio news media outlet France Bleu Nord on X on 26 January also shows a similar angle of the protest, and states it occurred at Le Touquet beach.
It’s important to consider whether something is genuine before sharing it on social media. We have previously fact checked other misleading videos and images about farmer protests in France and elsewhere in Europe.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image does not show farmers blocking boats at Dover as claimed, but a protest in France near the second home of President Emmanuel Macron.
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