At around eight on Saturday evening a friend called and told me to switch on Sky News to watch its coverage of the demonstration in Dover, where more than 100 men – dressed in black and wearing balaclavas – could be seen marching through the streets to protest against illegal migration, the only sound an occasional chant of ‘Stop the boats’.

As it happens, I had already seen the footage she was referring to but I was shocked by her reaction to it: ‘At last, someone is finally speaking out for us.’

The reason I was taken aback is that she’s a mum of three in her fifties who runs her own successful hair salon – someone I’d never describe as a Right-wing head banger, or a racist, or any of the other terms the Left uses to condemn anyone who supports such protests.

She’s asked me not to use her name as she lives in an area of north London that now houses hundreds of migrants. But it’s clear that her frustration stems from the fact that, while she’s struggling to keep her company afloat as Labour clobbers small businesses with taxes and red tape, these ‘freeloaders’ – as she called them – live off her taxes. And she’s had enough.

‘Come and see what it’s like where my salon is,’ she said, describing an environment where gangs of young foreign men in designer suits stand in doorways dealing drugs and menacing women and girls, many of whom are now too frightened to go out in the evening because of the unwanted – often intimidating – attention they get from these men.

When my friend told one of the men she would call the police if they didn’t move away from the entrance to her salon as they were putting off customers, she was laughingly told to ‘F*** off’.

Yes, it’s just one story, one person’s view, but I was so struck by it that I canvassed other friends, all hardworking types – a teacher, an accountant, my plumber and the local florist – for their views on the march.

Large groups of protesters – all masked and dressed in black – blockaded the Port of Dover on Saturday morning

The protests were followed a day later by similar events along the coast in Portsmouth, led by local agitator Daniel Thomas

And, to my surprise, they all said pretty much the same thing: as they struggled to make a living, barely making ends meet, they despaired at the fortune being spent on housing illegal migrants – a budget that now runs at around £5billion a year.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Labour have been in power for more than two years, the so-called ‘small boats’ – though many of them are positively gargantuan and capable of carrying more than 200 people apiece – just keep coming.

Given the scale of the crisis, you might have thought that the Government would be straining every sinew to address it. But no. Indeed, can you remember Andy Burnham making a single speech about illegal migration and what he will do to sort out the problem?

In Opposition, then in power, the now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood vowed to impose a crackdown, warning that illegal migration is ‘tearing our country apart’, adding that ‘hatred’ would rise if the Government failed to act.

Even more prophetically, she said that a failure to confront concerns over immigration levels could lead to ‘a littler England as anger turns to hate’.

You don’t say. Look around you, Ms Mahmood, it already has. As the demonstration in Dover and the one that took place the very next day in Portsmouth proved, this country is already deeply divided over illegal migration.

This anger is not driven by prejudice against a person’s skin colour, or race, it is driven by a deep-seated sense of unfairness at the way so much of the taxation we pay on our hard-earned income goes to support people who have entered this country illegally, who enjoy a lifestyle fuelled by benefits that many poor working folk can only dream of.

Ms Mahmood’s attempts to introduce a tougher line on migration are routinely thwarted by Left-wing Labour MPs too blinded by ideology to listen to the concerns of ordinary people.

And their voices will only grow louder following recent revelations. On Monday, a Home Office whistleblower claimed that just 1 per cent of asylum claims are genuine, the rest appear to base their applications on coaching from lawyers or charity workers who know how to game the system.

Then it emerged that, in the 12 months to June this year, just short of 200,000 migrants successfully applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain, a 24 per cent increase on the year before.

Not only does this status allow a person to live, work and study in the UK permanently, it entitles them to NHS treatment and a wide range of state benefits. They also have the right to bring over close relatives and dependants.

Given that the country is already drowning in debt, despite the fact that working people are paying tax at crippling rates, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain is broken.

I’m pretty sure my hairdresser friend does not condone lawlessness and, like any mum and working woman, would have sympathised with the locals and holidaymakers who had their journeys disrupted for hours due to the balaclava protests.

But she wants her country back. She wants hard work to be rewarded. In short, she wants a fair deal. And it is telling that she feels the only way the voices of people like her will be heard is via troubling protests by men with their faces covered, dressed head-to-toe in black.

Donna Jones, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, is only too familiar with the sight of protests in Portsmouth, many of them focused on the city’s three large migrant hotels.

While she described the sight of the balaclava marchers as ‘deeply concerning’, she also warned that their demonstration was a ‘wake-up call’.

Andy Burnham promises ‘growth in every postcode’. But, thanks to his failure to tackle the migrant crisis, his legacy could well prove to be ‘protests in every postcode’.