Reform councillor George Madgwick is calling for a Labour MP to “correct the record” after a social media post in which he claimed the city councillor wasn’t “fit to lace the boots” of RNLI volunteers.

The Portsmouth and Hampshire county councillor described the post made by Darren Paffey, MP for Southampton Itchen, on September 19 as “wildly inaccurate and misleading”.

Cllr Madgwick called for the MP to publicly correct the information, claiming he had now received abuse from members of the public believing he was unsupportive of the RNLI.

The war of words follows the arrival of around 120 asylum seekers at Eastney who were brought ashore by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) on September 6 after being rescued from a small boat crossing the Channel.

This prompted a protest, during which roads were blocked in a ten-hour stand-off. Hampshire police said vehicles were damaged and officers were injured during the protest, and have so far charged four men with violent disorder.

Afterwards Cllr Madgwick, who is the Reform UK group leader on Hampshire County Council, wrote on Facebook that the RNLI, in his view, “facilitated the arrival of 100+ migrants to our city of Portsmouth”.

He added: “What I’m saying is you could look to lobby against RNLI. Withdraw your support and funding.”

Mr Paffey said he found the comments “incomprehensible”, particularly that a “senior politician from a maritime city could speak in this way”.

“The crews and volunteers represent the very best of our region and our country, and they deserved to be thanked and supported without equivocation and regardless of your politics.

“And as for George, I don’t think he’s fit to lace the boots of a single brave RNLI volunteer.”

In a BBC Radio 4 interview, he said there are “legitimate concerns around levels of migration but to start throwing out accusations against the RNLI that they are ideologically driven is nonsense”.

He said it was “sick” that volunteers had been targeted online and that it was “very worrying” to conflate migration with the duty of the RNLI.

In a response letter, Cllr Madgwick said RNLI staff should never be “attacked for doing their duty and work”, but said he did not agree that they should “bring undocumented people trying to enter our country via illegal methods, using criminal organisations”.

He argued that Mr Paffey’s post failed to “mention that I was publicly calling for calm and publicly calling for people not to attack or threaten the RNLI or their staff”.

He added that a poster shared by Mr Paffey, which quotes “Lobby against the RNLI. Withdraw your support and funding” alongside Cllr Madgwick’s name and title, had led people to believe he created the poster “and that I personally am organising and promoting a lobbying campaign to close the RNLI”.

He said that, as a result of the post, he had “received countless messages being incredibly threatening and abusive, to the extent I have now been assigned security myself”.

Cllr Madgwick asked the MP to publicly confirm that the councillor condemned violence and intimidation towards the RNLI and that he was not lobbying against the charity.

The RNLI has temporarily taken its Portsmouth lifeboat station out of service following abuse directed at its volunteers after the protests.

The charity said the move was made to review crew safety and wellbeing, while arrangements remain in place for search and rescue cover.

Many volunteers have been targeted for helping those in distress at sea, with social media posts describing them as “traitors”. The RNLI has also advised volunteers and staff to consider not wearing the charity’s branding in circumstances where they may feel unsafe.

The south-east head of region for the charity, Jacqui Irons, said: “We have a duty of care to our people, we therefore took the decision to pause activity at the station to review crew safety and wellbeing and to support those involved in the incident on September 6”.

The charity’s chief executive, Peter Sparkes, has described abuse of RNLI volunteers as “wholly unacceptable in a civilised society”.

He said recent protests had generated “deliberate misinformation and a misunderstanding about the RNLI – our purpose, our tasking, and particularly our lifesaving work in the Channel”.