Rally follows ban of former EDL leader Tommy Robinson from Twitter over ‘hateful conduct’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Thousands marched through London under the banner of free speech on Sunday after Tommy Robinson, a former leader of the far-right English Defence League, was permanently banned from Twitter.

Protesters flying national flags and holding placards decrying limits to free expression rallied at Whitehall after marching through central London from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, a location seen as emblematic of free speech that has been the scene of several recent far-right rallies.



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Robinson called for the demonstration last week in response to Twitter’s decision to ban him for “hateful conduct” after he posted a message saying: “Islam promotes killing people.”

He and several prominent rightwing figures addressed the 2,000-3,000 attendees. Robinson told the crowd: “We couldn’t have done this three years ago, we couldn’t have done this four years ago. We are now mainstream.”

Other speakers included the leader of Ukip, Gerard Batten, the Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes, the YouTube personality Sargon of Akkad, Anne Marie Waters of the political party For Britain and the former Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos.



Lines of police with riot vans separated the protesters from several hundred counter-protesters demonstrating against what they saw as a far-right movement.

As the crowds, swelled by support from the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), an umbrella group for football ultras, turned from Piccadilly into Whitehall, they chanted Robinson’s name.

Paul Stevenson, 42, from Harrow, said he was marching to “protect freedom of speech”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Democratic Football Lads Alliance and For Britain were some of the supporters of the demonstration. Photograph: Penelope Barritt//REX/Shutterstock

“It’s to protest against all the censorship that’s going on, political correctness, cultural Marxism and attacks on the white, Christian culture, not just in this country but across Europe,” he added.

Numbers dwindled throughout the lengthy Whitehall march, while the atmosphere was unthreatening.



In his rally speech, Robinson said: “The people of this country have been silenced for 20-30 years with the tag of racists. They have managed to silence people so that they are too scared to speak up when they see things that are wrong.

“They now realise that that tag is dead: no one cares anymore with being labelled racists.”

Yiannopoulos told the crowd: “Truth and righteousness are behind you. You are the vanguard, you are the dark nights, the first men and women to proudly stand with your heads above the parapet, caring nothing for the bullets that come your way and I salute you.

“I saw what happened when Nick Griffin went on Question Time, in America when genuine racists [appear on television] ... When those people are exposed to the harsh light of day, I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Carl Benjamin, whose alias is Sargon of Akkad, said the protest was against “totalitarianism, identity politics and Islamism, which is really the same thing.”

“Those protesting against them were only in favour of ‘curated speech’,” Benjamin added.

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On the other side of the lines, Freddi Hyde-Thompson, 28, from London, was shocked to find the counter-protesters outnumbered. “It’s really worrying ,” he said. “This cannot come to London and there be more of them than there are of us.”

Hyde-Thompson saw the protesters’ claims of support for free speech as a contradiction. “If their freedom of speech is going to rub out other people’s freedom of speech then they’ve got no point. If they want to ban certain religions, that speaks for itself.”

Among those watching the speakers and videos was Fatima, a black Muslim woman who would not give her full name.

“I’m here for freedom of speech,” she said, adding that she did not feel threatened. “It’s okay, I’m in my element; I don’t really care, this is England. There’s a guy with an infidels shirt right in front or me, I don’t know how he would react to me. This is a bit awkward for all of us.”</s>As most Britons spent their bank holidays bathing in the summer sunshine, it was easy to miss the fact that thousands of protesters marched on Whitehall to “protect freedom of speech”. Far from being an innocent defence of Enlightenment values, the protest seemed more a Trojan horse for the ideas of the far right to insert themselves into the political mainstream. The demonstration was a response to former EDL leader Tommy Robinson’s permanent ban from Twitter, and featured figures such as Anne Marie Waters, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Gerard Batten of Ukip.

I’m not sure that British mainstream politics has quite taken the growing presence of the far right across Europe and the US seriously enough, or indeed the fact that British far-right and socially conservative groups are overtly and deliberately adopting the tactics of their allies across the pond. Claiming freedom of speech as a value is something the American far right has been doing for years (aided and abetted by liberal dupes, naturally); Britain has also recently had an escalation in protests outside abortion clinics. “They are starting to resemble more and more the tactics that you’d see in the United States: graphic imagery, more aggressive approaches to people,” said John Hansen Brevetti, clinical operations manager at a clinic in Ealing, west London.

It’s important to understand that these protests aren’t simply individual opportunistic acts, but part of a growing narrative embraced by social conservatives and the far right that the nation has been corrupted by elites, who are simultaneously destroying the economy and damaging society with their decadent liberal values. These elites, argue these protesters, are censoring ordinary people from expressing reasonable opinions, and forcing women to abort their children when other options might be available. Or as Tommy Robinson put it when he addressed the rally: “The people of this country have been silenced for 20-30 years with the tag of racists. They have managed to silence people so that they are too scared to speak up when they see things that are wrong.”

Robinson is tapping into that hoary old Nixonian trope, “the silent majority”. Central to these culture wars, then, is who “the majority” is and which groups can claim to speak for it. No one can claim to have found the perfect oppositional response to the culture wars, but in light of Robinson’s argument, it’s probably a bad idea for the opposition to set itself up as a group that represents only minorities. Instead, perhaps the aim should be to redefine who the majority are, through collective struggle, solidarity and a movement that makes itself welcoming to, and represented by, all demographics in society.

Whatever the response to the weekend’s rally is, it can’t come soon enough. Nigel Farage’s triumphalist meetings with Marine Le Pen, the far-right AfD in Germany, and Donald Trump should tell us all that this is a concerted international nationalist project that correctly sees itself as insurgent. And preceding every far-right victory is a political mainstream that didn’t take it seriously enough. Let’s not allow that to happen again.</s>Britain’s populist UK Independence Party (UKIP), which played a major role in the runup to the 2016 Brexit referendum, suffered an almost total wipeout in Thursday’s local elections in England.

The UKIP lost 92 seats in local councils, after a steady hemorrhaging of support since the Brexit referendum, holding onto only 2 seats with results coming from 99 of the total 150 councils up for grabs in local elections.

The Euroskeptic UKIP made Turkey’s EU membership bid the centerpiece of their pro-Leave Brexit campaign.

An ad styled as a “news report” featuring scenes from Turkey had claimed the U.K. would have to take in 15 million Muslim refugees if Turkey joined the EU.

The ruling Conservative Party seems to have benefitted from shifting UKIP votes to win in a few councils and managed to hold onto central London councils, Wandsworth and Westminster, two main Labour targets in the election.

Labour also failed to take Barnet council, losing it to the Tories. Local political commentators have linked the loss in Barnet to recent anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour Party.

The Labour Party, however, managed to win Plymouth from the Tories.

The pro-EU party Liberal Democrats managed to increase its votes and won 40 extra council seats so far.

In 99 results out of 150, Labour won 1,467 council seats, the Conservative Party secured 881 seats, and the Lib Dems captured 326.

Overall results from all regions are expected by Friday night.
Thousands of far-right activists attend a protest in London, United Kingdom amid a recent crackdown on far-right activity on social media. Guest speakers included former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes, and UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Gerard Batten.