Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to take part in Tommy Robinson’s “One Kingdom” rally against political censorship and mass immigration.
Mr Robinson, who attracted tens of thousands of people to Parliament Square for a “patriotic” demonstration last month, has again drawn large crowds, with aerial images of Trafalgar Square on Saturday showing a sea of people waving flags for Britain, England, Israel and even Donald Trump.
An anti-grooming gang activist told the crowd: “Fighting is in our DNA. It’s in each and every one of you and in your children. Britons have been known as fighters throughout our history and the sooner we remember that, the sooner we realise that each and every one of us is a fighters, the more we need to stand up to them.”
“Freedom of speech has never been free. Our ancestors died and bled for it. Every suffering imaginable, solitary confinement, torture and death. People sacrificed for freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is worth fighting for and worth dying for. Death, prison… We will never succumb to your lies.”
Robinson, who is often a target of the justice system in the UK, is due to appear in court next week on a contempt of court charge arising from a defamation lawsuit over the Almondbury Community School incident in 2021. During the rally, Robinson streamed a documentary about himself. silenceThis, he argues, weakens the case against him.
“They’re going to put me on trial, and I’ve just put you on trial for the world,” he said. “If they want to send me to prison, the world will know that I told the truth.”
The future is ours ❤️ #Unite the Kingdom pic.twitter.com/cy4M6Kw966
— Tommy Robinson (@TRObinsonNewEra) July 27, 2024
Laurence Fox, the actor-turned-activist and leader of the Reclaim Party, also addressed the crowd, saying: “We are a family, we are a community, we stand against those who want to stifle free speech, we stand against those who want to experiment on our children, we stand against those who want to dismantle everything that our fathers, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers fought for and built as a society.”
“This is our home. We have nowhere else to go. So do everything in your power to defend it, reclaim it, and unite the kingdom. May God bless you, King.”
Carl Benjamin, host of the Lotus Eaters podcast, said in his speech: “At the moment the UK is an occupying power and British people feel terribly exploited. We feel this has to change. If it doesn’t change, what does our future hold?”
Benjamin argued that the “essentially liberal” British polity does not recognise the British people as a group and therefore fundamentally rejects the notion that Britain belongs to the British people.
“They will be forced to say that England belongs to nobody, or that England belongs to nobody. In a word, they have robbed you of a thousand years of ancestral heritage. They have taken from you the most precious thing you possess, and they have declared that not only is it not yours, but that it belongs to somebody else.
“This is a colonialist project. To say that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland belong to foreign peoples, not to the local people… You are the underclass they are trying to create.”
The United Kingdom Rally drew such a huge crowd that it was impossible to see in one place as the crowd circled the stage. pic.twitter.com/JEI8EZ0mPa
— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) July 27, 2024
Benjamin told Breitbart London: “There is clearly a growing movement to restore British dignity to our own soil. Last time, 30,000 people gathered outside Parliament; this time, over 50,000 gathered outside Nelson’s Column. Something big is happening in this country, people no longer want to be exploited second-class citizens, and they are mobilising.”
Another consistent theme at the rallies was disappointment with Nigel Farage, who was absent, with many attendees claiming to have voted for his populist party, Reform UK. Farage has long distanced himself from Robinson since leaving his UK Independence Party in 2018 after Robinson was admitted as a member.
Ironically, at a left-wing counter-demonstration activists carried banners reading “Stop Nigel Farage”.
The counter-demonstration was organised by anti-racism activists, in collaboration with the Stop the War Coalition, the Peace and Justice Project and the Anti-Fascist Coalition, and was supported by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other trade unions, Daily Mail report.
At a much smaller counter-demonstration, former leader of the Socialist Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, spoke. Protesters carried banners reading “No to Tommy Robinson, No to Fascism” and “Smash Fascism and Racism”. Said Two men have been arrested following an alleged assault on participants at a “Stand Up to Racism” rally.
