Bartholomew's Notes

From the Evening Standard:

Thousands of people gathered in Parliament Square on Saturday for a protest organised by Tommy Robinson.

Speeches were given by Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Reclaim leader Laurence Fox and political commentator Carl Benjamin.

The focus of the protest was meant to be “two-tier policing” although Robinson had a broader list of grievances that were set out in a pre-recorded message broadcast to the crowd from a big screen above the man himself:

They shut down the country. They took away our rights and our freedoms. They flirted with compelling medical treatment, they caused the inflation we suffer from by printing money, continually printing money. And don’t ask questions about excess deaths – miscarriages, stillbirths, cancers, heart disease and vaccine efficacy and [such?]. The failure to reject net zero, the Marxist anti-capitalist dogma that will drive millions into poverty and hardship. They embrace unilateral economic disarmament. They can’t stop the tide, they can’t stop an earthquake, a hurricane, or even a strong breeze, yet they want us to believe that if they tax us more they’ll be able to stop the climate from changing… there’s over a hundred genders, because we say there are. And what will come next? Sex with little children is just another form of sexual expression? It will not be long before denouncing paedophilia is demonized.

Pre-recorded messages were also provided from June Slater of UK Politics Uncovered and from Katie Hopkins, among others – Hopkins was unable to be there in person because she was speaking at the Weekend Truth Festival in Cumbria (covered by Sky News here). Fox used the platform to rail against Pride Month, which (as usual) he described as a “child mutilation cult”.

So far so predictable, but there was an unexpected turn to religion at the end, when an unnamed speaker started talking about a “spiritual battle”, unfurled a banner declaring “Jesus is King” and led the crowd in saying the Lord’s Prayer – although pointedly he skipped over the line “As we forgive those who tresspass against us”. The speaker urged the crowd to “pray with me like you did in Sunday School”, an implicit acknowledgement that this was primarily an appeal to populist nostalgia, drawing on half-remembered phrases in communal memory.

The speaker also had a banner declaring “Jesus is King”, written in the same block capital font that was seen at last week’s “Disciples of Christ” protest outside the Azerbaijan Embassy. That event was led by someone who calls himself “Bob of Speakers Corner”, and Robinson also invited him onto the stage. Bob got the crowd to chant “Christ is King”, although I suspect for most participants this was just another supremacist slogan rather than an affirmation of faith, with no deeper meaning than the chant of “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” that was heard from some of the crowd during the march from Victoria Station.

The Mail wrote up the protest as “London Protest Chaos”, an assessment which one person who watched the whole thing with a critical eye described as “ridiculous”. The framing, though, is useful for creating the impression that protests in general are problematic and need a firmer hand.

(H/T @Nullen80 for various clips)

UPDATE: The person who led the Lord’s Prayer was one Joseph Buthee, and he says that the missing part was just a mistake.

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