{"id":141561,"date":"2025-09-13T18:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T18:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141561\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T18:22:11","slug":"thousands-march-in-london-in-support-of-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141561\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands march in London in support of far-right activist Tommy Robinson – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0massive London march\u00a0organized by far-right activist\u00a0Tommy Robinson\u00a0became unruly Saturday as a small group of his supporters clashed with police who were separating them from counterprotesters.<\/p>\n

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Several officers were punched, kicked and struck by bottles tossed by people at the fringes of the \u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d rally, Metropolitan Police said. Reinforcements with helmets and riot shields were deployed to support the 1,000-plus officers on duty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to see significant aggression directed at officers by \u2018Unite the Kingdom\u2019 protesters,\u201d police posted on the X platform.<\/p>\n

At least nine people were arrested, but police indicated many other offenders had been identified and would be held accountable.<\/p>\n

Police estimated that Robinson drew about 110,000 people, while the rival \u201cMarch Against Fascism\u201d protest organized by Stand Up To Racism had about 5,000 marchers.<\/p>\n

The marches had been largely peaceful, but toward the late afternoon, \u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d supporters threw items at the rival rally and tried to break through barriers set up to separate the groups. Officers had to use force to keep a crowd-control fence from being breached, the police said.<\/p>\n

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Counterprotesters heckled a man with blood pouring down his face who was being escorted by police from the group of Robinson supporters. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear what happened to him.<\/p>\n

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The larger crowd stretched from Big Ben across the River Thames and around the corner beyond Waterloo train station, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (around a kilometer).<\/p>\n

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While the crowd was large, it fell far short of the one of the biggest recent marches when a pro-Palestinian rally drew an estimated 300,000 people in November 2023.<\/p>\n

Anti-migrant rhetoric<\/p>\n

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and is known for his nationalist and anti-migrant views, billed the march as a demonstration for free speech, and also said it was in defense of British heritage and culture.<\/p>\n

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Robinson told the crowd in a hoarse voice that migrants now had more rights in court than the \u201cBritish public, the people that built this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The marches come at a time when the U.K. has been riven by debate over migrants crossing the English Channel in overcrowded inflatable boats to arrive on shore without authorization.<\/p>\n

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Numerous anti-migrant protests\u00a0were held this summer outside hotels housing asylum-seekers following the arrest of an Ethiopian man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London suburb. Some of those protests became violent and led to arrests.<\/p>\n

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Participants in the \u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d march carried the St. George\u2019s red-and-white flag of England and the union jack, the state flag of the United Kingdom, and chanted \u201cwe want our country back.\u201d U.K. flags have proliferated this summer across the U.K. \u2014 at events and on village lampposts \u2014 in what some have said is a show of national pride and others said reflects a tilt toward nationalism.<\/p>\n

Some Robinson supporters held signs saying \u201cstop the boats,\u201d \u201csend them home,\u201d and \u201cenough is enough, save our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the counterprotest, the crowd held signs saying \u201crefugees welcome\u201d and \u201dsmash the far right,\u201d and shouted \u201cstand up, fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson supporters chanted crude refrains about U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and also shouted messages of support for slain\u00a0U.S. conservative activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n

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One demonstrator held a sign saying: \u201cFreedom of speech is dead. RIP Charlie Kirk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson had planned a\u00a0\u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d rally last October, but couldn\u2019t attend after being jailed for contempt of court for violating a 2021 High Court order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him. He previously served jail time for assault and mortgage fraud.<\/p>\n

Robinson founded the nationalist and anti-Islamist English Defence League and is one of the most influential far-right figures in Britain. He urged followers not to wear masks, drink booze or get violent.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\u00a0massive London march\u00a0organized by far-right activist\u00a0Tommy Robinson\u00a0became unruly Saturday as a small group of his supporters clashed with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40,76061,3275],"class_list":{"0":"post-141561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories","14":"tag-unite-the-kingdom","15":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}