THE events in central London on Saturday September 14’s “Unite the Kingdom” march had me casting my mind back to previous mass demonstrations in the capital — other than those against British involvement in the Iraq war and the 1990s poll tax riots.

From independent sources, Tommy Robinson’s jamboree drew from 110,000 to 150,000 followers; the Iraq war protests peaked between one to two million, while 200,000 people were estimated at the 1990 riot.

Incidentally, anti-Brexit demonstrations in the capital apparently rose to as many as a million protesters in March 2019.

These three demonstrations all had a clear purpose, whereas the Yaxley-Lennon gathering appeared more of an inchoate, piss-soaked howl against immigration, non-Caucasians and the unpatriotic left, coupled with the canonisation of previously little-known slain far-right influencer Charlie Kirk, fuelled in part by booze, cocaine and blind fury.

The police managed the more violent members of the crowd with a degree of forbearance, going so far as to kettle counter-protesters, while some officers were punched, kicked, and hit by bottles hurled by the demonstrators.

‘Bloody Sunday’

This contrasts mightily with events 138 years ago, when Marxists of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and Socialist League, reformist socialists of the Fabian Society, the radical wing of the Liberal Party and free speech activists from the National Secular Society joined with working-class east Londoners to demand Irish liberty, fair pay and free speech.

The protesters were bludgeoned by Sir Charles Warren’s Met Police (Warren being the chap who so spectacularly failed to catch Jack the Ripper), supported by the army — but they fought back.

Marchers learned from lessons of the previous year, crowds erupting when the police barged through the crowd to remove trade unionist and future Liberal MP/president of the Board of Trade, John Burns, from giving a speech at the pedestal of Nelson’s Column.

Rather than minorities, the anger of the demonstrators was directed towards upper-class establishments such as the Carlton and Devonshire Clubs, as well as The Pall Mall Gazette offices.

Peterloo – not revisited

In 1887, 30,000-plus activists (whose “respectable” faction included George Bernard Shaw, tasteful textile designer William Morris, and Burns, again) attended the rally, protesting economic injustice in Britain and oppression in Ireland.

Conservative supporter James Compton Merryweather volunteered to use a 400-gallons-per-minute steam fire engine as a water cannon on the crowd, but Warren, in a rare display of sense, declined.

As one may remember, London mayor Boris Johnson acquired German water-cannon to use on crowds in the advent of another 2011-style riot in the capital. In 2015, home secretary Theresa May blocked their use in civil disturbances — Johnson’s typical blockheadedness lumbering London’s taxpayers with a £300,000 bill.

A proportion of the protesters in 1887 decided to brave police truncheons, the hooves of the cavalry horses, and 400 soldiers with fixed bayonets. The infantry was ordered not to engage, the cavalry to refrain from drawing their swords, although horses used their hooves at the urging of their riders. 

This was to be no Peterloo Massacre, though, as Conservative Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, reported that the wounds received by the mob were less severe than those of the constables. Not to be condoned, of course, but a warning of the time when socialist working class could only be pushed so far — and when their fellows were not so easily duped by the lies of the extreme right.

The full harshness of the law

At least we can be glad that after 138 years, protest by the left is not cracked down upon with similar harshness. Unless one is wearing a “Plasticine Action” T-shirt of course. Or a pensioner branded a terrorist by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper.

Or indeed the Just Stop Oil protesters banged up for five years (later slightly reduced) for disrupting traffic on the M25 back in 2022.

If only they were lucky enough to have Labour Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle supporting them; after all, he did recently say of Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom march, “It doesn’t disturb me, because it’s actually proof that we live in a country where free speech, free association, is alive and well.”