THE administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been marked by him being booed by crowds of protesters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

One could argue that Johnson has united the country in protest more quickly than any recent premier and this may be his most significant and perhaps his only achievement as Prime Minister.

No doubt some on the right will label the protesting crowds a “mob” and argue that as a new PM Johnson has a democratic mandate.

Except of course he does not. Being elected by a few thousand members of the Tory Party is not something that provides a wider democratic legitimacy.

Booing and particularly booing reactionary politicians is a great British tradition.

Johnson himself was booed at The Oval cricket ground last year, while when chancellor in 2012 George Osborne was booed at the London Olympics.

Historically booing was more often known as “groaning” and EP Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class records several instances of crowds groaning right-wing notables.

Karl Marx himself (Neue Oder-Zeitung June 28 1855) recorded one of the most well known instances of crowd protest in 19th-century Britain.

The occasion was a protest against a Sunday Trading Bill which attempted to restrict what could take place on the one day ordinary people then had off work, while allowing the wealthy to continue leisure occupations unimpeded.

The protest took place in Hyde Park where the well-to-do were often to be seen riding and walking on a Sunday.

Marx noted that “the spectators consisted of about two-thirds workers and one-third members of the middle class, all with women and children.”

He observed “a procession of elegant ladies and gentlemen, ‘commoners and Lords,’ in their high coaches-and-four with liveried lackeys in front and behind, joined, to be sure, by a few mounted venerables slightly under the weather from the effects of wine.”

What wealthy persons in Hyde Park faced, according to Marx, was rather similar to what Johnson encountered across the country in the first few days of his time at Downing Street.

Marx found “a babel of jeering, taunting, discordant ejaculations, in which no language is as rich as English, soon bore down upon them from both sides.

“As it was an improvised concert, instruments were lacking. The chorus therefore had only its own organs at its disposal and was compelled to confine itself to vocal music.

“And what a devil’s concert it was: a cacophony of grunting, hissing, whistling, squeaking, snarling, growling, croaking, shrieking, groaning, rattling, howling, gnashing sounds!

“A music that could drive one mad and move a stone. To this must be added outbursts of genuine old-English humour peculiarly mixed with long-contained seething wrath. ‘Go to church!’ were the only articulate sounds that could be distinguished.”

A broader way of looking at such a noisy but generally peaceful protest is to see it as what is known as rough music.

A noisy, quite unruly, crowd of people gathered to make complaint against someone who is seen as transgressing the values and morals that are accepted as being those that should generally exist.

The hypocrisy, lies and philandering of Johnson certainly make him a well-deserved candidate for such protests.

A final interesting aspect to the booing of Johnson is to compare this with the reception of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as he travels the country speaking to large gatherings of people — invariably unreported by most of the mainstream media. He of course is not booed but applauded and cheered.