Unlike the last anti-lockdown protest, Saturday’s Unite for Freedom rally has actually received some media coverage. This has, of course, focussed on anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. Protesters held signs reading: “My body, my choice”, “we do not consent” and “you have no power over us”. The Met, concerned also about a protest against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill taking place at the same time, “urged people to comply with the restrictions that apply to large gatherings”.
The MailOnline has more (although it smeared the protestors as anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists in its headline).
[Those gathered] protested [in part] against the idea of vaccine passports.
It is thought many of the crowd travelled from outside of the capital to take part in the gathering.
Several people set off smoke bombs and one launched a firework.
One man, who did not give his name, told the PA news agency he had come to the capital “because I want to be free and I want you to be free and the Government are lying to us”.
Another said she had attended because the press “are lying to us”.
By lunchtime, the crowd had started to disperse and head to Whitehall, with some heading to Trafalgar Square.
Pictures showed a London bus covered in anti-vaccination stickers.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Guardian actually ran a fairly balanced report about the occupation of Westfield by the protestors. The march, which began in Parliament Square, snaked all the way to Shepherd’s Bush and beyond to Acton.
Hundreds of anti-vaccine passport protesters invaded the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush on Saturday evening at the culmination of a mass march that drew many thousands and snaked miles through central and west London.
There were tussles with police who tried to block access through one entrance to the shopping centre at about 6pm, before protesters quickly realised that another door just yards away was unguarded.
Hundreds made it into the shopping centre where they stayed for about half an hour chanting “no more lockdowns” and “take your freedom back” before they were cleared by police with batons drawn, although without scenes of violence.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
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You say the Guardian gave a fairly balanced report but the first sentence talks about “hundreds invading the Westfield shopping centre”. They didn’t ‘invade’ it, its open to the f***ing public that the protest consisted of. But then I suppose “hundreds of people walked into…..” wouldn’t have had the same winding-up effect on the average neoliberal, lockdown-worshipping Guardian reader.
The Telegraph announcing early this morning, vaccine passports inside the UK will not happen is, in my view, a result of Boris being shown the helicopter video footage and police estimates for the protest march in London.
You can just see the fat b stard eating his bacon and eggs and saying “Bloody Hell Cass, that’s a lot of people!, I better call Patel.”
“Hey Patel, What are they bloody protesting about ?”
“All sorts of crackpots but mostly the vaccine passports”
”Bloody hell, if that’s all it is, let’s back off of that one then, I’d better call Gates first though.”
”Ah Gates has gone underground sir, he’s been exposed as a possible kiddy fiddler.”
AS far as I can see, the BBC didn’t cover this massive event at all! Surely they must be in breach of their charter for not doing so?
https://t.me/c/1220368920/17442
I am not sure of how to post links, if this don’t work can someone explain how to link from telegram.
FYI behavoural sorcorers, censorship/and media blackouts will have the opposite effect..
“No person shall participate in a gathering of more than 30 people outdoors”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
To everyone of you that attended the
March I congratulate you
I knew the March was on and trawled sites to find out how it went
By the way I’m not in the UK I am in Australia so don’t for one second think the world is not aware of what is going on over there
You have millions of like minded information seeking allies
There is at least _some_ media coverage of the protest, at last.
I can’t give a full account of it: I don’t know how anyone without access to a helicopter or drone could. At 1pm you could hardly move in Parliament Square. I have no idea whether I was near the front or the back of the march.
It took us 3 hours to go to Trafalgar Square, up Charing Cross Road to Centre Point, and along Oxford St to Marble Arch. Marble Arch is where I, like many others, just flopped in the park as we were exhausted. (The mast of my sign had snapped as well, so I had to carry it in an awkward way from Tottenham Court Road onwards).
The reason it took so long was the sheer, tightly packed number of us.
One thing I can draw from it (from the hundreds of possible conclusions): it’s literally a _demonstration_ of the vast distance between reality and the po-faced, namby-pamby, risk-hysterical dull expanse of grey which claims to be “UK society”. I was stuck in a tightly-packed crowd at the top of Charing X road for what was probably 20-30 minutes, not moving. But I didn’t… Read more »
‘and beyond to Acton’ TY in the dog house again for bringing his mates home for the after party?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/on-the-march-at-saturdays-anti-lockdown-protest/
I thought Toby and James Delingpole were planning to get to the march. If they did they might have a video to share. Give him a chance, he’s a busy man and doing us all a massive favour.
Saw them in Parliament Square just before we set off, plus Fox and Kurten.
The revolution will not be televised!!!!
Need to keep going! It gets bigger every time. We will get there. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Yesterday was a great day!
That’s the spirit. Nothing worthwhile is easy!
They are minimising the numbers in MSM in order to keep the vaccine pressure on the public. If they had to acknowledge that such large numbers were resisting, then others who are wavering might resist too. Big numbers of resisters will also make it harder to operate vaccine passports as part of daily life and people will realise what a dead end this is.
We were there. We even spoke to Piers Corbyn.
HOWEVER A WEBSITE called “LOCKDOWN SCEPTICs” SHOULD BE PUBLICISING THIS ALL WEEK BEFORE THE EVENT.
But all we got was Cummings.
So LS you report what the police said, what the Daily Mail said, what the Guardian said. Underwhelming.
I saw the Shopping Mall thing live in You tube. Since when was it illegal for people to walk into a shopping centre. Of course it that’s all the could come up with it was 100% peaceful.
BLM would have smashed up the racist shopping mall in a largely peaceful protest
I was on the march, from Charing Cross to Acton, but decided not to enter the shopping centre. That really was playing into the media’s arms – soft target. Bad decision.
The problem is that the Guardian article was, surprisingly, quite good! But the best bit (‘hundreds of thousands of people’ was behind ‘Read in full’. I suspect quite a few here didn’t do that, and I can quite understand why. But it’s a shame LS couldn’t have used the ‘hundreds of thousands of people’ from the Guardian article in its headline. After all, it would be quoting the Guardian…
I would like to think this site will improve it’s coverage of the demo in the next day or two.
The site will be visited by other sceptics and potential sceptics who need to know they are not alone and that something can be done to change things.
In the absence of any credible political base or opposition to this lunacy what else can we do?
But I would like to see TY pushing the demo, the numbers there and the msm lack of reporting.
Again,well done to all that were there.
The problem lies not with those on this site but with those who consider skepticism over lockdown akin to manslaughter. We have become supine and befuddled- we accept the role of a Professor of mathematics Tim Gowers determining medical practice: -never been in my clinics or operating theatre where I have felt the lack of a mathematician,epidemiologist or politician with an arts degree: but then again I thought we lived in a democratic libertarian country!
Armstrong Economics in the US had better coverage – including an interview with a nun !
I wonder if those in the media understand the damage they are causing to democracy by ignoring and/or misrepresenting hundreds of thousands of people marching for a cause.
How many peaceful means do ordinary people have for voicing serious concerns? Very few.
Hundreds of thousands of people (if you believe the Guardian’s estimate) gathering to protest is a massive, massive deal. Not reporting it properly and fairly leads to loss of faith in democracy, loss of faith in media and loss of faith in peaceful protest.
The effect may not be felt immediately, but it will be felt.
The media are nothing more than the government’s mouthpiece. Democracy and a free press are already dead in this country I am afraid.
The media is paid off by the huge Government advertising spending spree (your taxes) – they even pay full price. Oh and by Institutions like The Gates Foundation that made ‘donations’ with strings attached to all including the BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian ….
Well said. It’s almost as if LS doesn’t want to be seen to be too closely associated with the marches. Despite the fact that the marches are the natural result of the lockdown scepticism – which it supposedly espouses – being ignored.
Hopefully there will be an article ATL today to redress the balance.
Pretty weak reporting of the reporting by others which is acknowledged to be weak. I was there. Who knows exactly how many people were there – it was alot. AND from all walks of life. And from all parts of the country. AND peaceful. Perhaps we might take heart from media silence – if these protests were no threat to the critical interests of the status quo – then they could be safely reported ….. but since – just maybe – they are a threat to those interests – best pretend they didn’t happen and just wait till even the brave are exhausted. This may turn out to be the most significant challenge to rights and freedoms of people since WWII. It IS worth the effort – but requires courage – and patience.
Your analysis is spot on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57294438
This is outrageous. The NHS are demanding our freedoms are not returned to us on 21st June, not because of Covid but because of the backlog of none Covid patients. It is high time this disgrace of an organisation was put out to pasture and the saving in taxpayer spending passed directly to taxpayers in the form of tax reductions and rebates. People could then use this money to buy very good private healthcare.
It is outrageous that our basic freedoms are held to ransom by the efficiency and capacity of one of our public services. Do we lock down when the roads are busy or the trains full or there’s a power outage? No. The problem is the NHS not its users. It needs sorting out.
I’m not suggesting there’s any comparison with India, and one should be sceptical of anything in the Guardian but this is of interest.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/kumbh-mela-how-a-superspreader-festival-seeded-covid-across-india
Permalink: https://archive.is/4WmOc
“Kumbh Mela: how a superspreader festival seeded Covid across India”
It’s tempting to call it ‘natural selection’ – people dumb enough to join huge crowds, thinking religion will protect them, die. Unfortunately, they also spread it to everyone else.
Oh I know, I know. ‘The people dumb enough to join’…the BLM protests last year, the ‘people dumb enough to join’…the crowds in Cornwall last year, ‘the people dumb enough to join’ the crowds on the British beaches last year, and of course ‘the people dumb enough to join’ the hundreds of thousands in London and other cities on 24th April’. And there were reported ‘spikes of infection’ after all those, weren’t there? Oh, hang on, there weren’t.
I was dumb enough to join yesterday’s march and I’m proud of it. So are the thousands upon thousands of others.
Just checking you noted that I wasn’t actually agreeing with Rod. (I was there too.)
There is no evidence to suggest that a single person has caught Covid and died as a result of a protest. Even if your above statement were correct, it is nothing compared to what ultimately happens to people who are dumb enough to surrender all their freedom and control of their lives to the state.
The opposite of dumb, both literally and metaphorically. Healthy people don’t need religion to protect them, they have immune systems. Challenging those systems builds immunity. It also builds herd immunity, thereby protecting everyone.
This IS worth reading in full, as the Guardian does say ‘hundreds of thousands’. And it IS the most ‘balanced’ report I’ve ever read of the demos. It’s not great, sure!! But not as bad as the usual ****. The ‘hundreds’ refers to those entering Westfield. I was there as well. I marched the 12 miles to Acton but didn’t want to go into the shopping centre. For me, that was the only bit that didn’t feel right.
No, it didn’t did it. Almost as if the police let a hundred or so protesters inside the shopping centre in the hope that they’d start trashing the place resulting in photo ops, arrests, etc.
At last! The Guardian: ‘At its height there appeared to be hundreds of thousands of people taking part’.
But I am suspicious that the Guardian has highlighted this. It is so far up Bill Gates’ backside. Has it an ulterior motive, perhaps? Sowing seeds for a continued lockdown? Claiming that these ‘hundreds of thousands’ are responsible for the spread of the latest so-called variant. Thereby creating more division between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
I do hope not but why suddenly mention the protest? Don’t trust the report at all.
(See Rod McLaughlin’s post later. Very suspect tbh. Is this the route MSM will take? We will have to wait and see…)
Interesting theory…obviously hope that’s not the case…
I might just have read too many Whodunnit books 🙂
Quite right Monica. I think they call it ‘poisoning the well’. Hundreds of thousands from all over the country – this is so unusual for the Guardian that there has to be an ulterior motive. This protest can be blamed for any so-called surge anywhere in the UK in the next 19 to 20 days
Just a question for all of you: has anyone complained to Ofcom or directly to the BBC that refusing to broadcast the protests is a breach of the charter? I think it clearly breaches point 5 and especially point 6 (4). I’d be interested in what replies were forthcomimg if any. I do wonder if there is a legal case to be answered but assume someone has explored this option already.
I complained after the last demo and got a standardised, anodyne, lying reply. Still worth doing, though.
Was that the BBC or Ofcom? I’m not surprised of course.
BBC. Look for their Complaints link.
Same here. Wishy washy insubstantial responses though I will keep bothering them as they are despicable and not doing their job
why doesn’t someone very capable BTL here compose a letter which we can all download and send – customising as we please – to Ofcom and BBC.
I was there today and to hear hundreds were there is a scandal. People said a million – I’m not sure about that, but a road wide procession of people walking for two hours is easy hundreds of thousands. The fact it got no coverage is a disgrace.
While we we were already half way down Oxford Street, people were telling us they were still coming from Parliament Square, there were thousands of us and we know it!!
Tried to post a comment to give my opinion of the coverage but the “Post Comment” button ceased to glow well before I had the chance to even attempt to post it. (No there was no bad language).
Naturally no mention of this on the BBC news at 10. Instead they told us about a game of football, a black lives matter scumbag who has been shot then another game of football.
The BBC will tell you this is 1-200 anti-vaxxers ….
https://twitter.com/Adam_Stratford_/status/1398615543284961283