Police are set to deploy 1,600 officers on the streets of London fearing trouble with a counter March Against Facism, organised by Stand Up To Racism, along with potentially volatile football matches
It is being billed as a festival of free speech, but for many communities, tomorrow’s Unite The Kingdom rally in central London will spread nothing but fear.
Organiser Tommy Robinson has assembled a motley crew of fellow far right activists and provided them with a platform to spew hatred and baseless conspiracy theories. They include a woman, nicknamed a “shieldmaiden of the far-right”, who claims “western elites” are trying to replace white Christians with immigrants.
Other speakers apparently lined up include a German politician facing a criminal probe over Kremlin bribe claims, a Danish MEP who jokingly used a Nazi greeting, and a Belgian politician who used the official motto of Hitler’s feared SS paramilitary.
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Police have already expressed concerns for Muslims in the capital and Joe Mulhall, from Hope Not Hate, told the Mirror: “The rally will be a major gathering of international far-right figures and shows that Stephen Lennon (Robinson’s real name) is an influential figure in the global far-right scene. He has invited a host of well-known far-right actors from across Europe and the US to bring their hateful and divisive rhetoric to London.”
Tens of thousands of people are set to take to the streets for the march. It is due to begin near Waterloo Bridge at 1pm before speeches given, including by Robinson, from a stage on Whitehall.
One speaker, Dutch-born Eva Vlaardingerbroek, 29 – dubbed “a darling of the young Right” – had a video removed by YouTube last year for allegedly violating its hate speech policy. Titled ‘The Great Replacement is not a theory – it’s a reality’, it featured her speech in Hungary spouting a discredited theory centred on the belief that ruling elites are actively trying to replace white Christian populations with immigrants in Western countries.
She claimed: “If we don’t start to seriously fight for our continent, our religion, our people, our countries, then this time will go down in history as the time in which Western nations no longer had to get invaded by hostile armies in order to be conquered. The native white Christian European population is being replaced at an ever-accelerating rate.”
Vlaardingerbroek, who claims London’s native population has been outnumbered by migrants, added: “Our new reality in Europe consists of frequent rapes, stabbings, killings, murders, shootings, even beheadings.” She ended by saying: “Our elites have declared a war on us and now it is time for us to put on the full armour of God, fight back, and win.”
Another speaker to appear today is far right German MEP Petr Bystron. He is accused of receiving payments from the pro-Russian website ‘Voice of Europe’, in return for his commitment to speak and vote in the interests of the Kremlin.
Danish MEP Morten Messerschmidt will also get a platform. In 2002, he got a suspended jail sentence for publishing material that appeared to suggest a link between a multi-ethnic society and rape, violence and forced marriages.
And in 2007, he temporarily left the Danish People’s Party after a newspaper accused him of praising Adolf Hitler. Messerschmidt won a lawsuit against the paper’s editor and a journalist after the court accepted his explanation that his behaviour was a joke.
Speaker Philip Dewinter, 62, is a senior figure in Belgium’s Vlaams Belang party, which promotes Flemish nationalism and strict immigration control. In 2001, he was reportedly at speaker at a gathering of former SS collaborators, telling them “My honour is loyalty” – the SS motto in the Second World War. This year he was accused of using a similar phrase and posing with a fascist flag.
Other speakers include Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyski, pastor Brian Tamaki, Rebel News founder Ezra Levant and one of his reporters Avi Yemini.
Tarczyski, 46, was reportedly formerly a lay assistant to a British exorcist and a community organiser at Westminster Cathedral. He is a vocal supporter of US president Donald Trump and has described Poland as the “last stronghold of Christianity and normality” in Europe.
Brian Tamaki is the leader of Destiny Church, a Pentecostal Christian organisation, which he denies is a cult. He leads the Freedoms New Zealand party and has condemned homosexuality while claiming that Covid was a sign the world has “strayed from God”.
Ezra Levant, 53, is the founder of far-right website Rebel News, described as a platform for the anti-Islamic ideology known as counter-jihad. Avi Yemini is an Australian-Israeli activist with a domestic abuse conviction who reports for Rebel News. The right-wing commentator was banned from Facebook for hate speech violations.
Ex-Apprentice star Katie Hopkins, ex- special forces soldier Ant Middleton and activist Sammy Woodhouse complete the line-up.
Robinson, 42, has urged his supporters to refrain from wearing face coverings and not to drink heavily. But police fear trouble with a counter March Against Facism, organised by Stand Up To Racism, to take place at the same time along with potentially volatile football matches.
Both marches are set to end with with speeches at opposite ends of Whitehall, where police say barriers will be in place to keep a large “sterile area” between the two groups, with officers deployed there and on surrounding roads to “minimise the risk of disorder” if they try to come together.
Over 1,600 police officers will be deployed across London, with 500 brought in from other forces and commander Clair Haynes noted anti-Muslim rhetoric and offensive chanting at previous marches.
She said: “We recognise that there are particular concerns for many in London’s Muslim communities ahead of the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest given the record of anti-Muslim rhetoric and incidents of offensive chanting by a minority at previous marches. There have been some suggestions that Muslim Londoners should change their behaviour this Saturday, including not coming into town. That is not our advice. Everyone should be able to feel safe travelling into and around London.
“Our officers are there to ensure that is the case and we’d urge anyone who is out on Saturday and feels concerned to speak to us.”