London: A man stands alone with an old British flag in a crowd of thousands near Big Ben, and he tells me why he has joined a rally that is seen by many as an eruption of right-wing hate.
He is white, 58, and lives in Islington, a part of north London where about one third of the residents were born outside the United Kingdom. He believes migration must be slowed.
“We’re not against people coming into the country, but it’s the speed at which they’re taking over and trying to take over our culture,” he says.
“This is not what we want, not at this speed. Our culture is a dominant culture, and it should stay that way. It’s just that we want our way of life the way it’s always been, and for it to gently change, if it has to change.”
We are standing near Westminster Abbey on the weekend. On any other day, tourists would queue at the red telephone boxes behind us to take selfies with Big Ben and the halls of parliament in the background. Today, the streets are choked with protesters. The crowd cheers and chants when speakers call for the removal of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government.
Police feared that this protest, called Unite the Kingdom, would explode in violence because the organisers have a track record in fuelling anger. I’ve come here to report the news if the event turns into a clash of protesters and police. As it turns out, there is no sign of that violence when I talk to people in the crowd.
But the man with the flag will not tell me his name. He worries about being identified as a critic of migration from the Middle East, and he says the increase in antisemitism has made him more wary of being named. He is not Jewish.
Then he says something that is utterly at odds with the sentiment in this crowd. “We’re a very welcoming people,” he says. “As you can see from this demonstration here. It’s very peaceful, lots of families, all colours.”
In fact, the crowd is almost entirely white. And the message is not welcoming to those who are not.
The organiser is a man called Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He is a former bankrupt who has served time in prison for assault. His critics accuse him of whipping up Islamophobia and spreading fascism on social media.
But there is often a difference between the speaker on the stage and the listener on the lawn. I speak to people in this crowd who speak quietly about their concerns. They’re not brawling with police; some of them chat happily with the bobbies.
And that’s why the shift to the right is significant: it is real, as the UK elections showed on May 7, and it is not just about a few rabble-rousers.
Sue Day, who is at the rally on her mobility scooter, is a case in point. She is chatty and cheerful in a Union Jack cap.
She is from the working-class districts of east London and wants the government to stop asylum seekers coming by boat across the English Channel. She has read about the criminal convictions of some of these asylum seekers for rape.
“We want to stop this invasion of people in small boats, with all these foreigners that we don’t know who they are,” says Day.
“They come here to kill, they don’t come here to integrate. We’ve been an integrated country for hundreds of years. We welcome the Jews, the Irish, the Caribbeans. We welcome the world and his brother, but we’re not going to welcome murderers.”
The noise from the rally is so loud I do not hear what she’s saying until I play the tape back later. And I’m struck by her selective memory about the past. The Jews, the Irish and the Caribbean migrants did not feel so welcome at times. I’ve spoken to refugees in Britain who have contributed to the country, for instance as nurses.
But I do not dismiss how Day feels. And she most definitely does not see herself as a member of a far-right fringe.
One of the speakers at the rally is Siobhan Whyte, whose daughter, Rhiannon, was murdered by a Sudanese asylum seeker in 2024. Deng Majek stabbed Rhiannon 23 times with a screwdriver; he is now serving a life sentence.
Another woman in the crowd has the same conviction about the migrants who need to be turned away.
“Our country is falling apart,” she tells me. “And I’ll say it clearly: we’ve got mass immigration, we’ve got so many people coming here from so many cultures.” She believes Muslim migrants are trying to dominate.
Each person I speak to says something similar. Migration is the single biggest issue for this crowd, and the polls show it is driving voters to the right. On May 7, millions of voters shifted to populist leader Nigel Farage, whose right-wing Reform UK party promises to turn away asylum seekers, send illegal migrants to an Atlantic island and assert British values.
The right is dominated by big egos who fight among themselves. Farage and Robinson do not get along. Farage has split with American billionaire Elon Musk, who has funded Robinson and spoken at his rallies in the past. There are different tribes among the hard right.
But it would be wrong to see the protesters as blind followers of one camp or another. I speak to people at the rally who are sceptical about Farage, even though they agree with what he says about migration. In the end, like other voters, they will cast their ballots for the side they see as the least worst.
It is easy to dismiss this rally as a gathering of extremists. When Robinson held a similar rally last September, just after the assassination of American conservative Charlie Kirk, about 110,000 people attended and it turned violent. Musk, speaking by video, called for the dissolution of the British parliament. Police arrested 21 protesters.
The crowd is smaller at this latest rally, held on Saturday, but it is not a fringe event. I see thousands of people from Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall and into Parliament Square. Critics post videos showing a thinning crowd, perhaps taken before or after the main event.
Is migration really too high in Britain? It shrank during the pandemic, then surged afterwards. This reflected the policies put in place by the Conservative Party, not Labour. Net migration fell to 204,000 last financial year, sharply lower than previous years. In Australia, net overseas migration was 306,000 in the same year, also down.
Citizens do not really see the annual intake, of course. They feel the cumulative impact. Voters generally say they want lower migration, even though political leaders often overlook this when setting policy.
What do the British want? In 2019, a YouGov survey found that 58 per cent thought migration was too high. On the same question in April this year, it was 70 per cent. The politicians are on notice.
There is no easy way to report these opinions when they are offensive to many in the community, including migrants. One option is to let the rallies pass without comment, or to simply avoid listening to those who attend. It is better, I think, to report views that are having a real impact on elections and governments.
A few blocks from Parliament Square, I go in search of a completely different group. Thousands of people are walking along Piccadilly to a gathering in Pall Mall for a Rally Against Racism, held to mark the Nakba for Palestinians who lost their land in 1948. The police cordon between the two gatherings is so tight that it takes a roundabout walk to get from one to the other.
I talk to Greens supporters about what they think of the right-wing rally nearby. They regard Robinson and his supporters as Zionists backed by big money. The biggest noise at the Rally Against Racism comes from the socialists and communists, but there are plenty of ordinary Britons in the march.
Pauline Mackay, who used to work in the oil industry in Scotland, is holding a sign that calls for peace in Palestine. One of her motivations for coming to London for this march is to make sure her new grandson will know, in years to come, that his grandmother tried to do something to make people aware of what is happening in Gaza.
What would she say to those at the rally in Parliament Square?
“What are you hoping to get by exhibiting and showing all that hatred?” she says. “What are you hoping to achieve?”
If my conversations are any guide, the right-wing protesters know exactly what they want. The next question, which may take a few more years to be answered, is whether they will gain the power to impose their vision on Britain.
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