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The march routes through London
Here is the map of the two routes being taken today:
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Katie Hopkins, the former reality TV star who previously compared migrants to cockroaches, told crowds at the Unite the Kingdom protest in a video message she was “so proud of you”, PA reports.
She said:
I want to thank you all for being at the Unite the Kingdom rally today, whether you’re here in London or joining us from overseas, welcome to Great Britain.
I want to say a few things to you, if I may. I see you, and I see our capital city, and it looks for the first time in a very long time like the place that I remember, and our capital city and a place that we can all call home, and I’m so proud of you.
Facial recognition in use outside Kings Cross station
Oliver Holmes
Outside Kings Cross station in north London, where protesters arrived on trains from around the country, police had set up large signs on lamp-posts declaring facial recognition was being used.
“Police officers are using Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology to find people who are wanted by the police of the courts,” the sign read.
A white Metropolitan police van was parked on a nearby road and surrounded by metal fences. Three cameras on a metal pole were pointing to the exit of the train station.
The sign warned that anyone who passes by the system would have their “facial biometric data” processed, but that unless an “alert is triggered”, the data will be immediately deleted.
Oliver Holmes
Far-right protesters have arrived into London through the capital’s major train stations in Kings Cross and Euston, and are walking south towards parliament.
Many people arrived with England flags and union jacks wrapped over their backs, some with “STOP THE BOATS” written on them. For those who did not bring their own, they could buy flags – or bucket hats with flags on them – from any of the multiple street sellers outside the station.
One seller is calling out: “Flags or hats, sir?” as men passed by. Dozens of police officers are standing around, and police vans were parked along the road.
Some protesters are stopping to take photos of a hot pink McLaren sportscar outside St Pancras, before heading down to the demonstration.
Many people are visibly drunk. A woman on the protest raised her middle finger to a helicopter overhead with a camera attached to it. “Hi,” she says. “Fuck off”.
Tommy Robinson has posted a video on X from his Unite the Kingdom rally, claiming it numbers in the “millions” and is “the biggest event in British history”.
Police have yet to provide estimates on the number of demonstrators today, but last year’s event in September is thought to have drawn somewhere between 110,000 and 150,000 people.
The pro-Palestine march today marks the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. The march also includes anti-racism counter-protesters to Tommy Robinson’s rally.
Robinson urges supporters to 'locally get involved in politics'
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, or Tommy Robinson as he’s known, called for crowds gathered for his Unite the Kingdom protest to get involved in politics, PA reports.
He said from the stage:
Are you ready for the battle of Britain? 2029 we have an election. We’re not asking anyone to go out and fight, but this is the most important moment in our generation.
If we don’t send a message in our next election, if you don’t register to vote, if you don’t get involved, if you don’t become activists, we are going to lose our country forever.
He added:
We have to get political, we have to get involved. I’m not going to tell you which political party you need to join. We’re a cultural movement. I’m going to tell you that you have to join a political party. I don’t care if it’s Reform, if it’s Advance, or it’s Restore, or it’s the Conservative party. We have to locally get involved in politics.
Tommy Robinson spotted among the crowds at his Unite the Kingdom rally:
Police say 11 people arrested 'for a variety of offences'
The Met said it has arrested 11 people “for a variety of offences” so far. It did not specify how many arrests were linked to the Unite the Kingdom event and the pro-Palestine march.
Police said earlier today two men were arrested near Euston station on suspicion of grievous bodily harm following an incident in Birmingham where a man was run over. They arrived in London to attend the United the Kingdom protest.
PA reported several people in the crowds at the pro-Palestine march chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
The chant has been the subject of intense political debate, with Keir Starmer previously saying he believed it was antisemitic.
Met police guidance states the slogan “could potentially constitute an offence, but our advice at this point is that we would not likely pursue a prosecution”.
Here’s an explainer by the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey on where the chant comes from and what it means:
Protesters begin marching in central London
Both marches have now set off from their starting points.
As a reminder, the Unite the Kingdom rally began in Kingsway near Holborn while the pro-Palestine Nakba Day march gathered more than 3 miles away in Exhibition Road in Kensington.
The march routes through London
Here is the map of the two routes being taken today:
A woman has been arrested after she appeared to refuse to remove a fabric face mask she was wearing at a pro-Palestine protest forming up in South Kensington, the Press Association reports.
She was part of a group of protesters who were all asked to remove fabric and surgical face coverings.
A separate group, who were wearing orange jumpsuits with masks over their faces bearing a photo of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, were also asked to remove their masks.
Vikram Dodd
Speakers at today’s far-right rally, according to its advertising, include the mother of a woman killed by an asylum seeker, and the American conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, a former anchor on the rightwing Fox News channel who left amid claims he was too extreme for the Rupert Murdoch-owned network.
March organiser Tommy Robinson went to the US in February where in Washington he met more than a dozen lawmakers and was hosted by the US state department. Previously he had been banned from entering the US because of criminal convictions.
The promotion material for the march features an AI-generated video that denounces Muslims and ends with a sequence where Robinson is on a stage adored by a crowd of tens of thousands and contains the line: “Tommy Robinson’s vision, this is our destiny.”
While the video for UTK may be AI fantasy, Nick Lowles, of Hope Not Hate, said the reality was that Robinson was popular among a significant minority of Britons.
Polling shows he is known by more than 80% of respondents, and while the number of those disliking him is high, 17% like him: “Lennon can put more people on the streets than any other person. He is a phenomenon,” said Lowles.
Here are some of the latest images of protesters gathering in London:
