In Hyde Park the talk was all of the end game – the eradication of racism. In Trafalgar Square it was more like a war game. Beneath Nelson’s column – erected in honour of a national hero and, of course, defender of slavery – a hundred or so people, largely black and dressed in black, listened to a speaker dressed in white, who led them, fists raised, in a chant of “black power”. Then, seemingly from nowhere, but probably coming from Whitehall, there was a group of about 30 white men, trying to get through a line of riot police. These were the people who’d appointed themselves protectors of the statues, and widely dismissed, not least by the Black Lives Matters supporters, as football hooligans. In Hyde Park Sasha Johnson, holding a Black Lives Matter placard, complained: “We’re painted as thugs when the real thugs are disguised as protecting those memorials. And when they’re drunk, they piss on those memorials.”
The irony is that no one was supposed to be out protesting in central London. Not just because, in theory at least, meetings of groups of larger than six people are banned, but also because Black Lives Matter called on its supporters to avoid central London and protest in their own neighbourhoods. That directive was given after a call was issued by the erstwhile English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson to defend war memorials. The so-called Democratic Football Lads Alliance – a title which sounds like the product of randomly selected words – urged members to join the protest, though requested that they not “engage with any agitators”. No sooner had he stirred things up, Robinson withdrew. “Black Lives Matter were wrong to issue that recommendation,” said Johnson, who ignored it because she wanted to “stand up to intimidation”. “What’s going to end this?” asked Doug “the Fresh”, hidden by behind a mask and sunglasses. “What’s going to make us go home? Nobody really knows. I think we need more causes than just pulling down statues. The cause needs to be reparations for black people so we can become the same standard as you lot.” In Trafalgar Square, a large, heavily tattooed man in a T-shirt emblazoned with the “Parachute Regiment” led the democratic football statue alliance, or whoever they were, away from the police. For a moment it looked as if the confrontation had been averted. But a few minutes later a much larger crowd shouting “In-ger-land” ran around the north side of the square, by the National Gallery, letting off a series of loud bangs that startled the crowd of onlookers. As many people fled the square, a section of the Black Lives Matter protesters broke off and, resisting calls to “hold your fire”, rushed to meet the white group at the top of the stairs. Suddenly the joint multiracial protests of recent weeks had become bi-racial and avowedly antagonistic.
The atmosphere was ugly, and heavy with the threat of violence. The statue protectors didn’t seem very interested in statuary, instead beckoning those below in macho gestures familiar from football grounds – an elaborate choreography of the phrase “Come on if you think you’re hard enough”. Just in time a phalanx of police arrived to separate the two groups as bottles were thrown by the white crowd. After a chaotic few minutes the “lads”, some of whom were in their 50s and 60s, managed to break through and there were several fist fights. A nasty spectacle was given a surreal edge by the fact that a number of protesters on both sides were wearing masks, intent on not spreading Covid-19, as they laid into each other. Eventually the police regained order by kettling the attackers.
Once peace had been restored, the police cut off Trafalgar Square, but small groups of the statue protectors, beer cans in hand, began to emerge from the backstreets, as conspicuous as a group of football hooligans in a Pall Mall’s clubland – which is where they were heading. Now it was they who were outnumbered, and subject to taunts and threats as they moved – some proudly strolling, most at a swift getaway pace – out of the area. A handful of the crowd who’d earlier been under assault sought to confront them, and now with the police busy holding their line, they were dangerously exposed. But a well-built black man, who’d been photographing the demonstration, intervened on at least four occasions to prevent anyone fighting. His name was Clem – no surname, he explained, because he was a “public servant”. “We marched peacefully last week and we came out as elders today to protect our kids,” he said, gesturing to his friend – both men were in their forties. They may well have protected their kids, but into the bargain were a number of the people who’d not long earlier launched an unprovoked assault on the BLM protest. It took a lot of courage and self-discipline to prevent the kind of violence the football lads had been only too happy to mete out, and Clem lacked neither quality.
As we spoke, another group of middle-aged white men in shorts and football shirts came out of a side street and Clem engaged them in conversation. “It’s not about race,” the ageing football democrat said. “We don’t have problems with you. It’s about our history.” Why anyone thought their history was so in jeopardy that they had to attack peaceful protesters was not explained. They claimed they had nothing to do with Tommy Robinson. Apparently “it wasn’t about that” either. There were many opinions expressed in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square to which one might take exception. For example, I was told Covid-19 was over. Doug “the Fresh” maintained there was an £80,000 salary gap between black and white people. And one woman seemed convinced that “the establishment” funded the BNP so as to maintain racial tensions between the workers. But that’s the beauty of free speech. You can disagree without any need for thuggishness.