on Saturday., among thousands who traveled to the city to protest, on charges including violent disorder and assault on officers.The city has become a new epicenter for protests in the weeks following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in the U.S. as the Black Lives Matter movement. It has prompted a reckoning with the U.K.’s history of involvement in the slave trade and racism.
Saturday’s right-wing protests marked the start of a backlash with far-right activists shouting racial slurs and vowing to protect English culture. The protests were advertised as an effort to defend a statue in Parliament Square of Winston Churchill which was defaced during a protest last weekend with the words "was a racist" in graffiti. The monument to the wartime leader has subsequently been boarded up temporarily.Saturday night.
“Millions of Londoners will have been disgusted by the shameful scenes of violence, desecration and racism displayed by the right-wing extremists who gathered in our city today,” KhanReferring to the violence perpetrated by far-right protesters, Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy said, "The scenes were ugly and very very threatening."