Protesters carrying placards saying “No to racism, no to Trump”, and “Refugees welcome” marched through the capital to Whitehall amid a heavy police presence, with officers lining the streets
16:35, 28 Mar 2026Updated 17:48, 28 Mar 2026
Protesters holding placards and waving flags take part in the march(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Into Trafalgar Square they kept coming, wave after wave of marchers of every generation and from every part of the country, as the trombones played ‘Give Peace A Chance’.
Long after the earliest marchers reached Nelson’s Column, others were still standing two miles back along the side of Hyde Park waiting to start. Organisers of Saturday’s Together Alliance demonstration claimed 500,000 people had taken a public stand against the Far Right in London. With police estimates, as ever, much lower, it was still clearly the biggest ever national demonstration the UK has ever seen against the Far Right.
The banners name-checked places from near and far – ‘Chesterfield Dump Trump’, ‘Cornwall against Fascism’, ‘Nottingham Fights Back’, ‘St Albans Together’. As the march passed two elderly gentlemen coming astonished out of the Royal Academy of Art, one exclaimed to the other “well, where have this lot been hiding?”
The ‘Red Rebels’ of Extinction Rebellion walked silently in the opposite direction to the march with white painted faces and red robes – as white police vans squatted in the side streets all along the mall.
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Demonstrators hold papier mache heads depicting JD Vance, Donald Trump and Melania Trump amid the march(Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
I marched with the ‘Singing Resistance’, a gathering of choirs and singers – inspired by Singing Resistance Minneapolis – who have been learning for weeks the songs they sang today in choirs across the land.
“I believe that one fine day,” the crowds sang, “the power of love will rise above the love of power”, holding placards that read ‘Folk Against The Far Right’, ‘London Sea Shanty Collective’, and ‘sing for unity’.
Among the singers a little girl in a pink and green stripy bobble hat on her dad’s shoulders with a placard saying, ‘Be Nice, Don’t Fight’. Hand-picked daisies were sellotaped to the front and back.
The crowds, holding banners, gathered in central London(Image: PA)
The songs have been learned from the United States where brave anti-ICE protesters risk their lives to stand with their immigrant neighbours – songs sung in minus 20 degrees and sung outside detention centres where they creep through open windows to the ears of detainees.
In London, the songs went on under the drone of the police helicopters, and the drums of Extinction Rebellion, past the barricades at the end of the West End’s poshest streets, and under the watchful eyes of London’s famous statues, and all the way to Trafalgar Square.
And, while the endless column of marchers moved through London, America was waking up to what has been billed as the biggest every march in American history – with more than 3,000 events in 50 states for the third No Kings protest.
The songs carried the sound of solidarity across continents. We face the same enemies – hatred, fear, division, scapegoating. And while every one of Far Right activist Tommy Robinson’s marches have had counterprotests, it seemed no fascists had wanted to counter 500,000 people. Yesterday, 500,000 people in Britain chose hope.