{"id":2179,"date":"2026-03-31T13:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/2179\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T13:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:22:14","slug":"i-went-to-the-anti-far-right-march-in-london-and-it-wasnt-what-i-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/2179\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I went to the anti far-right march in London and it wasn\u2019t what I expected\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saturday saw me marching through a chilly central London, one of the half million who converged on Westminster for the Together Alliance march<\/a> against the far right.<\/p>\n

It remained good-natured throughout, despite the lengthy wait to get moving.<\/p>\n

\"KentOnline\"KentOnlineKentOnline columnist Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

Can you imagine trying to shift half a million people anywhere? We stood two hours through all four seasons and yelled every anti-racist slogan we knew.<\/p>\n

Unemployment and inflation, are they caused by immigration? Bull****, come off it! The enemy is profit<\/p>\n

I remembered that one from my uni days, and yelled myself deaf.<\/p>\n

People shared sandwiches, gave out water and indulged in some good-natured, terribly British grumbling about the length of the wait.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, we did as we were told. Of course we did. This is what community looks like!<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

We set off at last, our slow bimble teeming with warmth, humour and bonhomie, and nairy a sniff of rage.<\/p>\n

I was told several times that my hat looked \u201cdivine\u201d, which, for the record, it did.<\/p>\n

This was not a gathering spoiling for a fight. It was keen to present a version of Britain that\u2019s plural, tolerant and pleasant.<\/p>\n

A country of which we can all be proud. And it managed it just by existing.<\/p>\n

I passed the time by snapping a creative mix of placards.<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

Plenty of anti-Farage slogans, anti-fascist riffs, funny rather than spiteful; the familiar refrains about fighting ignorance rather than immigrants.<\/p>\n

Jackboots then, now suits and ties, we recognise the same old lies: our grandparents fought against these guys.<\/p>\n

These sat alongside a more eclectic mix: appeals for trans girls to be readmitted to the Girl Guides, calls to reopen a local lido, the evergreen \u201ceat the rich\u201d, and a smattering of \u201cstop the war\u201d banners whose specifics were left usefully vague.<\/p>\n

If you wanted a single, unifying message, you had to squint.<\/p>\n

It was less a tightly focused political intervention and more a living collage, with drummers, dancers and that earnest, chaotic energy that characterises grassroots organising at its most sincere.<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

One group marched under the banner \u201cBassists Against Racists\u201d: top marks for specificity.<\/p>\n

It brought together trade unionists, seasoned activists, first-time marchers, and local groups like Faversham Against Racism, who\u2019d laid on coaches for the day.<\/p>\n

Some came with clear ideological commitments; others seemed motivated by a general sense that things weren\u2019t quite as they could be, and perhaps we should unite and mention it publicly, politely, preferably to a banging tune.<\/p>\n

Music was everywhere. We danced to ABBA and Tainted Love; elsewhere there was folk, a spot of Morris dancing, a gentle tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the notion that \u201cBritish culture\u201d is under threat.<\/p>\n

Here it was, bells and all, thoroughly unbothered.<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s large far-right mobilisation in London appeared rather more uniform in composition and considerably more aggressive in tone.<\/p>\n

This weekend\u2019s crowd was more female, more varied in age, and less obviously drawn from a single demographic mould.<\/p>\n

One hesitates to generalise, but then, the far right make it so easy.<\/p>\n

Makes writing about this stuff tricky, though. While the march was explicitly political – a response to the rise of far-right sentiment, an attempt to demonstrate such views don\u2019t command majority support, a march against hate, a march for hope – it didn\u2019t feel confrontational.<\/p>\n

It was less about drawing hard lines than about sketching an inclusive picture.<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

The underlying message was clear enough: this is what Britain looks like too. But it was delivered with a lightness of touch that resists easy caricature.<\/p>\n

This may also explain the curious afterlife such events tend to have online.<\/p>\n

Coverage of the march has already attracted the usual flood of comments, the arguments familiar, almost ritualistic: Nigel Farage will save the country; no he won\u2019t; yes he will; no, you\u2019re a sheep, and so it goes, until everyone\u2019s wound up to apoplexy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so much easier to type \u201cthis country is broken\u201d than stand in the cold and try, however imperfectly, to fix it.<\/p>\n

My pals in the US are busy protesting too, but there demonstrations often frame themselves in opposition to the system itself, invoking the language of \u201cno kings\u201d, drawing on a long tradition of suspicion towards centralised power.<\/p>\n

\"The\"TheThe Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

In Britain the system is largely taken as given.<\/p>\n

The argument is not about whether it should exist, but who it should serve, who gets to feel at home within it.<\/p>\n

This weekend\u2019s march fits squarely into that latter category.<\/p>\n

Whether that message cuts through is another question.<\/p>\n

Optimism doesn\u2019t usually travel as far as outrage.<\/p>\n

\"Placards\"PlacardsPlacards at the Together Alliance march against the far right in London. Picture: Melissa Todd<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easier to rally against something than make a compelling case for a gentler, more inclusive alternative.<\/p>\n

And yet, for a few hours at least, central London offered a glimpse of what that alternative might look like: imperfect, charming, unfocused, undeniably human.<\/p>\n

But not always the easiest beast to turn into a headline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday saw me marching through a chilly central London, one of the half million who converged on Westminster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1537,529,309,27,613,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-2179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-faversham","9":"tag-human-interest","10":"tag-kent","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}