I wasn't there, I haven't watched the news and in truth I was unaware that it was happening. My mind has been elsewhere. I've been in Gretna Green since Thursday at a friends wedding. The first I know about it was when I got off the train back from Carlisle at Euston at around 6.30pm. The station was abuzz with people in Union Jacks. A fair few seemed to be rather inebriated. Clare asked me if England were playing (she doesn't follow football). It had the vibe of the afters of an England match at first sight, but the crowd's mood was completely different. There was a fair bit of shouting and chanting, whilst the ordinary customers did there best not to engage. On the train back, I did some googling and checking twitter. I learned that there had been a large rally, with a small counter demonstration by Antifa protestors. It also seems that Elon Musk attended. My first thought when I read this is that anyone who considers themselves a British Patriot, surely should expect British speakers on the stage. If Mr Musk wants to support them, it's a free country, but I thought the whole idea of patriotism is to not have foreigners telling us what to do. The second thought was that if people genuinely were interested in respecting the flag, they would treat it with respect and not wear it as a Batman cape or have shorts and bandanas with it. I am all for waving flags at the right time, but getting drunk, shouting at your mates whilst the flag is dragged along the floor behind you is not, to my mind, respectful. A lot of white, English people at Euston, seeing the demeanour of the people waving flags, clearly felt a bit uncomfortable. Police looked on, with that ready to get stuck in look, I've seen when they expect public disorder. We got away from the station as fast as we could.
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw an extraordinary site. A couple of very drunk men of my age, with big read noses, and a couple of winos, most likely of African descent, shouting "I love you, I'm proud to be British" at each other. It all seemed good humoured, althoug a group of police in hi-viz jackets looked on in a bemused fashion. I suspect that the real problem with the British, is that as hard as some may try, they will always make lousy fascists, because when it comes down to it, we are a bit too polite and if we decided someone is "ok" we let them alone. Some of us enjoy a good punch up and a bit of social disorder, but when this descends into bullying of people who are going about their business, we don't really think it is very British.
Ultimately, I suspect that what will eventually undo Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson (in my book people who change their name to sound less posh are dodgy BTW) is that half of the people out in their flags, will get home and have a curry or chow mien. They really want to hate 'the other' but by the same token, are the first to pull people up who insult the staff at the Tandoori or th chinese takeaway. Yaxley-Lennon's problem is that, at the end of the day, we are British and whilst some of us like a nice day out waving flags, we are not the Germans, so we aren't really taken in by people like him. On the Thameslink back, I earwigged a conversation between two people who were returning from the rally. The gist of it was that they'd enjoyed waving their flags and being patriotic, but when it came to Yaxley-Lennon both agreed he's a bit dodgy and that Elon Musk is a bit strange. Whilst neither will be voting for Keir Starmer any time soon (their conversation was largely about what a W-Anchor he is), I suspect that what they really wanted was Boris Johnson back. One clearly felt that he'd been stitched up by the Tories.
The problem with large rallies, is everyone always draws the wrong conclusion. In the UK, things ultimately get decided by people who would not be seen dead at any political rally.
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