The St George’s Day violence proves one thing - the police are heroes, until the aggravators are white
Featuring two broken trumpets Stephen Yaxley Lennon and Laurence Fox.
“The migrants now have the whip hand. Happy now?” - Joel Pacheco, on the Telegraph article.
Underneath it: “No attempts by police to cordon off and turn round mask wearing From the river to the sea Hamas supporters with swastikas. It's the double standards that nauseate.” - Andy Jack.
On Twitter, it’s never-ending.
“Metropolitan police deployed in full riot gear to stop a march of English people waving English flags as they celebrate St Georges Day. 🏴 Contrastingly, riot police are never seen being deployed for any of the pro-Hamas hate marches.” - Oli London
“Once again, you have shown your utter contempt of the indigenous British public. Whilst Palestinian protesters are allowed free rein to defile national monuments, and intimidate people, English patriots are kettled for no good reason.” - Yorkie 'B'
On Tuesday 23 April, St George’s Day, there was a gathering of patriots at an event in central London. No amount of research will help me figure out what exactly this event was, but it seems that far-right groups gathered to hear Stephen Yaxley Lennon make a speech, and to be generally ‘patriotic’.
But it isn’t until the ‘patriotic’ — and let’s be honest, we’re talking about white supremacists — are arrested that suddenly, the police are not their friends.
Before then, the police were right to show force, to question, to arrest.
But now, the police are out of line, they are undemocratic — in fact, they are apparently controlled by Muslims a.k.a. Sadiq Khan. Of course, the institution that racially profiles people is run by…the people it racially profiles.
The thing is, it doesn’t need to make sense, because if it did, then so would their racism and conspiracy theories.
Because they are quite frankly having a tantrum.
You see, bigotry, xenophobia and racism used to be the norm — ‘patriots’ could get away with crime that would in turn be protected by the police. For example, the National Front killed 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar in 1976, and during the unrest, they were protected in a town meeting in the same area. All while jeering at the crowd who protested.
But reports have come out about institutionalised racism, within services like the police force and they do not want to accept it. While they deny these reports, people of colour, women, trans people, queer people and specifically Black people are harmed or die in the hands of the police.
So what exactly happened on the 23 April in London?
People were celebrating St George’s Day — a day a saint died for proudly being Christian. But little is known of him, other than he was from what is now known as Turkey. Does that mean he was a person of colour? Honestly, who knows — he apparently was also a dragon slayer, so let’s not go too deep into this.
Why would we? When those celebrating him deny his birthright anyway?
So let’s move on from these murky waters of folklore, to the unremarkable people we saw at the event yell “I’m England ‘Till I die, I’m England ‘Till I die” and National Front football chant “No surrender”.
Many were inebriated, or full of ‘patriotism’, I’m not sure which is which anymore. It coincided with the end of Stephen Yaxley Lennon’s court case the same day, but it’s only a coincidence I imagine. [note: insert Jim looking to camera gif]
The court case was in response to his arrest for attending a march he was told not to attend — but the case was thrown out because a date was incorrect on some paperwork. He has since said he wants to sue the police. If these institutions don’t work in their favour, they are broken, and of course, Muslim.
In fact, it was these two broken trumpets (Laurence Fox joined later) that made speeches and both incited the distaste towards the police — believing that the Met’s presence was only there to agitate them.
So there was a surge, a horse was attacked, people were injured — all in all, there were six arrests.
A man was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty after "a police horse was targeted on Whitehall", the Met said.
Another man was arrested on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly.
Four more arrests were made outside a Whitehall pub - one on suspicion of assault and three on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker, the force said.
And now, Yaxley has called for more protests, getting the far-right worked into a frenzy — and I will predict it now: they may incite a harmful attack on someone.
It’s a scary world we inhabit — these characters fill their social media channels with Islamophobic, queer and trans hate. In fact, it is well known that these groups groom young people.
Some are getting banned, which is refreshing to see, but they pop up as quickly as the last — being banned doesn’t stop the ideology, it causes further infuriation.
What we need to be doing is changing the optics on how people of colour are treated — sending people to Rwanda on planes, and letting 7-year olds die in desperate border crossings is not the way.
It can be said that the biggest far-right group is indeed the Conservative party.
Because these ideals have been around for a long time, before and after large groups of people immigrated the England — and at first it was allowed. Then suddenly, it wasn’t. People of colour, queer people, trans people — have been given (some) rights.
Many have been given the grace of humanity and are no longer their play-things.
What do you expect a child to do, when you take their toy from them?
They will riot.