What BLM and the Remembrance Day protests had in common

Back in June 2020, I attended a quasi-legal Black Lives Matter protest in London, and a widely reviled counter protest, by hard-right Tommy Robinson-esque ‘football lads’, who were determined to ‘defend’ the Churchill statue and the Cenotaph.

As a journalist, I was able to move freely between these two protests: one – the football lads – took place in Parliament Square and lower Whitehall, and the other – BLM – was largely confined to Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross. Mostly, the police managed to keep the warring tribes apart, occasionally the lines broke, and pretty serious violence ensued. I saw this violence from both perspectives.

It was thus with a sense of sad expectation that I sat down to read what my fellow journalists wrote about that day, and it was with a total sense of shock that I realised that none of the journalists was prepared to tell the truth. Because these journalists were standing right beside me and they saw what I saw.