British legacy media came together to celebrate an evening of left-wing activists turning out across the country to confront a “far-right” that didn’t seem to meaningfully exist, but one of the largest rallies, billed as “preaching a message of peace”, saw one of its speakers shout a call to kill.
An activist was said to have been identified as Labour Party politician Councillor Ricky Jones has been suspended by the party after apparently calling for political opponents to have their throat cuts at a left-wing rally in London on Wednesday night. The development has somewhat dented the establishment media narrative that the evening had seen a flowering of brotherly and open-minded feeling across England, in defiance of days of riots.
Hundreds of people gathered in Walthamstow, East London, on Wednesday night after the government claimed it was bracing for “100 riots” across England and Wales, with police reportedly calling the intelligence “a credible picture”. What actually happened nationwide and why remains contested, but like an earlier “far-right” protest in Birmingham which seemed to have been a fake and which only resulted in a group of journalists being intimidated by the “Muslim” counter-protesters, the alarmism over a huge surge in protests appears to have either been seriously mistaken, or an outright hoax.
Who would be faking the existence of right-wing protests and why remains and open question at the time of publication.
While enthusiastic media coverage praised the broadly unopposed counter-rallies as “preaching a message of peace”, easily geo-located footage captured at one meeting by an independent journalist showed a dark side to events, with an organiser handing the microphone to a self-professed trade unionist who went on to call for the killing of their political enemies while making the motion of drawing his finger across his neck.
The activist was later said to have been identified to be Labour politician Councillor Ricky Jones and suspended by the party.
In the footage, a woman wearing a ‘Stand up to Racism’ organisation vest introduced a speaker from the transport worker’s union TSSA, handing him the microphone. Making claims about right-wing extremists planting razor blades on trains to hurt staff and the public, the man said to be Jones shouted: “these people don’t give a shit about who they hurt… they are disgusting, nasty fascists. We need to cut all their throats, and get rid of them all”, before leading a chant of “free free Palestine”.
The crowd enthusiastically cheered and applauded the speaker after he called to cut the throats of their enemies, and a woman wearing a tabard identical to the official garments used by Amnesty International UK activists stood next to the speaker smiled happily. Nevertheless, at least one person at the rally had the presence of mind to realise the speaker had said the quiet part out loud, with who appeared to be the rally convenor — the woman controlling the microphone — immediately pulling a panicked face before bursting into awkward laughter at the remark.
Responding to the emergence of the footage on Thursday morning, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage stated the throat-cut-threat man should be arrested and called on the Labour Party to suspend the man. Shortly afterwards, broadcaster GB news cited a Labour Party spokesman who confirmed the party had suspended a Dartford-area councillor, Ricky Jones.
They said: “This behaviour is completely unacceptable and it will not be tolerated. The councillor has been suspended from the party.”
Protests, riots, and confrontations between different ethnic groups started last week in the wake of the mass stabbing of young children in Merseyside, England. While British people are not well predisposed towards rioters and this seems to be no exception, the response of the government so far does not appear to have impressed voters and the Prime Minister has even come in for criticism from the hero of the Southport stabbings, who tackled the alleged knifeman to try and save more children from being stabbed.
Businessman John Hayes said this week: “I’m not particularly politically motivated, but I do get dismayed when I hear Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper talking about [how] the police are going to come down with the full force of the law on these people.
“But they are not actually talking about the root cause, and they need to start listening and understanding that. They need to address the cause rather than the symptoms. Putting these guys in prison isn’t going to deal with the core issues.”