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A massive Unite the Kingdom rally in England last weekend drew what police claim was tens of thousands of right wing protesters, but what ralliers say was actually hundreds of thousands of patriotic citizens.
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The rally was met with a major police force of more than 4,000 officers who set up a sterile zone and used armored vehicles, horses, drones and dogs in what officials called the biggest policing operations in years. It was also countered by pro Islamic
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demonstration In this episode, we sit down with Alan Miller, an independent journalist and co founder of the Together association, who is on the ground there during the rally talking with Britons who say they're fed up with the way the government has been treating them. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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discuss the massive Unite the Kingdom event is co founder of the Together association and independent journalist Alan Miller who is there between these clashing rallies. Alan, great to have you on.
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Thanks for having me here.
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So first we've been tracking the increased frustration among many people in the UK over the way the government is handling a lot of things. Immigration, one of the key policies. That's an issue. What was the focus of Unite the Kingdom?
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I think the key focus is a number of areas. One really important part of it is free speech and United Kingdom around the sense that free speech is something that should be for everyone. It's a foundational principle and Britain has been very, very important in universalizing that internationally. And over the recent years there's been a lot of pressure put on free speech. We've seen that there have been many arrests for so called non crime hate incidents. That's where people are saying things or posting them on social media and there are arrests from that. We've seen debanking around people's political views as well. And also we've seen how both the police and the judiciary has been weaponized around certain types of protests and it's not consistent down the line. That was true during the lockdown period with responses to people who are challenging some of the COVID measures as well as more recently we've seen it in response to things like the Southport murders and other Protests that have been happening. So I think on the one hand, that's a key thing that people are doing, and also a sense that there's been a big discussion about flying flags, flying the British flag and flying St. George's flag, the English flag. That's also a part of it. And really the British public wanted to be able to come out. I think the sense was that they could come out and be united around common values and principles that they share, that often they are then being presented or insulted and smeared as being far right or extremist or racist. And all of this is built up into a crescendo around a lot of the key issues where we've had a situation where people are very concerned around the boats, the small boats that are coming in with illegal migration, with some of the hotels having those. Those people there that often not documented, and concerns around the local areas with increased crime and things like that. And when people discuss them or raise issues with them or say they have concerns about them, they've often been branded as though they are the ones with the problem. And so I think, you know, the United Kingdom is about saying that people can be united, can be proud around these traditions and values and cultures of enlightenment and freedom, and also to take pride in the country without being called names and without being insulted. And that was the spirit, very much of it, because it was very much like a celebration. It had a festival like experience, all sorts of age groups, different demographics.
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So we consistently see anybody right of sinner described as far right from the press over in the uk. Again, that was the case with the protesters for the Unite the Kingdom rally. How would you actually characterize who was involved there?
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Yeah, I'd say that, John, it's very much like you'd get at sort of when we had the Olympics on, or when you had a Jubilee or a coronation, I never witnessed or saw anyone doing aggressive behavior, no hateful behavior, no shouting or screaming. Basically people smiling. There are lots and lots of flags. And then there was a big dose of good humor. And unlike some of the other protests, we see where there's quite intimidating chants or where people are saying things about Britain and other people within Britain. People very much wanted to get the point across that they're fed up of being treated with this contempt, as though they're tarnished with something that's really bad. The government and the Prime Minister talks about being divisive, but actually it's many of their policies that have been obsessed around identity and DEI and other issues that have actually illuminated and made these issues such a big thing, rather than having a united approach that's based on a sovereign nation and really supporting the public. And a lot of it is to do with the fact that many of the mainstream politicians are so divorced from the public, they've been so estranged, they've come to fear the public and be contemptuous of it. And they only see it in terms of negative strains. And they're always there, kind of this mad mob ready to turn into a horrible thing. And it's so insulting because it was actually our grandparents who actually did fight real Nazis. And the idea that, you know, being proud about this nation and its history and its traditions then makes you a far right or a fascist or any of these terms, which are very specific terms. It's a very lazy. It's a very lazy and pretty disgusting set of myths. But the other thing that happened, John, is that people are saying we're just not listening to it anymore. It's like we have this expression because water off a duck's back. It's like you're saying these things about anyone who's got concerns about a whole range of issues. Surveillance, borders, free speech. Basically it means nothing anymore, and we're not going to be put off by that.
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So really destroying the effectiveness of their own rhetoric by applying these labels to basically everyone. Now, this started off, of course, as the Unite the Kingdom rally, but it was quickly answered by a pro Islamic or pro Palestinian series of demonstrations. What exactly were the counter protesters trying to do there?
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Well, so for the last couple of years, since October 7th and the brutal attacks there, almost immediately, there have been these pro Palestine rallies and demonstrations having really significant numbers. And it's interesting because Keir Starmer was saying that the hate and these things wouldn't be allowed in terms of speech and expression. But many people have been very concerned over the last couple of years with all sorts of things. We've seen everything as it happens, from support to terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, people celebrating those type of jihadi ideals, some of them there. And of course, not everybody that goes there does that. There are people that are genuinely concerned about whatever they think is happening. So that's a discussion about what's happening in the Middle East. It was meant to be that. But very quickly we began to see that it's often about what's happening here as well. We see very few British flags or English flags. There's a kind of quite a hostile and aggressive approach. Many people say they're scared to come into London, and often it's presented that if you criticize those things, you're an Islamophobe or you're a racist. But actually there are many people, as they say, of color that are not comfortable with these things and people that are moderate Muslims as well. They don't want to be associated with things that in many instances have ruined their own nations. And yet it becomes presented as a whole thing. And so then what happened is that the organizers, what they've now said is that they're doing it around the Nakba, which is the, in the, in the creation of the state after the Arab Israeli wars in 48, that basically they have this Nakba which is the disaster. And within that they also said this is a counter demonstration to unite the kingdom. So that was their reasoning and it was so interesting because the thing is, words are really important, as Orwell and others always reminded us, because when you, you make a word meaningless, it's very dangerous because you need to be able to use and identify these words to actually. Because there are people that are actually far right and there are people that are racist and we need to be able to decipher and discern that and explain it. And I think we should thrash those ideas out in society and let the antiseptic of reason illuminate those things and we can debate them. Actually, Britain's got a very good record of being very welcoming of, out of all of Europe and internationally, of having lots of different people in communities. That's something very different to people's concerns about mainly men, young men coming in on boats and illegally into communities. And we've had 200,000 since, you know, only in the last sort of nine or 10 years. We've got many people on a watch list with intelligence services. We've had a variety of incidents, terrible things like knife attacks and other things. And then of course, rapes and sexual assaults. And so people have got genuine concerns about those, those, those things. And they should be able to discuss these things without them being smeared and branded. And that's something that's very concerning to people and people are very furious about it.
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Not hard to understand why in that case now, officials went all out preparing for this rally over the weekend in ways that frankly, we have never seen them prepare for things like left wing or Islamic rallies in recent years. Was that warranted? Was this overkill? What are we to make of this immense police presence from this weekend?
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It's so interesting because we've had a lot of people saying that they're not happy with the introduction of live Facial recognition on our streets. And this was the first time that they were doing it at a big protest like this. And they said they're gonna do it only for the people who are coming to unite the Kingdom, not to the other protests where all sorts of things have been chanted and said. Some things when they talk about incitement to hatred or violence that are linked to, as I say, terror organizations and other things. So it's not to do those protests, but it is to do unite the Kingdom. In the same time. The Prime Minister said that they're going to make sure that the police will be checking what people are saying. And he took great pride in saying that he stopped people coming into the country to speak, people from the States, people from Europe, at a time when they don't seem as diligent to be able to stop and protect our borders from other people. And David Lammy, the Home Secretary, said, you know, we'll speed up, open up capacity for courts to try people. You know, I believe in free demonstrations, but. And this kind of whole threat of two tier policies. And you think, well, if you can open up the courts for this, why can't you open up the courts for all the crime people are experiencing all the time that they're so unhappy about, from shoplifting to assaults and all the different things that are happening around Britain that burglaries that are very difficult to get police attention. So it very much demonstrated a kind of view by both the Metropolitan Police and bringing in police forces from other areas across the UK that they were, that these were a problem. This was a particular problem. The United Kingdom rally last time, it had many people, they were like, you know, different estimates, but I would say certainly over a million people, some have said a million and a half. The, some of the mainstream press tried to say 150,000. And so at one level there is always a question about safety and policing and everything. And I think it's important that the two groups, you know, should be in different places and everything. And that's sensible. But the way in which this was presented and the way which this was discussed, as though these terrible people are coming to, you know, the centre of London with this hateful, divisive rhetoric and approach. And then you see grandmothers and mums and daughters and kids, people from all across Britain that are smiling, waving fags, very peacefully, calmly, in a very British way, to be honest, which in America, in the States, you see much more of that. But yet when people try to do that here, they're now branded as Being extremist and dangerous.
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Yeah. Now, just to clarify, you're saying that there were over a million people at this. Because the official reporting is that there were maybe tens of thousands. You're saying it's at least hundreds of thousands.
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Indeed. So that was the last one when I said that figure. This one. The Metropolitan Police have come out with a number of 60,000, which is laughable as well. So I don't know the exact number, but certainly hundreds of thousands. There's some footage that has been shown now from drones that really shows how far it goes back. Obviously, some people are trying to show some other footage, which is earlier in the day, and they say, oh, look, people weren't there, but it was significant number. So hundreds of thousands of people. Definitely.
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There were a few dozen arrests. But you said you didn't see any violence yourself. You saw mostly people celebrating their country and in good spirits and enjoying this event, correct?
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Yeah. So. And what the police have said is that there were 43 arrests made on the day. I think they said that 22 were at or around the United Kingdom rally, and 11 were at the Palestine Nakbar rally, and then another 11 that were not attributed to any. Now, other day of policing, when you get that amount of numbers and you think about anything, of course that's a low number. And if you also look at the numbers of arrests last time and then compare them to the other protests where they regularly have many arrests, there is a. Then it really shows that it's a very limited amount. I just think it was very unfair to present the public like this. And it demonstrates that in spite of all those numbers and all those things said about them, people were very well behaved. So I think that that should reinforce that point. And the fact is that the Prime Minister, when he had his mea culpa and was trying to save his political career and came out, he used that to do a couple of very important things. One is to say that he's gonna limit free speech and the rights to protest. The other is to go further into the eu. He's so tone deaf. He's so not able to understand what's going on with the public. So it's a dangerous concoction. But. But, John, the great thing about the British public is that people are calm, they're reasonable, but they're robust and they're stoic and they're strong. So all in all, it was a really remarkable event. I think the British public are making sure that their voices are heard. We're seeing this also with this sense of what people are calling populism, but no longer the Conservatives and Labour, but actually new political parties like Reform, that has just done really well, perform really well in the local elections with thousands of counsellors, and then a sense in which things are gonna change and the British public is not prepared to be prevented from insisting on freedom, free speech and privacy just because people call them names and insulted and actually it's gonna be counterproductive. And I really hope to see a situation where with all these things, like with the rights to have a jury trial, which they're trying to stop, with imposing digital id, with limiting free speech, that we turn this around with everyone and the public and have our voices heard and make Britain better together.
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Well, all so important, and also very important that people like you were on the ground documenting what actually took place at this rally, rather than the way it's been characterized by politicians and the press. Alan Miller, thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.
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That was Alan Miller, co founder of the Together association association, and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.