\n<\/p>\n
Police officers have been assaulted as they clashed with protesters at a \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d festival led by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, Scotland Yard said.<\/p>\n
More than 110,000 people gathered in central London for the event. Protesters marched from Southwark to Whitehall draped in the flag of St George and the union flag in what was called the \u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d demo.<\/p>\n
About 5,000 counter-protesters from trade unions and anti-fascist groups marched in a separate route in central London.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Aerial footage shows scale of ‘unite the kingdom’ rally \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n Scotland Yard said there had initially been \u201cno incidents of note\u201d as both groups marched towards Whitehall, but as the marches met one another on either end of the street, divided by metal barriers and lines of police, some supporters had tried to breach the line that was put in place to keep the groups apart.<\/p>\n Skirmishes broke out with the Met police confirming officers were targeted with thrown objects. The force tweeted: \u201cOfficers were attacked with projectiles and have had to use force to avoid their cordon being breached.<\/p>\n \u201cOfficers are having to intervene in multiple locations to stop Unite the Kingdom protesters trying to access sterile areas, breach police cordons or get to opposing groups. A number of officers have been assaulted,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In a video from the protest, Yaxley-Lennon said \u201cBritain has finally awoken\u201d and that \u201cthis is never going away\u201d.<\/p>\n Members of the far-right rally climbed street furniture carrying wooden Christian crosses as crowds chanted \u201cTommy\u201d, \u201cKeir Starmer is a wanker\u201d and \u201cEngland\u201d.<\/p>\n Both the far-right crowds and the antifascists chanted \u201cwhose streets? Our streets\u201d.<\/p>\n Apsana Begum, the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, gave a speech to the gathered groups, which included a large Stand Up to Racism contingent, before the anti-fascists set off. She said: \u201cLet\u2019s stand here and send a message to the far right who continue to spread division and hate. Not here!\u201d<\/p>\n Thousands of police officers from the Met and neighbouring forces were in attendance, some of them with short shields and helmets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Police officers have been assaulted as they clashed with protesters at a \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d festival led by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, Scotland Yard said. More than 110,000 people gathered in central London for the event. Protesters marched from Southwark to Whitehall draped in the flag of St George and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7941,5856,8305,4644,150,1551,7696,641,2809,12850],"class_list":{"0":"post-21072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-assaulted","9":"tag-clashes","10":"tag-farright","11":"tag-led","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-police","14":"tag-rally","15":"tag-robinson","16":"tag-sparks","17":"tag-tommy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}