“The Great British National Strike, taking place this weekend, is set to see more than 500,000 people across the country walking out in protest of the state of the UK.”
That’s how right-wing TV channel GB News previewed Saturday’s outbreak of al fresco grumbles, few of them more than a couple of dozen strong.
It makes you wonder if GBeebies has any more idea what ‘walking out’ means than the damp squib’s organisers have of what constitutes a ‘strike’.
If you really want people to down tools and bring business and services to their knees, you don’t (unless you are, say, Gatwick baggage handlers) call your strike for a Saturday, when the majority of offices aren’t working anyway.
Saturday is a day you choose so that people can come and wave semi-literate placards at your gurn-and-grouches without having to piss off their bosses and/or lose a day’s pay.
On top of this, an appreciable fraction of your flag-wavers may be expected to be (and events showed this to be a correct supposition) people old enough to be drawing a pension and so not missing work of any sort.
And there’s no telling how many attendees are either genuinely unemployed or signing on but drawing a shadowy stipend from one of the far right’s many grift schemes.
So what is it that these people are on a ‘walk out’ from in GB News’s feverish collective imagination? Bingo halls? Sewing bees? Supermarket own brand ciderfests at the vandalised playground equipment in the park? A prolonged session on the sofa watching the Secrets of the Third Reich channel on TV?
None of these are the kind of actions that are going to bring any part of the economy grinding to a halt for the day.
Preposterous estimates
And if you were about to say ‘Well, OK, but did anyone ever claim such a thing in the first place?’ embarrassingly yes, they did. Bigging up the event(s) on social media, ‘The British Patriot’ pompously proclaimed “BREAKING: 500,000+ patriots expected to shut down Britain nationwide this weekend.
“MAJOR strikes are planned to bring the UK to a halt starting this weekend, which may see strikes for the whole of SUMMER.” At least we can see where GBN got its preposterous half-million estimate from. Allowing amateur nutjobs to write their own scripts saves paying journalists to do the job, we suppose.
Shutting down Britain?
Shut down Britain? Bring the UK to a halt? Did you notice any power cuts on Saturday? Unrepaired burst water mains? Any hastily implemented temporary railway timetables? Motorway jams? Supermarket shelves stripped of toilet rolls and cheap cheddar by panicking stockpilers?
Did you buggery. The smattering of people ‘on strike’ on the streets weren’t skipping work. They were skipping Racing From Haydock and reruns of Call The Midwife.
Recognising the lack of likelihood of anything at all happening in locations such as New Malden, Shepton Mallet or Market Rasen, our chief reporter decided to spend the day in the north-western metropolis of Manchester, sure that here at least the whingerati would manage to put on some sort of show of force.
Our people spent much of the day bemused, not least by the fact that the strikers somehow managed to ‘doughnut’ a completely different demo consisting of Chagos Islanders protesting this week’s give-away of their homeland.
Though both groups had a beef with Keir Starmer, beyond that they were far from bosom buddies.
Racists among the strikers were patently unhappy that their protest had, as far as they were concerned, been hijacked by a bunch of people of an unacceptable colour, while the Chagossians were less than thrilled to find themselves cheek by jowl with Yaxley-Lennon fans.
Pathetic turnout
Online reports that there were “about 200 on either side” (strikers and anti-fascists) were met with spluttering scorn by our people, who were mingling among and even chatting with the strikers. They report that, after you subtract the 25 or so Chagos Islanders…
“Around 70 racists, conspiracy nuts, football hooligans and a number of, yes, ordinary and decent (if perhaps a little misguided) folk attended the strike event in St Peter’s Square, Manchester.
“The vast majority of usual suspects stood around, sullen and dejected at the pathetic turnout and the noticeable lack of organisation.
“No timetable, no speakers, no stage/platform, no PA system. Shambolic. Organisers Dawn and Viv were early with their excuses for failure but admitted they’d spent two months arranging this butterfly’s fart of a protest.
‘Next year will be better,’ was the unconvincing promise – and one that suggested the organisers were unaware that these ‘strikes’ are supposed to be going on throughout the summer, rather than an annual event.
Old ladies appalled
“The lack of focus for the gathering and the bedraggled state of angry middle-aged men wrapped in St George or Union flags made for an embarrassing spectacle.
Several older ladies were appalled by the ‘thuggish Tommy Robinson chants’ led by a lout in a baseball cap. (The majority of strikers did not join the chant, which is interesting).
‘Those yobs have ruined it,’ said Marjory from Saddleworth. ‘We don’t want anything to do with him.’ So she and her friends left in disgust.
“By the time we left, most people were drifting away, having been outsung, outsmarted and outnumbered (about three to one) by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) counter-demonstrators, probably feeling that their day out in town had been a total waste of time.
The anti-fascist effort was impressive, with support from trades unions, community groups, workers, students, and local families.”
We are still waiting for reports from many places, but (where we have them) strike turnout numbers are pretty unimpressive across the piece, and in some places abject.
Footage from Whitehall suggests that no more than a couple of dozen grumbles congregated at the security gates at Downing Street.
To be fair, many potential ‘strikers’ may have concluded ahead of time that chanting at the gates would be a waste of time because Starmer was unlikely to be cooped up in Number 10 for the duration.
Given the choice between spending a bank holiday weekend in The Smoke or in leafy Chequers, which one would you plump for?
The smallest turnout in the country was, we think, in Perth (four strikers), but the saddest may well have been in the Scottish capital.
Edinburgh SUTR’s claim that “anti-racists outnumber[ed] fascists 10 to 1” was amply corroborated by the mainstream news site Edinburgh Live, which reported that “Unite, Stand up to Racism and Pro Palestine counter-protests attended the demonstration in droves with hundreds in attendance in comparison to the small group of around 15 far-right activists.”
Fifteen! And they have photos to prove it.
It sounds like things were a lot livelier down the road in Glasgow, where crowd reports suggest that 200+ strikers turned out, many of them, we are told, with strong connections to the Orange Order.
One report says that “7 fascists [were] escorted away by police.” Whether this is ‘escorted’ as in ‘arrested’ or as in provided with a security guard for their own safety’ awaits clarification.
Only Nottingham seems to have come anywhere close to Glasgow for striker numbers, with a turnout of 150 reported.
Some of this seems likely to have been East Midlands Kippers turning out to get a glimpse of the more or less self-proclaimed UKIP leader Nick Tenconi – not that it sounds like he hung around for long.
The only other places when turnout has thus far been reported as probably being in three figures were Coventry (100 strikers, 200 anti-fascists) and Plymouth, where there were similar numbers of strikers and anti-fascists (each 100+).
Violent disorder
Plymouth sources say that the strikers included Gary Harkness, fresh out of prison after being convicted of violent disorder in the city during last summer’s riots.
Two men were reportedly arrested in Plymouth, one of them seen throwing multiple nazi salutes and attempting to attack the counter-demo.
Not a million miles from Plymouth, Exeter was the venue for the appearance of another easily recognisable far-right activist, Mike Lynton – one of Kenny Smith’s avid acolytes in the Homeland Party and a 15% also-ran candidate in this month’s local elections.
Exeter was one of the few places that we’ve heard from where anti-fascists were slightly caught on the hop and found themselves outnumbered by strikers, who (perhaps unexpectedly) seemed to have attracted quite a number of people who usually stick to conspiracy theorising.
The other gathering that had a turnout higher than expected by counter-demonstrators was Mansfield, with about 75. Local anti-fascists have taken note.
Other estimates received to date are from Bristol (80), Derby (80), Oxford (60), Newcastle (50), Swansea (50), Truro (40) and Worksop (20).
The dribs and drabs all add up, and with other reports yet to trickle in, the total number of ‘strikers’ will surely turn out to be in the low thousands rather than high hundreds.
But absolutely nothing like the half-million conjured up by the overheated imaginations of the fanatics at GBeebies.
The big question now, we suppose, is will the organisers try again or realise that the game is not worth the candle? After such a poor turnout for a ‘nationwide’ protest, surely the next can only be worse.
Those who showed up for what they imagined was a general anti-Starmer event (for example, those who were focused on the WASPI women) will have been disillusioned not only by the miserable numbers but by finding that they were sharing a pavement with yobboes chanting “Ooh, Tommy Tommy!”
They won’t be back.
