The Metropolitan Police were braced for one of the “busiest days for policing in London in recent years” on Saturday, with both a Unite the Kingdom rally organized by Tommy Robinson and a pro-Palestinian Nakba day rally taking place. Some 4,000 officers were deployed, along with helicopters, drones, Sandcat armored vehicles, dogs, horses and live facial recognition systems. The last Unite the Kingdom rally, in September, drew a crowd of 150,000 according to the police, three times what the Met expected – and organizers said this one would be “the biggest patriotic rally to grace this planet.”
Addressing the crowd at the event, Robinson said “we are here in our millions” and that attendees were at the “biggest event in British history.” But police estimated that just 60,000 turned out, using CCTV and helicopter footage.
Nakba day protest organizers exaggerated too: they reportedly said 250,000 had turned out, making their rally "ten times bigger" than the Unite the Kingdom protest. Police estimate that between 15,000 and 20,000 actually attended, only one-third as many.
The biggest political march in recent British history remains the Iraq war demonstration in February 2003, when, according to the police, 750,000 turned out. Organizers claimed the number was up to 2 million. Two decades on, the marches are smaller – but the exaggerations are greater than ever.
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