The GBNS is a movement co-ordinated by Richard Donaldson. Its Facebook page, confusingly now rebranded the Great British National Protest following an online poll over the weekend, presents the movement’s demands as one mixed list of problems and preferred solutions in a single array.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
NET-ZERO
INHERITANCE TAX
RAPE GANG INQUIRY
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
REVERSAL OF BENEFIT CUTS
East Anglia Bylines spoke with supporters of GBNS at the Cambridge action. One of them advised us to take our questions to music teacher Natania Thomas, who was wielding the loud-hailer. Natania Thomas explained that the aim of the day was: “to raise awareness, and make sure that everyone here hears our voices about the great British national strike. I will have to stop this here. I’ve got to get back to my crowd.”
First time at a protest
A couple who declined to be named were more forthcoming.
“We don’t object, we don’t go on marches or protests. But we’ve absolutely had enough. It’s gone far too far. And we know this current regime is crooked, because all the signals from everything you look at, with the farming, with Chagos, with everything you look at, donations in the Cayman Islands, when he was running for prime minister, nobody investigated who sent money to him from the Cayman Islands.”
GBNS’s Facebook announcements for the action included advice to
SPEND CASH ONLY TO SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES
AVOID USING LARGE CORPORATIONS
We asked if this couple had taken part in November’s Buy Nothing Day, and in the demonstration on the same site immediately before theirs, the local Green Party’s ‘Cambridge, we deserve better!’ protest against benefit cuts.
“No, this is the first time. I saw it as a big opportunity to come out and make a stand against the government and their behaviour. It has to stop. It has to be removed. It has to be replaced.”
The couple quickly got on to the subject of immigration, a major concern of the movement.
“He [Starmer] doesn’t want to stop the immigration. It’s easy, stoppable. He doesn’t want to. We don’t mind foreign people here. It’s a question of degree, when you’ve got tens of millions, it gets to dilute what we are.”
“We are not bringing people in that are doing work for us or helping us. They are abusing the country themselves. They’re into drug gangs. They’re into rape gangs. They are destroying our country. I will welcome refugees, people that really need a home here. I will give a home to a refugee or more than one, I will help anybody that really needs help. But we’re not doing that. We’re filling our country. They’re all on the streets here, sleeping on the streets, and it’s just got to stop.”
The other side
GBNS’s Cambridge action attracted a counter-demonstration from a coalition of groups. GBNS gathered at the eastern end of the Guildhall front, and their opponents – trade unions, Green Party, Revolutionary Communist Party, Palestinian activists, Stand Up To Racism, and others – had a line of stalls at the western end. A spokesperson explained that the counter-demo was a repurposing of plans they’d already made:
“In two weeks’ time, there is a major national demonstration in London, against austerity. We wanted to be here today to mobilise for that. We’ve got a coach going from Cambridge. But when we heard of those people over there, who are claiming to stand for something called a Great British Strike, and whose only message is racism, that made us even more determined to have a good showing today, to oppose that message! Whatever the problems in society, the answer is not division, it’s not racism, it’s not discrimination.”
‘Racist’ and ‘far-right’ are labels that GBNS are keen to disavow. Their online utterances, and the loud-hailings on the day, go beyond “I’m not a racist but” to repeated claims that people of all colours and religions and political allegiances are welcome to join them. But the two sides were shouting at each other, with chants and loud-hailers, when East Anglia Bylines left.
Better information needed before Phase 2?
GBNS’s national plans had been for actions in towns and cities across our patch: not only Cambridge but also Chelmsford, Colchester, Ely, Norwich, Peterborough, Southend and St Albans. We’ve heard that their action in Norwich was outnumbered by gulls; heard also that GBNS in Norwich outnumbered the opposition. Do any readers have information about what went on in their own towns?
It would be great if the couple who didn’t give their names could find better information about how many migrants are coming into the country and what they do. It’d be better still if their wish to help refugees could be translated into an offer to Room For Refugees or some charity of the sort. Meanwhile, the movement congratulates itself and prepares to launch Phase 2.
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