by Niall McCrae:
Let’s be clear. The authorities fear protests against the Covid regime, and will do whatever it takes to stop them. Alongside lockdown, we have had 12 months of suppression of publicity for rallies, and fines, arrests and riot policing for those who dare to attend.
The latest event, ‘Unite the North’, was as usual a peaceful gathering, attended by ordinary people who want to get their lives back to normal. The weather was fine and the atmosphere was almost joyous. Yet the rally was heavy-handedly policed and prevented from marching through Bradford city centre. Meanwhile, a ‘Kill the Bill’ protest with almost as many people was allowed to block a Sheffield shopping precinct, with no police officers in sight.
In the week before the Bradford rally, Muslim hotheads protested outside a grammar school eight miles away in Batley, where a teacher was suspended after an outcry over a Mohammed cartoon shown in a lesson on religious tolerance. The school was closed due to the safety risk, and the teacher is under police protection. Policemen acted as though they were facilitating the demonstration, rather than imposing lockdown rules. For West Yorkshire Police, some protests and protestors are more equal than others.
Mostly, the mainstream media strategy is to ignore anti-lockdown protests; perhaps editors have had instructions from the authorities not to give any oxygen of publicity to any show of strength against the Covid regime. If too big to hide, newspaper reports highlight the number of arrests, contributing to the narrative of demonising the resistance (although in truth it is the baton-wielding thugs in uniform who caused the trouble).
The few media reports of the freedom rally in Bradford stated that a vaccination centre was targeted. I saw no evidence of this, and suspect a deliberate untruth. Whichever way the march turned, police formed a line across the road to obstruct it, eventually ‘kettling’ a few hundred protestors. This was unnecessary interference, and at odds with the absence of policing of the Sheffield event.
Such double standards were displayed last summer, when the establishment gave its blessing to Black Lives Matter protests following the widely shared video of a police killing of a felon in Minneapolis. Despite violence at BLM events in London, few arrests were made (some officers ‘took the knee’ to protestors), while people attending anti-lockdown rallies around the same time were fined or arrested simply for being there.
Two recent protests confirm this bias in policing and reporting. After the murder of Sarah Everard (allegedly by a police officer), a large group led by feminists assembled at Clapham Common, purportedly for a vigil. While most of those attending came with good intentions, a few aggressive speakers incited the crowd, and there were chants of ‘all cops are bastards’ and ‘fuck the police’. Eventually officers took control of the bandstand, and a particularly vociferous actress was arrested, to the benefit of her publicity.
This caused a media outrage. Suddenly society was concerned about police brutality, after being blissfully unaware of this scourge at lockdown protests. People were horrified by policemen manhandling and handcuffing female protestors whose cause was the alleged murder of an innocent woman by a policeman. Yet two months earlier, an anti-lockdown rally in the same park was stopped by police, with women among the peaceful protestors arrested. Arguably the police should have stayed away from the vigil, but this would have shown inconsistency prior to a large freedom rally planned for the following Saturday.
The London event, despite having the largest turnout of over a hundred simultaneous freedom rallies around the world, was given limited attention by the media. It was eclipsed by what can reasonably be described as a riot. At first glance, the ‘Kill the Bill’ protest in Bristol was on the same page as the anti-lockdown cause. Indeed, protesting was not a permissible activity during lockdown, and it seemed that the government was exploiting the pandemic to instil a permanent curtailment on the right to assemble and protest.
Look at the faces, though, and you will see significant differences between the London and Bristol marchers. Unlike the demographic mix walking along Oxford Street, the Bristol protestors are mostly young (probably students) and they are all wearing masks. To self-muzzle while protesting against the criminalising of protest is ironic. But mask-wearing is a moral fault-line, enabling the ‘woke’ younger generation to signal their virtue (there is no requirement to wear masks outdoors).
The Bristol marchers targeted a police station, where expletive graffiti was daubed on the wall, windows were smashed and police vehicles burned. Officers were abused and missiles were thrown in a febrile atmosphere. Yet the police were relatively restrained in response. It seems that protests involving people of progressive outlook are not only allowed but sometimes encouraged by the authorities. The media gave a platform to protestors, with reporters asking questions from a sympathetic stance.
Politically favourable protests are to some extent promoted by the powers-that-be as controlled activism, diverting attention from undesirable causes. BLM and Extinction Rebellion are heavily funded by the very globalists who are launching the Great Reset. Youthful energy is harnessed into contrived crises to push a simplistic zero-carbon strategy and divisive identity politics. Zero-covid is another ploy, as digital surveillance is manipulated through vaccines.
A key challenge for the freedom movement is to win the hearts and minds of the young, whose prospects are most impeded by the global technocrats. I feel conflicted watching the ‘Kill the Bill’ protests in student cities, because I agree with their opposition to the Policing Bill but dislike the screaming self-righteousness of those who would readily cancel my freedom of speech. Nonetheless, we should avoid falling into the trap of divide and rule. As one of my followers on social media stated: –
‘They’re being manipulated. They are angry and don’t know how or where to focus it. They have the right ideas at heart but are being pulled down the wrong path’.
If a popular revolt is the only way to topple the globalist tyranny, Generation Z must be brought on board. That may be a tall order, but it would be easier than expecting fair policing and reporting by a corrupted establishment that regards us as the enemy.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
