I love the fact that Britain is, probably, the most ‘free’ society, the most democratic, the most protest marchy nation in the world. Yeah the Americans have freedom of speech enshrined in their constitution, but they also have a lot of guns around, which can tighten jaws up a bit. The Scandis are all lovely blonde liberals who march around waving placards, but mainly just to keep warm when the whale meat runs low. But my little verdant isle (full of coronavirus and death, currently, but I’m in ‘big picture’ mode here) is a bastion of true liberty, as it ‘always’ has been. For the record, ‘always’ started in 1963 when the Beatles got big.

But there are inherent problems with this. Mainly that protests and marches often get politicised and hi-jacked. I’m not implying in any way that your average protester is a dim-wit. But they are susceptible to ‘outside influence’. Or simply victims of infiltration by those with a slightly different agenda.

So today we have marches and protests and sit-ins and sit-ons and statue-removals planned in 73 cities. Even though we don’t actually have that many cities. That’s not the point. The point is that Black Lives Matter. An unarguable truism. And ending racism is the noblest of noble aims. Not that its going to happen by swinging a few banners around Parliament Square but its a way of illuminating a problem. A fairly big problem. And I’m all for it. I’m not going because of Covid considerations (as if) and also because I’m playing tennis. Because old, white lives matter a bit too, so I have to try and look after this one.

There are also planned marches by ‘the right wing’. All of it/them. Tommy Robinson, jailbird leader of the English Defence League, president of the Paki-Bashers Collective, chairman of the Commission to Get Rid of Darkies, has rallied his troops. To counter-march against… well against any form of decency or tolerance or inclusivity, which he and his cohorts find abhorrent and subversive to ‘the Brittttish Way’a Life’. He has managed to get lots of rival football ‘firms’ on board and, as long as they don’t try to kill each other on the way to the protests, as rival football fans tend to do, they’ll be rewarded with lots and lots of duffle-coated liberals and ethnic minority people to attack at their leisure.

Thus the London BLM march was shifted to yesterday, where it was fairly peaceful, more people taking the knee than being kneed in the groin, to avoid the conflict. As two thousand Millwall fans gather today to ‘defend’ any statue depicting anyone involved in racism, imperialism, colonialism or whiteness. Which is basically, all of them.

Social distancing will be demonstrated, all punches swung from 2 metres. Use of baseball bats will be similarly encouraged, being aware of the threat of virus.

Happy Demo-day

A xxxx