Over recent months Speakers' Corner has
taken on a new lease of life, not all of it healthy. The 'home of
free speech' has become the arena for a weekly gladiatorial contest
between Islamophobic English nationalists and a fluid group of young
Muslim men, as eager to defend their religion as their opponents are
to insult it. The result has been much noise, little enlightenment.
The conflict began in March, when the
Austrian far-right Generation Identity leader Martin Sellner was
refused entry to the UK and deported. The following week English
Defence League founder Tommy Robinson and a large number of his
supporters descended on Speakers' Corner to protest at what they
regarded as a denial of their right to free speech. Some of them have been around
ever since, apparently happy to have found an easily accessible
target for their anger.
Testosterone levels are high (very few
women are involved), and police intervention has become a regular
feature. After some years during which there were often none to be
seen at the Corner on a Sunday afternoon, police are now present in
force, their vans strategically parked and rows of constables
lined up to step in and separate the two groups when they overheat.
In another new development, the clashes
are now available to the world beyond in the form of hours of
mostly unedited, often chaotic footage posted on YouTube. Everyone is
either filming or being filmed, sometimes both at the same time, and
the resulting broadcasts can pick up 20,000 or more views within hours of posting.
So the place has got a lot busier, and
although endless religious arguments remain its most prominent (and
least interesting) feature, crowd numbers are well up, there are
still some discussions worth a listen - and still the occasional frisson
when the police go on manoeuvres. More 2018 pictures here, older photos from my book here.
