An off the cuff tour for two Bobbies

On Armistice Day this year I was preparing to give a Darkest Hour Tour which involves a guided tour around some of the most important political places in Westminster including inside the Houses of Parliament as well as a few hidden places before heading off into the Churchill War Rooms.

The last few weekends had been punctuated by protests relating to the war taking place in Gaza.

‘Everyone’ in London protests, it’s one of the joys of living in a very political, cultured and firearm free culture. The Queen would wear colourful outfits so that everyone knew she was there.

The politicians are expected and have to show their faces and to this day I still berate those who left 3 million like myself Excluded. One of the highlights of my entire life was telling Boris Johnson what I thought of him to his face and yes it included some very industrial language!

Though I’m very much up for protesting, I’m not entirely sure it does much good as no-one really cares. If it suits their political position they may care to agree but only for as long as it suits them. I can only think of one real time a protest in London changed anything, that being the Poll Tax Riot in Trafalgar Square which was the beginning of the end of the Iron Lady.

My basic philosophy is just to be nice to everyone, don’t go out of your way to be horrible to someone and accept that some people have entirely different and other equally meritorious points of view. Help everyone you can, do whatever you like so long as it doesn’t impact on the lives of anyone else. These days everyone seems to get professionally worked up and angry about things especially as some cause is seen as trendy or cool.

Doing tours in London I come across protests dozens, maybe even a hundred times a year. The ones I really can’t stand are what I think of as the McDonalds of protests. The ones people suddenly decide to get worked up about whether it is for or against Brexit etc. Or some famous event happening overseas whilst the very same people ignore entirely much suffering at home. Who cares about people who freeze to death in their homes as they can’t afford heating? Or the trials of people living with disabilities? There are countless things people could protest about but don’t.

The protests all say they don’t want to hinder every day life or people working in Westminster but of course that is the result. Whether it was the summer of Extremist Rebellion people just sitting in the busiest London streets or the million or so anti-Donald Trump protestors who very legitimately might have seen dictatorial tendencies in his policies. yet a few days later when an actual Middle-Eastern dictator arrived who did actually kill and imprison people arrived in London, there were 17 people protesting.

People are so fickle. The opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer does a very well documented video of him kneeling for Black Lives Matter before quickly getting up when he thinks the video footage is complete and yet entirely ignores the 30+ people I personally know who committed suicide because the government left them Excluded.As did the million or so people who protested weekend after weekend in London for something not really applicable here. A very noble cause but just the most fashionable one of the day.

I often attend the odd protest. Twice for myself, in what the police called the best behaved protest they’d ever seen but also for largely unknown causes. An extra person amongst 100,000 people won’t be noticed but if you join 6 Ethiopian farmers or a handful of Bolivians then I think it’s different. Of course you have to be aware enough of what is going on in the world rather than just what is populist at the time.

Back on Armistice Day I was wanting to check a few things as there was another Stop the War march for Gaza and for the first time a group of Brown Shirts encouraged by now sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman. I wanted to see what was happening and what might be closed off or at least safer to give a wide berth given the potential for violence which did indeed come about exactly when and where I would have otherwise have been.

I got chatting to two police officers from where I come from in NE England. Like thousands of others, they’d been bussed in to help keep law and order. We had such a good friendly chat and I ended up give them a 10 minute tour of Whitehall from the very spot where they had been posted. I even through in some Police related history which they hadn’t heard before.

There is so much to see just in this one street. I remember during Covid when Parliament and other places shut without notice I ended up doing a 5 hour tour just of the main Whitehall Street and got a 5 star review for it though I admit it was a little bit of a challenge!

They said I might no longer sound like I come from Newcastle but I’m definitely as friendly as them. I told them that I hoped everyone they met today would be as friendly as I was and they hoped so too although I think we all knew that wouldn’t be the case.

I did my Masters Thesis on the Arab-Israeli conflict and got death threats from both sides which my professor said was the best indication that I been accurate with my paper. Back then a death-threat was pretty much something we’d laugh off given how the IRA had repeatedly bombed my route on the way to class minutes either side of my passage. Nowadays people take offence at all manner of things and then everyone is meant to know and care about it.

Sometimes I think my life just revolves around protests, strikes and terrorist attacks, that’s the downside of working every day in the very middle of London. The good side is meeting people like these two. it makes you wonder why everyone can’t just be friends.

If you want to read about probably my favourite tour of 2023 then try https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2023/06/06/a-special-charles-dickens-tour-in-the-land-of-the-blind-the-one-eyed-man-is-king/