I’ve been reviewing some of the video footage and news reports from a British version of the French ‘GiletJaune’ or Yellow Jacket protest. Whether it will viewed as a success or a failure, time will tell, but what it has revealed is that, in Britain we do things a bit differently than the way that ‘Les Gaulles’ do things. For a start, this was considerably less violent than the French protests, although one report said that police had to break up a scuffle between an onlooker and one of the British Gilet Jaune protestors. However why this scuffle occurred and who started it, I am none the wiser at this time.
Whereas the French Gillet Jaunes managed to get tens of thousands of protestors onto the streets of Paris and other French cities, the British version of this protest was considerably smaller. The UK Gilet Jaunes brought along about 25 or so individuals who employed the time-honoured protest tactic, as used by groups of both the Left and the Right, of blocking Westminster Bridge, before wandering up Whitehall to shout a bit of abuse at Number Ten Downing Street. At the time of writing, it seems that the group has gone down to City Hall now, to shout abuse at London’s failing mayor, Sadiq Khan. A mass revolution this most certainly was not, but this appears to be only the first of a planned series of protests, so it will be interesting to see how this protest group develops.
It will also be interesting to see if this British Yellow Jacket campaign starts to pick up more ‘normies’, by which I mean those who are not political activists and not normally given to taking part in demonstrations. If it does, then it could grow, as support for others, like Tommy Robinson, who deal in touchstone issues, has grown in recent years, by attracting the nominally non-political through their message. Getting more normies involved would also go a long way to dilute the influence over protests by the sometimes noisy fraggles and political outliers using a campaign for their own ends; the sort that all protests, whether they be of the Left or Right or whatever can have a tendency to attract. I’m not saying that such people were present on this recent protest, but it is something that those organising these protests should be aware of for the future. I’ve noticed that as the Tommy Robinson protests have grown in size, the promoters of some of the more objectionable politics and lunatic causes that exist could still be turning up, but are now, more often than not, drowned out by the more sensible majority. Let’s hope that this British Yellow Jacket movement, if this is what it is, can learn from this aspect of the history of the Tommy Robinson movement.
As regards getting the message over about Brexit, then I have to say that these British Yellow Jackets may have had a bit of a fail here and missed an opportunity. As a Brexiteer, I would have liked to see some sort of banner about the cause and I certainly didn’t see one in the video uploaded by Unity News Network. Custom ‘Yellow Jackets’ with a pro Brexit message on them might also be an idea that the organisers could consider for the future and would have informed the public more clearly what the protest was about. I’ve been on hundreds and hundreds of demonstrations over the years, both as a participant and as a press observer, and it bothered me that there was no obvious means of discerning for what reason the UK Yellow Jackets were demonstrating. The use of the Yellow Jacket motif by these Brexit protestors is a good one, but there may need to be a little more clarity of image and information, lest the Brexit message of the protest be lost or obscured. This clarity of purpose and image is even more necessary when carrying out a protest action that is done at least once a year or so if not more, such as blocking Westminster Bridge. Another ‘image’ related criticism that I have is that for a pro-Brexit protest maybe there should have been a more cohesive online presence, prior to and during this protest, than there has been? There seems to be some confusion, in both the mass media and some of the alternative media, as to whether this was a Brexit protest or a protest by Tracy Blackwell’s Justice for Our Boys group. This is confusion that should have been avoided. I’m treating this as a Brexit protest because this is the cause that I heard being chanted by the protestors but a more cohesive web and publicity policy might have avoided such confusion.
I think that this group has done very well for a first run out and I liked the little touch of non-violent direct action with people sitting down in the road. At the very least, this action got the event publicity, as it allowed lazy journalists to write that ‘London came to a standstill’ even though it hasn’t as London is a whole lot bigger than just the Westminster area. Apart from the aforementioned scuffle, I have not heard so far at the time of writing any news of arrests of those taking part. This is good. This suggests that the action was as done in as peaceful a manner as possible, which is what is needed to bring in more people to the cause of protesting for the Brexit we all voted for back in 2016. If these protestors had acted like thugs, then it would have driven people away rather than brought people in.
As I said at the opening of this piece, this demonstration was inspired by the actions of the French Gilet Jaunes but carried out in a very recognisably and praiseworthy British way, without too much violence, from what I can gather. I shall be watching this group with some interest. I want to see just what they do next, how they do it and whether they can be seen as credible enough to attract wider support by those worried about the current state of the Brexit. I do hope they can be part of the way to a better future for us all.
