Protest outside Buckingham Palace showed that Londoners’ angst goes far beyond NHS privatisation

While Donald Trump met Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace last week, hundreds of Londoners took up pickets outside.

The march was organised by the Stop Trump Coalition with the slogan: “Tell Trump: Hands off the NHS!”

The US president was in the UK to attend the 2019 NATO Summit. His first two visits, in July 2018 and June this year, were also met with protests. 

This time, he arrived against the backdrop of a general election, and Britain’s imminent exit from the European Union next month.

If Prime Minister Boris Johnson is returned to power, he is expected to see Brexit through and pursue a major trade deal with the USwhich has given many of his detractors cause for concern.

The NHS: not for sale


Protestor John Cockram speaking to a reporter about the NHS

Chief among their fears is that Trump may be eyeing the NHS as a major piece in trade negotiations with Johnson.

For health workers like John Cockram, retaining the state-owned healthcare system as a British institution is both a matter of livelihood, and of national pride. 

“We’ve paid for the NHS since its inception,” he says. “Our NHS is the people’s NHS, and is not a commodity for sale to private companies in the US.”

Cockram, who has spent 40 years in the industry, went alone but quickly found groups of colleagues and led them in chants.

He feels it is “appalling that empirical evidence and truth doesn’t count for anything these days”, and that the Prime Minister has been publicly denying his intention to offer the NHS to Trump.

American physician assistant Laura Steiner, who was visiting London for just over a week,  felt enough solidarity with NHS staff to join the march.

“We know a thing or two about what privatisation can do to healthcare,” she says, pointing out the high cost of healthcare in her country. “I’m not a fan of Trump or his policies, so I decided to come and lend my voice.”

Against foreign intervention


Bolivians holding up a hashtag for deposed President Evo Morales which reads “Evo, You Aren’t Alone”, and another denouncing his political challenger as fascist

Despite being the flagship cause for the event, many of the protestors were not there for the NHS. 

London-based Bolivians Yoshida Beltran and Victoria Cespedes consider Trump personally responsible for the recent coup in their country, which saw socialist President Evo Morales replaced by right-wing leader Jeanine Áñez Chávez. 

“[The US has] always intervened in our political affairs. Because Bolivia is rich in natural resources, like lithium. Trump wants our richness,” says Cespedes. “He is funding all these fascist groups, paying the army, paying the police.”

Pointing at the palace, Beltran adds: “a massive dinner is happening in those doors, organised through the money of taxpayers. So we have the right to be here, to demonstrate against it.”

A large contingent from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was also present.

“I came here to tell Donald Trump: hands off Palestine,” says student Marah Abu Gazi, before declaring “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine!”

In December 2017, Trump broke with his predecessors in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Half a year later he moved the American embassy there, from Tel Aviv.

Assange and journalistic freedom


Campaigners for Julian Assange’s freedom handed out flyers at the protest

Another group turned up to raise awareness about the legal proceedings that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing.

The Swedish publisher rose to prominence in the late 2000s after releasing volumes of secret US military documents online. He is currently incarcerated at HM Prison Belmarsh, and faces possible extradition to the US, where he has been charged under the Espionage Act 1917.

Tom Marwick, a campaigner from the Committee to Defend Julian Assange, is concerned that a dangerous precedent would be set if the extradition proceeds.

“[Assange] was not a US citizen, he was not in the US, they’re trying to extradite him to the US to face charges for espionage…USA is reaching right outside of their jurisdiction,” he explains.

Marwick fears for Assange’s life. He also fears for the future of journalism itself. Unchecked by journalists, governments “will dictate what can be written, and what can’t,” he warns. “Journalists will become stenographers.”

Questions surrounding Trump’s character


Costumed members of Facebook group Handmaid’s Resistance

Some joined the march to protest not just Trump’s policies, but his values as well.

Sonja Reddy came from Nottingham just for the event, with some choice words for the US leader: “His treatment of women is abysmal. He’s disrespectful, he’s corrupt, he’s unintelligent. He’s a pervert and a criminal.”

She and three of her friends dressed in costumes inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale. The best-selling dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood describes a society where women have been completely subjugated.

Reddy met the others during the demonstrations against Trump’s 2018 visit to London. At the time, someone on an anti-Trump Facebook group suggested dressing as a handmaid from the novel. Several of them, including Reddy, Raffaella Ravaioli, Jessica Branch and Mary Burt, took the cue.

The group then went on to participate in other protests, mostly related to human rights, still dressed as handmaids.

Along the way they inspired several other women to do likewise, and together they have formed a Facebook group called Handmaid’s Resistance.

“Now we’re very good friends, we talk every day,” said Branch, who also helped to design their costumes.

Were you at the march on 3 December? Did you represent a cause not mentioned in this article? Comment below, or tweet us at @GoldRavenNews to tell us about it.