No, a Met Police video of the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally didn’t show a 2020 protest

The AI chatbot Grok and a number of social media users have wrongly claimed that a video shared by the Metropolitan Police of a crowd at this month’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London was actually footage from a 2020 anti-lockdown protest.

Following the rally earlier this month, we saw a number of claims that the footage was five years old and was actually filmed in Trafalgar Square. But identifiable landmarks show it was filmed elsewhere, and the police have confirmed the video really does show the “Unite the Kingdom” rally.

The video was shared by the Metropolitan Police on X (formerly Twitter) on 13 September, with a caption saying: “A crowd of ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protesters attempted to enter the sterile area on Whitehall that is place [sic] to keep the two protests apart.”

The footage included aerial shots of a line of police holding plastic riot shields clashing with people at a barrier on a road, and closer shots from a different angle. Several England flags can be seen being waved by the crowd, and a statue can be seen in the clear area behind the rows of police.

This matches the statue of the 8th Duke of Devonshire, and the plinth saying this can be seen around 18 seconds in. That statue is at the junction with Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue, which is around a five minute walk from Trafalgar Square.

A post from Grok in response to someone asking if the chatbot had “any idea when and where this footage is from” said: “This footage appears to be from an anti-lockdown protest in London's Trafalgar Square on September 26, 2020, during clashes between demonstrators and police over COVID restrictions.”

And we saw similar claims from a number of social media users, some very widely shared, with a number of different messages from Grok wrongly telling X users that the footage was from 2020.

The Metropolitan Police addressed Grok’s incorrect statement directly in a further post on X, telling a user: “The footage was filmed yesterday afternoon shortly before 3pm at the junction of Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue.

“It is quite obviously not Trafalgar Square as is suggested in the AI response you have referenced, but for the avoidance of further doubt we have provided a labelled comparison to confirm the location.”

Other videos posted on YouTube which were shared the day after the rally, one with the title “Riot Police Clash W/ Lost Patriots”, show the same spot where the incident shown in the Metropolitan Police video occurred.

Grok did correctly attribute the footage to the 13 September march plenty of times elsewhere on the site, and has since acknowledged its mistake, telling one user: “The Metropolitan Police posted footage from a recent rally on September 13, 2025, at Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue. It was mistakenly identified by some, including a prior Grok response, as 2020 anti-lockdown footage, but the Met confirmed it's current."

X has been contacted for comment.

Before sharing content like this on social media, first consider whether it comes from a verifiable and trustworthy source. Large language models (LLMs) such as Grok can hallucinate (present false or conflicting information, often confidently) and are not inherently accurate—as we explained in a blog last month.