Did police estimate three million people attended the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march?

Multiple social media users are falsely claiming that police have estimated three million people attended the “Unite the Kingdom” protest march in central London at the weekend.

But the official estimate from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) was that between 110,000 and 150,000 were in attendance.

The three million figure was also shared by the event’s organiser Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), who posted on X (formerly Twitter) “I’m hearing police estimate 3 million patriots on the streets”, and later criticised “legacy media” outlets for reporting the Metropolitan Police’s estimate. We’ve contacted Mr Robinson for comment and will update this fact check if we receive a response.

The demonstration was clearly large in scale, and reported by some to be the largest “nationalist rally” in recent times.

But in reality it’s hard to precisely measure crowd sizes at non-ticketed events. A spokesperson for the MPS told Full Fact that its crowd estimates are based on a number of sources, including officers on the ground, CCTV and helicopter footage. The force said it also uses data based on its experience of previous events to estimate numbers.

The largest political demonstration in British history is thought to have been the “Stop the War” protest which took place in London in February 2003. This event, which aimed to deter the UK from joining the war against Iraq, had an estimated attendance of between one and two million people, according to its organisers, with police estimating a crowd of around 750,000.

We’ve written previously about claims about crowd sizes at other marches and protests.

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