What was claimed
A video shows 500,000 people marching in London for a recent Great British National Strike demonstration.
Our verdict
The footage is of a different protest organised by Tommy Robinson in July 2024. The Metropolitan Police says a Great British National Strike protest in London on 24 May was attended by no more than a couple of hundred people.
A video is being widely shared on social media with misleading claims it shows people attending a recent “Great British National Strike” event in London.
The clip, which has been circulating on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), shows a large crowd of people waving the Union Jack and the flags of England on the Strand in London, near the Royal Courts of Justice.
It’s been claimed that this was part of planned UK-wide Great British National Strike events on 24 May protesting the government’s handling of a wide range of issues.
One post sharing the video on 25 May includes a caption saying: “Not in the media of course... but yesterday saw about 500,000 people marched in London for the Great British National Strike..... many outside number 10 with signs wanting Starmer to resign - The country are waking up slowly [sic].”
Another post shared on 24 May featuring the same clip which has been viewed over 700,000 times on Facebook has the caption: “Thousands of people marched in London today calling for Keir Starmer to Resign!!!”
Other videos posted online do appear to show a demonstration held outside Downing Street on Saturday 24 May. The Metropolitan Police told Full Fact it did not have an exact estimate of attendance at that event, but said it was no more than a “couple of hundred”. A march of 500,000 people in London would also have likely attracted media coverage, whereas we’ve found no coverage of the demonstration outside Downing Street in either the local or national press.
The video filmed on the Strand actually shows a march by supporters of Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, which took place in London on 27 July 2024.
By reverse image searching key frames of the video, we found it was shared on TikTok on 27 July 2024. In that footage people can be heard chanting the political activist’s name.
Photos from PA Media and the Associated Press of the protest last summer also show similar scenes at the same location.
Footage on the user-generated video aggregator Newsflare shows the same protest from a different angle of the same area on the Strand, with a description saying it depicts “the Unite the Kingdom protest organised by Tommy Robinson”.
Attendance at the 2024 London demonstration was reported as being in the “thousands”.
This isn’t the first time we have seen old or unrelated footage and images of protests reshared as if they show recent events, and have previously debunked misleading claims about protests in South Korea, France, Lebanon and Italy.
Before sharing content that you see on social media, first consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and reliable source. Our guide to spotting misleading videos can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video is of a different protest which took place in London in July 2024.
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