As NATO leaders convened in Buckingham Palace on the 3rd of December to mark the alliance’s 70th anniversary at the Heads of State summit, thousands of furious protestors marched the streets of central London.
Demonstrators voiced their fury at a host of issues including climate change, the destructive “special relationship” between the UK and US, US President Donald Trump’s foreign policies and increased defence spending by NATO member states. They waved banners and held up placards reading “No to Trump – No to NATO”, “Stop Trump’s nuclear arms race” and “Take Britain out of NATO”.
On Tuesday, Trump and NATO members attended a reception hosted by the Queen at the Royal residence and later went to an event at Downing Street. The next day, NATO leaders gathered at the luxurious Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, some 20 miles north of the capital. NATO Secretary General Jeans Stoltenberg said that during during the two-day summit leaders will make decisions on a range of issues, including updating the alliance’s action plan against terrorism and balancing the burden more fairly when it comes to investing in defence.
Increased defence spending was a point of contention for many demonstrators. Lindsey German, convenor for Stop the War, who helped to organise the protests, said: “Donald Trump’s aim is more spending on the military which means less on the NHS and schools. NATO expansion has been immensely costly in terms of finance and is growing tension across the world. It must stop now. Trump must go.”
Since entering office in 2016, Trump has consistently criticised NATO – he even once described it as “obsolete” – and has lamented the scale of the US’s financial contribution to the 29-member Trans-Atlantic alliance. At last year’s NATO summit in Brussels, Trump threatened to walk away from the alliance if members did not pay more. Ahead of this year’s meeting, on 29 November, he announced plans to reduce US spending for NATO.
Kate Hudson, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a speaker at the protests, considered the announcement a continuation of Trump’s efforts to pressure states into spending more on the alliance. “This is an unacceptable undermining of national sovereignty over public spending decisions,” she said.
Preemptively placating Trump, Stoltenberg that same day announced that 2019 defence spending across European allies and Canada increased in real terms by 4.6 percent, making this the fifth consecutive year of growth. Nine allies will meet the two percent guideline this year, up from only three allies just a few years ago. The UK is the biggest defence spender in Europe and contributes to every NATO mission, giving 2.1 percent of its GDP to the alliance.
“More spending on the military means less on the NHS and schools. NATO expansion has been immensely costly in terms of finance and is growing tension across the world. It must stop now. Trump must go,” said German.
German and the CND were also protesting against the further development of NATO’s nuclear arsenal in Europe, which currently consists of some 180 US B61 nuclear bombs, stationed in across Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. And it’s not only unpopular in the UK. There has been virulent opposition from host nations to these weapons. The governments of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have all, unsuccessfully, called for the removal of US nuclear weapons from their countries. This is also reflected in a fall in popular support for the alliance in the last two years, according to a YouGov poll. In 2017, almost 73 percent of Britons approved of membership. That has since dropped to 59 percent. Similarly, in Germany support has fallen to 54 percent from 68 percent, and in France to 39 percent from 54 percent.
NATO wasn’t the only issue mobilising protestors. Many said they feared Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) could feature in UK – US trade talks. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused Johnson of putting the NHS “on the table”. On Friday, Johnson responded, insisting that the NHS is “not for sale or up for negotiation” in any future trade talks.
Trump also said that the US wanted “absolutely nothing to do with” the NHS in a press conference on Tuesday 3 December. When asked if it would feature in future trade talks, he said said he wouldn’t touch it even if it was handed to his administration “on a silver platter”, adding: “Never even thought about it, honestly.” But it was, in fact, Trump who raised it as an issue when he was in the UK June at a news conference saying everything should be on the table.
The fact that Trump arrived in Britain just over a week before a General Election was concerning for many, who see the US president as an “interfering” force in UK politics. Several UK politicians, including opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have accused Trump of intervening in Britain’s upcoming election after Trump called into a radio show hosted by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage in November, urging the far-right figure to create an alliance with Johnson to push through Brexit.
On Tuesday, Trump said he was a “fan of Brexit” but refused to comment on the election in general, despite having previously said Corbyn, a leftist, would be “so bad” for Britain if he won.
There will be a huge sigh of relief when Trump and everything he stands for departs the UK. And that, in the eyes of protestor Bess, is “fascism, racism and misogyny.”
Images taken by the author