THOUSANDS of people packed into Glasgow’s George Square last night to protest against the visit to Scotland by the most divisive US president in recent history.
Campaigners, political parties, trade unions, Yes groups, and hundreds of others took to the streets.
READ MORE: Glasgow Trump protesters: ‘He’s a threat to world security'
Many of the protesters were objecting to Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and in particular, the now scrapped practice of separating families at the border, and placing children in “government custody”.
In the crowd too were members of the city’s sizeable American population, coming down to distance themselves from their unpopular president.
There was a heavy police presence, but most of their time seemed to be taken up with a small pro-Trump counter-protest. It was led by Alistair McConnachie, the Holocaust denying, ex-Ukip organiser, behind the pro-unionist A Force For Good.
He attempted to antagonise the crowd in much the same way as he had tried to do when he led the tiny counter demonstration at the All Under One Banner pro-independence march in May.
One of the three others involved in his protest, was Charlie Baillie, a former BNP organiser and candidate.
They were effectively kettled in by police and anti-Trump protesters, including comedian Janey Godley, far away from the main stage and made little impact on the rest of the rally. There were speeches from the SNP’s Keith Brown, Labour’s Richard Leonard, and the Green’s Patrick Harvie.
Many of the campaigners had made their own placards, some were brutally blunt, while others were brutally funny.
One read, “We’ve got enough orange bigots in Scotland already, thanks.”
While another was from “Fifers Against Neo-Nazi Yanks”, or FANNY for short.
One simple message to Trump read, “What’s for you will no go by ye, you utter wallop.” It was the first of a number of protests organised to coincide with the president’s two-day stay in Scotland.
Today, in Edinburgh, a national demonstration will start outside the Scottish Parliament at noon, with a march winding its way through the city to the Meadows for a “carnival of resistance”.
Protests are also expected at the president’s golf courses in Turnberry and Balmedie.
Meanwhile, London was brought to a standstill as more than 100,000 protesters joined an anti-Trump march. Aerial views showed densely packed crowds gathered at Portland Place and filling Oxford Street and Regent Street ahead of a rally at Trafalgar Square.
The Metropolitan Police said they had to ask stallholders in Trafalgar Square to take down their stands “to maximise the space available”.
The day of demonstrations began with a 20-feet tall inflatable balloon depicting the US president as a nappy-clad baby flying in Parliament Square.
While the president did not get to see the helium-filled-inflatable look-a-like, he said it had made him “feel unwelcome”.
Attempts to fly the grotesque-toddler-Zeppelin outside the Scottish Parliament at today’s demonstration were kyboshed, when Holyrood bosses knocked back the application.
They said the blow-up-bediapered-Trump-blimp, “would not be an appropriate use of the Parliament’s grounds.”
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