Boasting an eye-wateringly strong panel of endorsements from Sir Lenny Henry to Fontaines D.C., Paul Weller to Paloma Faith, Together Alliance seeks to represent a broad left of ‘trade unionists and environmentalists, community activists and faith leaders, musicians, athletes, entertainers and elected representatives’ united against any and all forms of far-right inculcated division and delinquency. With my bright-yellow suitcase still unpacked from my return home the day prior, I joined Together’s grey-skied protesting throngs on 28th March, which, though culminating in a House Against Hate musical takeover in Trafalgar Square, was a sonically charged event from the outset.

Joining the march halfway down Picadilly after picking up my cousin and her artistically self-illustrated placard sporting a blood-splattered motto of ‘F**k Farage’, the music of the march was a mix of front-led chants half-lost in the wind and dominated by a general hubbub of chatter and laughter, given a base beat by the constant resonance of marching drums from somewhere in the back. Mothers side-by-side with sons, husbands with wives, sisters arm-in-arm with brothers, friends shoulder-to-shoulder, smiling and laughing with strangers: the heavily badged, placard-parading mass was alive with conversation.

For the moment, the visual scene was enough, with sights ranging from the honourable to the horrible: teary-eyed carriers of Palestinian flags and beautifully decorated signs advocating for love not bombs were intermixed with floating photographs of Epstein arm-in-arm with President Donald Trump, headshots of Farage and Prince Andrew, and a litany of witty protest limericks littered with proud profanities. We had donated our gaffer tape to a couple arriving earlier at Charing Cross station with an anorak-clad, placard-sporting, green inflatable alien with a puncture in its neck, who we hoped to see again on the streets, but to no avail.

“Conversation began to dominate again, in clusters of vox-pops and walking interviews”

Rounding the corner of Piccadilly circus new sounds fluttered up: the Dorset Red, a progressive-inspired choir, delivered protest songs in closely controlled harmony, while applause rose to resounding levels as the march passed a cluster of people holding a banner that read ‘descendants of holocaust survivors against Palestinian Genocide’.

As the march divided at Trafalgar Square, conversation began to dominate again, in clusters of vox-pops and walking interviews. A curly-haired photographer, precariously suspended from a traffic light, asked my sign-carrying cousin ‘Miss, what would you say to Nigel Farage right now? ’ as a keen young journalist named Calum asked my Mum why she was marching today and what she thought about there being a Reform Rally in Croydon that evening. While the protest continued down into the heart of government for readings and speeches, many peeled off for the party in Trafalgar Square, where – regrettably – all signs and flags were confiscated on marshalled entry and my cousin was parted from her artwork; here a small, dancer-dominated temporary stage had begun to radiate house music.

“Infants adorned with ear-defenders carried in the arms of bopping parents, the young dancing with the flag-enshrouded old”

The chance to dance in a crowd of thousands in Trafalgar square is a rare one, and not to be wasted. The event, organised by R3 Soundsystem, got people of all ages moving quickly: infants adorned with ear-defenders carried in the arms of bopping parents, the young dancing with the flag-enshrouded old. DJ sets from ahadadream, Melvo Baptise, GIDEÖN and Benji B were standout, colliding genres and sounds from across continents in the name of unity. Planted on the steps down from the National Gallery, many an instruction floated out across the crowd: turn to the person next to you, and even if they’re a total stranger, tell them ‘I love you’. The message was always and everything love over hate, unity over division.

A brief and joyous intermission came through as Leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski MP and recently elected Gorton and Denton MP Hannah Spencer took to the stage, delivering speeches over off-beat hi-hats and bass-syncopated house piano chords. Though occasionally teetering on the absurd – could you imagine Keir Starmer up there, grooving along with his dungaree-dressed neighbours? – the crowd loved it: bobbing up and down in a white top and khaki green trench coat, Polanski spoke with vigour: “The tide is turning” he said, “[…] days like this are here to send a message, a message to Tommy Robinson, to Nigel Farage, to those who appease them.”

“Zack Polanski MP and [...] Hannah Spencer took to the stage, delivering speeches over off-beat hi-hats and bass-syncopated house piano chords”

“The message is,” he continued, “when we turn up, in our hundreds, in our thousands, in our hundreds of thousands, we are unstoppable.” Polanski’s speech was perfectly supplemented with the later chants led from onstage with a perfect scouse lilt, “Let’s take this message back to the community, we’re all here for peace, love and unity” and “when I say Farage, you say out!”

From a purely musical perspective, the solo-appearances from the likes of Jessie Ware, Celeste and Leigh Anne Pinnock fell a little off-key. The stage, built for house, seemed to bristle a little bit when put up against Ware’s soul-shearing vocals; Celeste’s descent into the crowd meant much of her delivery came out quite muddy. These artists often only came out for a song or two: the audience was never quite ready for the switch – not to mention that the diversity of age-ranges and variety of musical and liberal-political persuasions meant that sing-alongs were a tough reach. Regardless, it’s good to see so many big names in the music industry turn up in the name of unity: maybe music isn’t as far from forgetting it’s politically charged roots as we might imagine in our Spotify-controlled capitalistic streamosphere.

Bermondsey and Hastings’ own Greentea Peng was a prodigal exception to this rule of hit-or-miss. Although proclaiming “I’m no DJ”, her all-to-short appearance displayed her deftly chosen dance tracks and offered enough time to deliver the bewitching opening of her new single ‘Prisoners Round’, a few lyrics of which seem to hover over Trafalgar Square, to an enraptured audience:

Is there no respite, can there be no Peace
I’m suffocating choking on all your double-speak
Lord, give me the strength to see through all these lies

“We have just forty-five seconds left, London,” came the cry from onstage as the sun set, Trafalgar Square continuing to be full of dance up until the final seconds of the music. It’s estimated that approximately half a million people turned up for the demonstration, the biggest demonstration ever against the far right.

Though police estimates degrade these figures to just a tenth of that number, House Against Hate and Together Alliance’s day was a success, proudly proving that the left can form a united front: despite the disparate beliefs that have often prevented political cohesion within the left, all people can get behind a movement that prides itself against hate, racism, and xenophobia of all sorts, a movement that provides hope in an increasingly worrying political climate. Put perfectly by Bob, a protester on the march interviewed by the Guardian: ‘We stand here for love and hope and unity, and who can’t get behind that banner? […] we’ve got to stand up for it, and that means love for everybody, not just the people who are here today, but everybody who’s not here today, including the people who might even stand against us.’