"NO VAT" demonstration against the Pope


Last Sunday, a group gathered outside Westminster Cathedral to protest against the visit of the Holy Father to Britain. They walked to the Italian embassy in Grosvenor Square and had a rally there. The British Humanist Association website gives some information about the event and there is a page at meetup.com. (The organisers give a figure of 200 attending so there are unlikely to have been more than that.)

The demo was set up to co-ordinate with a similar one organised in Rome by the Facciamo Breccia Coalition. Speakers came from the BHA, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, the Protest the Pope coalition, the European Humanist Federation, the National Secular Society, Outrage and others.

The various groups report on the event focus on their own concerns. The humanists emphasise the secular Europe agenda while the gay groups claim that the demo was mostly LGBT. I expect it was a mixture of both. We can expect from of the same in the run-up to the Holy Father's visit, perhaps co-ordinated under the banner of the "Protest the Pope Coalition" (or something similar) - but it will be mostly the same people.

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