To think we should avoid London right now?

[StayorgoLDN]

Due to visit London in the next few weeks.

Anxious with Palestinian protests and so forth in the news. I don’t want to be near that with young children, and worried that it may escalate to some sort of attack.

We are not Jews, but presuming as the U.K. is supporting Israel that we’ll all be fair game ie there might be an attack/bomb somewhere prominent to send a message to gov.

Have been in London during terrorist attacks before and I’d rather avoid.

AIBU to consider rescheduling our family trip to next year?

@Saverage

We really weren’t and as I say there was no drama whatsoever in the area we stayed (usually a 20-25 minute drive away).

My purpose of relating what we found is to make anyone visiting aware that it isn’t just the protest march itself you have to be aware of.

There was at after 7 at night still a significant amount of people (protesters/police) around the Trafalgar Square/Charing cross area causing issues.

@Jacesmum1977

Theatre tickets were over £400 and we couldn’t get them sold.

We rearranged the rest of the trip to be outside central London.

@Saverage

I found the situation frightening and triggering because I grew up in NI and have a lot of experience with helicopters circling/police in riot gear.

Children do not have this experience therefore don’t have any expectation of threat.

They are also autistic, so have little awareness of danger and as I said had their ear defenders on and hoods up so they couldn’t see what was going on.

I believe we were just unlucky coming into the area as the dispersal order came into place and things were probably at their most contentious.

It did happen.

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/four-police-officers-injured-after-pro-palestinian-protesters-fire-fireworks-into-crowd-13000924

I was naive thinking they would be removed from the area at the end of the afternoon.

Anyway, lesson learnt.

And overall the trip was fantastic thanks to advice so cheers everyone.

This is a lot of drama….

We were in Edinburgh last weekend and found ourselves at the edges of a ProPalestine March. We stood back and let it pass which took a while.

OP this thread has jumped veered about topics. Your original post seemed to be that you were concerned about being involved in a terrorist attack if you came to visit. It then switched to asking for advice on visiting cities with children who have autism. You’ve now posted to say don’t visit London on Saturdays because it gets very busy. Yes, it does get very busy, there’re protests most weekends. Don’t come to London tomorrow because it’s the Lord Mayor’s parade AND there’s the Armistice Day events all over the city. Don’t come to London on a week day evening as well, as there’s likely to be home game at Arsenal/Chelsea/Wembley or maybe some rugby at Twickenham, or tennis at Wimbledon, or too many Christmas shoppers or don’t come to London it’s Nottinghill Carnival……

@Sunseaandsand1

Yes that was my initial concern coupled with how the children would manage (they did great).

However, things did seem to settle to being just these weekly protests.

There are protests going on where we are too. But they disperse towards the end of the afternoon. There are no lines of fully armoured police, nor lunatics firing fireworks at people in the evening.

We will come back to London in future and will take the advice for Holborn station (whether there are protests/issues or not).

I just wanted to add something about protests in London. I cycle in London most weekends, all times of the year. It feels like there is always a protest going on in Trafalgar Square, some bigger than others. In different parts of London on the same day there are often multiple different groups of diaspora protesting about something in their home country.

I don't mean to dismiss the protesters, but if I'm honest sometimes I roll my eyes a bit and wonder why London has to be permanently clogged up with protests about non-domestic issues. But it is a sign of our peaceful nation and traditions of peaceful protests, so we could see it that way. We're very lucky to live in a safe country in the first place so I "check my privilege", even though I hate that term.

It does clog up the place and cause congestion, but from what I've seen is very well managed and policed, and I've never seen it get out of hand. It invariably seems very good natured. The only time I've felt remotely threatened was when England had some kind of world cup game, when Trafalgar Square was packed with drunk white blokes, smashed glass and people throwing up. The atmosphere was a bit nasty.

I'm pretty sure the calendar is booked up way in advance, and that's why the policing thing on Armistice day has hit the news because it's well managed.

I would not worry about this if I were a visitor to London. But I would urge almost anyone at any time to avoid Trafalgar Square if you don't like crowds. Or check what's on that weekend.

If your tickets cost that much it suggests that you went to a very popular (sold out?) show as ticket prices follow market demand. There is no way that a box office wouldn’t be able to re- sell tickets to a sold out West End show on your behalf. If someone in box office told you that they were not doing their job properly.

🙄

@Ramalangadingdong

We had good seats in the dress circle.

The tickets are the same price several months ahead.

There was still some availability on the day.

I'm off to London this weekend to meet up with my DDs. We will just be careful and try to avoid any protest marches.

Drunken football supporters are way more scary than protesters IMO.

Drunken people after Christmas parties ditto

OP, you're determined to milk this. London is fine. Always good to avoid Trafalgar Square in any circs as it's not very nice and to avoid London in general if you don't like crowded cities.

So I work in central London and I was in London for a weekend last weekend. I do know London well, but I did not see any particular issues. There are demonstrations regularly in London for all sorts of things and it is quite easy to avoid large crowds with a bit of advanced tube planning. I had a great weekend and I did not really consider the protest in anyway impacted my visit.

As a case in point I was cycling through London yesterday - we went right through Vauxhall just as the Palestinian protestors were all leaving the area.

They were all very calm, not rowdy. A lot of the anxieties about this stuff is just in the mind, not the reality.

I was in London (central areas) yesterday. Perfectly safe, in fact more so due to police presence. I wonder if people find it slightly exciting to worry about possible danger elsewhere while they are safe? No disrespect OP. But there was a tiny amount of unrest that was easily contained.

@Vocaladvocaat

Look if you haven’t lived through situations like this going out of control (riots, violence, attacks) then you haven’t the associated anxiety with seeing crowds/police/anger on this scale.

Nothing about those sorts of situations is exciting. It is something you ardently want to avoid.

From our point of view the situation did impact on our enjoyment of the Saturday night and disrupted our plans overall - we initially intended to spend most of the time in central London throughout most of the city, but backscaled to being outwith London altogether save for 2 days when we were mostly in South Kensington.

We’ve had friends/family also visiting over the last few weeks, one said they were glad to be leaving before this weekend. Another was avoidant of some places as we were. Which has given me some reassurance that we weren’t completely mad to feel apprehensive, as some have made out.

So what should the 1.5milliin people who live in Central London do?

@Sigmama

Petition local gov for stronger policing and more regulation around protests, the size of them and how long they’re allowed to go on for week in week out.

As I say the issue here is with being a tourist, the trip overall for flights, hotels, transport, food, tickets etc was around £3000…. And to have to adjust from our initial plans was annoying.

If you live in Central London and this is going on, you might think oh that’s alright we’ll just go see X on a different night or at a later stage. And you know the transport network/area better so working out what to do is easier in the event of disruption as I stated before.

The point is if you’ve spent a substantial amount of money to be there for a week and things aren’t as they would be normally it seems a bit of a waste.

We had to avoid going to certain places on the day we wanted to go as they were near where the march was going on and this wouldn’t have worked for our family.

We thought the police would have cleared the area of protesters by the evening and would have promptly arrested and removed people setting off fireworks, but they didn’t.

So we will now have a second trip to London in about 3yrs time when we can afford it again to be able to do what we wanted in the first place.

If you are a Londoner you can work around disruption, you live there, and it doesn’t cost you anything beyond your normal living costs.

You really are milking this OP. I've been into the West End three times this week. Including a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. It was no different to any other night out in the centre of town.
London is a crazy busy tourist destination pretty much all the time.
You're reminding me a bit of Michael Gove who just happened to be walking through Victoria Station yesterday. No ministerial car available?

I agree 100%. My point was that London is calm and this isn’t a game. There is no need to be scaremongering. It’s not exciting at all. People’s lives are adversely affected. No we shouldn’t avoid London.

@StayorgoLDN very small areas are affected. Just don’t go near those maybe? London is a huge place with limitless things to do.

@Vocaladvocaat and @beguilingeyes

I have no doubt that London is wonderful and we certainly experienced that and had a lovely time.

My point is I would have liked the Saturday night to have gone more smoothly and I would have liked to have visited some specific places that are near to where the march was going on on Saturday as per our original plan.

London was limitless and fantastic and we found other things to do and reorganised the trip.

But we will still have to come back at another time… for some things we wanted.

That’s the issue for me.

But I am glad we went and it was fun!

I think through this we discovered a lot like how enjoyable it is to walk around rather than take the tube for example and how accessible other places are from London.

London is an incredible city BECAUSE of and IN SPITE of all these things. Lots of us (about 8million of us) live here happily and just get on the tube, regardless of it being busy with protesters. We just get on it. It’s not an insta photoshoot or a holiday resort. It’s a city full of people going about their daily lives. If you can’t cope with that, may I suggest you stay at home?

So annoyed with people wanting all the nice shiny bits of major tourist destinations without the actual day to day life bit of the people who live there. It’s not instagram!