Several thousand people in London held a solidarity march today. It started in London’s Hyde Park.

Thousands of #GeorgeFloyd protesters who left a Hyde Park in central London now marching to parliament square to meet up with another large group of demonstrators pic.twitter.com/u4aHSkJdMd

— Mark White (@skymarkwhite) June 3, 2020

There was supposed to be social distancing taking place, but as you can see that really wasn’t happening.

Thousands of people gather in Hyde Park in central London for a Black Lives Matter rally in solidarity with US protests against the death of unarmed African-American George Floydhttps://t.co/MIyUBSMbVs pic.twitter.com/itAuCqNYhl

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 3, 2020

People marched through the city and gathered in Parliament Square.

“We’re not victims, we’re warriors”

It’s a full house at Parliament Square as the #BlackLivesMattter protest has taken over Westminster.

But so tightly packed together you can barely see the grass, let alone 2m apart. @LBC @LBCNews pic.twitter.com/1Kb4xVk7tR

— Matthew Thompson (@mattuthompson) June 3, 2020

Actor John Boyega, who appeared in the Star Wars sequels spoke to the crowd at one point.

Outside parliament @JohnBoyega tells everyone to take a knee and says black people “I love you” pic.twitter.com/2egDZwmBzE

— SymeonBrown (@symeonbrown) June 3, 2020

The AP reports that Boyega asked the crowd to stay peaceful: “Because they want us to mess up, they want us to be disorganized, but not today.” But he’ll have to settle for mostly peaceful because there was a moment of chaos outside #10 Downing Street when the protesters started throwing things at police:

It's kicking off now. Unclear exactly what started things. Police appeared to attempt to take a man from the crowd and pandemonium ensued pic.twitter.com/6XPGXV2HKt

— Mattha Busby (@matthabusby) June 3, 2020

You might be able to make out that in the center/right of that scene, police appear to be arresting someone. Sky News reported things got out of control after one of the protesters punched a police officer:

BREAKING – Crowd confronting police outside the gates of Downing Street. Officer punched in the face, numerous objects being thrown at police now. pic.twitter.com/tJ6ZnXUcv6

— Mark White (@skymarkwhite) June 3, 2020

Lots of people giving us grief down here outside Downing Street claiming our reporting of an officer being punched in the face is fake news. Make your own mind up – pic.twitter.com/JCLXQ9gmmS

— Mark White (@skymarkwhite) June 3, 2020

Here’s video of how this happened.

🇬🇧 London #Riots spread to UK#londonprotest #londonriots #riots2020 #emeutes #RiotsNotProtests pic.twitter.com/S0GVUBkf3c

— John Rule #Duda2025 (@JohnRule18) June 3, 2020

Thinks returned to relative calm after that:

As of now… Larger police presence, especially on far side where the incident occurred pic.twitter.com/EgsnLTKnfw

— Mattha Busby (@matthabusby) June 3, 2020

As of a few hours ago, most of the crowd had left but some journalists were chased out a few people were refusing to go home.

“Please go home”

Dissent in the ranks. Protestors are now being urged to leave. Most of them have now gone. A few hard core seem less willing to do so…@LBC @LBCNews #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/iG5KG4v2fh

— Matthew Thompson (@mattuthompson) June 3, 2020

There were also some last minute scuffles with police:

Unpleasant end to a day of largely peaceful protests in London. Met Police management clearly wanted a low key approach today, to avoid accusations of heavy handed policing. But it left some officers horribly exposed when trouble erupted . pic.twitter.com/rjQkA9RVqu

— Mark White (@skymarkwhite) June 3, 2020

As you can see in that last clip, it’s just getting dark now. We’ll have to see if things settle down or flare up tonight.

Update: NSFW language in this clip. He’s watching two police officers retreating from the crowd.

#blacklivesmatter protest in London getting ugly !!! pic.twitter.com/W8gD2FZjQu

— ukhoodvideos (@ukhoodvideos) June 3, 2020

Update: A teenager organizers of today’s march explained why she didn’t really care about social distancing.

Today 18-year-old Aima and Tash, 21, were named as posting a series of hard hitting social media messages slamming Britain for being a ‘racist country’ and claiming that ‘police brutality’ will kill black people before coronavirus does.