An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History.
In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections campaign across the United Kingdom. First it was former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, then UKIP’s misogynist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, and now Nigel Farage as he was out campaigning in Newcastle for his new Brexit Party. When Farage visited Edinburgh, the local police advised McDonald’s not to sell milkshakes, and there has been further news that Farage refused to step off his tour bus after being threatened with further milkshakings.
This has followed on from the egging of right-wing politicians in Australia and of neo-Nazis in the United States. Some commentators have argued these milkshakings and eggings are a form of political violence, while defenders of those who have thrown milkshakes and eggs have countered that these are nonviolent forms of protest, designed to humiliate rather than injure. Compared with the prospect of violence from the Far Right, the dousing of political opponents in foodstuffs is relatively minor.
On social media, opponents of the Far Right have been quick to use eggs and milkshakes as cultural symbols of anti-fascism. The throwing of foodstuffs at politicians has a long history in most parts of the world, but there is a discernible history of foodstuffs being used to combat the Far Right in Britain going back to the 1930s and the fights against Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF).
In June 1934, shortly after the violent clashes between anti-fascists and the BUF at Olympia, eggs and fruit were thrown at the BUF in Melksham, Wiltshere, alongside a car being overturned. Later in the same year, eggs and bottles were thrown at the BUF in Gillingham, Kent. At the “Battle of Cable Street” in October 1936, various accounts say eggs, rotten fruit, and flour were hurled at the marching fascists and the police. In the weeks following Cable Street, eggs, vegetables, and tomatoes bombarded fascist speakers in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
The Cable Street Mural commemorating the Battle of Cable Street, London, England (photograph by jo-marshall via WikiMedia Commons, CC BY 2.0).
After the war, Oswald Mosley still attracted protests involving food. After being invited to speak at the Cambridge Union in 1958, Mosley was hit in the face with a custard pie. Invited again to speak in 1960 to the same union society, Mosley was slapped with a jelly across the face, while protestors chanted, “Sharpeville, Notting Hill.”
When the fascists attempted to go out in public, they were also confronted with foodstuffs. When Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement held a rally in Trafalgar Square in July 1962, he had tomatoes and rotten eggs pelted at him. A few months later, Mosley attended a Union Movement (the successor organization to the BUF) event in Bethnal Green in East London and endured a hail of fruit and bad eggs while he tried to speak. As he fled to his car, he was egged again. When Jordan married Francoise Dior in Yorkshire in 1963, eggs were among the things thrown at those attending the Nazi wedding.
In the 1970s, when the National Front (NF) held provocative rallies, there was a clash in North London in April 1977 at the “Battle of Wood Green” (with a young Jeremy Corbyn involved in organizing the protest). Bags of flour, rotten eggs, and fruit were gathered and thrown at the NF.
During the protests against visiting hard-right politicians in the 1970s and 1980s, several MPs had foodstuff thrown at them. Sir Keith Joseph, one of Margaret Thatcher’s early supporters, was pelted with flour bombs and eggs when he came to speak at Essex University in February 1977. Home Office Minister David Waddington was doused in beer in December 1985 when he tried to address a meeting at the University of Manchester, and Enoch Powell had a ham sandwich thrown at him the following year during a visit to Bristol University.
And the tradition of egging the Far Right continued into the twenty-first century. Days after winning a seat in the 2009 European elections, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin, was egged as he tried to hold a press conference. When the English Defence League attempted to march through Nottingham in August 2016, eggs (alongside the protestor’s popular choice, smoke bombs) were thrown as anti-fascists largely outnumbered the small EDL crowd.
After the egging of Nick Griffin, Gerry Gable, the long-time editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight wrote that while seeing foodstuffs being dumped over Griffin’s head “certainly brought a smile to many people’s face,” it was “going to take more than a few well-aimed eggs and worthy placards to finish the BNP for good.” This is certainly the case, but a well-aimed egg or milkshake (especially in the era of social media, where such spectacles can be shared and replayed by millions) can lift the spirits of anti-fascists everywhere.
As mentioned earlier, throwing of foodstuffs, particularly eggs, tomatoes, fruit, and bags of flour, has long been used in protests across the globe, as well as the spectacle of hitting a political opponent with some sort of dessert. Historians of protest would do well to weave these often seemingly isolated incidents into a narrative of how various groups of protestors have used foodstuffs as part of their tactics, either as a defense during street confrontations or to gain media attention.
Evan Smith is a Research Fellow in History in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, South Australia. He has written widely on the British Left, anti-racist activism, and political extremism. He blogs at Hatful of History and tweets from @hatfulofhistory. He is currently writing a book on the history of “no platform” at British universities.
Cite as: Smith, Evan. 2019. “Love milkshakes, hate racism: A brief history of throwing food at the Far Right.” FocaalBlog, 25 May. http://www.focaalblog.com/2019/05/25/evan-smith-love-milkshakes-hate-racism-a-short-history-of-throwing-food-at-the-far-right/