YOU DO NOT GET TO PUT YOUR HANDS ON PROTESTERS: Watch the Full Reform UK Conference Footage
Whatever you think of the protesters, this is where the argument should stop: disagreement is not permission to put your hands on someone. Footage from Reform UK’s conference at Birmingham’s NEC appears to show people in the audience physically grabbing at protesters as they were being removed. The scenes are ugly, unnecessary and deeply revealing about what can happen when political opponents are treated not as citizens to be argued with, but as enemies to be humiliated, shouted down and physically dealt with.
Video: The New Arab/X. The clip is embedded for reporting, scrutiny and public-interest commentary.
UPDATE: Police are now carrying out enquiries
This story has moved significantly since it was first published. West Midlands Police says it is aware of the video circulating from the Reform UK conference and has asked the woman involved to come forward so officers can carry out enquiries. The force said it had not received a direct complaint at the time of its statement. Anyone with information has been asked to contact police on 101 quoting log 924 of 5 September 2026.
The public reporting is now more specific about what the footage shows. The Standard and LBC report that audience members can be seen pulling the woman’s hair and grabbing her head as she is removed, while a man in the audience is seen striking her with a walking stick. That does not amount to a criminal finding against any individual, but it is no longer accurate to describe this simply as an unclear scuffle for which there has been no police response. Police are actively seeking the woman and information about the incident.
Climate Resistance, which organised the protest, says it is horrified by the violence it says its protester faced and that she has been considering whether to contact police. The distinction remains important: an allegation, visible conduct on footage and a police enquiry are not the same thing as a charge or conviction. Truth Vs Hate will keep those lines clear while refusing to minimise what the footage appears to show.
The protester has now spoken publicly
LBC has now spoken directly to the woman shown being removed. She says she was hit and grabbed by her hair and jaw by attendees after challenging Nigel Farage during his keynote speech. She also accused Farage and some supporters of creating a climate in which violence is celebrated rather than confronted. Those are her allegations and her interpretation of what happened, not a court finding, but her first-hand account is now an important part of the evidence surrounding the incident.
LBC also spoke to another protester who said she experienced repeated hair-pulling during her own removal, including by security guards, and showed the broadcaster a bruise on her arm. That is a separate allegation and should be treated separately. It matters because accountability cannot stop at whichever part of the footage is most politically convenient: if audience members crossed a line, investigate it; if security staff used unnecessary force, investigate that too.
Truth Vs Hate is not going to soften that judgement because the protesters were disruptive. Protest is often disruptive. Nor are we going to pretend that every person seen in the footage has been identified as a Reform member when that has not been established. Reform’s own conference information says the event was open to members, business leaders and first time attendees. What the available material does show is a political protest being met with a level of physical hostility that should trouble anyone who claims to care about free speech, public order or democracy.
What happened in the hall
Press Association reporting says Nigel Farage’s keynote speech on Friday was interrupted several times. Two women stood in the hall holding a banner reading “Reform works for billionaires”. The audience booed and shouted “out”, and television footage showed one woman being carried from the hall by security. Climate Resistance said it organised the disruption.
The part that deserves much more scrutiny is what happened around that removal. Footage circulating from the incident, together with the stills reviewed by Truth Vs Hate, appears to show people around the protester making physical contact with her head, face and body while she is already surrounded and being removed. Security staff have a job to do when somebody disrupts a private event. Angry people in the audience do not suddenly acquire the same authority, and they certainly do not acquire a moral right to pile in because they dislike the message on a banner.
Farage laughed. That matters too
As the disruption unfolded, Farage laughed and referred to a protester as a “screamer”. He later said the young woman looked as though she might do herself an injury, then dismissed the interruption as “boring”. Those remarks were reported by Press Association. Farage was not reported as instructing anybody to attack a protester, and Truth Vs Hate is not claiming that he did. But political leadership is about more than avoiding an explicit instruction to use violence.
Leaders set the emotional temperature of a room. They tell supporters, through words and tone, what deserves seriousness and what deserves contempt. When somebody is being forcibly removed and the person on stage turns the moment into entertainment, the message is not one of restraint, dignity or respect for dissent. It is that the dissenter is ridiculous, beneath empathy and fair game for the crowd’s scorn.
This was not the first time Farage has answered a heckler with personal mockery. At a Reform event in Scotland earlier this year, he mocked a protester’s appearance and employment as the person was removed. That style may get a cheer. It may make good social media. It may help transform politics into a performance of winners humiliating losers. But it also deserves a much harder question: what political culture are you building when contempt becomes part of the show?
Reform’s response: condemnation, qualification and a joke about the stick
The responses from senior Reform figures are now part of the story. Zia Yusuf was asked about footage of the woman’s hair being pulled and her head being grabbed and said he condemned people punching people. That is an important acknowledgement that physical violence is unacceptable, but it sits alongside markedly different reactions from other prominent figures at the conference.
Nadine Dorries, now a Reform member, said protesters were not really going to receive “gentle treatment”. She also said nobody should be violent or throw punches, but immediately qualified that by arguing people should not enter the conference to disrupt it. The problem with that formulation is straightforward: the right to remove a disruptor and the right of members of a crowd to use violence are entirely different questions. One does not excuse the other.
Party chairman Lee Anderson went further into uncomfortable territory. After reporting said a man in the audience had hit the protester with a walking stick, Anderson told the conference he did not condone that behaviour but joked about having a whip round for a new walking stick. Whatever the intention, turning an alleged act of violence into a punchline risks trivialising precisely the conduct political leaders should be discouraging.
Farage, meanwhile, argued that criticism of Reform was one-sided, pointing to occasions when he himself has been targeted with milkshakes and placards and saying disruptive protesters at a paid event are removed quickly. He is right that attacks on him are also unacceptable. That is not a defence of what happened here. The democratic standard is not complicated: throwing something at Farage is wrong, and an audience member striking or grabbing a protester is wrong. Consistency is the point.
Rhetoric does not pull a hand. It can still shape a crowd
It would be irresponsible to draw a straight line from a politician’s sentence to a particular person’s physical action and declare causation proven. Human behaviour is not that simple, and the evidence here does not establish it. But the opposite claim is equally unserious. Rhetoric matters. Repetition matters. The way leaders describe opponents matters. Political movements create norms about who deserves to be heard, who deserves sympathy and who can be dismissed as an obstacle to be removed.
When politics is constantly framed as a battle between the real people and an enemy within, when critics are treated as saboteurs rather than citizens, and when humiliation becomes a routine response to dissent, the space for restraint shrinks. Supporters can begin to hear not “person I profoundly disagree with” but “person who is against us”. That does not excuse anyone who crosses a physical line. It is precisely why responsible leaders should be careful about cultivating a politics of contempt.
Reform has built much of its appeal around the idea that ordinary people have been ignored, silenced and patronised by a political establishment. If that principle means anything, it cannot suddenly disappear when the person speaking is a critic of Reform. Free speech is not a loyalty reward. It is easiest to defend when you agree with the speaker and most important when you do not.
There is a simple democratic standard
A political conference is entitled to remove people who disrupt proceedings. Security can intervene. Organisers can revoke access. Police can act if the law is broken. None of that requires an audience to turn a removal into a scrum. A protester being irritating, provocative or politically hostile does not become an invitation for strangers to grab them.
And this standard does not change with the party logo. If Labour supporters did this to a Reform protester, it would be wrong. If Conservative supporters did it, it would be wrong. If Greens or Liberal Democrats did it, it would be wrong. Political violence and mob intimidation do not become more acceptable because the target said something you hate.
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction here for a movement that talks loudly about law and order, free speech and protecting people from disorder. Those principles cannot mean “law and order for the people we dislike, freedom for the people on our side”. The test is whether you apply them when your own crowd is angry.
TruthVsHate.com View
The footage matters because it captures something bigger than one protest. Britain’s political culture is becoming more comfortable with contempt. People are increasingly encouraged to see neighbours, migrants, activists, journalists, political rivals and whole communities not merely as wrong, but as threats. That is fertile ground for rage, clicks, votes and influence. It is also corrosive to the basic democratic idea that opponents remain people with rights.
Reform and Farage are entitled to attack the protesters’ argument. They are entitled to call the stunt misguided, dishonest or absurd. But a party that wants to govern Britain should be able to say something equally simple about its own event: nobody should be physically attacked for peaceful political expression, and security, not an angry audience, deals with disruption. If people in that hall crossed the line from objection to unjustified physical aggression, Reform should condemn it without qualification.
The strongest movements do not need to fear a banner. The strongest leaders do not need to turn dissenters into objects of ridicule while a crowd closes around them. And a democracy worthy of the name should be able to survive somebody shouting something unpopular without anybody deciding that their hands are part of the argument.
What is verified and what is not
Verified reporting now confirms that West Midlands Police is aware of the video, has asked the woman to come forward and is carrying out enquiries. The force said no direct complaint had been received when it issued its appeal. LBC has interviewed the woman shown in the widely circulated footage, and both LBC and Press Association reporting describe audience members pulling her hair and grabbing her head. Reporting also describes a man in the audience striking her with a walking stick.
The woman’s account to LBC is evidence of what she says she experienced, but it does not by itself establish criminal liability. At the time of this update, Truth Vs Hate has not seen a public announcement of an arrest, charge or court finding arising from this specific incident. We also have not established the identity or Reform membership status of every person seen making physical contact, and we will not attempt to identify unnamed attendees from their faces.
What can now be said with greater confidence is that this was not merely a disagreement over whether protesters should have been removed. There is footage serious enough for police to seek the woman involved, a first-hand account alleging she was hit and grabbed, public reporting of a walking-stick strike, and senior Reform figures responding to the conduct. Those developments strengthen the case for scrutiny while making careful attribution even more important.
Sources
Truth Vs Hate links the evidence because readers should be able to inspect the reporting, compare accounts and decide whether our conclusions are justified. We separate what can be seen, what witnesses allege, what police have said and what remains unproven.
Comments