From eggs to milkshakes a great British tradition of protest from the London crowd of the 1790s to Clacton & Barnsley in 2024
A long tradition in political protest
Nigel Farage engaged with a banana milkshake after leaving Wetherspoons in Clacton. As Farage is a great defender of British traditions he will no doubt recognise this as one. Eggs and milkshakes create a cleaning bill and perhaps damage pride but they do not cause injury. He also had a stone thrown at him in Barnsley(it missed). There was also an unrelated protest against his racism that veteran liar Farage tried to blame.
Politicians condemning the milkshaking were in the main the usual authoritarian suspects(aka Starmerites) and like many such actions historically its unclear who exactly was behind. Perhaps it was an anti-Faragist campaigner, perhaps it was a Farage stunt. No matter these things are part of the democratic election tradition when politicians have to actually meet the crowd and sometimes the mob too.
In 2023 a person who pleaded not guilty to throwing an egg at King Charles in York (it missed) was found guilty of threatening behaviour with the judge describing the egg throwing as ‘unlawful violence’. It’s a reminder that judges cannot be counted to uphold historic democratic methods of registering a protest, albeit the reasons for the protest on this occasion were not particularly progressive. Again that is also a feature of history
E.P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class records that when a perjurer was placed in the pillory in the 1790s the London crowd pelted him with eggs. Yet when a political radical suffered the same fate a few days later the crowd brought him glasses of wine to drink, which Farage would certainly have preferred.
In more recent times egg throwing has been officially recognised as a legitimate protest. An anti-fascist arrested for throwing a(traditional rotten) egg at a National Front march in Wood Green in 1977, known as the ‘Battle of Wood Green’, was acquitted as the judge noted that it was indeed a traditional form of political protest.
John Prescott, who also egged on the campaign trail, didn’t agree (he whacked the egg thrower) but ultimately a point is made and no harm is done beyond making the person egged look silly and a dry cleaning bill.
Of course in the era of more authoritarian Governments egg throwers are invariably arrested. That doesn’t alter the reality that be it eggs or milkshakes such protests are part of an historic British democratic tradition
The art of lobbing food at politicians is actually a lot older. Suetonius records that Vaspasian whilst still a pro-consul was once pelted with turnips by an angry populace.