Trafalgar Square sits at the heart of London, flanked by the National Gallery and within walking distance of the Houses of Parliament. Since it opened to the public in the 1840s, it has drawn far more than tourists. Its wide open ground and proximity to government buildings made it a natural gathering point for anyone who wanted those in power to hear them. Speakers climbed the bases of statues and the steps of the National Gallery to address crowds below. Banners stretched across the stone. Chants echoed off the surrounding buildings.
The authorities understood the square’s potential from the start. The fountains — now one of its most photographed features — were installed partly to reduce the open floor space available to large crowds. The tactic did not stop the protests. It barely slowed them.
The suffragette movement was among the most prominent early causes to use the square. In 1908, Keir Hardie and Emmeline Pankhurst stood together before a crowd demanding votes for women.
The following year, Emmeline’s daughter Christabel took to the square as well, continuing the campaign with the same urgency.
In 1910, playwright George Bernard Shaw appeared at an anti-vivisection protest, while activist Charlotte Despard addressed her own crowd the same year. The square was hosting multiple causes across a single decade, and each one drew on the square’s visibility and symbolic weight.
Emmeline Pankhurst returned to the square in 1916 alongside Norah Dacre Fox, this time to speak on the Rumanian Crisis — proof that the suffragette leaders saw Trafalgar Square as a platform for international concerns, not just domestic ones.
Through the 1920s and 1930s, the square became a rallying point for workers, the unemployed, and those watching the rise of fascism in Europe with alarm. In 1927, a crowd gathered there to memorialize Sacco and Vanzetti, the two Italian-American anarchists executed in the United States that same year. By 1932, mass unemployment had driven thousands to the square to protest their conditions directly.
In 1934, the Hunger Marchers brought their desperation directly to the capital. Two years later, journalist Hannen Swaffer addressed blind marchers at the square — a demonstration that disability and poverty were being ignored by the government.
1937 was a particularly turbulent year at the square. Sir Oswald Mosley led a fascist march through the area, which brought direct, violent confrontations with both communist counter-protesters and police. Young and old demonstrators clashed with officers in scenes that made international headlines.
That same year, Ellen Wilkinson addressed a demonstration in support of the International Labour Policy on Spain, and Ben Tillett led a protest against Japanese military aggression in China. The square was absorbing the anxieties of a world lurching toward another global war.
As Spain fell to Franco in 1939, both Lord Strabolgi and Dr. Edith Summerskill addressed separate protests in the square against what demonstrators called the betrayal of Spanish democracy.
During the Second World War, the square remained active. Lady Nancy Astor spoke there in 1941 demanding equal injury compensation for women in wartime. That same year, mass meetings pushing for Allied aid to Russia drew enormous crowds — some of the largest gatherings the square had seen.
In 1942, a rally demanding the opening of a second front against Nazi Germany featured Fred Cotton addressing a large crowd. By 1943, the square hosted an Allied nations ‘Wings for Victory’ march with American contingents marching alongside British participants.
The post-war years brought new causes. In 1944, Dr. Haden Guest led a demonstration against British policy in Greece. In 1945, speakers rallied in support of striking London dockers. A 1946 spinsters’ rally demanded pension rights at age 55. Each demonstration made a specific, targeted demand — the square was not used for vague discontent but for precise political pressure.
By the late 1940s, labour politics dominated the square. Willie Gallacher launched his party’s election campaign there in 1949, and dockworkers on strike used the square as their public stage the same year.
The 1950s saw the nuclear question dominate public debate. In 1957, a mass meeting against nuclear weapons testing filled the square. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — CND — made Trafalgar Square the finishing point of its famous protest marches. American singer and activist Paul Robeson spoke there in 1959 at an anti-H-bomb demonstration.
Into the 1960s, Ban the Bomb rallies continued. Some demonstrators were arrested directly in the square. The Committee of 100 — a direct-action offshoot of CND — organised its own sit-down protest meetings there in 1961. That same year, Christopher Chataway addressed a Young Conservatives rally, a reminder that the square was used across the political spectrum.
In 1962, nurses took to the square to protest their pay — a rare workplace demonstration by a profession not typically associated with strikes. That same year, a National Socialist Party rally and a separate clash between police and members of the British Union of Fascists showed that far-right politics continued to collide with the square’s history of opposition.
Anti-apartheid demonstrations became a fixture through the 1960s and beyond, with the South African Embassy on the edge of the square making it a direct target for protesters. Woodrow Wyatt addressed an anti-apartheid meeting in 1963. Oliver Tambo, then leader of the African National Congress in exile, spoke at the South African Freedom Day Rally in 1968.
The Vietnam War drew some of the decade’s largest crowds. Actress Vanessa Redgrave led demonstrators toward the U.S. Embassy in 1966, and returned with her brother Corin to an anti-Vietnam War rally in 1968. In 1969, Madame Nguyen Thi Binh — a senior figure in the Vietnamese communist movement — arrived at the end of a CND march at the square.
The early 1970s saw the square host demonstrations on several fronts at once. A TUC march against the Industrial Relations Bill arrived from Speaker’s Corner in 1971. Women’s rights campaigners filled the square demanding equality that same year. Bernadette Devlin, the Irish republican politician, addressed a rally there in 1971. A Women’s Liberation Street Theatre group used the square to protest against the Festival of Light.
Miners’ families used the square as a platform during the industrial disputes of the 1970s and 1980s. Supporters of the National Abortion Campaign marched there in 1976. That same year, peace campaigners from Northern Ireland — including Joan Baez, Betty Williams, and Mairead Corrigan — arrived at the square after the Ulster Peace People march.
Gay rights demonstrators marched to the square in 1978 for a rally organized by the National Gay News Defence Committee. Two years later, CND filled the square again as Cold War tensions escalated with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The most violent episode in the square’s modern history came in March 1990. An anti-poll tax demonstration — protesting Margaret Thatcher’s deeply unpopular Community Charge — turned into a full-scale riot. Demonstrators pelted police with missiles. Cars were set on fire. Injuries and arrests numbered in the hundreds. It remains one of the most significant civil disturbances in post-war British history.
The 1990s and 2000s brought fresh waves of protest. Gay rights activists staged a sit-down protest in the Haymarket in 1994. Anti-capitalist demonstrators clashed with riot police in 2000, with some photographed by police monitoring the crowds. Pro-hunting campaigners also used the square that year, demonstrating that protest there was never the property of any single ideology.
In 2002, British Muslims gathered at the square to protest Israeli actions against Palestinians. May Day protests the same year drew demonstrators to the square once again. In 2003, a woman was led away by police during May Day protests — one arrest among many that year as the global anti-war movement intensified following the invasion of Iraq.
Anti-nuclear protesters returned to the square in 2004 for another CND-organised march, and a separate anti-war protest organised by CND took place the same year. Islamophobia rallies brought demonstrators to the square in 2006, adding to a long list of causes that had claimed the same stone ground.
Security cameras now watch over the square constantly, a visible sign of how authorities monitor public assembly in the modern city.
CND marches against military strikes on Afghanistan brought further crowds to the square, as did anti-war protests linking Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park in coordinated demonstrations across central London.
