THOUSANDS of republican campaigners are expected to gather on King Charles’s coronation route on Saturday, organisers have said.
The anti-monarchy group Republic has said it expects 1500 and 2000 protesters to gather at Trafalgar Square, which the King will pass when he heads from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey where the coronation ceremony takes place.
Speakers at the rally, expected to reach its height between 11am and midday while the King is in the abbey, include human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Labour MP Clive Lewis and republican campaigners from the Netherlands and Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland).
The group said the main protest will take place beside the statue of Charles I, the tyrannical English king who was the country’s only head of state to be executed.
In a statement, Republic said: “Our ambition is simple: abolish the monarchy and move to a parliamentary republic.
“Take what we have, a parliamentary system with a prime minister and make it genuinely democratic, top to bottom.
“An elected head of state would not run the government, but act independently of the government to guard the constitution and represent the nation.
“This is a model that works well across Europe, in countries such as Ireland, Iceland, Germany, Finland, the Baltic States, Austria and so on.”
It comes amid a backdrop of widespread apathy towards the event, with a recent poll showing just 15% of people were “very interested” in the coronation and rising republican sentiment across the UK.
Scots are particularly disinterested in the royal family, according to a study released earlier this month which showed the majority viewed the monarchy as “mostly an English thing”.
