Police have charged a man after objects from a building site were thrown at Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage on the campaign trail yesterday, prompting the campaigner to express concern about the state of debate and public conduct in Britain.
28-year-old Josh Greally of Clowne, Chesterfield was charged with “using threatening, abusive, insulting words and behaviour with intent to cause fear or provoke unlawful violence”, reports The Sheffield Star. He has been released on bail and has been ordered to appear before a magistrate later this month.
The charges came after an arrest on Monday of a man wearing a red hoody-type top filmed throwing refuse from a streetside building site at Nigel Farage, who was on the top of his campaign bus at the time. This itself was just the second such attempted assault on Mr Farage in a week, with a woman arrested last Tuesday for throwing a milkshake in the campaigner’s face.
As reported on Tuesday:
The unidentified man appeared to have barged his way onto a roadside construction site and picked another object from a storage bin among the building materials and threw that before being manhandled away by construction workers. Running from the scene, the man was tackled by a police officer.
South Yorkshire Police told Breitbart News: “We have arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of public order offences following disorder in Barnsley Town Centre today.
“It is believed that the man threw objects from a nearby construction area. A suspect was quickly detained and remains in police custody.”
After two attacks against Mr Farage in just seven days, the government has belatedly stepped in and offered him government-coordinated security. The Daily Telegraph reports the Home Office has offered to provide additional private security workers to Mr Farage — he already has his own team — but not a police detail.
Responding to the attacks, Mr Farage has said “our Democratic process is directly under threat… It’s an attempt to crush democracy, it is worrying and it is frightening”.
He vowed to keep fighting, saying: “I will not surrender to the mob, I will not stop campaigning, this democratic process must continue.”