Farmers’ tractor tax protest forced into last-minute move because Trafalgar Square is not big enough

Organisers behind a massive farmers’ protest in Trafalgar Square have been forced to move elsewhere because the space is too small to accommodate the number of people planning to attend.

The November 19 rally, set up by the Farming Forum, is now set to surpass its original 5,000-10,000 attendance as legions of farmers descend on London to protest Rachel Reeves’s controversial inheritance tax hikes on agricultural land.

Protesters will now be heading to Westminster to make their voices heard at the heart of Government – with farmers set to arrive at Victoria Embankment Gardens as early as 11am – but those gathered in the capital face a “tractor ban”.

Farming Forum founder Clive Bailye told The Telegraph: “We’ve been asked by the police not to bring tractors into London in what is effectively a tractor ban.

“But we’re not planning to do that. This is not about causing disruption. We don’t want trouble or blockades, especially given the family nature of the event.

“If Tuesday doesn’t work, the Government has picked a fight with the wrong people. If it comes to it, farmers can shut down every road and we don’t want to do that.”

In light of the “ban”, farmers’ children on toy tractors will lead the march – with politicians and farming advocates including Jeremy Clarkson expected to join them.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw – who has been extremely critical of Labour’s farming tax hikes – will also address crowds.

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An email to participants unearthed by The Independent asks them “to wear their boots and wellies as a sign of working people” in a jab at Labour’s claims that it would not impose extra taxes on “working people”.

The Countryside Alliance, set up in the late 1990s to protect rural communities from Tony Blair’s agricultural reforms, said it would be supporting the protests.

It has urged its supporters to stand in solidarity with farming families across the country – who it said had been “thrown under the bus” thanks to Labour’s inheritance tax raids.

But the protests come alongside dire warnings of “two-tier policing”.

Mike Neville, a retired Scotland Yard detective chief inspector, said: “The public do not want to see a contrast between the way the farmers are policed and the way more fashionable left-wing protesters are treated.

“They will not want to see farmers kettled while pro-Palestine activists are allowed to march freely and do what they want.”

Clarkson has said similar – he told The Sun last week: “Perhaps if I had draped my tractor in a Palestinian flag, it would be different.

“It seems that if you are from Just Stop Oil or protesting about Gaza, you can do what you want!”