Piers Corbyn leads anti-lockdown protest in Sheffield and brands Covid-19 a 'hoax'

There was a heavy police presence with dozens of officers, some mounted on horses, covering the crowd of people who were standing apart from each other.

Protesters - some who came from as far as Milton Keynes, Manchester and London - held signs including ‘it’s a hoax. Lies, lies, lies’, ‘freedom over fear’ and ‘curfews equal nazification’ and there were various chants shouted including 'we are anti vax'.

Leigh Stinchcombe, who lives in Sheffield, said: “I love my family, I can’t go and see my nan or close friends because they are stopping us from going there now. I am getting sick of it. I wish things could all go back to normal. I’m missing my singing group, we are doing Zoom and we don’t want to do Zoom anymore, I want to go back to meeting together and seeing people."

James Freeman, who came from Manchester, said he believed coronavirus symptoms were being caused by the rollout of 5G and that he was not worried about Covid-19 because he thinks it is a hoax, despite studies disproving this.

He said: “We are getting out and saying we have had enough of this fascist tyranny.”

A number of speakers stood at the Peace Gardens to address the crowds.

Piers Corbyn, the brother of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and who was arrested by South Yorkshire Police at a similar protest in the same spot on September 5, was one of the speakers.

He said: “The whole thing [coronavirus] is an orchestrated lie taking away your rights. It is a hoax from start to finish and the way we are going to win is we are going to have to actively break and be seen to be breaking the lockdown.”

Mr Corbyn then started a ‘no more lockdowns’ chant. His speech continued with allegations including that Parliament is a 'brainwashing institution' with 'fake scientists' who are 'paid liars'.

He added: "The main thing we have to get across to the public is the Covid measures are not to control Covid, they are there to control you.”

The protest was part of a series of rallies taking place on different days around the country.

On the same day as the protest in Sheffield, the city was put in a Tier 2 lockdown - meaning people from different households cannot gather indoors and only gather in groups of up to six outside.

Last week Greg Fell, director for public health in Sheffield, said there was a sustained increase each week in the number of people hospitalised and put on ventilated beds due to Covid-19. He added we are beginning to see Covid recorded on death certificates again following a period without this.

Over the past seven days up to October 3, Sheffield was recording an average of 237 positive cases a day and the average age of those testing positive was 28. Mr Fell said it was of 'great concern' that this creeps up to older, more at risk, age groups.