Pro-EU demonstration at Last Night of the Proms

14 September 2019, 21:42

A pro-EU demonstration outside the Royal Albert Hall in south Kensington.
A pro-EU demonstration outside the Royal Albert Hall in south Kensington. Picture: PA

By Sylvia DeLuca

Dozens of audience members waved EU flags and wore blue berets as the Last Night of the Proms began tonight at the Royal Albert Hall.

Anti-Brexit campaign group the EU Flags Proms Team helped organise the stunt for the fourth year in a row.

Prior to the concert, the activists claimed to have amassed 50,000 EU flags to hand out across the various Last Night of the Proms events.

Kate Hobbs, of the EU Flags Proms Team, said she hoped the flags would be a "timely reminder" to the audience that music is a "universal language which unites people".

At the end of each act on Saturday evening, crowds could be seen waving union jacks and European Union flags from their seats. Others sat wearing blue EU berets.

The EU Flags Proms Team first co-ordinated the stunt back in 2016 and have repeated it each year at the annual classical music festival.

The campaign group said the initiative was crowdfunded by a group of "music lovers" to ensure the EU flag would be waved alongside the union jack at the event.

"We were keen to demonstrate that it is possible to be patriotic at the same time as maintaining a European and internationalist identity," the EU Flags Proms Team said.