Police seek protester after footage shows Reform audience pulling hair

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Several protesters disrupted Nigel Farage's speech at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham on Friday.

They were quickly bundled out of the room amid boos and heckles from the crowd, and taunts from Mr Farage as he pushed on with his speech.

One woman who stood up to disrupt the speech can be seen in video footage being removed from the room. While several security guards remove her, members of the crowd appear to grab at her face and hair, and hit her with a walking stick.

The heavy-handed approach to the removal of the protester, and the involvement of members of the crowd, has drawn criticism online.

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West Midlands Police has said in a statement that they are aware of the video circulating online, but have not received a complaint from the woman involved.

They said: "We’re aware of a video circulating from the Reform UK Conference showing an incident with a protester.

"We haven’t received a complaint but would ask the woman involved to come forward and contact us so we can carry out enquiries.

"Anyone with any information should contact us on 101 quoting log number 924 of 5 September."

Demonstrators were thrown out of the main conference hall four times at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

They interrupted Me Farage’s keynote speech, shortly after his deputy Richard Tice had a banner displayed during his own address referencing the scandal around a donation to Mr Farage.

The Reform UK leader laughed during the disruption and said: “We’ve got a screamer. Oh dear.”

Addressing the conference hall, the Reform leader said, “that poor young girl, she looked like she was going to do herself an injury”, before adding, “boring, boring, boring”.

Activist group Climate Resistance claimed responsibility for the protest.

In a comment they said they were “horrified at the violence” from Reform conference audience members.

The group also said the protester is considering whether to come forward to police.

Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf condemned members who pulled the hair of a heckler during Mr Farage’s speech.

Asked whether he condemned the actions of some members who appeared in footage pulling the woman’s hair and grabbing her head, the party’s home affairs spokesman told a conference fringe event: “On the question of whether I condemn people punching people, yes, I condemn people punching people.”

Yet former Conservative cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, who is now a Reform UK member, said protesters “are not really going to get gentle treatment”.

She told a fringe event: “Of course no-one should be violent, no-one should throw punches, but… no-one should come into this conference and try and disrupt it.”

Mr Farage told broadcasters on Saturday: “It’s all one way, isn’t it? I can have milkshakes chucked in my face, be bashed over the head with placards and that’s all fine. That’s absolutely fine.

“Yet, well, we have a big event that people have paid a lot of money to come to and we get people there trying to disrupt it and we remove them. Suddenly we’re in the wrong. Utter nonsense.”

He added: “This is just also one-sided. It is ridiculous. There were people there trying to disrupt our conference. We always have them. We always have them and we remove them quickly and expeditiously.”

LBC spoke to another protester who said she also experienced hair-pulling while she was being escorted out.

The woman, who said she has done quite a lot of conference disruptions, said that "this is by far the worst handling I've experienced".

She said: "I was yanked by my hair. I had people pull me in various different directions.

"I've already shown you the bruise that I've got on my arm, and this was within the first five minutes. I then got pulled— my hair pulled multiple times by the security guards.

"And then when I complained and said, please don't pull my hair again, I was put on the floor. And when they went to pick me up again, there was a security guard stood on my hair, which was obviously incredibly painful."

She added: "I would like to state that this is actually illegal behaviour, that it's not okay, and that it's not warranted.

"But I think it really highlights the kind of people that you can find at these kinds of places and the kind of behaviour that the Reform Party is willing to condone and promote."