AROUND 100 people gathered in Bournemouth to protest against the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown restrictions, just two days before restrictions ease.

Protesters met yesterday at the town hall in Bournemouth and marched through to the Square and towards the beach

Signs read “people vaccinate out of fear, people refuse to vaccinate out of knowledge” and “end lockdown, save lives” as campaigners chanted “freedom”.

Bournemouth Echo: Protesters campaign against Covid restrictions in Bournemouth

Police officers and security guards oversaw the protest, which comes two days before the next stage of prime minister Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown.

One of the campaigners, 71-year-old Mike, said: “I don’t need to protest because I’m retired, I’ve got an easy life, I’m doing it for the children.

“I’m doing it for the youngsters who need an education who haven’t had an education, I’m doing it for the people who are scared stiff wearing a mask all the time, they’ve been wearing a mask for a year now and it hasn’t stopped this virus, what they call a virus.

“All them, Whitty, Hancock, they’re saying ‘save your granny’, well I’m sorry to say grannies die.

“They’re old, they die. They’re very good at the propaganda, poor old kids who can’t hug their grannies, can’t see their grannies, they’re terrified.

“How long is it going to go on for? The only way we’re going to stop it, is for people to stop it and to say ‘that’s enough’.

“Half of freedom is not freedom, we will not get total freedom back. Everybody thinks we’re conspiracy theorists, all I say to them is Google it, Google ‘the great reset’.”

Bournemouth Echo: Protesters campaign against Covid restrictions in Bournemouth

Another campaigner, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “The Covid virus, so called, is being used as a Trojan horse to bring in a dystopian society, and that’s quite obvious now.

“All the science that I’ve personally researched suggests it’s just a flu variant.

“We know that there’s another agenda, the precise nature of the agenda we don’t know. We know something is wrong, they’re up to know good, and people are now seeing this.”

On their march through the town, protesters could be seen asking people why they were wearing masks and questioning why security guards were present.

One protester said through a megaphone that 2020 was one of the “quietest years in NHS history”.