Today’s Sunday Express has denounced “extremists from left and right” who protested in London yesterday, contrasting them with the “dignity” of people observing two minutes’ silence at the Cenotaph. But the photo they chose for their front page shows how mistaken they are in their assumptions about what protesters look like.

The paper illustrated the “dignity” of Remembrance with a picture of a medal-wearing vicar bowing his head at the Cenotaph. What they almost certainly did not realise was that the medal-wearing vicar in question attended the anti-war march calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after he left the Remembrance ceremony.

The man was Tim Daplyn, a Church of England priest in Bristol. Had they realised that he was an anti-war protester – with a history of climate activism – the Express would surely have attacked him, or at least ignored him, rather than used him to illustrate the “dignity” in which they claim to believe.

Along with the Daily Mail, the Daily Express spent last week warning that there could be “violence” at the Cenotaph, with anti-war protesters “dishonouring” Remembrance Day. When it came to it, it was the far-right counter-protesters who violently attacked police near the Cenotaph, thus dishonouring Remembrance Day.

It must have been difficult for certain editors to know how to respond to the violence that their newspapers had fuelled.

The Sunday Express went with the headline “Dignity and Dishonour”, adding, “As the nation remembers our war dead, extremists from the left and right march for hate”.

They thus equated a peaceful march of hundreds of thousands of people calling for a ceasefire with a group of far-right thugs attacking police officers. The anti-war protest was not a march of left-wing extremists. The small minority who voiced support for Hamas or anti-semitism were indeed disgusting; it is misleading to suggest they were representative. Nor as it happens are they “extremists from the left”: Hamas is a right-wing group.

One one side of the Sunday Express front page is a masked protester, on the other is a man in a clerical collar with medals pinned to his chest, bowing his head. He looks exactly like the sort of person of whom the right-wing press would normally approve.

But as soon as I looked at the front pages this morning, I noticed that the man in question was wearing a white poppy as well as a red one. The Express may have overlooked this: they are usually very negative about white poppies (and the Mail attacked people wearing white poppies at Saturday’s march).

When I posted about this on Twitter, I received a response from Ed Bridges, who I know through the Peace Pledge Union. He directed me to a BBC News clip interviewing the man in question – who explained why he was going from the Cenotaph to the anti-war march.

With a bit more digging – and some much-appreciated help from a few people on social media – I discovered that the gentleman’s name is Tim Daplyn and he is a Church of England priest in Bristol. He is a British army veteran who was stationed in Northern Ireland.

He is also a member of Christian Climate Action and has protested alongside Greta Thunberg.

He told the BBC, “It’s been termed a pro-Palestinian demonstration, I think it’s a pro-peace demonstration.”

He added, “That is what it’s all about – old soldiers on Armstice Day calling for armstice. And there can’t be anything wrong with that… So much was got wrong in the past, in past conflicts and past warfare. So much is going wrong today. It’s up to us, and we owe it to those who went before, that we do better.”

You can watch Tim Daplyn’s BBC interview here.

Given how much effort the Express puts into smearing anti-war protesters, climate protesters and left-wingers generally, it might well be that their own prejudices led them to assume that protesters are scruffy people in hoods or masks. Their prejudices seem to have backfired on them. Sometimes protesters are medal-wearing vicars.