Plans to stage an ‘enough is enough’ protest in High Wycombe in the wake of a knife attack that left three girls dead on Monday didn’t pick up momentum – with a few campaigners on both sides instead laying down their signs to listen to a busker’s rendition of ‘It’s a wonderful world’.

The protest was one of dozens planned across the UK this weekend following the tragic stabbings at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport at the beginning of the week.

Police were on the ground from around 10am, with officers patrolling the High Street throughout the day, and while a few protesters and counter-protesters turned up, they were few and far between and the result was nothing comparable to the violent disorder seen in Southport, London and other areas in the last few days.

Instead, a guitar-armed busker stole focus from both those wearing Trump 2024 hats and holding signs calling for ‘the far right to be stopped’, with a rendition of ‘It’s a wonderful world’ that defused some of the tension from proceedings.

Mark Lewis, 46, an engineer from the Wycombe area, was one of the locals who had come out to “oppose” the expected protesters and said the counter-effort had come about organically, with the group meeting after arriving separately on the High Street.

He said: “I hoped it would rain and they’d get put off, but it looks like they’ve been put off anyway. I personally think the diversity in Wycombe is one of the things that’s great about this place.

“All of our friends are from different countries; my kids play with other kids from different cultures – why allow people to ruin that with hatred?”

Lincoln Mitchell, 56, a software designer whose father lives in Wycombe, was out protesting what he viewed as “dangerous and extreme Islamist views”, a cause he thinks is worth highlighting despite the Southport attacker’s family being from Rwanda – a fact revealed by authorities after an initial slew of misinformation online.

He said: “My dad is concerned about extreme terrorists of all kinds and, yes, extreme Islamist terrorists, especially with everything that’s happening in this country at the moment.

“We know now that (the Southport attacker) was not of Muslim descent, but it was my first impression because I think the Islamist ideology causes a lot of issues and we need to stand up to it. I don’t want to live in a society where you feel fearful.”

Strong views on each side culminated in little to no direct confrontation, however, and Reuben J. Brown, a 22-year-old magazine editor who was visiting from London, described the High Street scene as “proof that we in Britain really can all live together”.

He said: “You’ve got a bunch of pretty right-wing people around, some anti-protestors who have turned up and a bunch of normal Wycombe folk as well.

“And, at 2pm, we’re all just standing around enjoying a man playing guitar. It’s rare in Britain right now that you find a public square that really feels like a public square – people who maybe don’t agree on everything just coexisting in the same space.”