More than 50,000 are to march in London when the president visits Britain – and for many it will be their first demo

With less than a weekto go until Donald Trump arrives in the UK, preparations are being made for protests up and down the country. More than 50,000 are expected to march in London on Friday in what has been billed as a carnival of resistance with dozens of organising blocs – including Vegans Against Trump, Muslims Against Trump, Trumpeters Against Trump – rallying in the capital.

More than 1.8 million people signed a petition last May to protest against Trump being invited for a state visit. Although it has been downgraded to a less formal working visit, a sense of anger has spread beyond seasoned demonstrators.

The Stop Trump Coalition has helped organise dozens of coaches to London, and plenty of people are expected to protest for the very first time. “I’ve thought this ever since he got in – that this chap is so dangerous and I’m going to London to go to protest, even though I’ve never done it before,” says Robin Hodgson, 76. “I’ve been saying it for months and months and nobody really took me seriously.” Hodgson, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, will be driving 17 miles to Swindon and then taking the coach to London. “There must be a lot of people like me,” he says, “and we need to get up and go on the bus and the train just to show him and teach him.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin Hodgson, 76, lives in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Hodgson says his determination springs from his anger at the xenophobia rising across the country. “You saw it after the referendum here, people thinking you could have the old days back when ‘we ruled the world’ and ‘things were made in Britain’. You can’t turn the clock back.”

As to why has he been compelled by this march, rather than the anti-Brexit ones, Hodgson is clear. “Trump preaches hatred and greed and he is winding people up into a furore. Those are like the Nazi rallies, it is that serious.” Will he be carrying a placard? “I don’t know if I will have one of those, I want to be there to be heard.”

Woody Johnson, the US ambassador to Britain, has denied that the itinerary was organised to avoid the protests – which will include a giant “angry Trump baby” balloon flying over Westminster with the permission of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. The president’s schedule includes a black-tie dinner at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire and a meeting with the prime minister at Chequers in Buckinghamshire, instead of Downing Street. “The president is not avoiding anything,” Johnson said, before confirming that Donald and Melania Trump would not be travelling by motorcade while in the UK, but by helicopter. “The president is merely trying to get as impactful a trip as he can get in a 24-hour period.”

For Michelle Garcia, a 26-year-old office assistant from the US, Trump’s visit is hugely personal. “This weighs heavily on me,” she says. “I don’t want to be terrorised in my new home as I was in the US.”

Garcia was born in Mexico and moved to the US with her parents as a baby, where the family settled in Sacramento, California. As undocumented migrants, they hold precarious Daca status. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allows them to stay in the US but must be renewed every two years. Under the Trump presidency they could be sent back to Mexico at any time. “There were all these threats to us in the run-up to the election and things changed so quickly.” She describes the panicked scramble her family faced and a blanket of fear that fell after the election. “It affected us emotionally and physically.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michelle Garcia, 26, an office assistant from the US, is the child of Mexican migrants. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Garcia left the US a month after the president’s inauguration, having been granted a spousal visa to the UK with her British-American husband. She left knowing that for some years at least she would not be able to go back. “And now we’ve found out my mom has stage-three cancer. I can’t go back, they won’t let me in and I will never see her again. That’s something, you know…” Her voice breaks. “I’m very angry, yes I got away but a lot of people don’t get to have that and it’s horrible. I’m going to be there [at the demonstration on Friday] in solidarity for all those people.”

It’s stories like these that have spurred Tarryn Sessions, 30, a South African recently arrived in Britain, to march. “It’s my first protest,” she says. “I’ve been following American politics with a growing sense of alarm. I’m just very angry and very frightened about the future of not just America, but the world – and the America situation affects that.”

Sessions is clear that visibility is important. “Lots of people have said we shouldn’t show up because Trump loves the attention,” she says. “But he is not somebody who thrives off negative attention, it actually upsets him. I don’t think it’s something he will get a kick out of and I think it’s important to say ‘yes, we are not Americans ourselves, but we do care and it does impact the world.” She says she feels a sense of urgency. “Being on the streets making our voices heard feels more productive than arguing on Twitter.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tarryn Sessions, 30, has recently arrived from South Africa. Photograph: Handout

Cheddar Gorgeous, a 34-year-old drag artist and anthropologist from Manchester, is bringing a group of first-time protesters to London, all in extravagant party drag. “Pride marches have become very different in the UK, it’s less about a political message and more a commercialised celebration of LGBTQ people,” he says. “Those marches haven’t had the same political resonance.”

He counts the anti-Trump march as his first demonstration as “a proper grown-up now, increasingly aware that there are things in the world that I am not happy about, movements in the world that I’m not happy about that are destructive to people and the planet.”

Like many, Gorgeous considers the US presidency to affect more than just America itself. “Trump is a by-product of a much more sinister energy in the world and I think we can highlight things like racism and sexism and homophobia [on this march] but ultimately, they are all intertwined with unregulated free market economics. When the economic system slows down and becomes clunky, and wealth is extracted from the top, people turn to fascism. Trump suggests: ‘it’s not your fault, it’s somebody else’s fault’. And the easiest targets will always be marginalised people who are different to you: women, LGBTQ people, migrants.”

How will he be getting his message heard? He laughs. “One thing a drag queen does really well is to get people to look at them and we as a group can draw attention to all these issues.”