So let's talk about the protest...

We started at Gower St around noon, and already it was wall to wall people. One of our party picked up NO WAR placards and we waved them around after first ripping off the Mirror logos.

Going was slow cause there were SO MANY PEOPLE. I'm still flabbergasted and amazed by it all. It took us an hour to get around the British Museum. An hour down Shaftsbury. We gave up in Chinatown and took a drinks and Chinese buns break for a bit then got back in the fray at Picadilly Circus. With three streams of people trying to get into Picadilly, it took us half an hour to get across the square. Crazy. They made us march through a tunnel to get into Hyde Park. After marching for four hours, it was kind of anti-climactic. Stood around for a little while half listening to speeches, then it broke up. Amazed by the number of people, amazed by the mud. Started to walk home and there was a mini-protest starting at the American Embassy. We joked about running and getting our passport/greencard and starting a protest inside, but thought better of it.

The thing that amazed me the most was the waves of cheers. They seemed to errupt spontaneously every few minutes, they were low roars that you could hear half a mile away, then they'd sweep over you like a football chant, but SO LOUD and then sweep off. I wondered if they were sweeping back from Hyde Park all along the march routes. It was truly awe-inspiring.

Hyde Park really is so big you couldn't get an idea of the scale. Until you tried to walk around and FIND people, THEN you realised how many there were. "Like herding cats" as Ed said. Couldn't find any of my mates, they were just eaten by the crowd.

Hilton said he'd be easy to find, he'd be drumming with a samba group. Do you know how many drumming circles there were? (messaged me after, asking me to go protest at the American Embassy, but I just didn't think that was a good place for me to be. A bunch of hyped-up, angry people who have been protesting for five hours, and my accent? Recipe for trouble, I stayed away, fearing anti-American yuckiness...)

(marcello sorry i did hunt abt for you at rfh but just TOO MANY PEOPLE blimey!!)

we ended up next to the CUNT COVEN banner: "if you want to spill blood borrow ours" — mainly painted in menstrual flow apparently hurrah ew ew

Is this where we get to go "nyeah nyeah, we're so central..."

Can we scrap the Congestion charge, and just make it like it was today ALL THE TIME?

If this doesn't stop war I don't know what will.

(I am so tired)

Oh, and "War is menstral envy"

And it was "Give peas a chance by the Gardeners against war"

Unlike everyone else I thought Ken Livingstone magnificent.

The art of chanting, central in the 1980s and doubtless long before, is apparently dead. But only those who seriously attempt to resurrect it (eg: not me) should be allowed to be too haughty about this unfortunate fact.

I did try a chant of 'Maggie Maggie Maggie' at one point, but it didn't get beyond that first line.

(OK, I'm lying about the baby but the rest of it is true.)

Totally agree, I saw a little old lady in the middle of the Bastille pirhouetting on the cobbles in front of her husband as if to say 'Look, I'm walking here without the threat of instant death hanging over me!'

The Paris weather was intensely beautiful, actually it reminded me of the New York weather on 9/11. The traffic-free calm and sense of solidarity and compassion also reminded me of post-911 Lower Manhattan (before the flag-waving and propaganda set in). There was a similar sense of habitual enemies being united.

Chants I heard: 'Bush, Sharon, assassins!' (Sharon alternated with Blair as Enemy Number 2. Some of the communists tried to add Chirac to the 'assassins' chant, but got only a half-hearted response from the crowd.) 'Pas de Bush-erie!' (butchery). And, of course, the french version of 'Make tea, not war!' -- 'Make cheese, not war!'

I don't know how many people were there, but it was the biggest demo I've been on in my life. My photos here:

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/dailyphoto150203.html

speeches = above and beyond as far as i'm concerned

so does this make any difference? Can Blair keep going when it's so obvious everyone thinks he's a fool?

What gets me about all of this is the attitude displayed by Bush'n'Blair. The nature of pluralism and mainstream society nowadays is that protests are now accepted to the point that they run the risk of being meaningless (though I think the large number of people who showed up today will have an effect!). Whereas in the 60s, protests were broken up violently, which gave validity to anti-government arguments, Bush, attacked for being anti-democratic can now say "Oh I am glad these protests are going on - it shows democracy still works in the USA' and get away with it and still go to war.

I really happy that so many people went.

We had a huge banner from the steelworkers that said, "Make steel not war". Also saw a lot of duct tape improvisations.

Worldwide Iraq protests draw large crowds

US Still Wants Iraq Showdown

CNN reports the worldwide total of protesters as 'hundreds of thousands'. Which is pretty disingenuous, considering in London alone the figure was in the millions.

the protests against the vietnam war got much this kind of response also, but in fact the 1968 student protests travelled round the world, sparking similar large-scale demonstrations, until they were stopped by tanks in czechoslovakia, the exact moment the ussr lost the last vestige of its credibility anywhere... the soviet empire was big and slow, and it took another two decades for it to unravel, but better slow unravelling and the arrival of the actual possibility of street-level democracy everywhere than the unleashing of nuclear terror

i'm sure there are ppl in former iron curtain countries who still resent the western student revolts as being "self-interested, self-absorbed and selfish" — but those revolts nevertheless played a major role in the (relativiely) non-violent self-removal of the stalinist monolith

hey, Vicar: it has just struck me: if there was a march called 'DON'T ATTACK IRAQ, AND ESTABLISH A UNITED IRELAND', wouldn't you stay at home?

not that much i felt: eg the countryside alliance weren't very in evidence, nor the truckers

apparently ken did get an anti-congestion charge heckler though!!

Let alone her name. Ban this sick stunt.

if the second part of that odd slogan was receiving equal billing I might well stay at home.

Re. the "marching band," they seemed to me to be a marching band comprising sectarian crazies. A few of them were waiting with me at the bus stop and they seemed to be friends with the people who wore the sectarian buttons and carried the magazines, etc. Also in their stridency and their patent disinterest in the speakers (who were talking from the platform on Leavitt [??] while the marching band was making a ungodly noise a few blocks away, drawing some media attention away from the speakers in the process) and their decision to use the red white and blue not as a positive symbol (as one marcher did upfront) but as a negative one--this all smacked of the sectarians to me.

What I'm saying is that the march reflected a very broad band of opinion indeed, which is something the "Anti-War = Pro-Saddam" coverage (from Blair downwards) simply ignores. And I think this is what's going to be the real problem for Blair post-demo - by caricaturing marchers as a unified front of Saddam appeasers he is insulting and losing the huge swathe of centre-left opinion that can't be painted with such broad strokes. Ignoring public opinion is one thing - Blair has done it before and been right to (fuel protests) - but not even attempting to understand and reply to it is something else entirely.

Meanwhile it was a freezing, exciting, exhausting day out and Isabel and I enjoyed it. I'm glad there wasn't a 'carnival atmosphere', personally, and I'm sneakingly glad I didn't hear most of the speeches in Hyde Park, but mostly I'm glad I went.

How does this apply to my post?

Where did I say anything like this?

Is where.

Did it ever occur to you that some of these "world may rot" foax think they're in the business of saving the world (again, agree or disagree as you like) and c'mon, the People's Weekly World as sectarian? For god's sake are you living in 1955? The PWW ppl. probably worked harder to get Joe Moore elected than most of the rest of his campaign staff. (As far as I know, they're very involed in local elections).

I am not red-baiting. But it is my conviction that rhetoric peppered with Marxist-Leninist phraseology and vituperative denunciations of capitalism and the middle class--evident in many of the banners, newspapers, etc. carried to the rally -- is not to the benefit of the anti-war "side." In Europe this might play differently and that speaks well of the breadth of political debate there.

*entrenching two sides = key self-defeating "goal" of bourgeois Marxists

as for "bourgeois Marxists" this is just weird to me coz either you're trying to make a claim for yourself or someone else as an authentic "proletarian Marxist" who you like, or yr. throwing an insult at them which only makes sense in their value system not yours.

Also Are the DoJ immigrant policies "racist"?

One of the mainstream groups you allude to is also rather exclusionary and snobbish - their definition of "mainstream" being, apparently, people who hold professional positions, are well-connected, and most likely live in the suburbs. If several buses from northwest Indiana or a youth group from the south side isn't "mainstream" enough for them....Usually when people say "mainstream", they actually mean "people who look like me, dress like me, and have the same income level as me."

As for PWW - they've got some good articles in that newspaper! It has better labor coverage than the Nation or whatever magazine it is that we're supposed to read. And why are people offended by their presence but not the horrible folk music (which no one south of 35th street listens to) on the stage?

amazing breadth of photos here - http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/19/nyregion/19RALL.html

*this is a bit harsh, esp.when it wz so cold, but come on pop-kids, RAISE YR STANDARDS!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/nyregion/20MATT.html