Republican News · Thursday 20 February 2003

Massive London demo

BY FERN LANE

Organisers of the anti-war movement in Britain estimate that up to 2 million people converged on central London on Saturday to voice their opposition to military action against Iraq. It took something like five hours for those at the end of the march to arrive at Hyde Park, where well over a million packed in to hear impassioned speeches from, amongst others, Tony Benn, American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, and the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. It is believed to have been the largest political demonstration ever seen in Britain.

The protest, almost uniquely, drew support from across the social, religious and political spectrum; Christians of every stripe marched together with Jewish and Muslim groups - many of whom greeted each other warmly. The placards ranged from the witty to the surreal to the starkly literal. A group calling itself Stoners for Peace ("Say Yes 2 Drugs, Say No 2 War") walked side-by-side with the Quakers ("Read your Bible!"), off-duty firefighters, trade unionists and a group from Eton. "This many Iraqis will die" read one striking banner, "Make Tea Not War" proclaimed another. Many were aimed at Bush and Blair personally (or BLUSH! as several placards had it, together with a conflated image of the two men), from the polite - "Blair is really annoying - to the more, er, Anglo-Saxon "Blair is a c***" as wielded by a man perched impassively on top of one the lions in Trafalgar Square. Others proclaimed "the madness of George II" and advised him to "have a break, have a pretzel".

There was also a huge international presence and massive - and voluble - support for the Palestinian people.

Thousands of anti-war protesters also took to the streets of Glasgow, marching through the city centre towards the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, where the Labour Party's spring conference was being held and Blair was justifying his pro-war stance, even in the face of the throngs of marchers outside and in London. "I ask the marchers to understand this: I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction," he claimed.

Around 61,000 people are estimated to have taken part in the largest ever peace demonstration staged north of the border.