August 5 demonstration in London against the War in Lebanon

By anyone’s standards (except for those of the BBC apparently) this was a big demonstration. Let’s get the obligatory numbers argument over with first. The BBC, which always says it is reporting the police estimates as if they were the sole guardians of the Truth, told the world that 20,000 people showed up. Hmm, the word I’m looking for here is Bollocks! The Beeb did also quote the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) estimate as well (100,000) but in such a way as to make readers and viewers distrust their figures. Of course they declined to show any aerial shots of the march. From the ground it is impossible to guess the numbers (at least it was for me), but Tom from Blairwatch applied his considerable mathematical skills to the problem and came up with a much more realistic 52,800 to 66,000 people marching. I would have put the number higher, at about 80,000 to 100,000 but based only on previous experiences of such protests and not on any real calculations.

I did ask a steward what she thought the turn-out was and she suggested it might be between 80,000 and 140,000. Apparently STWC calculate numbers by the not very scientific method knowing how many placards they have and assuming that one in five protesters will pick one up. This of course doesn’t allow for people joining the march as it progresses. Suffice to say, I haven’t a clue how many people were there but there were an awful lot of them. Judge the numbers for yourself from these photos and video clips. People were still pouring into a very crowded Parliament Square halfway through the rally with the march still winding up to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.

The march started at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, went down Park Lane and then detoured off to go around the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square where there was a lot of shouting and booing at the building and its occupants surrounded as they were by the ubiquitous fortifications and battalions of day-glow police.

It then went back onto Park Lane, down Piccadilly to Piccadilly Circus from there onto and Lower Regent Street into Whitehall (Downing Street) and finished at Parliament Square where the Rally was held. Holding the rally in Parliament Square was a stroke of genius (I don’t know how the organisers managed to get permission to do that). It meant that the protest was impossible to ignore even with a near total media blackout.

The mood of the march was obviously very angry, and rightly so. However there was still a very friendly atmosphere, no doubt helped by the fine sunny weather (actually it was bloody hot and I’ve gone red) and the huge turn-out. There were people from all walks of life and of different ages and races, which was a very good thing to see. Lots of children attended too which helped to highlight the huge proportion of children’s’ deaths and injuries in this war (a trade mark of Israel).

As the march reached Whitehall, it got much noisier and angrier. The march slowed down as people hung about to hurl abuse at the Prime Minister. His Tonyness was in residence, apparently. We were treated to the frankly surreal spectacle of hundreds of shoes being lobbed towards Downing Street. The shoes represented the children whose lives have been snuffed out in this war. Later they were placed in a touching arrangement at the Cenotaph.

Finally we ended up in Parliament Square for the rally. I think I was somewhere in the middle of the march and so I missed some of the speeches. I would have liked to have heard John McDonnell’s speech as I have been reading his campaign blog recently. It seems I also missed Diane Abbot. I did get to hear Craig Murray’s speech which was very good. I tried to record it but my camera ran out of space so I only managed to capture the beginning (weirdly enough the same thing happened to Lenin on Craig’s speech).

I tried to capture the rest of what he had to say on my cell phone but the audio is so bad that I’m not going to post it here (all the other speeches I filmed on the mobile are also incomprehensible unfortunately – Note to self: buy another memory card for the camera, one with more storage space). I did manage to record the speeches of George Galloway, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn after deleting some photos and accidentally deleting Bianca Jagger’s speech and some others.

I can’t remember all of the other speakers but I liked Jeremy Hardy’s speech about a secular and harmonious Middle East with Jews, Christians and Muslims living together eventually in one state, and Professor Manuel Hassassian’s speech (the would-be Palestinian ambassador to Britain if Palestine was allowed to exist).

After the Rally, the crowd dispersed fairly quickly and I made my way to the nearest comfortable pub with an outdoor area for a well-earned couple of pints. I don’t know how effective the demonstration will be. Demonstrations don’t have a very good record of changing Government policy, but it is important to register dissatisfaction while we still can. The media blackout on the protest is a pretty appalling state of affairs and the mainstream television news channels should be ashamed of themselves. I actually thought they would report this event in a misguided bout of optimism. As it is we will have to rely once more on the bloggers to spread the word and do the journalists’ jobs for them.

There is excellent coverage of the march from Lenin’s Tomb, Septic Isle, The Sharp Side and also Blairwatch. Also, a very good report from the antagonist which has video clips of Rose Gentle from Military Families Against the War, and also the whole of Craig Murray's speech. Little Richardjohn has some more good pictures. If I hear of more reports I’ll update this post.

Finally, while we were protesting, there was some movement at the UN. I say movement rather than progress because this looks like anything but progress. However, I may be proved wrong. The idea seems to be that Israel gets to occupy southern Lebanon (again) until the much-talked about peace keepers/enforcers arrive. Hezbollah has to stop retaliating while Israel can continue to attack provided they call it “defensive” action rather than “offensive” action which is what Israel has called its genocidal wrecking spree all along. This will go down like a lead balloon with Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon. No immediate unconditional ceasefire, just “full cessation of hostilities”. Is that really the best the USA and France could come up with?

Tags: Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, London Demonstration, UK Politics, Blair