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A blog for that outspoken and aggressive member of the Buffy Bulletin Board.
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   Wednesday, November 26, 2003

UK protests


I was lucky enough to be in the UK last week, when the biggest week-day protest in their history took to the streets to say that Bush/Blair were acting illegally and without the backing of the British public.

It was quite impressive. Originally, the police and official estimates placed the crowd in the region of 20,000 people. Now, I know from long experience that crowd sizes are one of those things that the media play fast and loose with. If it's an event you support, you inflate the numbers. If it's one you disapprove of, you decrease the numbers. But 20,000 was fucking ridiculous. If anything, all it indicated was the depth of annoyance the establishment felt at the protest. "Official" estimates have since gone up to a more realistic 120,000 though the organisers are still claiming it was over 300,000. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between.

A couple of things struck me quite forcefully during the day. First, the wide ranging political nature of the groups involved. It would be impossible to pidgeon-hole these people into any one group. There were soldiers mothers, conservatives, Guardian readers, hippies, Pro-Palestinian groups, LibDems, Labour supporters, Americans living in London, war veterans... the list is huge. You could not get a group this diverse to agree on many issues, but under their dismay and disgust at Bush and Blair, they were united.

Another thing that struck me was how the different countries (American and England) react to such protests. Americas response has been to ignore and sideline the issue. Some of the more rabid neo-cons calling "peack-niks" traitors and unpatriotic and so on. There was a brief effort to stage "pro-war" rallies but they were so pathetic they vanished from the public record.

England on the other hand (under the auspices of Blair's regime) looked at hundreds of thousands of people marching outside and said "Well, 50 million people stayed at home. Ergo, they support us. Let's go."

Do you see the difference there? Do you think America could tolerate it if a President looked outside his window and saw the Million Man march heading up Pennsylvania Avenue and said "Well shee-it, 248 million stayed at home! I must be doing good!"

By far the highlight of the protest was the toppling of the Bush statue in Trafalgar Square. It made great television so even the Murdoch mouthpiece had to cover it about 4 times an hour for a few hours. (No offence George, but ratings is ratings.)

The organisers had erected a statue of Dubya and were going to topple it in symbolic parody of the toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad. Unlike the Saddam toppling (where judicious use of framing the shot made it look like the square was crowded) this was a well attended piece. You can see the statue fall here complete with protesters dancing on his head.




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