In the old days, the organizers of a demo would claim between 2 and 10 times more people attended than the police. Today they seemed to agree with plod that between 100,000 and 200,000 were protesters. Oddly, I and several other marchers estimated between 500,000 and a million. Admittedly we’re not experts at counting crowds, but on the other hand we have been on plenty of demos in the past and heard what the coppers and the organisers have said about numbers on those occasions. Believe me, there were far, far more than 100,000 people there. And it was great.
Michele was holding a banner that read “Proud of my Country. Shamed by my ‘president'”. She added the quote marks around “president” and stuck lots of stars and stripes all over it. As a result she had her photo taken about 20 times, and even got interviewed by a reporter from “London Student”!
We got some great photos, met up with Zap, Anna, Matt and Adam, and went for a drink in the Salisbury where we met a spectacularly cynical American called “Ismail” who was only too happy to argue with us. Matt, Michele and I also managed to do some very enjoyable bluejacking 🙂
Bush, Blair, Straw and the Police must have been shitting their pants about this massive demo…but this morning a horrific event in Istanbul proved they were right to invade Iraq, beyond any doubt, and consequently found us demonstrators to be, in Tone’s own words, “bizarre”. Well Tony, if I was a cynical person, which of course I’m not, I’d have to wonder about the timing of this bomb.
