Not in my name (part 1)

I was a tiny part of something very special.
Like a pixel on a screen, on my own I was nothing to look at. On my own I made no headline. But together, put all together, on Saturday 15th February I felt myself form part of the dot that makes up a picture that is then forever framed in our history. I went on the anti-war march.

I am in a bit of a political minority. I often find myself arguing points that other don’t agree with. Let’s say I’m a bit of a leftie. In fact, no, let’s come right out and say that I am a left-wing, socialist feminist, and watch you all slinking away from my diary in embarrassment. After Saturday I rang friends in excitement, telling them urgently,

“This is what it must be like to be politically mainstream! I am almost tempted to start adopting loads of really reprehensible populist views… just so that I can go outside and feel the fantastic pressure of thousands and thousands of people agreeing with me!”

I should have known it was going to be something special when, in the pub after work, Penny who I work with started to ask people whether they were going,
”So are you going on the demo? What about you?” she gave me an arch glance, “I know you’ll be going…” I sometimes think my politics must be tattooed across my face.

What was remarkable was the way she was asking people… as though she was asking them whether they were thinking of watching the football, or whether they’d be seeing the latest film. There was an expectation in her question. The expectation was that the question was at least worth asking – even those who weren’t going would probably have thought about it.

I made my way there on my own, walked down the road to the Tube feeling oddly excited. Or rather, not excited, more a kind of restrained but strong determination that came to flavour the whole day. I once met a friend in town on his way to a demonstration against the bombing in Afghanistan, and asked him what he was doing. He turned to me and said quite simply, “I’m going to stop a war.” I laughed and laughed. But in my solemn, yet jumpy and almost nervous walk to the tube, I suddenly caught a flavour of what he meant.

Sitting on my tube train, the realisation that everyone else in the carriage was also going to the demonstration came quite suddenly. I just lifted my headand realised that everyone in the carriage was headed in exactly the same direction as me. I wore a small ‘Don’t Attack Iraq’ badge on my scarf slightly self-consciously, but it wasn’t badges and placards that I saw on the people in my carriage – those came later. It was that look. Half excited. Part very sad. Part determination. Part the kind of expression that even now I struggle to describe. The kind of expression that comes from talking with your feet.

I waited to meet my friend Steve at Waterloo, and stood and marvelled at the people around me. A girl sat by Costa with her make-up bag open, black eyeliner pencil in hand, and as I turned to scan the crowds for Steve, I scoffed inwardly. Make-up? I was going to stop a war. I had my mind on higher things. (Besides, I’d put on my make-up back in the flat, where high-minded lefties couldn’t laugh at me.) But as I turned back, I noticed that she had drawn black CND signs on her cheeks in Elizabeth Arden’s best black. It was a day of surprises.

Like the mild-looking man with something of the hamster in his face, who walked past me in an immaculate suit, looking rather nervous, holding a Socialist Worker Party banner, complete with large fist and the classic Socialist Workers’ motto of ‘Occupy! Revolt! Destroy Capitalism!’ or something similar.

Waterloo was full of people who had come from outside London: swarms of middle-aged women from Hampshire wearing Windsmoor, bearing home made placards, who looked as though they might march for a while and then retreat to the coffee shop in Harrods and perhaps then pop to Liberty’s.

Waterloo was so full of people I couldn’t use my phone. I kept trying to ring, but only got a faint beep-beep-beep in my ear. No use trying to make a call. Too many people. Too many protestors. Too many people against the war.

When Steve finally arrived we started to make our way to Embankment. Waterloo is only across the river from Embankment, the walk should by rights have taken us around ten minutes. But there were so many people it took an hour and a quarter just to arrive at the start of the march…..

We couldn’t use Waterloo bridge, or the Hungerford bridge, and policemen directed us up the river to Blackfriars. I stared out across the cold grey Thames and all I could see on either side were people streaming down both sides of the river, across bridges, then flooding back towards Embankment. “Like ants” I whispered to Steve. I felt rather humbled. And it was only the beginning.

I bought a whistle. It has a rainbow shoelace for a string. I was glad to have it, because as we marched along, every now and then a great Mexican wave of noise would well up from behind, reach us, break over our heads like surf, then move on up and ahead. Some of these protest noises had a target, like 10 Downing Street, or the Houses of Commons. Some of the walls of noise seemed to come from nowhere, you heard them creeping up from way, way back behind you in the thousands of people, then suddenly the noise was being made by the people around you, whooping, yelling, shouting, blowing whistles and horns, and you were joining in, then just as suddenly, the noise had swept on ahead, leaving us hoarse and wind-swept in its wake.

It was all so orderly. It was what you’d hope for from a peace-march. Primitive ideas of the fear of a mob were far away. Rather than feeling a deep urge to loot shops, I felt safe with so many people. We were a benign force to be contended with. We may have individually only walked very slowly, but together we had all of the inevitable, slow sheer strength of a wall of water. Traffic stopped. Barriers designed to keep marchers in one place were carefully lifted to one side, then the marchers thronged through and over and round. People climbed up onto lamp-posts to bang on drums, to call out chants, to give out leaflets, or simply to gaze and get some sense of the size of it all. People swarmed over phoneboxes and onto the roofs of public toilets, they climbed railings and postboxes. Pedestrians, so often tenderly at the mercy of hard metal traffic, were kings and queens of London. We ruled the streets….. continued