Had a great day on Saturday, made some new friends, marched with some old ones. It was the largest single gathering of people in the History of the UK.
Between 1.5% and 3% of the whole population of the entire country turned up in London alone, leaving aside marches in Glasgow, Birmingham and other UK cities.
Fantastic speakers (with the exception of Jesse Jackson, who just kept shouting the same dumb phrases over and over).
By the time the rally in Hyde parked wound up there were still 3.5 miles of protesters 20 abreast who hadn't reached the rally yet. The police started the march an hour and a half early because of the number of people that turned up exceeded all expectations, even those of the organisers. By 7:30pm most of the protesters had finished marching. 5 miles in total, filled with a river of people for 8 continuous hours. Amazing show of public strength. An historic event.
There was one guy outside the Iraqi section of the Jordanian Embassy in a solo pro-war rally.
Anyway, those pics. Mostly I shot banners, because there wasn't much to see apart from the back of half a million people's heads.
This one made me laugh, but not very relevant.
Another Choice banner
The view down to Picadilly from Hyde Park Corner
Anthone Wedgewood Benn addresses the multitude
A big
to anyone who made it, and big to all of you in Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, Seville, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, NYC and all the other 60 cities that saw a protest yesterday.
