Eight Days Later

Last Saturday; The Big March, the March For An Alternative, the march where, depending on which estimate you believe, as many as 300,000 people gathered and made their voices heard as one, screaming at the top of their lungs that our government, the rulers we didn’t ask for, is wrong.

Wrong about the direction it’s taking our country in. Wrong about the scale and scope of the spending cuts they’re making. Wrong about their choice of tax cuts and who should be receiving those cuts. Wrong in targeting the most vulnerable members of our society. Wrong in following economic doctrine that will push us into harder and harder times until we face a situation unseen here in over eighty years.

It was a good march. Nobody can ever know exactly how many people joined in, and it may end up like the first Sex Pistols gig or the Brixton Riots; if everybody who claimed to be there had actually been there, it would have been the greatest concentration of humanity in one place since the Black Hole of Calcutta. We’ll never know.

We all know now that the later part of the day was marred and scarred by the actions of a handful of idiots who despite having good intentions went about things in a stupid and juvenile manner. Most of these were there specifically to cause trouble, to gain attention, to show off. Most of these were no more than kids. There are rumours that there were agents provocateur in the small splinter groups that caused the damage. There are rumours that some of the violence was encouraged by a certain news-gathering association. We’ll never know.

All I know is that for eight or so glorious hours, I marched alongside a handful of friends and a countless number of strangers, strangers who felt like they’d been there all my life, strangers with the same feelings as mine, the same deep conviction that we can have a better society than the one we’re being headed toward. Not necessarily left-wingers, not even socialists, certainly not communists. If you’d taken a straw poll on Saturday you’d have seen a great proportion of disenchanted Liberal Democrat voters, a great proportion of disgruntled Labour voters and a good share of Conservative voters who have very quickly become appalled at what their party is doing.

I know that at one point I talked to my old friend Phill Hall, who’d come down from Northampton just for this march and who was doggedly following his union banner despite having to walk with a stick and despite the pain he was in. I told Phill, as we approached Hungerford Bridge with its thunderous trains and its overshadowing Eye, that no matter where I go in this world, no matter how estranged from it I feel - and there are times when my usual world-weariness and cynicism tip over into disgust and hate, and times when this is too much for even me to bear with fortitude – when I come out from Embankment station and I walk along that narrow strip of wood and metal towards  the South Bank, that’s when I feel the world getting more at ease. That’s when I feel at home. That’s when I know that this city is where I came from and where I belong, and no matter what, I always will feel that way about her.

Last Saturday, standing at the north end of Hungerford, looking east and seeing the march trailing back, out of sight, beyond the bend in the river, then looking ahead to the west and seeing that same trail continuing up around Westminster and again out of sight, that enormous crush of people at their best, demonstrating their displeasure and anger not just against the policies that affect them directly but against what they see as genuine injustice against those less fortunate than themselves. That was real humanity.

Those with interests not best served by social responsibility; those who would rather we stay indoors and swallow the pap we’re served; those who make fortunes from others misfortunes; they immediately tried to put us in our place. The Home Secretary wasted no time to tell us how misguided we were and how our protests would make no difference. The papers next day gave lip service to the peaceful majority – or completely ignored it - while filling their front pages with photographs of the rioters who attacked Piccadilly (the Queen’s grocer! The temerity of these people!).

And I’ll admit that the evening and the morning following brought a comedown worse than any drug; a feeling that all of Saturday’s joyous optimism and fellowship, of shaking hands with unexpectedly-seen old faces and hugging unexpectedly-found new friends, had all been for nothing in the face of 200 idiot rioters and a government owned by big business.

But I can’t forget the faces of those 300,000 people. Nor the noise they made, ear-splitting but brim-filled with peace. Nor the shattered but exhilarated bodies making their way home at every station. And especially not the looks we gave each other, wordless but so very clear, the looks that said “We have done something today not done for years before, and we will not be ignored.”

And that, allied with the feel of my city beneath me, tells me that this argument is far from over.