march
March in October
Numbers
After the Trump thing earlier in the year, another walk through London on Saturday just past. This time with over half a million people — 770,000, by some estimates. That’s a hugely impressive number, and a measure of the strength of feeling in the country against Brexit. Or at least against the idea of the government pushing it through without us having another say on the matter.
You’d imagine it might be enough to make them at least consider enquiring as to the will of the people. But I highly doubt it.
The March
A group of us from Hackney joined at Green Park. There’s an exit from Green Park station that comes out in the park itself, which I don’t think I knew before.Then it took us an age to get out of the park, because of the crush a t the gate. Quite a lot of people were trying to get in at the same time, which didn’t help.
We milled around on Piccadilly for a while. The main march started on Park Lane, so we were ahead of it, and it wasn’t clear to us whether the head of it had already passed us, or if not, then when it actually reached us. It looked like nothing was moving ahead of us. My assumption was that they hadn’t yet closed all the roads between us and Parliament Square, but there was no way to know for sure. Eventually we started moving.
The mood was universally peaceful and cheerful. There were hardly any police to be seen.
I tried to post a couple of photos, but inevitably the network was swamped and nothing would work. I guess even if people weren’t trying to post, just that many phones trying to register with a cell tower would slow things down dramatically.
The Rally
By the time we got to Whitehall Parliament Square was full, and we couldn’t get in. The organisers had set up some big screen-and-speaker systems, so we could hear the speeches (at least when the hovering helicopters weren’t too close).
Conclusion
There isn’t one, really. Like I say, the Mayhemic leadership of the country won’t pay any attention. But if nothing else it helps to keep our spirits up in these dark days.
