Troops Out, No Trident: report from London demonstration. posted by Richard Seymour

Ya hala Tomb-readers. I'm updating this report as fast as I can upload material. First indications is that was about 100,000-strong, which is probably one of the larger anti-nuclear demonstrations that we've had in recent years. I didn't hear any figures for the Glasgow demo, but I'm told it was enormous: unsurprisingly, since Scotland is where the British ruling class likes to keep its nukes. It goes without saaying that most of the media are blacking out the demo, and the BBC gives it only a few inches in a local section (misquoting the figures too). Bizarrely, they actually devote more space to the demonstration in Glasgow which they say was much smaller. It's quite interesting: clearly, the story of the boy who gave David Cameron the one-gun salute being arrested for possessing cannabis is much more important, as is the startling revelation that Hazel Blears wants to be the deputy Prime Minister. Here are some pictures of the demo as it began. My footage has been uploaded to Youtube, but they are taking their time approving some of it, so I will post as it becomes available.

It's not easy capturing the crowd scenes with my camera, but it's a bit more difficult when certain people, who shall remain nameless because I don't know their names, insist on drawing attention to themselves. Like this purveyor of apocalyptic gloom. Then there was the man at the far back of the demonstration who kept shouting "Anti-Blair whistles! Only a pound!" How the fuck can you have an anti-Blair whistle? He then went on to chant, while rattling his blowholes: "Troops out, Blair out, Don't attack Iraq". Not Iran, Iraq. Which seems to miss the point that we already did attack Iraq. Then there was this call for international solidarity and equality from a pair of Iranian demonstrators. And a Spoonerist. Actually, for some reason, I quite like 'nucking fuclear', perhaps because it's an anagram for 'fucking unclear'. There was also a very young child with a t-shirt that read: "Unfuck the World". It looked like one of those produced by Globalise Resistance. Finally, there was a man in a mask.

Well, hear we are proceeding up Picadilly:

Here are some CND people. I have quite a lot of time for them, but they do have this alarming penchant for breaking into song at a moment's notice. A speaker from the Aldermaston Womens' Group approached the mic and immediately gave us a few bars of 'Five Minutes to Midnight'. What we really need, as I think someone said long ago, are more men of violence:

Some more for you:

I recorded many of the speeches, which were brilliant. I regret that I did not capture any of Galloway's, although it was a vintage performance. He got a particularly rousing close by saying that if there was an attack on Iran, there wouldn't be protests in the streets of London: there'd be riots! People exploded into applause. Lindsey German, some of whose speech I did record, got a brilliant reception when she called for strikes and protests and occupations in the event of an attack on Iran. That's the way to do it. I missed Craig Murray's speech, so I hope one of the professionals filmed that. Livingstone's speech was actually quite good, and he a got a decent cheer for his recent deal with Chavez, and Augusto Montiel of the Venezulan National Assembly was warmly welcome when he arrived at the mic in his red shirt and said: "A BIG. WARM. EMBRACE. TO LONDON!! FROM HUGO CHAVEZ! FROM VENEZUELA! FROM ALL OF LATIN AMERICA!". The speeches are still being approved by Youtube, but in the meantime, you can see some of the demo footage here, here, and here. These next guys were a lot of fun. When this part of the demo fell a bit behind, the guy on the loudspeaker announced in a mock-melodramatic cry that "we are being isolated in this demonstration in exactly the same way that Palestinians are being isolated in the world!"



Socialist Worker's report is here. Good report and pictures from the Glasgow demo by the Prophet of Rage. David Simonetti has Mark Thomas and George Galloway, and some good photos here

Update: Well, as Youtube are still bungling my video uploads, I've uploaded a few to Google Video. Here's a tour of the demo as it was lining up from near the back to near the front:



Here's Livingstone's speech:



Here's Lindsey German:



Here's Augusto Montiel: