Ban Broke: demo report posted by Richard Seymour

As I said, we broke the ban. Apparently, they reversed their ban an hour before the demo was scheduled to begin. Tony Benn was announcing it to no particular surprise but much satisfaction when I arrived. I think this is quite important in itself. Had there been only a few dozen there, the ban would probably have remained in force and the demo would have been confined to Trafalgar Square. The turnout, though probably in the low thousands, was fantastic for a Monday afternoon. I remember when it would have been an achievement to get twelve people out at such a time. Plenty of young people and students there, and I even met one incorrigible lecturer who had got thirty students to come along. Even with all that, the demo was incredibly over-policed, and they even kept the traffic flowing round Parliament Square, which meant that the demo had to be fed through in small blocs every time the traffic stopped for a red light. How ridiculous. There were some particularly good speeches from George Galloway, Ben Griffin, Lindsey German, Mark Steel and Mark Thomas, which I filmed and will be uploaded as fast as Google Video can do its work. In the meantime, here are some pictures.







Here is the first of the footage, speeches by Mark Steel & Ben Griffin, plus protest shots:









Here is Galloway, Mark Thomas & Lindsey German:

Labels: afghanistan, iran, iraq, stop the war, US imperialism