Thu, 20 Nov 2003
Demonstrations
I was late getting out last night, so rather than trying to figure out
where the Edinburgh march had gotten to I headed straight for the US
Consulate, which is just over the road from where I live. As a point of
note, it's well-known -- to the marchers, if not the general public --
that the US Consulate in Edinburgh is staffed during office hours only,
and by local Scots employees. At the time of the march (6:30pm onwards)
there was nobody there. So, probably for this reason, the police
presence was no heavier than you'd expect for any other peaceful but
large demonstration.
I don't have an accurate count of the size of the march, which in any
event was a side-show to the big event due in London today, but if it's
anything to judge by the Metropolitan Police -- who are said to have been
preparing for up to 100,000 marchers -- are in for a very nasty surprise.
I'd say this one had somewhere in the range of 3000-6000 demonstrators;
the column took a quarter of an hour to walk by, ten-abreast.
That puts it close to the same scale as the largest of
the anti-war demos in March, and if it's indicative of the
size of the London protest today it suggests there could be
up to half a million people on the streets of the capital
protesting about Bush's visit.
There's not much else to say. The crowd were cheerful and
fairly well-behaved, and in addition to the usual subculture
protestors included a lot of folks who seemed to have come
straight from their office jobs to join in. The police were
professional, unprovocative, and mostly bored (from what I saw
of them) and I'm not aware of any arrests or trouble. Afterwards
I met up with Ken MacLeod and Iain Banks, and we decamped in
the direction of a pub where we ran into Andrew Greig, Ian
Rankin, and a couple of other scribblers.
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