According to Scotland Yard, about 70,000 people showed up for the "we love butchers" rally. But it is fascinating how some of the British press covered it. Sky News covered it breathlessly. When the effigy of Bush was pulled down, Sky had its cameras just sitting there for several minutes, waiting for the countdown as if it were New Years Eve, with excited commentary about the "tens of thousands" of protesters.
The Guardian does not even mention the numbers until the eleventh paragraph.
Yesterday the organisations claimed that more than 200,000 took part, and it was difficult to argue that they were wrong. Scotland Yard, however, gave an estimate of 70,000.
Apparently, Scotland Yard did not have difficulty saying they were wrong. Only the Saddamites at the Guardian have that difficulty.
But the prose was the big give-away, written as if a twelve year girl was writing in a diary about her crush on her teacher, and as divorced from reality.
Yesterday was by far the biggest turnout since the million-plus march in February; along with the crowds, the anger and conviction were back with a vengeance.
. . .
By mid-morning people were coming together in Bloomsbury for the start of the march, everyone from schoolchildren playing truant to pensioners carrying placards reading "Go Home" and "World's Number 1 Terrorist".
Young and old, doctors, and teachers, students and the unemployed, representing every religion and every colour. They had come on foot and on bikes, by train and in cars.
Twenty coaches made their way down the M6 from Manchester, while at least four more came from Exeter. All were assembling to make up the diverse mix that in two years has seen the Stop the War Coalition become the fastest growing political movement in Britain.
Do you notice something about the arithmetic? 70,000 show up, but the last march they say was over a million. This is a growing political movement? It looks more like a shrinking movement. But the Guardian is not one to let facts get in the way of a lefty parable.
I also liked this cute line:
By 2.45pm, with Bloomsbury a seething mass of whistles and chanting, the march was led off by a disabled Vietnam veteran-turned peace protester, Ron Kovic, behind the banner "Proud of My Country, Ashamed of my President".
As if anyone seriously believes that.
The rally was not anti-war, it was pro-Saddam. And it seems the Guardian is as well.
Posted by sjostrom on November 21, 2003 06:59 AM
Comments:
Do you notice something about the arithmetic?
The previous march was at the weekend this one was during the week. This is (alledgedly) the biggest protest that has occured on a week day.
Posted by: Danack on November 21, 2003 02:24 PM [Permalink]
Oh and by the way the police are rubbish at estimating numbers - they started off at 30,000, increased it to 70,000 and are now claiming that 110,000 is the really real number - don't believe the organisers of the protest, trust the police, they never lie.
Posted by: Danack on November 21, 2003 02:33 PM [Permalink]
The Police and the organisers of a demo always disagree about how many people were there. That's mainly because it's really hard to work out how many people are where - I believe the Countryside Alliance were the first and last people to actually spend serious money on counting their support. Otherwise, you have to guesstimate, and there are so many factors that can skew your figures that it's always difficult to work out how many people were actually involved.
The police always under-estimate, the organisers always over-estimate. Par for the course.
I remember a political cartoon from years ago, covering a demonstration by the French Police. The caption was something like "50,000 people according to the organisers, 80,000 according to the police".
So, let's remember that the 70,000 figure is the Police's estimate of yesterday's rally, and 1 million is the organisers' estimate for the last one. If you compare like with like, you end with 200,000 vs 1 million (organiser's figures), and given that the million march was on a weekend and this was on a week day, that doesn't look too bad at all.
More substantively, speaking as someone who wasn't at that rally (I was at the previous one) but whose wife was at the Scotland rally, I can assure you that UK anti-Bush / anti-occupation people don't give a fig about Saddam Hussein. We're concerned about the fact that Bush and Blair lied to us about WMDs, that the war was waged on false pretenses, and that it's been so badly mis-managed that our troops are suffering unacceptable levels of casualties even though the war has allegedly been won.
Kovic was the star attraction at a protest at the U of C in May '79 where the organizers did everything they could to try to provoke the Chicago cops (including simultaneously throwing a cherry pie in the face of the deputy police superintendent and setting off a bottle rocket, to make it look and sound like he'd been shot). It didn't work. One of the few people who got arrested was Kovic himself, simply for not leaving the intersection of 57th and University Ave. The most dangerous place in London yesterday was probably in between Ron Kovic and a TV camera.
