War and peace

“Make Love Not War”, trumpeted the Valentine’s candy love heart cover of Time Out. It had been a tense week for Londoners, faced with ominous images of tanks at Heathrow, the discovery of a hand-grenade in a passenger’s baggage at Gatwick, dark mutterings of an imminent terrorist attack. Despite all this anxiety, a contentious anti-war march jointly organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Stop the War Coalition still anticipated the biggest ever street protest in British history.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell attempted to ban the march because of dubious concerns for the state of the grass in Hyde Park rather than civil disobedience. As M-day drew closer, some commentators expected crowds in excess of one million. Initially, that seemed to be little other than wishful thinking, but astonishingly the streets of London were packed with over a million people. Some possibly exaggerated reports even placed the final turn out as between 1.5 and 2 million people.

The lengthy march route stretched along the Thames from Embankment, curving its way towards Westminister and on to Hyde Park. What was most striking was the prevailing mood of determination. This wasn’t so much a street carnival or a reclaim the streets funfair, but a highly committed gathering of people who felt that their government were simply not listening. The sight of Hyde Park thronged with people was mesmerising, memorably likened by Will Self in the Evening Standard as having the “mythic air” of a battle from The Lord Of The Ring.

The speeches varied widely from the banal to the rousing. Despite the wonderful sense of occasion, it is unfortunate that only Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy made any reference to the necessity to deal with Saddam Hussein, a critical issue that the anti-war lobby must engage with in the weeks and months ahead. Playwright Harold Pinter crassly but amusingly called the current American administration “a bunch of criminal lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug.” Pinter was followed by Lord Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, hilariously interrupted by a self-proclaimed “comedy terrorist” shouting the odds about the imminent congestion charge about to be enforced 36 hours later.

Keynote speaker Jesse Jackson powerfully evoked the spirit of the civil rights era.
“It’s cold outside but our hearts are warm. All of you together are generating some serious street heat. George Bush can feel it. Tony Blair can feel it. Turn up the heat.” He recited various mantras such as “Keep hope alive” and “Keep marching” with a stirring Martin Luther King-like fervour.

The final speaker was urban music’s anti-diva Ms. Dynamite, who was scheduled to make an appearance with Damon Albarn. However, according to the gossip columns, the Blur front man was sozzled since 11am and too “tired and emotional” to perform for the Hyde Park masses. She prefaced her breakthrough anthem ‘Dy-na-mi-tee’ by saying; “I’d like to sing you a song that is about my childhood. It’s a happy song and it’s about happy times but it’s about ups and downs. But I had the chance to live. I had the chance to be loved. This war will take away the lives of children. Iraqi children and children all over the world have the right to live so they can grow and sing songs about their happy childhood.”

A frozen army of marchers sang along wholeheartedly under a bobbing sea of placards and banners. One aptly read: “Rock stars who got rich on hippy ideas should put their money where their mouths were.” It was a suitably upful ending to a most remarkable meeting.

The Dublin march was equal to the London event in magnitude and importance. This is not just remarkable, it is historic. At the risk of sounding idealistic and OTT, Saturday February 15 2003 will shine on in our memories as a great day of hope, resistance and inspiration: this was the greatest mobilisation of people our supposedly apathetic generation has ever known.