I read a headline in one of the local papers about the demonstration in London that was so at variance of my experience of actually having been there that I thought I would let you have my impressions.
On the march in February 2 coaches carry about 100 people left Bridport, to make up a fraction of the two million people. On one of the subsequent demos I placed an ad in the local paper for people who wanted to go and got one call and eventually my partner Julie and I went up to Dorchester and went on the coach with a party from there.
It seems to prove that if you are boldly resolute and take your country to war, and in my view wrong, that the numbers of demonstrators will decrease.
This time I rang round and six us of us went off in the taxi together. I got the impression that the taxi driver and his mate would come on the march with us. It cost us each 25 pounds. Many people could not come because of work commitments.
An uneventful trip to London although the taxi driver had anticipated more traffic and difficulty getting into London.
We joined up with my friend Richard who is an expert of the American civil war, and I introduced him to one of our party, David, who I thought was interested in history. I had thought that Richard would shepherd us country bumpkins through the tube system. Of course they were talking so hard about his life's passion that he got off the tube and nearly left the rest of us to disappear off on the tube into the badlands of North London.
We arrived at a very busy Googe Street, where I presume for public safety we were ushered through the barriers without our tickets being inspected.
A few streets later we met a river of people coming from I know not where and we were separated from them by a line of fluorescent coated police. We managed to filter into this river to head for the starting point.
I have always tried to thank the police on these occasions as they are just doing their job, in the same way as I believe that I am doing mine. On the march in February it was also more likely that they were in sympathy with us than not.
I think that we waited an hour and three quarter in Mallet Street before we were able to move off. There was a party of students who were doing a call and response chant with the aid of a megaphone. We shuffled away up the street because it was very loud and disturbed Richard and David from discussing the use of opiates by armies in the 19th century. However I still lost my bet with Julie that they would manage to talk throughout the entire march. I am 10p poorer.
My recollection of the start was the number of elderly people there, Julie's was of the number of young people. She said that it did not bode well for Blair at the next election. Still we do not find much to disagree about.
There was an elderly gentleman in his maroon beret from the world war who was hoping to join up with another group of ex service men. He described himself as coming from the Tory backwoods of North Wiltshire.
There was a slight middle age woman who apologised to her friends and the assembled throng saying that she was only there to have her head counted. As that is all that we were all there for I was a little surprised. Perhaps she thought that she would only be valued if she was a deft hand with a Molotov cocktail.
There was someone from the Iraq Communist workers party, shouting through a megaphone about a few things that they were for, Peace in the Middle East, and a lot of things that they were against, suicide bombs, terrorists, injustice. There were so many things that he was against that I shouted out "Do you like cabbage?", my personal bete noir but got no response. Perhaps at the next march he will be roundly denouncing cabbage as well as all the other evils in the world.
During the hour and three quarters that we stood there we shuffled forward and the street became almost unbearably crowded. Occasionally it would seem like we were moving forward, so we moved, forward but merely ended up being even more like vertical sardines a short way up the street.
It was almost comical how much of a caricature of the British the marchers were. We were crammed in like sardines, trying to hold up banners, but whenever we so much as touched other parties there were such profuse apologies.
When the police helicopters came over there was a huge cacophony as the crowd tried to match the din with one of their own with shouting, whistles, hooters, megaphones, etc.
We had only just started marching when someone who we had met had a call from her husband saying that the first of the marchers had already arrived in Trafalgar Square.
It was a relief to walk rather that shuffle and after an hour and three quarters of shuffling it was definitely a walk and not a march. The police seemed as relaxed as the marchers, watching us go by with benign mild interest.
There were some very handsome mounted police at one end of the Strand which I believe the police had laid on for a photo call. Without being in anyway disrespectful to the constabulary it was the horses who were handsome.
We took a shortcut along the Strand to Trafalgar square in order to stand a chance to meet up with the taxi Driver and his mate Willy, they had changed their minds and spent the day at the Tate and having lunch with Willy's daughter.
Trafalgar Square was a sea of people with a huge screen but with the noise of the helicopter overhead it was nearly impossible to hear the speeches. I think we were all well versed in the arguments anyway, or as Richard would put it, "did not want the facts to interfere with our opinions". We caught a glimpse of the gold statue of George Bush complete with his missile, but we did not see it being toppled.
The whole party managed to make it back to Clapham on the tube in the rush hour, in spite of one of our party making a desperate bid for freedom one stop too soon. At seven foot tall he could brace his head against the roof of the tube in case of sudden stops.
On the way back on the tube we saw reports of the death of the British consul which I imagined was a result of the earlier bombings outside synagogues in Istanbul, and later on the way home in the taxi we heard the full story.
The next day I read in one of our local papers headlines about how the marchers should be ashamed of themselves and mention of a wild demo.
I wrote to the paper pointing out that the deaths in Istanbul were not caused by the toppling of a gold statue of George Bush, but might well have been caused by the invasion of Iraq by British forces amongst others.
I also asked where the wild demo was, because I had certainly not been there.
I am in the habit of carrying on a one man demo in Bridport on a Saturday morning. A farmer stopped his huge vehicle to tell me of his differing views. He was worried about the number of people that Saddam Hussein had killed, but thought that the number of people (8 million) who had died in the Iran/Iraq war was quite acceptable on the basis that the West was getting its enemies to fight one another. He still held to the view that Saddam Hussein had been a threat to the UK in spite of all the total lack of evidence.
I and all my party were persons of middling years who risked the expense of £25.00 sore feet and who took twelve hours out of their lives to do what they thought was the right thing.
David Partridge