The March for Change 20th July: Once again on the size of protests
I wasn’t on the March for Change on 20th July (being engaged on trade union activities elsewhere in the UK) and in terms of my interest in the size of protests it probably wouldn’t have helped all that much if I was. When you are in a march unless it takes ages to move (a sign of large size) its difficult to judge numbers.
The composition of the march was possibly of as much interest and the Guardian report gives some flavour of that:
Differing views clearly on Brexit and 2nd Referendums but definitely opposed to Boris Johnson as PM. For those keen on pursuing that further there are central London demonstrations next week. The People’s Assembly will gather at Downing St on Monday evening and the Labour Party has called a rally for a General Electlon next Thursday at 5pm in the Parliament Square area.
Anyway while I can find no report which estimates size fortunately social media, judiciously checked, is the research historians friend.
The Met Police reported that the march left Hyde Park at 1pm and the head of the march was in Parliament Square by 2pm. The rally had concluded by 4pm and diverted buses were back on route.
On that basis I’d estimate the attendance at between 50-100,000. This is not as large as earlier demonstrations and until I can find a picture of the crowd in Parliament Square which can definitely be attributed to 20th July as opposed to some other occasion I cant go further than that.
Why smaller? The main reasons I suspect are firmly material. It’s the start of the school summer holidays (they have already started in some parts of the UK) and its also a peak holiday season. Many who might have gone at other times might well have been otherwise engaged.
A reminder that there are better and worse times of years to hold demonstrations, and the demo season is to some extent seasonal. Here the imminent coronation of Johnson dictated but expect much bigger protests in the early autumn.
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