According to the Met Police the central London march calling for a ceasefire was ‘absolutely enormous’. A a later police estimate was 300,000. The march ended in Nine Elms on the south side of Vauxhall Bridge with two stages. That means, unlike the Stop the War march about Iraq twenty years ago, which ended in Hyde Park, its difficult to get an accurate impression.
Twenty years ago the focus was on central London and is still is rightly today. But things have changed. Not just a crumbling transport infrastructure which might make some think about a day trip to London (lest it last more than a day..)but also and perhaps particularly since the pandemic the UK is an entity is fracturing.
So on 11th November there were also large marches for Palestine in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. I was on the Cardiff march. Despite transport to London being fully booked it was the largest of the four Saturday marches that have taken place in the last month. It came after the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, had passed a motion calling for a ceasefire in the week. One of the speakers on Saturday was the General Secretary of the Wales TUC.
Roots of a movement calling for peace in Palestine are being built in communities and workplaces far away from central London and official politics and media knows little and understands even less about it.
A movement being built not in London Head Offices (though they have a part) but from the bottom up
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