It’s ages since I last went on a decent demo and had a bit of a dust-up with the pigs. I should get out more, there’s a lot of fun to be had, throwing stuff at the police and shouting things in a self-righteous manner. I think the last one I attended was in the very early 1980s, in Cardiff. Sinn Fein was marching through the centre of the city in support of its right to maim and murder people, and the National Front decided to march against them. As a consequence, the Socialist Workers Party’s most successful front organisation, the Anti-Nazi League, insisted that it had a right to march against the fact that the NF were allowed to march, and that was the section I was in.
Of the three chants in evidence that day, we had the least interesting: ‘The National Front is a Nazi front, smash the National Front’. Meanwhile, the snaggle-toothed hags and tinkers from Sinn Fein were singing ‘Have some fun with a tommy gun, join the IRA’. And the NF gave a reprise of their famous, if non-sequitur in the circumstances, ‘If they’re black/send them back/if they’re white/that’s all right.’ All three contingents shouted abuse at the filth, trapped between these three furious and mentally ill platoons.
I nearly went on the Stop the War march in 2003, and now I wish I had. There were at least a million people on that, perhaps two million. By our own government’s criteria, and certainly by the BBC’s, that more than enough for us to demand regime change, isn’t it? More than enough for the Russians to get involved and demand that the protestors be negotiated with and the prime minister leave the country forthwith. Sadly, none of that happened.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in