Submitted by johnh on February 16, 2003 - 01:34.
This is a long-ass post. Bear with me while I braindump on you.
On the occasion of becoming really quite unwell today, I've installed Gallery.
Why am I ill? a) I'm arthritic, despite still (until Friday, anyway) being only 30 and today more specifically also b) I was stewarding what turned out to be the biggest demonstration in British history today, which involved arriving at 0920 this morning at Embankment, being given a radio and backup battery and then running around in the style of a fly with a blue arse for the next 10 hours putting out fires and preventing bad things from happening. Our 100% record of 'no rucks ever happen on our watch' remains in tact, I'm pleased to report. Took me until nearly 10pm to get home.
If you found yourself on Waterloo Bridge today being stuck for ages and then suddenly moving again: that was me and Martin and Nicola. We called for police backup but they couldn't get through the crowds so we did it by ourselves. By my reckoning 40,000 people owe us a beer. If you couldn't get onto Waterloo Bridge because it was closed - that was me and a lovely lady called Sandy from LBC. I couldn't see the end of the bridge, and neither could Tony Myers from CND from his vantage point at Blackfriars, 500 yards further up the river, so Sandy - get *this* - Sandy pulled out her mobile phone and GOT THE FUCKING LBC HELICOPTER TO GO OVER AND HAVE A LOOK FOR US. How cool is *that*? Anyway, the answer was that the crowd was backing up all the way over the bridge, down past Waterloo Station and half way to the Elephant, so we radioed the coppers and asked them to shut the bridge so that no more people would get held up there. If you therefore got diverted all the way back to Blackfriars, therefore, sorry 'bout that but we did save you about an hour of queuing.
On numbers: the 1.5 million number which Sky News were quoting in the afternoon was confirmed by the police operations chief on the ground at about 3pm. And then his superiors cut the number in half and gave it to the BBC at about 5pm. (In 15 years, for the record, I have never seen them do that before, despite urban myths to the contrary.) Sky, bless them, nevertheless stuck to their 7-figure estimate since they'd done an aerial survey of their own.
A strange day, all in all. I left CND 10 years ago last month for a myriad reasons all related to the fact that despite its lofty goals the reality of the outfit is that it's a bag of shite. But a few days ago, as people in the queue at the post office or bank started to talk to total strangers about 'going to the demo', it became obvious that all bloody hell was about to break loose and I (along with several others from 'my' era) suddenly started getting increasingly desperate emails calling us up to assist.
[Cracked many a joke today about empathising with army reservists.]
So today, at all those crunch points near the river, (count 'em) a lousy ten people were scuttling about fixing as much as we could. And the astounding thing was that all of us were there not because we work there anymore but because we were doing all the organising in the 80s for anti-nuclear campaigns and/or in 1990/91 over the last Gulf War.
This represents something of a saving grace, and a notable oddness. The saving grace, I guess, is that the 45-year-old CND has an institutional memory good enough to know who it needed. The sheer dumb luck element being that they knew how to find us (thank fuck for email).
The notable oddness is that we were needed. Apparently only CND among the Stop the War Coalition has *any experience at all* in handling crowds in excess of 150,000 people. I couldn't help thinking today in thse rare moments I didn't have something to do how it was strange that 12 years have elapsed without anyone *needing* to know. Which rather means that a generation has passed in which the Brtish Left basically didn't exist in any meaningful sense. What's left now is in such a mess that I *know* we'll have to be there next time too, if there's a next time. I'm arthritic, I'm 16 years older than I was when I got involved in the peace movement. It was -2 Celcius today, all fucking day. I'm too bloody old for this shit, bluntly. But yeah, I'll probably be there again, because it needs doing and apparently our little gang of late-80s Cruisewatchers are the fire brigade for the whole damned movement.
Highlights of the day:
* The chopper thing. Way cool :-) Thank you so much, Sandy
* [Personal thing] I was getting sick of being younger than the older CND crowd and I missed the really big demos in 1982-1983. Now I played a reasonably important role in the biggest demo in British history (true by a factor of two even if the low-ball 750k estimate *was* correct). I can now bore teenagers for the rest of my life :-)
* While on Waterloo Bridge a 70-something man wearing military medals on his anorak asked how come there were so few people 'like me' in view. I told him that usually we were only outnumbered by 1000 or so to one, not today's 50,000:1. He said he was sorry if it sounded like he was criticising but he'd never been on a march before. I said something along the lines of 'Well, sir, I'm not hearing you criticise, so that's okay. The thing is, we're up a creek today because there are so many people like *you* here today.' We agreed that we were both very happy that was true, even though the poor sod had been stuck in a human traffic jam for an hour and was facing another 4 hours of walking before he'd get to Hyde Park.
* The Metropolitan Police. We learned a long time ago that in crisis moments you find a flat-cap with brass on his shoulder to deal with things. Several Inspector-rank and higher officers today were absolute stars, none were not. We were able to call in uniformed support after explaining in plain English why we thought they were needed. The Met today excelled themselves by either seeking us out or responding brilliantly when asked to assist. I missed it, but apparently they made a point on the BBC this afternoon of thanking the CND steward posse for making their lives easier and spotting public safety problems they'd missed while overstretched from time to time. I'd like to thank them back. They were the very model of a police force in active support of the democratic right to protest, and complained not a jot all day about the shitty job they had today.
* Seeing The Tony Myers and Patrick Van Den Bulck Show one more time. The first time I met them both was over 15 years ago at my first CND demo, where they were organising that too. By a strange quirk of fate they're now both working at CND again after all this time and it's a joy to watch.
* Being told off by Nicola, who was with the very irritating Greenpeace contingent earlier in the day. Somehow they'd found themselves attached to 100 or so Class War people and the aforementioned Tony and I struck up a radio conversation about this new 'alliance'. The 'please shut up now' message from Nicola came over after I posited the suggestion that if they were now in cahoots, Class War would become an outfit which anyone could join, though only staff members would be permitted to riot. Apparently Greenpeace could hear us over her radio. Sorry, hun :-)
* The unexpected appearance of half the London membership of the Liberal Democrats, all wearing gold T-shirts and carrying party-branded No War placards. I suddenly feel entirely vindicated for backing them in the last two general elections, where traditionally lefties like me were 'supposed' to vote Labour.
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To be honest, deeply painful limbs notwithstanding, I had a great time today. Back when aged 16 I started working for CND I wanted to be *doing* things, not sitting in endless committee meetings with old farts who only ever attend said committees. But CND's not like that and after 6 years of trying I left. Today was *all* about the important work, and as such very cathartic indeed.
One last odd thing (for me): both my other half and another, much more recent friend have both today said things to the effect that I'm some kind of hero and/or they're 'proud of me'. My own perspective says I was just doing a short reprise of a job I used to have.
In the end, these things I know:
a) 'Saving the world' boosts the ego enormously, feels really good and being one of the people who can 'fix things' is very gratifying.
b) I don't ever want to do it full-time again. The job rightly belongs to people who were the age I was when I left. People like us are just here to help sometimes.