London Indymedia

Parliament Square last night: anger at last!

Richard N | 11.11.2004 06:33 | Anti-militarism | London

Last night's noisy, passionate demo in front of parliament was an encouraging sign that the days of marching placidly from A to B are over...


After the STWC rally, which featured a powerful speech from bereaved military mother Rose Gentle, still raging after a third fruitless visit to Downing Street (Blair is never 'available' to see her) the crowd surged into the road in Parliament Square and made its feelings heard, with real anger, helped by arguably the most powerful chant heard so far during this whole horrific period: 'Fallujah, resist - Bush and Blair are terrorists!' repeated over and over, louder and louder, the crowd ringed by police and vans but the message strong and defiant and perhaps even creeping across the square into the consciences of some of those spineless New Labour MPs...

The 'unofficial' protest lasted for around an hour and was inspiring, a success, but lacked the numbers necessary to unnerve Tony's acolytes and perhaps force them to reconsider whether the Dear Leader is such an electoral asset after all.

Last night was a good start. I now read that demonstrators made their point in Picadilly Circus too. Next time we need more of the same but on a much, much bigger scale. No more 'good humoured' (read: ignorable) marches. It's time for anger. It's time to shake our morally bankrupt PM and his cabinet cronies out of their arrogant complacency. Hit them where it hurts: on the streets and in the ballot box. Support the Impeach Blair campaign. Protest to your own MP. Declare your intention to vote tactically. Whatever it takes. We need to tell our elected representatives that they can get away with their lies and crimes no longer.

This is Blair's Vietnam. And now we must make it ours too.

Richard N

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Tactical Suggestion

11.11.2004 19:09

One thing that could work to cause more disruption would be to have lots of bloackades in different places in London. For example if there were 1000 people all in a group it is fairly easy for police to contain. But 5 groups of 200 or 10 groups of 100 could cause a lot more disruption and would mean police would have a much harder time controlling things.
This sort of thing happened in San Francisco after the war started and was more effective than one demo.

Tactic


road blocking

12.11.2004 17:02

It took only about 20 people to block the south and west junctions at Piccadilly that night. Drivers and pedestrians were generally supportive/enthusiastic/not confrontational. Imagine blocking all the 4/5(?) junctions, how would the agents of the state get through to disperse protestors then!
It's a very effective action. Just take banner/placards.. or flowers - like the activist from San Francisco who joined in last night.

Beep


Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

London Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

London IMC

Desktop

About | Contact
Mission Statement
Editorial Guidelines
Publish | Help

Search :