Trident
Went to the anti-Trident demo yesterday - and completely failed to take any photos, so this is nicked from the Guardian (the view from the "stage" towards the crowd as people were arriving; if you can make out the two cops in their hig-vis jackets who are filming the crowd from the left-hand steps into the National Gallery, I'm pretty much directly
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Trying to remember if we ever achieved anything. Is Polaris still around? "Och, och, a monster in the loch," we sang, among other other hopeful songs of protest.
Well, at least it's not forbidden!
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Yes, at least it's not forbidden - there were an awful lot of police photographers of course (and there we were, photographing them photographing us ... *g*)
It was good to have some high profile speakers, though - First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood, only Green MP (and former Green Party leader) Caroline Lucas and Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn (coincidentally my MP) plus a couple of big Trades Union leaders (and Bruce Kent).
The whole thing reminded me so much of our own moonlightmead and made me wish she could have been there marching along with us and cheering the speakers, it was just the kind of thing we used to talk about. And her lovely story Will You Let Your Cities Crumble of course, when she took the mickey out of it all so lovingly!
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I wouldn't have expected any Tories to turn up, really - political suicide for them, even if there are any who are anti-Trident (which I doubt) - but there were the leaders of all the main opposition parties, so higher profile than usual :-)
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Freezing cold, but a good rally with some excellent speakers (I'm pretty taken with Sturgeon, insofar as I can stand any politicians much, and I'm really very taken with Corbyn, who I think comes as close as realistically possible to blowing "politician" out of the water while still being one *g*. Happy to be able to vote for someone in his case, and not just against the other lot!)
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Actually, one nice thing about the rally was the great range of ages - there were a lot of older people who had very probably been on the big marches of the early '80s themselves, but the average age was much much younger - though I only saw a sprinkling of actual children myself, I saw a lot of student-age and thirty-ish people. Need much bigger numbers to make a difference at the elections, though - we'll see how it goes in May!
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And I like to think that she might have written a line or two about the bloke in the kilt who had brought along his bagpipes on the back of a bike (his mate wheeled the bike along while he played), and the other one who'd brought along some sort of Viking-ish horn - the two of them were playing near each other for a bit of the way along the route, very battle-cries-across-the-North-Sea!
I think she would have loved it, yes. And she would have gone and talked to them all too, so she would!
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