So there I was intending to lend my support to the Icount campaign, wandering down Malet St. and seeing all the people in costumers and waving banners and I thought, this looks good. There’s going to be quite a few people here, the beating drums whipping people into a frenzy and then they all just ran out… there were no more people left and I had barely walked half the length of Malet St. What kind of a protest is this? Well at least the Lib Dems were out in force.
So I sat on a wall for a few minutes waiting for the crowds of latecomers to arrive but when the march started off I decided that this was it, so I got off my perch and joined in at the back. I wouldn’t call myself a veteran of protest marches, but I’ve been on a couple of mayday riots, a make poverty history march and the anti-war march before we invaded Iraq. They were all much bigger than this one and I found it hard to believe that this was going to get anyone’s attention, and there was something else very strange, everywhere I turned there were people with Lib Dem placards, I searched vainly for even a green party one, but nothing, surely this wasn’t a demonstration organised by the Lib Dems? although it would explain the low turnout.
Halfway to Trafalgar Square someone offered me a placard, I took it because he was carrying two of them and had a look at the front to see what I would be hoisting up, relief, it was a RSPCB one. “At least it’s not a Lib Dem one” I said loudly, the deathly silence that followed told me volumns.
As you can see the march was pretty uneventful but worse still when we got to Trafalgar Square I realised that this was’t just a Lib Dem march it’s just that I was marching with God knows how many Lib Dem councillors and MPs, so we stood at the entrance, they decided to take a group photo and I was stuck almost at the front of them. So if you ever see a picture of a bunch of Lib Dems in the corner or Trafalgar Square at the end of a very short march about Climate Change and there is one twerp in the middle of the picture holding a RSPCB placard, that’s me.
I got away from them pretty quickly after that and went to listen to the pointless posturing of those on stage. 20,000 people were there apparently, personally I think that is a pathetic turnout for something that is being described as the worst crisis we have every had to face. Just as I thought there was hardly any coverage of it in the press and I didn’t see a single placard for the Labour party or the Conservative party, still at least the Lib Dems bothered to turn up.