February 17, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 15, 1423

LONDON: “Are there any more coming, then?”

There have been dafter questions, but not many. At 1.10 on Saturday, Mike Wiseman from Newcastle upon Tyne placed his accordion carefully on the ground below Hyde Park’s gates and rubbed cold hands together. Two elderly women, hand in hand in furs, passed through, still humming the dying notes from his ‘Give Peace A Chance’. They were, had he known it, early, part of a tiny crowd straggling into Hyde Park before the march proper.

Half a mile away, round the corner in Piccadilly, the ground shook. An ocean, a perfect storm of people. Banners, a cherry blossom of banners, covered every inch back to the Circus — and for miles beyond, south to the river, north to Euston.

Ahead of the marchers lay one remaining silent half-mile. The unprecedented turnout had shocked the organizers, shocked the marchers. And there at the end before them, high on top of the Wellington Arch, the four obsidian stallions and their vicious conquering chariot, the very Spirit of War, were stilled, rearing back — caught, and held, in the bare branches and bright chill of Piccadilly, London, on Saturday.

Are there any more coming? Yes, Mike. Yes, I think there are some more coming.

Britain’s largest march, surpassing every one of the organizers’ wildest expectations and Tony Blair’s worst fears, will be remembered for the bleak bitterness of the day and the colourful warmth of feeling in the extraordinary crowds. Organizers claimed that more than 1.5 million had turned out. Police agreed to ‘hundreds of thousands’. By three o’clock in the afternoon they were still streaming out of tube stations to join the end of the two routes, from Gower Street in the north and Embankment by the river. “Must be another march,” grumbled the taxi driver, then, trying in vain to negotiate Tottenham Court Road. No, I said; it’s the same one, still going, and he turned his head in shock.

There were, of course, the usual suspects on show — CND, Socialist Worker. But even they looked shocked at the number of their fellow marchers: it is safe to say they had never experienced such a mass of humanity.

There were nuns. Toddlers. Barristers. One group of Socialist Workers’ Party members had been joined, for the first march in any of their histories, by their mothers. There were country folk and lecturers, dentists and poulterers, a hairdresser from Cardiff and a poet from Cheltenham. I called a friend at two o’clock, who was still making her ponderous way along the Embankment — “It’s not a march yet, more of record shuffle” — and she expressed delight at her first outing. “You wouldn’t believe it; there are girls here with good nails and really nice bags.”

Cheer upon cheer went up. There were cheers as marchers were given updates about turnout elsewhere in the world — 90,000 in Glasgow, two million on the streets of Rome. There was a huge cheer, at Piccadilly Circus, when the twin rivers met, just before one o’clock.

And the talk was of politics, yes, but not just politics. There were not the detailed arguments we had had, even during the last peace march in November, over UN resolutions and future codicils. This march was not really about politics; it was about humanitarianism.

“I’m not political, not at all. I don’t even watch the news,” said Alvina Desir, queuing on the Embankment for the start of the march at noon. “I’ve never been on a march in my life and never had any intention. But something’s happened recently, to me and so many friends — we just know there’s something going wrong in this country. No one’s being consulted, and it’s starting to feel worrying — more worrying than the scare-mongering we’ve been getting about the terrorist threat. I simply don’t see how war can be the answer and I don’t know anyone who does. And, apart from anything else, as a black woman in London, it feels dangerous to spread racial tension after all that’s been done.”

“They will take notice of a protest like this,” said a Cheshire fireman nearby. “Our MPs, and Blair himself, were voted in by ordinary people like those here today. Blair is clever enough not to ignore this.”

Housewife Maureen Thompson, a lifelong Labour voter, who feels “Mr Blair is in terrible danger of letting the whole labour tradition down.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.