By the end of Saturday afternoon, police said that more than 750,000 people–organizers put the figure at more than two million–had come together in Hyde Park to demonstrate against the prospect of military action against Iraq. “It was just amazing to see so many people of so many different types, backgrounds and religions,” said student Siobhan Ainger, leaving the park as dusk fell.
And while London staged the largest demonstration ever witnessed in Britain’s capital, rallies in at least 50 other cities across the world drew a mixed turnout. Organizers claimed Rome’s protest numbered 3 million people (police estimated one million); crowds in Berlin were estimated at 300,000 to 500,000 and reports in Damascus, Syria were of 200,000 people. In other cities, numbers were substantially smaller: some 10,000 people showed in Amsterdam; several thousand reportedly gathered in Athens, Capetown, Tokyo and Canberra, Australia. In Bangladesh, Bangkok, and Kiev, there were reports of 2,000 people; in Moscow and Hong Kong, only a few hundred. In Mostar, Bosnia, 100 Muslims and Croats gathered together in what was said to be the first joint action between the groups in seven years. In New York City, activists hoped to see at least 100,000.
In many of those cities, crowds gathered outside the British and American embassies. Everywhere the skepticism about the motives of these two nations ran deep. “This is all about business,” said Rosalinda Arias, a restaurant owner in Madrid who lost her sister in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. “They want the oil: they want to bring American imperialism.”
Altogether, in a global outpouring of sentiment, millions gathered to demand a negotiated settlement between the United Nations and Iraq. Yesterday, in a meeting of the Security Council at the United Nations, delegates backed giving UN weapons inspectors more time to search Iraq. The United States had instead wanted the Council to consider a resolution approving force against Saddam Hussein.
Back in London, the march passed without incident, watched by more than 1,300 police. Although monuments along the route, including the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square, had been boarded up to protect them from attack, there was no sign of violence.
The event was the brainchild of the Stop The War Coalition, a loose alliance of left-wing MPs, trades unions, radical groups and churches, as well as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and moderate Moslem organizations.
But the broad spectrum of people who attended the march–teenagers, housewives, stroller-pushing families from the suburbs, among others–neatly demonstrated how opinion against British participation in any attack on Iraq now cuts across age, party line and class. Indeed, polls suggest that more than 80 percent of the British public oppose war without UN support. The demonstrators’ style of protest neatly reflected the mix. Slogans on the thicket of placards ranged from the personal and virulent-‘Attila, Napoleon, Hitler, Bush, Blair’-to the more gently humorous ‘Make Tea Not War.’ For many, it was their first political rally. “I have never done anything like this before but I just can’t believe in this war at all,” said pensioner Mary Edwards who traveled two hours by train from South Wales to attend. “It offers no solution whatever.”
Some were almost reluctant protestors. “I am not really a great fan of these events but if one doesn’t do what one can one is complicit with the government’s decisions,” said university lecturer Bill Tryhtall. “The outcome of military success could be even worse than failure. The whole Middle East region could be dissolved into chaos.”
In common was a conviction that a war could aggravate existing problems. “The people of Iraq have been suffering under sanctions for 12 years,” said Othane Elmez Ued, an Algerian doctor working in London, pushing his small son in a buggy towards the rally. “It’s important to be here to show that we are against the killing of innocent people.”
On the other had, some were still ready to be persuaded by the case for war. Their opposition rested more on concern over the apparent haste of the British and American governments to go to war without exhausting all other alternatives. “I am not 100 percent against war but so far the case has not been made,” said one former army officer attending the rally with a row of medals pinned to his oilskin jacket.
Almost as varied as the marchers were the speakers and performers in Hyde Park, a list that embraced the Rev. Jesse Jackson, London mayor Ken Livingstone, a clutch of MPs from the ruling Labour party ready to challenge their own leadership and Bianca Jagger.
The sheer scale of the event–as well its diversity–rams home the message to Prime Minister Tony Blair that his own political fortunes are now at stake. In the words from the podium of Tariq Ali, the veteran British political activist: “We are here to tell Tony Blair openly that if one country needs a regime change it’s Britain.”
For the moment, Blair seems unfazed. “I don’t seek unpopularity as a badge of honor but sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction,” he told a party meeting in Glasgow on Saturday. The British public has still to be persuaded that the cost isn’t too high.
