We had, said the media, 10,000 on the marches. It could have been
12,000. It was big, anyway, and given that it rained and rained all day
long, it was very impressive.
There were three marches, from Salford, South Manchester, and
Cheetham Hill. All were sizeable, the largest being the one from the
south. They all decanted into Albert Square, all in high good humour
despite being all very wet. There were lots of placards and banners
(though not many union ones), good chanting etc. We had drummers
and stilt walkers, lots of whistles and hooters. A mini-London in
atmosphere, but rather more militant in tone and more ready to chant, I
think. Lots of young people - especially notable were the big numbers of
young Asians, all very noisy and cheerful.
A sizable part of the crowd braved the steady rain and wind to listen to
the speakers. Those that stayed were very enthusiastic, cheering all
speakers wo put across their ideas clearly, welcoming chances to join in
chanting, strongly approving radical speeches and also demonstrating
in their responses how very knowledgeable about world politics they
were. They cheered for the Palestinians, for the Kurds, for Asylum
Seekers, they booed Marks and Spencers as well as Blair, Bush and
Sharon, they strongly applauded the idea of people's power replacing
parliament and the call for a different world.
The bucket collection raised over a thousand pounds (and there are still two more bucket sets to be counted) - it was noticeable that the copper proportion was small. That is, people were generous in giving - lots of one and two pound and 50p coins.
A lot of people put a huge amount of work into organizing this demonstration. I think overall we did a good job and it was worth it. One notable aspect was that a number of local companies in the 'street entertainment events' business who put in loads of free hours and heaps of valuable gear to help us, specially with the staging and sound system in Albert Square.
Colin Barker, Manchester Stop the War (c/o Richard Searle (07760 224 580, ANSWERmanchester@aol.com)
Photos: Tony S./MFoE, BBC Manchester, Manchester Evening News