Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Actually, not much to add to that: it was an SWP thing. The crowd wasn't that impressive for a major city - say 400 - even if it was 10x the fash numbers. Perhaps people coming out in the week reduced today's numbers. It had an SWP + liberal/hippy vibe in that there were loads of SWP printed placards, along with homemade 'we are all human' type things. The hippy vibe was also there with some communal singing about love. Don't want to be too cynical, it was fine as a liberal counter to the fash and there was plenty of decent content in the speeches, particularly about Palestine. But then the likes of Yvonne Ridley as well.Yes, numbers about right, though probably 400 plus in Newgate when I left about 40 mins ago. I'll do a report when not on phone but the anti fash demo was pretty much what you'd expect for an SWP dominated event.
However, there was no engagement with the fash, who could have easily been run out of town. Not necessarily by giving them a kicking, which certainly wasn't where this crowd was at, but just taking the space from them - as was the original intention. That's the problem with this kind of strategy, even though the fash numbers were pitiful, they weren't actually defeated today.