Various People Against Bad Things

On–the–spot semiotic analysis of demonstrations can be tricky, of course. My prize goes to the young man coming out of the tube station whom I overheard say to his companion as he pressed through the human tide pouring through the park to the Embankment: ‘This is the Countryside Alliance, isn’t it – the one in favour of fox–hunting?’

Wrong. If a glance at the expectant faces and sharply contrasting dress codes didn’t do it, a visit to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament website would have told him that – thanks to an accident of double booking – this was in fact a quarter of a million people (at least – four kilometres long, over two hours filing into Hyde Park) answering the joint call of the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain to march against war in Iraq, and for the liberation of Palestine.

Some reports say that 100,000 Muslims joined the demo. Certainly they were loudly, proudly, and everywhere in evidence. But there seemed to be nothing at all accidental about this amiable combination of long–distance carers: Keep Palestine litter–free car stickers worn proudly on T–shirts, alongside (British) Green party People B4 Petrol posters; a rainbow of old CND banners punctuated by even older trade union ones; Muslim elders with headscarved fourteen year olds, walking side by side with Oxford Quaker grannies, their grandchildren in pushchairs.

In other words, this was Britain’s latest exercise in hyphenation: a new stage in the development of multicultural Britain.

A look at the CND site reveals worries amongst some of the demo’s official supporters that mixed messages would lose the day’s focus. Some will have remembered how ill served Palestinian interests have been by premature or belated (by Western standards) support for Iraq and its dictator. But the causes seemed naturally united in a main message that was clearly anti–war rather than anti–anything else.

The organisers had worked long hours to provide enough of the hardly ubiquitous Don’t Attack Iraq, Not In My Name green posters to brand the event. It was a hopeless case from the start: from multiple corners of Britain, people brought their own messages, analyses, experiences of the world.

A kaleidoscope of concern

For Steve Burgin, Stop the War organiser, and Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, the whole thing was clearly about oil. For Scott Ritter, the ex–arms inspector now visiting the Labour party conference, regime change contravenes United Nations (UN) law. Milan Rai and CND consider Blair’s Dossier an exercise in misrepresenting the conditions in which weapons inspectors could return to Iraq, forcing a refusal that would precede a possible nuclear or chemical exchange.

Dissident Labour MPs focused on the discrepancy between the details of the main document and the much more urgent threat invoked in its summary. For veteran socialist Tony Benn, it was a question about whether the British people know how much power they have in a democracy. Then there were UNISON hospital workers who for years have connected the sanctions imposed on Iraq with the sharp rise in infant mortality, and just don’t like war. Free Palestine galvanised the Muslim youngsters. Hitler references were mainly directed at Sharon, while George Bush was reminded that his father was a murderer too. Tony Blair escaped most indignities, apart from being linked with Bush. In terms of positive proposals, a widespread commitment to a convincing UN resolution brought many of the walkers together.

But this was not what you might call a highly–disciplined demonstration. Practised London lefties chatted on traffic islands, or popped in and dropped out from various tube stations along the way. You would step aside for a headscarved girl with a friend, only to find a DNA ribbon of giggling teenagers, weaving their way up the column, the sixth whipping out a megaphone and proceeding to incite the surrounding community in a very professional manner. You would just have recovered your stride when a cross–current of Muslim elders would sedately exit left, disappearing into an unlikely part of Hyde Park. Perhaps we were too far back to feel the cohering impact of our leaders, but my guess is that most of the march was as uncentred, and as cheerfully companionable, as our bit.

Anger, prayer – and disbelief

By the time we reached Hyde Park, what we saw was a veritable field full of folk. I am told by a colleague that things were a little more ominous earlier in the afternoon. Troubled by anti–Semitic slogans, and liberal use of swastikas coupled with the Star of David (both utterly at odds with the peaceful message of the march as a whole), she had been struck by a new presence on an anti–war march: a stand staffed by men with Reject Western Solutions emblazoned in orange on their black shirts, representing Hizb ut Tahrir. They were ‘handing out leaflets and reading from the same leaflet into a microphone, over and over’, and round the stage area had formed a huge semi–circle where people were sitting surrounded by huge orange banners bearing Hizb ut Tahrir slogans, calling for the re–establishment of the Khalifah and the fight against capitalism.

Two hours later, the (Trotskyist) Socialist Workers Party still had its bank of recruiters. They were not the only ones armed with megaphones and prepared to tell you everything they knew about everything. The overall effect was summed up by the young man holding a placard announcing, Various People Against Bad Things. The Muslim elders who had left us earlier had rolled out a large prayer mat and were there praying to Mecca. Those who literally wished to stand up and be counted were still listening to speeches, but they were the gluttons for punishment. Others were just sitting in the September sun, laughing at the little dog who wanted to be at both ends of a frisbee game, or wandering up to the ice–cream vans at Marble Arch, past the Peace News stall, with its particular mixture of world–weariness and good cheer.

From all this, one message came through clearly to those who wished to read it: the credibility gap between the escalating war rhetoric, and what all these people, in their different ways, believe to be self–evidently true. Tim Jordan offers us an intriguing demonstration litmus test: is it in the past, the present, or the future tense? What was so noticeable about this demonstration was the internal combination of old and new. Many of the people walking simply had too long memories to be convinced by this latest crisis, whatever they then read into it. The peace activists have long assumed that weapons of mass destruction would indeed spread inexorably unless the big boys, including the US and the UK, could settle on a tough ‘non–proliferation’ regime.

Similarly, generations of campaigners for Palestinian rights simply cannot get beyond the asymmetry of the punishment meted out to Iraq and Israel over non–compliance with UN resolutions: ‘If Britain and America are having a war on terror, why don’t they stop Sharon?’ Even my favourite slogan of the day, Tony Blair – Be Fair, seemed to me to invoke the incredulity of people who have long held very mixed feelings about the British Empire.

For one day at least, this was one corner of Britain that was very much at ease with its internationalism and its latest diversity, so not really prone to enemy images, it’s true. But this Britain, indulgent as it is in many ways, is going to have to have a lot more straight answers to a lot more difficult questions, if it is to move an inch. Until then, we simply won’t be moved.