My own politics are left of centre. My parents thought I was a near communist in my teens, but I was left of centre then as I am now. It’s possible to believe strongly and passionately in something moderate so don’t think of my position on the spectrum as wishy-washy merely because of its position.

 

I’m probably considerably left of the present labour party and fail to understand their attachment to PFIs and their anxiety to have us bring the system that brought the economy to its knees back to the previous status quo however much it costs.

 

I like Marcus Brigstock and Polly Toynbeee is OK, but why do they dig at the Daily Mail instead of taking them on? They swipe and sneer, but fail to look seriously at the paper’s popularity with people like my mother. Now she lives with us, I always scan it too. There’s no point in dismissing it out of hand without trying to understand it and the people who read it. I admired Michael Moore for trying to understand conservative America. You can never argue effectively with your opponents if you can’t be bothered to understand where they’re coming from.

 

Say no to war in Iraq

 

I never liked calling it a ‘war’ as it was clearly an invasion. I speak of the George W Bush/Tony Blair operation. I felt more strongly about that than almost anything else our country has done in my lifetime. We disarmed a nation that clearly had nothing to do with 9/11.

 

Hans Blix got them to get rid of their longest range conventional weapons. They did. Then we mounted an offensive called ‘Shock and Awe’ – presumably named so the Iraqis could watch the effect of weapons so huge and destructive they’d take their breath away – figuratively and in some cases literally. While we did this we’d wag our fingers at the Iraqis  for not declaring weapons of their own that they did not have – and it was already becoming pretty obvious before the invasion that they didn’t have them when Hans Blix couldn’t find a trace even in the key places he was directed to.

 

I was a protest march rookie and these were my impressions of it at the time. I wrote about it a couple of days later:

 

The march was fantastic. We were shunted from pillar to post by the police in the name of ‘crowd control’ – ‘crowd aggravation’ for sure. They closed Westminster, Hungerford and Waterloo bridges to pedestrians – all ther most obvious ones to use.

 

There were older people, ladies and men in wheelchairs, me, seasoned marchers. We all had to leave Westminster Bridge, go down some steps, along the bank, over Lambeth Bridge and back again, to the march, where one was stuck in a scrum of thousands watching the march go by (already because they set off early because of the numbers) but blocked off from joining – by the police.

 

I did manage to join it just before Picadilly by walking further north so I was fairly near the front but progress was slow. I sat out for a while when we got near Hyde Park and the huge crowd just went on by on and on and on.  I understand people were still marching at 5.30 after I and many others had gone home.

 

It was too big for the police to do a perfect job, but I think they funnelled the crowd a bit thin so there was only ever half the total number in the park at any one time, I reckon. Still the crowd stretched as far as the eye could see and the picture from the Independent on this page shows a view of just a tiny patch of the march.

 

 

 

 

Tony Benn gave an inspiring speech. George Galloway was brilliant. He told France, Russia and China not to humiliate themselves as we have done. He said that the love affair between Blair and Bush was more revolting than Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But like that relationship, it’s unequal and, like that one, we have to spend time on our knees to please the Bush administration.

 

Most speeches linked to the Palestin ian question. There were some terrific posters, like ‘Spot the mad dictator’ and ‘Who’s the nutter with nuclear weapons?’ with photos of Saddam and Bush, ‘Make tea not war’ and other.s