Saturday’s anti-war demonstration in London was a large one, with estimates of 50,000 by the organisers. It took roughly 40 minutes to pass me going over Westminster Bridge, and by the time I’d photographed the final protesters opposite Westminster station I had to run the hundred yards or so to catch up with the head of the event going round Parliament Square. They had arrived there by walking a roughly 2km circuit, coming back across the Thames over Lambeth Bridge and up Millbank.
It was remarkable too for the range of different people and groups supporting it, many adding their own causes to the general aims of getting our troops back from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not going to war with Iran and ending the Israeli seige of Gaza.
I tried to reflect the whole range in my pictures, though I’m sure I missed some. And although thankfully the police did largely leave the conduct of the demonstration to the march organisers, the event did show the continuing fascination of FIT teams with the anarchist fringe, which only serves to encourage them. The only real clash, when four were arrested on what seems a very dubious pretext, predictably came when I was taking a break from the event as little seemed to be happening.
Although I’ve written a little on My London Diary about the event, mostly I’ve just put up pictures, roughly in chronological order, that cover the event. It was a big event, so I took a lot of pictures and there are rather a lot on line, perhaps about one in ten of what I took.
Thinking again about Winogrand, he liked to keep his work for a couple of years before he looked at it and selected the pictures that worked. Although nothing on My London Diary is in the same league, my serious edit will also be in a few years time. For the moment the site is really more like my digital version of contact sheets, as the name suggests a diary of how I saw things in London.