The march from Trafalgar Square to the Ecuadorian Embassy on Saturday March 1st 2014 wasn’t a huge event, although its aims were all-embracing. Those attending were appalled at the state of the UK and the world and believed that a better world is possible if only we could get rid of the greedy and corrupt who currently are in change – the party politicians and their governments, the bankers and the corporations, the warmongers and the spies.
If only. While I share many of their views and aspirations, those in charge are in charge because they have the power, the money, the control of the media, the armies and more and are not about to give them up willingly.
Politically the only real challenge to them has come from people like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Saunders and the establishment made mincemeat of them with no-holds barred dirty tricks, false claims, lies and misrepresentation. And even if Corbyn had been elected – despite many in his party conspiring against him to throw the 2017 election it was a close-run thing and a united party would have won easily – he would have found it impossible to implement many of his policies.
Those coming for this protest want things that many want – and which would – like Corbyn – have wide popular support. As I wrote “they want justice and a fairer society, one that doesn’t oppress the poor and disabled, that doesn’t spy on everyone and doesn’t use the media and the whole cultural apparatus as a way of keeping blind to what is really happening.“
On My London Diary I unusually report quite a large chunk of a speech at the event by one of the organisers, Mitch Antony of Aspire Worldwide, which I seldom do. Usually I’m too busy taking photographs to pay a great deal of attention to the speeches at events, and at most just jot down in longhand a few significant phrases, never having managed to learn shorthand. I did use to carry a small voice recorder, and nowadays could do it on my phone, but listening and transcribing often hard to hear speeches is too time-consuming.
The ‘Mike-Check’ of many Occupy-inspired protests where short phrases are repeated by the crowd, often as an alternative where amplification is either not available or prohibited – as in much of the area around Parliament – does make it easier to follow and report, as does the repetition in Antony’s speech, which concluded with the series of statements below.
We march against Global Government Corruption
We march against ideological austerity
We march against privatisation for profit
We march against the bedroom tax
We march against bankers bonuses
We march against the corrupt MPs
We march against state spying on the people
We march against state controlled media
We march against government misrepresentation
We march against warmongering
We march against global tyranny
We march against state sponsored terrorism
We march against the military industrial complex
We march against the militarisation of the police
We march against the suppression of alternative energies
Unfortunately since 2014, we’ve seen almost all of these things on the increase, and Julian Assange, then inside the Ecuadorian Embassy is still imprisoned, now in our maximum security jail, Belmarsh, awaiting the Home Secretary’s decision on whether to extradite him to the USA where he faces a 175 year sentence for the ‘crime’ of publishing the truth about war crimes, corruption and climate policy.
Trafalgar Square, once a public square, has increasingly beeen hired out for commercial events, and was being got ready for one the following day, which meant that the advertised meeting point for this march was unavailable, but there was room just across the road in the island at the top of Whitehall. Some trying to attend gave up looking for it, but others persisted and slowly the numbers grew – and after some speeches set off.
It was a very visual event, with many interesting characters taking part, some well-known to me from earlier protests. Its route took it down Pall Mall and on to Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge where for a short while they joined a protest outside the store by the Campaign Against the Fur Trade.
At the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange was holed up in a small flat (the embassy itself is only a few rooms in a larger building) there were too many for the small pen opposite, but they refused in any case to keep to this, soon swarming across the road. The march had attracted an over-large police presence, and this was perhaps the only place some of them were needed to occupy the steps in front of the crowd.
The protest continued here for around an hour in support of of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers and over the continued refusal to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, something that seems to be an personal vendetta by Home Secretary Theresa May. Policing this has been an expensive business and by the end of 2013 had cost the UK taxpayer around £5.3 million. Perhaps May should have been made to pay.
The protesters hadn’t finished and were marching back to Parliament Square for yet another rally, but I needed to leave and file my report and pictures from the protest – and to get some dinner.
Much more on My London Diary at Against Worldwide Government Corruption.