Workers and skinheads unite.
Profit, profit, profit! The enemy is profit!
Bankers. Not real people, but real wankers.
Whose streets? Our streets!
Bring Brown down!
This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy feels like.
Actually, that is what 35,000 middle-class Londoners sound like when they all forgo their weekend morning watching Saturday Kitchen on the tele or reading the Guardian Guide in a suburban café over brunch, to protest. People who usually keep their heads down and just get on with it, albeit with a slight tut, and would rather have a quiet life.
But this time was different. They weren’t going to be appeased by interest rate cuts or a new series of The Apprentice. This time even they’d been affected, and were moved enough to get out there and stand up for themselves under the guise of ‘putting people first’, humanity before profit. Against the unfair economy where bankers are allowed to gamble with their money, the rich can evade paying taxes, while poor people and workers across the world are exploited.
This was the march on Saturday to coincide with the G20 summit, not the later marches on Wednesday and Thursday which were more hardcore and involved anarchist groups and a heavy-handed police approach, with snipers and machine guns. On Saturday, all that was needed from the police was an authoritative look, or a firm hand on the arm. No this march on the Saturday was for the less die-hard, the more soft-core, the people who hadn’t yet lost their jobs due to the economic crisis, so they had to go to work during the other marches in the week. And they didn’t want to use any days off to protest. They cared, but they wouldn’t go as far as losing their holiday for the cause.
Of course there were the more passionate of the soft-core, who came out in their groups, waving their flags, banging their drums and chanting through megaphones. Religious groups, environmentalists and trade unions, including the RMT and the Militant Workers Bloc, who were slightly scary, yet you were glad they were on your side, as they shouted out powerfully against redundancies and repossessions. Then there were the Socialists, holding up their ‘We won’t pay for their crisis’ banners, who ranged from the fiery Europeans chanting, ‘Viva Palestina!’ to the quieter, more civilised ladies-who-lunch-types, reading passages softly, yet fervently from their Socialist handbooks.
Also the anti-capitalists, with the best banner of the day, ‘Capitalism isn’t working. Another world is possible’, an ironic twist on the Conservatives’ election winning poster campaign in 1979, ‘Labour isn’t working’. Another group out in force were the Goth and Vampire Kids, with their ‘rent-a-placards’ emblazoned with generic anti-war messages, mumbling indecipherable mantras, blowing their hair out of their eyes every few seconds, and their minds with soft-core weed.
Scattered amongst these were the individual characters, protesting in their own unique way. The ones the media and bankers would refer to as the ‘nutters’, but who actually brought theatre and laughter to the proceedings. One looked the spitting image of the British serial killer Charles Bronson. All bald-head, moustache and violent moves. Luckily they were just dance moves to the beat of the drums up ahead. He made it clear to everyone around him that he was a vegetarian, and then let out a blood-curdling cry. Yaaaarrrrrrrrhoooooooooooaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeoooo!
An English Che complete with beret, tweed jacket and umbrella-cum-walking-stick kept bellowing to the fluorescent yellow lines of police, ‘Don’t police us, police them!’ waving aforementioned umbrella in the direction of the Houses of Parliament. Here, here! Then a guy cycled past on his bike with a carrot on a stick dangling from the handlebars, shouting ‘I need it, I need it!’
But the ones who made up the numbers, made the difference. The unexpected mass of the middle-classes, mixing in with the organised groups and strolling along with flasks of tea or cans of beer. Having more of a meander than a march, chatting about what they got up to last night, bouncing up and down to the drumbeats, blowing whistles and holding up their handcrafted placards.
Forget the worthy cause for one minute, it was worth going on the march just to see these placards. Stationer Ryman’s profits must have taken a leap this week due to the sales of fat, black marker pens alone. Countless pieces of cardboard had been scrawled on with ingenious statements. ‘Asbos 4 Bankers’ got second place, with first place going to ‘What is going on?’. This homemade gem held aloft above a sea of middle-class protestors including a vegetarian Charles Bronson, jumping up and down and blowing whistles in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, should have been the march’s overall slogan.
You see, some of the marchers making up the numbers didn’t really know the full story. They weren’t socialists or against capitalism, for a start a few opted for Selfridges over the rally when the march was over. Yet that’s what made Saturday’s march interesting, meaningful and matter more. Today most people haven’t got a clear idea about what they believe in, but a mixture of contradictory opinions that don’t lead them in any obvious direction. Nothing’s black and white, it’s all grey, and that’s why we’re all unsure as to which way to go now. But Saturday’s march proved that a great number of people with differing viewpoints are united about something. We’ve had enough of wanker bankers and an unjust, unregulated economy.
So although some didn’t understand the full story, it didn’t matter, as they were there to represent their own particular chapter. Be it the threat of redundancy at their workplace, their pay-freeze or the loss of their pension. And it gave you a buzz to chat, laugh and share disgruntlement with a cross-section of the middle-classes, who you wouldn’t usually talk to.
This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy feels like.
If this is what it feels like, then we need a whole lot more of it, because it feels pretty good. Much better than anything you can buy.
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