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| Ealing TUC |
Amongst the banners at the other day’s march through central London – placards declaiming “Austerity Doesn’t Work”, "Buzz Off Cameron”, “1 Million Using Foodbanks”, “Climate Not Trident”, “Fuck The Tories”, and such like – a few enterprising protestors simply carried signs from Foxtons estate agents, presumably uprooted from someone’s front garden.
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| Haringey Defend Council Housing |
As I marched, I made a note of the chants that passed up and down the procession: “No ifs, no buts, no NHS cuts”; “They say, cut back / We say, fight back”; “When I say, green / you say, jobs / green / jobs / green / jobs”; "The people united will never be defeated”; “Whose streets? / Our streets”…
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| Greater Manchester & District CND |
One man, as if in the hope of inventing a new form of chorus in blank verse, simply shouted hoarsely, “Six hundred and fifty pounds a month to live in Peckham excluding bills? You’re having a laugh, mate.”
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| "We Have Found New Homes for the Rich" Class War |
I also heard a brief snatch of Procul Harem’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’. I heard a choir in matching red t-shirts singing ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ with lyrics altered to reflect the aims of the protest. And, to the tune of the old see shanty ‘Drunken Sailor’, I heard a small group singing “What shall we do with a Tory government…?”
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| Piccadilly & District West RMT |
Towards the end of the march, somewhere along the Strand, I overheard the following snatch of conversation: “… lots of police protecting McDonalds. They were discussing their favourite songs in Les Miz.”
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| "Time for Revolution" Anon. |
Quite a few of the placards people carried bore hashtags. Like “Let’s get rid of the royals too #republican”. But this was not the only thing that made this demo feel, at times, like an internet phenomenon that had somehow drifted through the screen and into the real world…
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| "No!" Anon. |
