Could have shown at least a bit of dissent by marching down the whole street, not herded obediently into one half. The rich slept well last night.

The actual TUC estimate is "MORE THAN 150,000" -

 http://afuturethatworks.org/thanks-for-marching-with-us/

All no thanks to the more-militant-than-thou dickheads who used Indymedia to pour scorn on a display of public solidarity before the march had even started (and yes of course Miliband is a total plank)

 http://anticuts.com/2012/10/15/demo2012-we-need-a-different-route/

"The rich slept well last night"? I chatted to some of the black-bloc on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Rd, my god they were posh

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hml4_zppOrM&feature=plcp

I spent some time both in the main bit of the demo and the Oxford St action.

Both were worthwhile events in their own right, but with national mobilisations against the cuts are so few and far between, the overall feeling I left with was a sense of slight disappointment.

The bits of the main demo I saw had plenty of energy; the diversity of people and home-made signs did renew my faith in humanity. But despite that I doubt that most of the people on the demo are willing yet to bypass the union bureaucrats and initiate wildcat strikes, blockades etc. So they'll continue to be ignored. I'd love to be proved wrong.

The Oxford St action added some much-needed militancy to the day, and was valuable even if only in denying the TUC a monopoly on tactics. But it quickly turned into the exhausting and dissatisfying game of cat-and-mouse round Central London some of us are so familiar with from previous years.

I can think of two things that could have improved it.

Firstly, more affinity groups coming along with a clear idea of what they might contribute to the group. What I mean is, it's great to come along to these things. It's even more useful to come along with a group of others that can look out for each other. But best of all is to come along with a group AND an idea of what that group will do. You might decide to specialise in giving out spare masks to unprepared people. Or bringing loads of snacks and water to distribute. Or providing first aid. Or having shields or re-inforced banners to push through police lines or protect from batons. Or coming prepared with stones or paint bombs to do property damage. etc etc.

We all have busy lives and I'm as guilty of coming unprepared as anybody else. Obviously, every time there will be some people who will not be able to come prepared in this way. But if we want these actions to be more successful we have to take collective responsibility for making that happen. Ourselves. Not waiting for someone else to do it for us.

Secondly, on a more mundane and tactical level loads of people still don't react when a squad of cops suddenly push their way through, or along the edge of our crowds. Almost always these groups of police are on their way to arrest someone, stop us from reaching a target, or kettle us. It's massively frustrating that more people don't seem to realise that it's in our interests to stop them before they do.

There were some of us getting in their way and blocking them, but loads more people not doing so, despite the fact that we easily had the numbers to succeed. Obviously everyone has to decide for themselves what they are comfortable with, but as a group we need more people to be willing to do this cop-blocking, otherwise we will be controlled as easily as sheep. And the more people who join in, the safer it becomes to do it!

One last thought. We can't wait another year and a half for the TUC to call another demo. We need to find a way of building a network capable of calling effective national actions against the cuts. The biggest barriers to this are probably the cultural barriers between anarchist-inspired direct action movements and grassroots trade-unionism. It's worth trying to overcome these, but even if we only manage to mobilise the anarcho crowd that's still better than waiting around for the TUC to do something.

"I chatted to some of the black-bloc on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Rd, my god they were posh"

Well good for you. I know plenty of people who do black bloc tactics who are not posh. What is your point?

Surely the only way to force the TUC to call a general strike is to organise it without them.

"Surely the only way to force the TUC to call a general strike is to organise it without them."

What is abundantly clear is that this march passed off almost exactly the same as the last one.

The TUC get some public sectory workers out onto the streets, most of whom are the TUC's membership, then they shuffle Miliband onto the stage to get booed at. Afterwards, the TUC reps get up and call for strike action...which most people will supposedly sympathise with because, well, they have been primed to! So at some point, the TUC will be able to call for strike action and Miliband will be able to condemn those strikes in order to appeal to the voter. The TUC will get what they want, Labout get what they want.

So we get some fairly benign strikes which do little, and in frustration, the voters vote for Labour in a last ditch effort to prevent the effects of the cuts.

So we end up with a new hobby horse selling us cuts under a different banner, and we all get to go home safe in the knowledge that somehow, in someway, for some reason nobody can think of, we had some effect on the way things are. Home to a house with just as many problems as before. The rent is still harder to pay for, the electricity is still just as expensive, the jobs just as hard to find, just as many disabled told they can work when they can't, just as many NHS patients chucked out onto the streets and told to suffer in silence...at home!

We have a problem in this country with a new political Middle Class of opportunists. They hijack everything just to lead us round and round in circles till nothing makes sense. They do this to live off the public purse at out expense. They don't really care about how things are, all they care about is dominating us...the plebs. They were suits and stand on stages with working class accents. They claim membership of Unions and sit in private dinner clubs drinking scotch. They sip champagne from coffe cups and eat caviar with brown sauce. Their freinds are called Henrietta but they drop their H's when they call them by name. They have staggering wealth, and they keep it in the High Street banks. They have a privilaged upbringing, and claim to be dysfunctional. They wear socks from Harrods...with holes in them!

We aren't the Middle Classes...they are. This grand experiment, has been nothing more than an excercise in political engineering...for the political classes. They aren't describing us, they are describing themselves.

Let them eat cake, from the end of a pitch fork. Lets spread the health, by spreading the wealth.

@ Rox "I chatted to some of the black-bloc on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Rd, my god they were posh" - bollocks, you are making shit up. I know exactly who you mean and they were not "posh" as you call them. I know them and they are from working-class areas. The black bloc that day were made up of people from working-class areas in London (Working-class areas in North, South and East End), Manchester, Kendal, Barrow, Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool, the North East, working-class areas in Essex, Cardiff etc. I never met one single person on the black bloc who could be remotely described as "posh" and I either personally know them or they are mates of mates.

Besides, I just love it how you can tell someones class status from a brief meeting on a street corner.

... Because the TUC demo in 2008 (before G20) drew 35,000 people, by 2011 that had risen to 500,000 people, by 2012, instead of rising to the 1,000,000 people some folk predicted, numbers in fact FELL to 150,000

It was still a huge demo, and it was still hundreds of times bigger than the radical workers bloc, but that's the real reason the rich slept well.... thanks in part to the great job some people did of providing us here at The Daily Mail with so many excellent pictures!!