Police sources say 3.500 but as someone who was at the front of the march as it entered Trafalger Sq., I'd guess there was between 5 - 6,000 people. Less than the numbers that attended any of one of the numerous football matchs that took place up and down the UK or queued bumpber to bumper on the motorways to get to the Lake District.

Let's face it, stoping the Empire's war machine is not a priority for most of the UK population at the present time. Which why it is crucial that those of us who do prioritise stopping it, resist the temption to delude ourselves or be complacent about our influence and instead concentrate our efforts on developing more meaningfull forms of mass resistance.

We need to inspire people to act and challenge their complacency and that means that being more creative than bigging up the marchs from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Sq..

One Love.

Sorry to disappoint everyone that wasn't there, but once again the UK had a shameful turnout compared to other countries in Europe. There was a comparatively small crowd of a couple of thousand, if that. The crowd was a mixture of well behaved and well shod middle aged, middle england lefties plus some nice pro Palestinian supporters and a few (I mean a few) student types thrown in.
Which leads me to ask the question, what's wrong with the student community? Aren't they supposed to be the angry young men, rallying against the machine? Perhaps they are now too busy working on their business studies degrees.
No wonder, the UK has had all of it's family silver sold off under our noses without resistence.
Come on people! Apathy will get you nowhere. 2 million people brought Rome to a standstill last week. Get off your backsides, go make friends with your neighbours and get get something done.

i was with daawn and whilst there was pretty pitiful organisation for it there were a lot of good ideas. there needs to be more focus next time of course but we grouped up with REVO and helped start the sit down in picadilly circus. the thing is that when we did that we were instantly lept upon by someone complaining that we were "Bush's Lackeys" and just causing problems for the people who were there to make a point. but then when we cleared a path for the SWP (the largest group who were just behind us) they refused to walk through us.maybe it would feel a little too much like crossing strike lines or something. good on the old folks who joined in at the sitdown outside downing street with us. Personally i thought that was the most successful thing all day even though there were only 20 or so of us at the very most. mostly because people walking past were coming up to try and join us (but being held back by the police who surrounded us until 4 oclock). we sang some songs for peace and WE decided when we would move on, not the police. that's the other thing. when people sit down what's the point if you just get up when you are told to by the police. that's not protest. that's just being a public nuissance. but in general it was just the younger student types who were interested in doing anything worthwhile. Frankly i think straightforward marches are for showing off how many you've got in your group and as such (and with such a bad turnout that's quite pointless). If you're protesting or demonstrating i think you have to do something in the way of civil disobediance of some sort in order to make a point that you are willing to go against the current order. that you're going to stand up and be counted for what you're doing. i don't mean violent direct action specifically although i don't condemn it. but sitdowns ARE a good (tried and tested) method of protest. occupations are a good method of protest. they catch people's attention. they inspire people. marching down the road advertises your organisation more than your cause. do something real towards your cause.

for all those who bitch and complain about how many people were there. Who gives a fuck, there were people there who were willign to make a difference, that was about 50 of us, who sat down, who ran, who shouted, WHO DID somewthing, the only people who shoudl feel guilty are those who facilitated the police to be able to surround us and scare us into moving on, we need to work togther to do something, DONT MArCH IN SILENCE, JOIN US!

DIRECT ACTION AGAINST THE WAR NOW!!!

good for you DAAWN guys 'n' gals! You used the courage of your convictions to behave how you see fit and that is the only kind of thing that works. Mabe if everyone split off spontaneously and did what their conscience dictates, we would see more vibrant, meaningfull and successful actions, instead of the boring stroll into town that I have been sorry enough to join with these last few times. I'm with the samba band, and we do try to be autonomous if possible, but its bloody hard to be spontaneous when lugging large deafening instruments about. We're working on it tho! I think people have got into quite a rut - the will for something new is there but many can't see a way forward. Meantime good luck, there are plenty who share your desire for more active, meaningful protest.

The reason that there was such a low turnout of around 5,000 was because that march was not very well advertised. The way to judge the success of a march is by the ratio of people who turned out to the number of leaflets and flyposters put out to advertise it.

The low turnout was not because people do not care about such things! It is simply because most people do not know these events are planned. For example I can remember in 1992 when the last remaining pits were due to close the TUC put full page adverts in all the national newspapers to advertise two marches in support of the Miners and there was a massive response with 150,000 people marching in support of the miners on the Wednesday and 300,000 people marching in support of the miners on the Saturday!

If we had similar advertising for the first anti-war march then we would have got over a million people in central London marching against the war!

I just realized that europe uses palestinian( i prefer to call them jordanese or lebanese because most of them are they just claim to be palestinian--thay are arab from the arab nation so they change there nationality to meet political agendas) Europe and obviously ireland uses cheap labor from these countries so they are getting a lot of pressure from the large arab communities in your countries ( I live in the US we get cheap labor mostly from all over the world not predominatly the Middle East) So this is why you people scream so much Politically Correct BS in your countries. You have been targeted by these terrorist before so you live on nails trying to control these out of control brainwashed Muslums. I read it all over the indynews abroad. We have it here to in the US but there are huge Pro-Israeli end the terrorism groups here and a lot of the Human Rights activists are Jewsish and they are concerned about the enemy the so called Palestinians. I feel much better after coming to this realization--of courc we have the anti-government people who want to stop The US from funding other countries millitary. I am sorry that this has turned into such a mess. What we need is alternative energy--non oil and no more cheap labor. People have to make a decent wage to live and stop importing cheap labor from radical countries which are known to be suicide bombers and terrorist. Stop living in fear of your neighbor in your own country. I read about Jews getting attacked and beat up even in the US. Probably by a bunch of Arabs. If you people com near near me I'll fucken kill you. Long live Israel Get rid of the real terrorist the suicide bombers---the "Palestinians". Keep on doing what you people have been doing--obvously no one believes you even if they are humanitarians like myself but I do not support any murder who kills for the reason of killing. The Israelis kill terrorist and maybe sometimes casualities are in the way but this is rare and a shame. Stop the terrorist. Stop Hamas stop al what ever it is called and stop the liberate palestine regime they are known terrrorist. They blow up things and people in Europe as well--you poeple are so scared and live in so much fear that you take the enemies side.. There is a difference in wanting to rehabilitate terrorist instead of killing them and actually supporting them. Free israeli stop hate crimes against Jews. You cant get away with your tactics in the US. Stop living in fear.