Though I couldn't go due to illness, I was involved in organising people and coaches for the area of Calderdale/Halifax.

Our delegations from our area for previous demos against war on Afghanistan and in solidarity with Palestinians have seen one or two coachloads go to protests of 150,000 but for the 28 Sept I saw more than 200 people go on four coaches one of them a double decker. A large demand for coach places happened in the last week and it was widely reported it was difficult to find coach companies with any left.

When the BBC keep saying tens of thousands, in the face of this they are worried on how to spin it.

Protest Menwith Hill US base
Sat 12 October see www.caab.org.uk

Build for day of action 31 October www.stopwar.org.uk

I was in London during the Countryside Alliance march last Sunday and walked the entire length of it from Hyde Park to Parliament Square several times over.
The organizers of that march (which was backed by 3 national newspapers and had a huge media buildup) had a big 'counter' which was going up 49 people per second - obviously not really counting but going up in multiples of 49. But because they had a big electronic counter going up saying '400,000' and because it was organized by conservative types it was reported like that. Police then estimated 300,000 which sounds about right to me.

This weekend at the Stop the War protest I again walked from the end point to the beginning of the march and it was definitely larger than the Countryside Alliance march. I overheard a couple of policemen talking about it and saying the Stop the War march was bigger than the Countryside Alliance march. There were thousands of people milling at the end point, Hyde Park, whilst people were still waiting for up to 3 hours at the beginning point waiting to leave!
I have been at a lot of protests in my time, including Seattle(50,000) and Genoa (300,000), and this was the biggest protest I have ever been on.
I met people on that march that are totally apolitical, old college friends, friend's mums, and so on. It was incredible.
So I have to say that I think if we had had a big counter over our numbers like the Countryside Alliance did the police would be estimating at least 400,000 people were there.
Sky news that afternoon (a corporate media outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch) was reporting 450,000!
I know it makes me feel good to think it was half a million, but based on the figures and on what I saw and on comparison with last week, I'd stake it was half a million people.
Lots of people are signing a pledge to take non-violent direct action for example at US military bases in the UK if they start bombing.
There is no doubt that an enormous civil disobedience movement is in the wings and ready to take action if they start a war. This is political suicide for Blair and I think after yesterday he knows it.

I was thinking of all of you in DC yesterday too and wishing you strength and luck. You have a more difficult job than us in the UK, where most people hate Bush. But if we're going to stop this war, what you do in the US is the most important of all.

Peace.

Why didn't they set up one of those big people counters? Have some independant counting person control and a police person stand next to it for checking purposes and you're basically set.

Check this AP pic link below for an idea of the crowd size in the park. I didn't even get into the park until the speeches were just finishing - thousands and thousands of people left the march along the route after hours of waiting amd marching, so no where near everyone made it to the park...


 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020929/170/2ccfk.html