on al jezeras the t.v. station from the gulf said there were a million and a half on todays demo
hey but i reckon it was more like 600,000 :)

People were still arriving in Hyde Park 5 hours after they had left the Embankment....you do the maths...it was certainly more than 400,000 - and it could have been 1,500,000. The police/state were using traffic tricks to fuck up the traffic to stop people getting to Embankment. The disruption to the traffic system by the many thousands of coaches, and people arriving by tube and bus, was so severe that it didn't really seem to recover even by 7pm. The police were funneling crowds into small areas around Oxford St. and disallowing travel down side streets...monkeys of filthy bastard Blair.

I work out in the street in Piccadilly. I have seen every march in the last twenty years. Todays was the biggest. It took four and a half hours to pass by. The last 'biggest march', to pass by, before todays, was the anti-Israel, Palestine occupation protest, a few months ago. That one took two hours to pass by. The one shortly before that was again about Israeli occupation of Palestine. And the biggest march before these last three was a few years back,...a Gay Pride mince.
And don't beleive the press hype about the march being hijacked by any particular group. The absolutely overwhelming majority of placards, were of the 'Don't attack Iraq' theme.

BBC said 500,000

Quite a few people left and rejoined the march for whatever reason so they could have been missed.
Some went to the US embassy. Grosvenor Sq had police on most of it's entrances and the embassy had crowd fencing and concrete blocks to prevent vehicles gettiing too close. but maybe those are there all the time?

I was there yesterday, and the best way to estimate the number of people is to compare it to the Fat Boy Slim gig on Brighton Beach in July, where I was too. I am sure that the demo yesterday was 2-3 times bigger than the FBS gig, which was estimated at 200'000-250'000 people ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2127259.stm) - so work it out for yourselves, and write letters to all newspapers and radio & TV channels about this blatant lie by the police.

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 thousand) and Genoa (300 thousand), and this was the biggest protest I have ever been on.
I met people on that march that are totally apolitical, friend's mums, and so on - lots of people who aren't the usual protest suspects. 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 the very least 400,000 people were there.
Based on the figures and on what I saw and on comparison with last week, I really would 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.

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 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 and Genoa, and this was the biggest protest I have ever been on.
I met people on that march that are totally apolitical, 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.