One wonders would you prefer a quick route march through town - best not hold up traffic too long.

It is quite common to slow down a demo!

If the SWP have managed to learn getting to the end to hear the speakers isn't the only poiny of a demo that can only be a GOOD THING!

The Samba block was even slower. Didn't arrive until after the toppling of the Bush statue was completely over.

But it was well worth it. We all had a great time.

What's the rush?

The front of the march was actually moving pretty quickly, the guys actually had electric wheelchairs, so i'm sure they wouldn't have had any trouble keeping up.

The reason it took so long for the back of the march to leave Malet street was because there were so many people there. I assume the stewards were trying to slow people down to stop a potentially dangerous crush happening at bottlenecks.

What does it matter how long it took?? If you just want to get to the end as quickly as possible, why even bother going on a march? Just get the tube to Charing Cross and you'll be first there!!

The longer it takes (within reason) the better, the more visible we are for longer.

Lots of little things need saying, I feel...

1) Slow marches are slightly better, because they have an air of NVDA to them. If you march slowly, you can't be accused of sitting in the road, but you can have the same effect.

2) There was apparently a group of people lying in the end of Mallet Street at one point. Also, I was waiting patiently with the School Kids, and thousands of people kept pushing past. This didn't make matters easier, thats for sure.

3) 30,000 people decided they couldn't be bothered waiting to march, and walked straight to the Square, arriving by 2:30. How many more went after, I don't know.

4) There were considerable problems with the demo in Mallet Street, full stop. The constriction, I felt, wasn't a bad idea because often Mallet Street is really cramped full of people before a march starts, and at the end of the constriction, people can spread a bit. Basically, you can stand 20 wide in Mallet Street, but you can't march 20 wide in the next street, so the constriction cut the number of people trying to get out at any one moment, meaning a trickle of people spreading to take the width of the next street.

5) I'm guessing you went quite a bit ahead of me, because much of the route was full width when I did it. After the turn out of Mallet Street, we had full roads or half roads, with no real consistency. I counted us as being 100 people wide at one point. When we crossed the first bridge, the barriers had been pushed over and people were spreading across the bridge, and the pressure was eased tremendously.

6) At the end of Kingsway, the barriers were thrown down, and the width of the road was used. It seems that the Samba troup made this happen. This caused delays because the police called reinforcements, but it made life easier on the next section.

7) Let us all remember what November 20th was. It was one of those days when thousands of people turned up to a demonstration who weren't expected. The organisers said 100,000 beforehand and 300,000 after. York took 1 coach to Sept 27th (100k) and 3 this time, to my shock (and that was the first time I realised just how big it would be). The planning was done with the wrong figures. Both the Police and the Coalition and everyone else went to that demo expecting a 100k experience. The barriers were configured for a 100k demo. And then the British People got up and demonstrated.

I have never been on a demo which was so miss-calculated. Most of you have. It's called Feb 15th. This demo may have been smaller, but no less underestimated. The first and last national STWC demo's of this year had that same thing in common. Wow.

The march didn't hold up traffic since every road was kept open, if not almost in entirety then in one direction. The slow shuffle also meant that many people did not follow the route.

the front of the march in fact moved quickly - i know this because i was trying to tatch up with it along parallel streets

the reason it took so bloody long to leave was that there were hundreds of thousands of people! simple (plus yes of course having only half the street to march along did slow the numbers able to leave at any point)

Actually, I think the demonstration was so slow to start because of the amount of people.
Malet Street is a perfectly good place for smaller demonstrations to start, but for 300,000 people it is a but small. I suspect the organisers couldn't have predicted such a massive turnout on a weekday.

I remember in the September demonstration before Febuary 15th having to wait for a couple of hours, we thought the police were holding up the demo - until someone went up front and found out that people had already arrived at the end and the reason for the hold-up was that there was 500,000 people. It was after this that they started having 2 assembly points.

While it is valid to criticise the SWP, this kind of nit-picking and snide comments are sectarian and offensive.

No way were there 300,000 people on that demo. For a start the Greater London only has a population of 7 million, most of whom either support the war, don't know whether the war was right or wrong or simply couldn't give a fuck. That reduces the number who are strongly concerned about the war to about 2million. Of those many are too old, too young or too busy with work or other commitments to be able to attend an anti-war demo. That reduces it down further to about 100,000 who could be bothered enough and felt strongly enough to turn out and demonstrate.

Remember most people dont give a damn about politics so 100,000 is a surpisingly large number for any demo and a weekday demo absolutly astounding. The lat big week day demo was the TUC demo insupport of the miners in june 1992 which attracted 75,000. The Satruday later another demo by the TUC attracted 150,000.

Does anyone know the name of the sound system that was playing outside the University of London Students Union on the corner of Malet street at the start of the demo, at around 2pm?
The march was riducously slow for the majority of the route. People continued to use one side of the road even when the other side had been closed off. People seem to unthinkingly obey the marshalling on the day. So I feel its a bit harsh to blame one party. On the other hand, a better deal should have been negotiated with the authorities beforehand, as the march appears to have had little impact.

I supposed because it started to rain around 6.30pm, That was the fault of the SWP as well. Don't bother putting your fingers to a keyboard if you don't have anything of relevance to say, what a miserable little article you posted.

This was the biggest week day demo in British history !
This was the biggest demo to protest at a visit of a state leader anywhere in the world.
This was the best way to finish off an historic year 2003 15th Feb - 20th Nov.

The SWP has been a vital part of the Stop the War movement, so perhaps a little credit where credits due, unless that makes you choke on your sectarian bile.

pros:
is slower safer?
makes our presence more strongly felt

cons:
walking that slow made me ache for days
it was very frustrating

However, I wasn't there to have a good time or to be comfortable. If it had been snowing, or if it had been in the middle of summer, I would have been there. My room would have definitely been much more comfortable than any march, but that's not the point. How about we demolish everything in our path to create a uniform-width demo route?