Eyewitness: the London Anti-Cuts March

After such a dramatic-sounding title, and the images that are all over today's newspapers and TV reports, I have to say that I was on the anti-cuts demo yesterday, and enjoyed a noisy, but good natured, slow walk through central London. With friends, I arrived at the Embankment tube station at exactly 11.00am, and we reached Hyde Park at about 4.00pm. The only anxiety of the day for us came when my friend's wife became separated from us for a short while, only to rejoin us happily, having been following a very lively steel band. I hadn't been on a demo for years, and it was exhilarating to walk down Whitehall in the company of thousands (no-one knows exactly how many). It took some time to pass through Trafalgar Square, but we were entertained by one marcher who climbed one of the statues and put a Unison jacket on the rider of  a horse.
In Piccadilly, we saw the signs of the violence that the media is focussing upon today. Bad as it was, and as frightening as it must have been at the time of the violence, many marchers walked by without seeming to notice. Apart from the damage to the Ritz, which was considerable, the rest seemed to amount to no mare than a few splashes of paint on walls. The action was over long before we got there. We arrived at Hyde Park at about 4pm, only to find that all the speakers had spoken and gone home. This was a flat end to what had been a lively day. It was quite a disappointment - and a missed opportunity for the Labour Party. Had Labour politicians appeared at staggered intervals, they would have got their message across far better.
As for the Anarchists and the subsequent evening violence, I can only say that I saw it coming. Without their acts of "propaganda by deed" (PBD), no-one would notice them, and it was obvious that they were not going to miss this opportunity. Near Temple Underground Station, I saw some of them wearing facemasks and carrying Anarcho-Syndicalist flags (the Anarchist flag is black) as we waited to join the main march, and wondered when they would kick off into action. I watched for them all along the route of the demo, but they never seemed to have enough troops to attack anywhere. I'm no psychic, but I guessed that they'd start something serious later - possibly after the main march dispersed. It looks as if I was right.

Sky News last night gave extensive coverage to the violence - more or less non-stop, all evening. Today's papers are showing lurid pictures of the action and no doubt have printed equally lurid articles. All I can say - and so will most of us who marched in London yesterday - is that we must not be tarred with the red and  black anarchist brush.