People’s Vote March

Saturday was a first for me, direct action, demonstrating against Brexit! So, I got off my bottom and my keyboard and put my feet where my words are and joined seven hundred thousand (700,000*) other equally frustrated anti-Brexit demonstrators in London at the People’s Vote march. #peoplesvote #stopbrexit

Laetitia and I had left Cumbria the evening before and stopped at our friend’s place in Princes Risborough on Friday night before catching an early train in to London Saturday morning…

We met up with Spenser on Hyde Park Corner after having already walked from Speaker’s Corner along the edge of Park Lane. The whole of Park lane and the periphery of Hyde Park were already filling up and we had a couple of hours to go before the march was supposed to start.

There was a remarkable lack of organisation. Perhaps this is normal on demonstrations like this, but for me being a complete newbie to demonstrating it felt weird having hundreds of thousands of people milling around with little idea of what was going on, when we would start, how the start of the march would be indicated, and indeed what the route of the march was! Luckily we’d checked the website and had a good idea of the route…

When the march did start, vaguely signalled by a sense of movement at around 12 noon, we almost immediately ground to halt on the roundabout, Achilles Way, outside Hyde Park. Clearly the roads hadn’t been closed either. Clearly the size of this thing had caught the authorities off guard. There were busses, cars, taxis, everything simply stuck in the crowds going nowhere. They were going to be stuck in a sea of people for hours, and hours!

We used the stalled procession to jump across the grassy innards of the roundabout to get across to the Hilton Hotel and rendezvous with Richard and his group. Our gang was growing. But then again the whole demonstration had grown beyond imagination!

Next we decided to sneak around the stalled start of the march and used Hamilton St to go directly to Piccadilly. From here we made steady, but very slow, progress along past Green Park and the Ritz before turning in to St James Street. The enormous crowds, atmosphere, and placards were great. Everyone was smiling, laughing, joking. Almost all the placards and banners were humorous – simply brilliant!

We met up with Nick at St James Street corner and continued on to Trafalgar Square.

And finally we made it to an utterly jam packed full Parliament Square at around 3.15pm. The speeches were supposed to be at 2pm, but the enormity of the numbers of protesters meant they didn’t start to nearer to 4pm. This was good for us as we’d made it to Parliament Square. Hundred of thousands didn’t. We understood the entire route of the march right back to Marble Arch was still completely packed with people.

Listening to the speeches, especially that of Anna Soubry was rousing. Stood in a bubble, albeit a massive bubble of some 700,000 energised protesters exercising their democratic right to protest, it felt like we really could be making a difference. That Brexit was losing its momentum and could be stopped by this massive swell of sensible opposition to this foolish undeliverable idea based on lies, deceit, and fantasy. Today I wonder if, after the euphoria of the march itself has subsided, if the evil, wicked, and delusional Brexiteers will simply double down and ignore the protest and take us all off a cliff-edge in March 2019! 🙁

I have heard reports that there might have been over one million (1,000,000) people demonstrating. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to be sure of the numbers, but it is certain there were a lot, an awful lot, of people demonstrating against Brexit!