Jackie Danicki

Our weekend away was actually just a weekend hiding out in a really, really nice hotel in London. (More on that later, as it was a rare example of fine customer service in this city.) So we were able to pop along to the demo in support of freedom of expression in Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon. We didn’t stay long, though.

Here’s the thing: I understand that ‘broad coalitions’ can have their uses. But I’m not going to stand there and cheer - or listen quietly - while some loathsome communist tells me about freedom of expression. As Perry de Havilland, who we met up with at the demo, put it:

Communists for free expression are like vegetarians for veal.

(Perry’s pictures from yesterday are here. There are more here and here.)

It would have been bad enough listening to this advocate for totalitarianism (I won’t name her, as she was purely there as a stumping politico - as evidenced by her minions in the crowd handing out election-style leaflets for her - and she doesn’t deserve the Googlejuice) shout into the microphone about how evil religion is, but when she got to her chest-beating bit about Iraq, we were already on our way out of Trafalgar Square. (I consequently missed what I’m told was a very good Iraqi speaker who informed the crowd exactly why he supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and why they should have, too.)

During the build up to the war in Iraq, I was disgusted by the many otherwise decent people I knew who had no problem linking arms with the likes of George Galloway in anti-war marches. I don’t think they’d march with some neo-Nazi scumbags or Klansmen, but for some reason a friend of Saddam and Stalin-loving piece of excrement like Galloway was a-okay with them. For similar reasons, I had a huge problem with some of the people given a platform at the demo, and there was no way we were going to stick around once the ugliness started.

Perhaps more offensive were the wardens who went around telling people that if anyone complained to them or the police about any of their placards, they would be asked to put them away. “It’s against the law if your signs upset or offend anyone,” explained one of these revolting enforcers. And - as Perry notes in his post linked above:

According to a warden, there is allegedly a by-law against flying national flags in Trafalgar Square, which I find hard to believe as I always see Palestinian flags and (burning) US or Israeli flags when ever folks from the Middle East protest in Trafalgar Square… On two occasions, The Plod tried to prevent certain signs being shown (one featured the Mohammed Cartoons on a placard from the Iranian Communist Party and another showed a mask of Tony Blair over a Nazi symbol). These incidents at a ‘pro-freedom of expression’ rally, and the presence of the police taking pictures of the crowd, were a useful reminder of the deadening hand of the state and just how precarious the state of civil liberties in Britain are.

Any anti-war march attracts top billing on the news programmes here. Yet there was no mention of the freedom of expression demo on either the national or local London news yesterday, as I made certain to check. The turnout for the demo was accordingly pitiful - no more than 1000 people, max.

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