Well here's my long-promised (to Chris) response on the pros and cons of marching.(this may be of limited relevance to non-UK citizens)
Chris, you maintain that a march for a cause that is not supported by the Government (in secret or in public) is doomed, which is why the Poll Tax riot was more successful than the anti-CJB marches.
I'd have to disagree. The anti-CJB movement may not have had the obvious success that the Poll Tax protest did, but it did have a different kind of success - it politicised a relatively large part of my generation against the Government and governments in general.
The Poll Tax marches were "pro-order" - i.e. "We're not out to smash the state, but we want this changed" - something the Govt could do without too much trouble.
The anti-CJB marches were far more radical than that - they attacked the movement of the political parties towards centralism and repression. HM Govt. made a crucial blunder in taking on the E culture in that they alienated any number of otherwise peaceful people. In essence, the CJB sparked off the huge increase in ground-level activism that we've seen in the last three years. People are losing faith with governments in the UK, especially the young. There's a feeling that voting changes nothing (accentuated by the Labour Party's move towards the Right). This corresponds to the increase in the number of voluntary co-operation based environmental groups, such as this one.
The Government response to this is to try and keep closer tabs on Green groups and promote "law and order" policies. They are quite simply scared - in alienating themselves from future politicians, they have consigned their future relevance to the dustbin. In a suitably ironic way, John Major has sparked an explosion in Green awareness with his cack-handed and repressive approach to us.
So I'd argue that while the anti-CJB marches failed in the mainstream sense, they were milestones in the underground sense. Without them, the McLibel case would have less support and people like Swampy wouldn't exist.
With regard to Saturday's little show of strength by the police (yours truly had a grandstand view from the National Gallery), the harder they beat us, the stronger we are forged. Oh, and that bike with all the whistles on was wonderful :)
Gideon.
(who got a _perfect_ shot of Big Ben with a red flag in the foreground)
