Yesterday I went down to London for the day to take part in the national demo against fees which has being organised by various left-wing student groups.The demo wasn't huge, but at a turn out of a round a thousand it was a little bigger than I expected (Although Socialist Worker has put it at 800). Socialist Students had around the same number on the demo as SWSS, and then there were small groups of ENS, Revolution, Communist Students and Socialist Appeal members on the demo as well as some other small groups.
What was unusual for me about this demo was that I was a steward, which was a new experience. Nothing major happened, so the only major stewarding things I did was warning people to move around parked cars!
1 comment:
Good day overall - shame the meetings afterwards were separate. The 'ENS' meeting we went to had a lot of independent activists in it and backed up the call for the student conference in April to get all the student fronts together, including importantly the rank and file members, to co-ordinate action as the current state of a very divided student activist movement is a real shame. I expect two hundred from Bangor given the stories you tell of it! (Well at least ten :) )
I think the SWP is more accurate on the figure, and that they had many more of their members present than you did - they just don't all make themselves obvious despite an obvious re-print of their flags now allowing them to do so.
As for spotting there was also David Broder from The Commune and a guy from the IBT. Also some of the Revolution people (well one actually) is actually just Workers Power as he's over 25 but a student...
Stewards should really be organised to co-ordinate people to link arms and face in the direct of police attacks on demos, particularly now they are getting more violent. This will be especially true at the G20.
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