“You realise I’m just using you for your whiteness – you’re my safe white friend to shield me in case the police want to arrest me!”

My friend was joking, but she kind of wasn’t. Marching for peace while brown isn’t *entirely* outlawed yet, but given recent comments by the Home Secretary, it’s only a matter of time.

Her teenage daughter wanted to come, but was also put off by the fear of the police and a conviction affecting her studies. This is the atmosphere of fear our establishment wants, and has worked hard to create.[1]

The protest was extremely well attended, conservatively estimated at 100,000 in the press, who were more interesting in suggesting Iran was behind it beforehand, and calling it a “Jihad march” after.

Racism is never far from the surface in the British media, and it’s been particularly explicit since the entire establishment decided that murdering children comes under the definition of “Israel defending itself”.

The number of children killed in Gaza over the last three weeks is more than the total number of children killed in conflicts across the world since 2019, and is only going to rise exponentially unless we achieve an immediate ceasefire.

There were a lot of children and families on the march. And a lot of Londoners generally, in all their diverse, multicultural glory. There weren’t enough white people though, as I commented to a British Pakistani Doctor I’d met on the march.[2]

“More than last week though, and we’re grateful to anyone who comes.”

Some of the banners and posters were heartbreaking. “Stop killing my friends”, read one held by a teenager, a reminder of the overwhelming youth of those trapped in Gaza.

A couple of analogies were made across the day which I thought were interesting – 1) no commentator would argue you need to destroy a school to take out a school shooter, and 2) Britain’s actions in Northern Ireland, already grim, would have been a lot worse had they indiscriminately targeted civilians.

There was a lot of anger here directed at Kier Starmer, the Labour leader, who has proved his moral cowardice in his comments to LBC and subsequent gaslighting of Britain’s Muslim communities.

The march started on Victoria embankment, and then wound its way past parliament, across Westminster Bridge, then back to parliament square via Waterloo Bridge and The Strand.

Walking across Waterloo, we could see people still setting off from the embankment below, and the police moving to reopen the road behind them.

Half way up Whitehall, my new doctor friend pointed out Mick Lynch, lurking by a leather jacket clearly trying to keep a low profile. I walked up to him, shook his hand, and said, “thanks for all the work that you do.” Because I am cringe.

March over, we melted our way into the rest of London, to do ordinary things like these are ordinary days.

Footnotes and asides

My favourite middle class marching comments from my friend were:

“You can do Starbucks[3] but please don’t smash up Gail’s, they do great cakes”

And

“It’s nice to catch up”.

[1] No one wants the attention of Prevent, so I can’t say I blame her

[2] Not the one from the Mail’s insane headline

[3] Which specific multinational business I was going to destroy with my extreme ginger violence was one of the ongoing jokes of the day, in case you’re reading, coppers