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A report from Edinburgh – July 2nd
Herne Hill and Dulwich were well represented at Saturday's rally in Edinburgh, making up at least 12 of the over 200,000 people who had gathered to add their voices and marching feet to the many demanding action from the G8 on trade, aid and debt.
Meanwhile in Dulwich nearly 40 people gathered at St Thomas More's Church on Lordship Lane to hold a short service in solidarity with the demonstrators. Participants symbolically ripped up "poverty" pieces of paper and put them in the bin of history, willing the G8 leaders to step forward and start the long process of making our hopes come true.
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In Edinburgh our banner read "Change the Rules! - make world trade work for the whole world" on one side and “Trade Justice Now!” on the other. The atmosphere in Edinburgh’s Meadows Park was positive with everyone's belief that enough is enough, clearly palpable in the sunny morning. More and more people came.
The time to start marching arrived, and no-one moved. We stood and waited. Then we sat and waited. We could see people moving at one side of the park, but our area remained static. So we faced the ultimate Post Office queue dilemma - do we nip over to the other side or do we stay here and hope for movement? We stood firm and remained stock still for about 4 hours. We tried to guess at the number of people there, 100,000? maybe 150,000? what would 200,000 people in one place look like? At 3pm a minute's silence was observed perfectly, by this point protesters had encircled the whole city centre, dressed in white they held hands to make a symbolic white band sending a strong message to the leaders who were probably starting to think what to pack for their trip to Gleneagles.
Live 8 started. We stood still. Eventually at some time after 4pm we started to move. The sheer number of people who had come to show their support had slowed down the whole demo, but we moved and we held our Herne Hill and Dulwich Churches Together banner high in the Edinburgh breeze. The Princes Street shops were eerily empty as families, trades unions, environmental groups, friends, peace activists and people of all faiths walked past, glad to be here, glad to be making a point.
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At the end of Princes Street we left some of the messages written on white bands that we had brought from congregations in Herne Hill & Dulwich on a display outside St John's church. A group of drummers pounding out African beats helped us on our way and when we got back to the Meadows we were confronted by a series of huge letters spelling out MAKE POVERTY HISTORY.
The letters were made up of the white bands bearing messages that had been brought from all over the UK (including yours). The gusty wind prevented them from being hoisted too high in the air, but they were a spectacular way to show that this campaign is about individual voices all demanding the same thing.
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In-between the music there were powerful speeches and film clips illustrating the complexities and challenges that lie ahead. Nobody there thought that the solutions we were asking for would be easy, but we want acknowledgement that the current systems of trade are causing harm to many, and we want action.
Eventually the announcers started to remind people that their coaches were leaving and the crowds began to drift away. The next morning the newspapers were mainly full of Live8, which was a great awareness raiser, but it was sad that a few more column inches couldn't be spared for the largest ever demonstration in Scotland and the largest ever UK demonstration about global poverty.
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However the Scottish press did us proud with "225,000 take to the streets of Edinburgh to Make Poverty History" on the front page of the (Scottish) Sunday Post and "200,000 march against poverty" as the lead in Scotland on Sunday. Good to see the traditional debate over the numbers attending!
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