AS I SAW IT

Liberty, equality and sorority

SALLY VINCENT

The young man on the soapbox is Hyde Park Cornering about the Fall of Man. He has no audience and is himself heedless of the three thousand women, men and children girding their banners and loins all around him for their march through London in honour of the Women's Liberation Move- ment. Despite their various efforts, the prin- ciples of female emancipation and the young man's expression of one Mr Moon's spiritual revelation, in Korea, of the root causes of oppression, remain unknown to each other. On the young man's blackboard is chalked a series of balloons, interrelated through a network of arrows, in which are written words such as 'God', 'Adam and Eve', 'Lucifer', 'Earth' and 'Angelic Realm'. The women, men and children of the Women's Liberation Front are carrying rubber balloons of red, blue, yellow and green, on which are neatly stencilled the motif 'Women's Liberation'.

'Original sin', postulates the young man to whom nobody is listening, 'is the sexual sin.'

'Who is Norman St John Stevas anyway?' asks a banner moving by.

The young man says that it was God's intention that Adam and Eve should love each other as man and wife when both, as individuals, had achieved spiritual maturity through the perfect love of God.

'Women are people too', say the banners, and 'Equal education' and 'Equal pay'.

The snow falls equally on the head of the young man and on the heads of the women, men and children gathered' to liberate women. The young man explains that Lucifer was jealous of God and of Adam's position in God's scheme and was also strongly attracted to Eve. He thought that if he could seduce Eve he would somehow be in a good position to usurp Adam and God.

A girl in a home-made cross between a cage and a sedan chair is borne past by chirruping companions. She is wrapped around with fur, from which her legs, in laddered fish-net, emerge in brave imitation of a beauty queen's. On her head she wears a cardboard crown fastened on by huge Kirbygrips and the placards of her cage-cum- sedan chair read Nis-fit, mis-used, mis- tress'.

So Lucifer, says the young man, seduced Eve and she responded to him. Then Lucifer was afraid of what he had done and this fear was communicated to Eve, who felt guilty about what she had done. She realised that her role in life was to be the wife of Adam and so she went about seducing Adam to make herself feel better.

A car cruises by, with a girl in blankets strapped on top. From the bottom of the pretend-bed stream ropes strewn with dang- ling cardboard cut-outs of babies. The sides of the car are hung with white sheets bear- ing red-cross symbols. The car bears no further message.

The expression of Adam and Eve's love for each other was premature, says the young man. They were not spiritually mature and so they were not ready to love each other. And this, he warns, was the original sin, the fall of man. This was what separated the original man and the original woman from God. This is what still separates us from God. This is why we don't know how to love each other. This is why the family unit does not work. This is why we are all so bloody awful.

The banners pass in oblivion. 'Free abortion', they say, 'Free contraception', 'Free twenty-four-hour nurseries'. A great crucifix, featuring a female tailor's dummy roped up with apron, string bag and nylon stocking bobs past in sombre symbolisation of women's subjection, and a jolly group of girls mime the words of 'Keep young and beautiful if you wanna be loved' played on a wind-up gramophone in a pram. Bringing up the rear as the carnival starts out towards Oxford Street is the Gay Liberation Front, a band of happy homosexuals, all butch and bearded, giving vent to the concept that love cannot corrupt since there are as many sexes in the world as there are people.

Left with no one not to listen to him, the young man who knows why man fell from grace goes on with his story while the snow gathers on his shoulders.

Since the march itself is confined to the walking wounded, a bus has been arranged to take all the rosy, fur-topped children to Trafalgar Square. Another bus arrives, full of policewomen. 'Christ', says someone's husband, 'look at all the fuzzettes', and the policewomen giggle and shrink with em- barrassment within their serge. Do they not, we wonder, feel the pull of sisterhood? At the head of the march they are chanting, 'Class war not sex war; class war not sex war'. 'Don't fancy either of them quite frankly', a female onlooker remarks to her friend.

It is, without a doubt, the happiest demo. London has ever seen. There is a lot of jumping about, singing, laughing, little run- ning bursts to keep ourselves in spirits and our blood from coagulating in the sub-zero temperature. Everything seems to have been patched together with a kind of careless gaiety and love as though to delight and amuse children. Everything is charming, light-hearted, well-intentioned. The police have nothing to do but pretend to grumble about us keeping in fives so they get snappish with each other so as not to lose their image.

Pretty girls with guitars are singing a song that sounds as though it's saying some- thing about 'We'll be making love in the House of Lords after we have taken over in our hordes'. But I might be wrong. I like to think, though, that the singers are typical women's lib girls. Young, slim, bare-faced, long-haired, dressed in each other's touch- ingly tatty cast-offs with woolly caps and scarves and no gloves, frayed jumper sleeves pulled down below coat sleeves to afford some small comfort to naked hands. But it's a silly thought. There is no typical women's lib woman. We come in every conceivable shape and size. We have nothing, but nothing, in common but the absurd fact that we all possess the same ridiculous set of ovary-womb-ovary. God knows what we're all doing trying to be unified by virtue of that fact. Only today we are managing to give that impression.

We pass the Cumberland Hotel just as three young fellows emerge from their lunch. They stand amazed until the one in the middle pulls himself together. 'I know where their place is', he tells his companions, and makes a thumbs down gesture with his driving glove. Their attitudes click into place and they go on their way, comforted.

Women in the street stand to watch, but remain strangely silent. 'Don't watch, come and join us', we chant. And maybe they think about it.

At Trafalgar Square there is a blizzard to stand still in. It is cruelly cold, the sort that anaesthetises the face, bites with spiked teeth into limbs and sets up involuntary spasms by way of self-protection. At last the police have something to do to justify their existence on •this happy, well-ordered day. They see how many members of the press they can restrain from the bothersome task of going about their business. Inspector `I'm in charge of the plinth' Warren of Gerald Road Police Station is having a fine old time demanding to be shown 'green cards signed by the Commissioner of Police' which apparently (according to Inspector `I'm in charge of the plinth' Warren) is re- quired identification for the bona fide journalist. No one passes me, he says, with- out a green card. Whacko, say the photo- graphers as they hurl themselves up five feet of stone and on to the plinth. As always happens on such occasions, I am singled out for expulsion. There's a great deal of polite- but-firm I can't help that and too bad and off you go from `I'm in charge of the plinth'. Which brings me to the moment of personal liberation when I slink from view to be heaved up the other side of the five feet of slimy stone by a passing stranger. Sucks to Tm in charge of the plinth', I've beaten the system. Up on the platform you can't see the heroines of the day for male photographers, cameras dangling round their- necks like extension penises. What with the inappro- priate phallus of Nelson's column it is all too much. `Men off, men off, men off', we chant with the only rancour of the demonstration. Startled, the photographers try to make themselves look frail and hide behind girls.

Our four speakers line up, faces uniformly solemn and responsible, handwritten speeches clutched in trembling, purple hands. One of them is exceedingly pretty, with pink lipstick and lots of curly red hair. Between pink shoes and the hem of her mini-coat, her knees tremble perceptibly. They apologise for the weather (but haven't you heard, God is a man) and keep their speeches short and full of bitter statistics.

There are nursery schools available for only five children in every thousand. Only 57 per cent of legal abortions are done on the national health. Only 12 per cent of women enjoy equal pay with men.

And then there is May Hobbs.

There are certain scenes from life's rich Pageant that always turn me over, bring emotional, uncomprehended tears to my eyes and make me gape with huge, uncontrolled smiles. Live performances of the can-can do it, and old movies of Mrs Pankhurst and new movies of childbirth. So now there's a new one, the sight of tough little May Hobbs, the cleaning lady, rousing a frozen mob of 'omen to cheers, unifying Trafalgar Square in one victorious moment. It wasn't, of course, what she said, just the way she said it: It was the capital letters in her notes that did it ,for me.

`Make no bones,' she says, and you know she means it, `the Tories will bring out the Bill, vicious bit of legislation that it is, stupid as it is.' Hooray. `With all their learn- ing of Cambridge and Oxford they have not got the brains of rocking horses and this is the quickest way to a won-kers' revolution and I can see this and I am only a cleaner.' Hooray. Hooray for May.

I don't- know if May heard the hoarse shouts of 'Mum' coming from behind her while she did her bit. But they didn't let up. The tow-headed fruit of her womb is trying to climb up Nelson's column and claim his relationship all at once. A child was never so proud.

`You'll fall off,' says May, when she's finished with the microphone.