AS I SAW IT
Cat among the pigeons
SALLY VINCENT
Trafalgar Square, Sunday The little girl on her own is sweet. 'Nom' says her banner, she must have made it herself. `Nigro Tory Arms Deal', she must have had help. But more stirring than the posh grown- ups' banner of smart green velvet, 'WAR we say no' appliqued on it—a kind of all purpose, everlasting banner that has come out before and will doubtless be preserved to wave again for other causes. The others are mere butterflies out for a day's flutter to be cast down by evening. 'Selling arms to South Africa is wrong'; 'Grocer turns gunrunner'; `Heath is hollow'; 'British hands are red with black blood'; 'Black martyrs hang on white crosses'; 'Black Heath', the simple, the straightforward, the passionate, the elusive—and the respectably ironic—blown- up, burned-out photographs of long white truncheons raining down on small black heads, captioned 'British arms will make a contribution to South Africa's way of life'.
A Metropolitan Police van does, with one officer inside and a fat lady driver grimly at the wheel. Then another vehicle, described on its side as the Cooperative Party Official Van", and both vans are borne along by youths waving black flags and shouting `Sieg Heil' and 'An-ar-chist-a'. The blue rocket hangs back so that you don't have to associate the black flags with the main body of the march, tenderly organised and making the correct noises. Manly voices raised in the proper chant, 'Freedom Freedom'. Like a brass band, it makes you smile and adjust your step. 'Freedom?' a fellow leads into his megaphone and a hundred voices answer In'. And 'Apartheid?'—`Out' they bellow back. 'Freedom In; Apartheid Out' just as they planned. Together we're a march. Together we're a rally.
At Trafalgar Square the fountain edges and lion ledges are sat upon and a man in a cardigan holds the pigeon feederk stance, arms at ninety degrees, swarming with birds. Then the pigeons abandon him for the roof of the National Gallery and the Square is jam-packed with the faithful. The converted have come to be preached to.
Canon Collins is proud and happy to be here this afternoon and we remember his benevolence from CND days. But we can't hear what he is saying. A young man, un- combed, unsmart, unscrubbed, is filling the air around him with his cries, head trembling with the physical effort, saliva speckling the tweed jacket of a mild-eyed man next to him with his little daughter on his shoulders. 'What about legality in Britain?' his rage is terrible and we can't move away into the crush. 'What about the Monday Club?' 'This isn't the People's demonstration, it's your demonstration, your organisation's demon- stration'.
- Up on the plinth they can't hear him. There is a good ten yards between them and the police guarded iron barriers behind which the loyal are assembled. One by one the honoured speakers recount their points of view. Those who have come to argue grow restive with the frustration of the gulf between themselves and those chosen to ad- dress them. Calls of dissension are dissolved to an incoherent rumble by the hiss of the fountains. There are black flags in the front lines. They cannot be heard so they shout louder. They organise themselves in rough unison. 'Action not words', 'No more words' 'Action, Action, Action.' And David Shepherd is on to biblical analogies. 'Bloody Church' they call, 'Bloody rubbish', 'Action'. 'Apathy Out, Apathy Out, Apathy Out.'
Those upon the plinth cannot notice that to their left half the audience has veered away into the street. The attraction is a swift moving stream of black and red, scurrying behind Nelson's column and head- ing for Canada House. Black is police uniform encircling the shiny red of banners, conveying the momentary and absurd impression that the Force are having a swift demo of their own. Red, however, is Maoist banners and between the long legs of the law we see about thirty dwarfed Maoists thrusting fists and pictures of the Chairman and emitting calls of 'Death to the Im- perialist Fascists'. Anti-apartheid supporters flood towards the promise of fresh drama. Laggers miss the opening shots. Things that might be rocks fly around and paper bags with red paint inside and things that cer- tainly are bottles. 'Action, Action', they call on the run. Bodies hurtle to the ground with police helmets and people are cheering. Cheering what, though? Cheering a fellow who cries `Up with Chairman Mao' as he grapples with police in the gutter. Cheering five officers who tear vanwards bearing a horizontal youth who continues to tell us it's a police state. Cheering three others, two with and one without helmet carrying between them the squirming body of a little fat girl glimpsed earlier raising her fist and voice to 'Death to the Bourgoisie'.
Mysteriously police link arms to form a barrier to prevent demonstrators (demonstra- tors of what?) from mounting the pave- ment. 'Pigs' is now the word. `Pigs, Pigs, Fascist Pigs', while civilian arms fink to con- front the unified, uniformed police challenge. The lines are long and the confrontation
spectacular, but suddenly comes a moment of bewildered embarrassment. 'Peace', says the civilians shyly, 'Peace, Peace, Peace.' A policeman blushes. Perhaps because he has lost his helmet.
Time for the last speaker. Paul Foot who has been pacing the base of the column for an hour and a half telling himself that Christ, he's nervous. He's on and has them rolling in the aisles. He does an imitation of Lord Jellicoe, a brave move in the light of the somewhat imperfect loudspeaker arrangements in the Square. But we get a good laugh and it might be teatime.
But obviously it isn't. While worthy representatives of the rally gather them. selves for their final polite journey to Downing Street with their scrupulous letter of protest for the Prime Minister, the left- over majority hurry towards new violence. They're 'taking, they promise each other, South Africa House. But they're not really. In fact they are wrestling in the precincts of a cinema the other side of the Strand which is showing a film called Do .you want to stay a virgin all your life? Those of us who cross over rather than associate ourselves with unpleasantness when we are alone hurtle now towards the lure of raised truncheons and grappling bodies swaying like a cornfield in a high wind to show us the way to the ac. tion. Eight policemen charge from the centre of a scuffle bearing a youth as though he is a battering ram. 'Kill the Pigs', 'Turn Over the Bus', 'Get the Bastards', they tell each other. There is a stench of vomit and we are lost in chaos. We try to go away but a policeman shouldered by two others tells us to get mov ing or be nicked. But that way not this because I bloody well say so that's why. Pain between the shoulder blades ends the discussion.
Inside a police van two forlorn youths sit in company with eight officers, waiting for the crowd to thin enough for them to be driven away to such punishment as is usual in these cases. Outside the van their cronies call their names and tap on the windows, but they do not look up. 'The bloody thing's sound-proof, the friends conclude. 'What shits they are, what bloody shits, sound• proofing their bloody vans.' And someone asks what he has to do to get arrested.
An agitated man with a wire haired terrier on a lead berates the young. 'I fought for you lot', he says, I'm a man, a man do you hear me, I'm a man.' And his dog smiles and wags his tail. He cheers us up. 'Don't let them push us', we say and we are unnerled by a very, very old man walking sideways to the main stream and yapping 'Kill the Pigs. The ritual verbals are demoralised. The police decide which way they are driving as and we find ourselves in a wan dispersal scene half way down Northumberland Avenue. We would have gone home but ae espy police vans travelling in a determined manner towards Whitehall. Reinforcements (reinforcements of what?) are being sent to Downing Street. Revitalised by the prospect of more beastliness we hurry to the spot. We are rewarded by the sight of our blue mascot going up in smoke, while a fiat capped officer (clearly of superior mkt boldly stamps on it to protect us all from death by fire. At the entrance to Downing Street police stand shoulder to shoulder. This is not sightseeing number eleven day. The more tenacious civilian elements get a `Heath Olg Grocer Out' chant going, but some 0 around on the pavement. `But he's not even in' a quitter persuades, his friends. 'No', they say, 'but someone is.
Previous page
