I woke to a cold, windy, rainy Saturday and I really really didn’t feel much like walking out the door. I also worried that no one else was going to feel like leaving their nice warm homes to join us, leaving just a handful of us and all of the firemen. Though now that I think about it, that would not have been bad at all! But I did get up, I did walk on down to Holy Trinity Church, and I needn’t have worried at all:
We had a great turnout for the day I thought, and people joined us as we marched, I think locals, and definitely the Southwark SOS and Goldsmiths contingent arrived a little later. We started it off with speeches, Labour was there in force and it was definitely great seeing them fighting against Boris Johnson’s cuts. Maybe it will inspire them to stop implementing their own and fight against all of the cuts. Finally we heard from the General Secretary of the FBU
And then finally finally we were off! Walking in the rain is far better then standing in the rain.
But here is who we were marching for
Firemen and women! Who doesn’t love them? We had clearly grown by the time we got to firestation
We stopped there a while then turned, and march down to Clapham High Street and Clapham North Tube, passing flyers to everyone standing around watching. We had some cheers, some honking of horns, the only police presence consisted of a police car driving by in the opposite direction of our march make cute siren noises in support — it was lovely really. Then back to the Common for some more speeches — Rahul was great moderating them. Among others we heard from Mandy from Lambeth Collge UCU:
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and Andy speaking for Unison and Lambeth SOS (no pics because we have enough pics of Andy with a megaphone I think! It’s great he’s always willing to be the public speaker because many, like me, tremble at the thought…), then Brian from FBU, who did so much to make this happen:
and then some of the most well informed people on how cuts will actually cut down response time and impact the community
A great demo, and we ended up in the Rose and Crown of course. I was wishing for a little more conviviality, lots of people ended up there but we all stayed in our own little groups for the most part. I think we should think about how to use after-march pints to get to know each other a little better…
The next planning meeting is this Tuesday evening at the Bread and Roses Pub, 7pm.
