Dickens Museum/Troops Home Demonstration

Today was a busy day for me.

The students in my "City of Dreadful Night" course have been reading Dickens' Oliver Twist for the past couple of weeks. Last week I took them on a walking tour of Dickens-related places in Clerkenwell. Today, we visited the Dickens museum, which is housed in the building where he resided when he was writing both Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nicklby. There was quite a lot to see: old manuscripts, paintings (and stained glass windows) of Dickens and his family, the original serial installments of his various serialized novels, illustrations from his books and artistic renderings of characters, stuff from his writing desk, mementos, old furniture of his, etc. On the top floor there was a very well done exhibit on Dickens' social conscience and his interest in the poor, which of course dovetailed nicely with the general theme of my course. Overall, it was an edifying experience (for the teacher if not for the pupils).

Today was the first day of Parliament and for the past month or so the British anti-war movement had been organizing for a massive "Troops Out" demonstration to greet the new Prime Minister -- Gordon Brown-- when he finally returned to work after the summer break. Amazingly, Brown tried to suppress the march by invoking an obscure 19th century law that allows the police to arrest anyone impeding the entry of a MP into Parliament. Denied an official permit, the conveners of the event -- among them, luminaries such as socialist stalwart Tony Benn and musician Brian Eno-- decided to march anyway. Naturally, following the visit to the Dicken's museum, I made my way to Trafalgar Square to see what would happen.

While it wasn't the biggest demonstration I'd ever attended, I'd say there were a few thousand people in attendance. The crowd did not quite fill Trafalgar (which is huge). [It was a delicious irony, by the way, to be at a peace rally at the base of Nelson's Column, a monument celebrating war and British imperial might.] Some in the crowd were the "usual suspects" who turn out to every such event-- black clad anarchists, members of various socialist and communist groups, and so on-- but there were also many senior citizens, families with children and, best of all, a number of delegates from trade unions (including the British Union of Indian Workers and other unions predominately representing people of color). In fact, the number of trade union officials who either sent messages of support or spoke from the platform was truly heartening. In the States, labor usually doesn't enjoy such a high profile at anti-war events.

There were too many speakers to keep track of but George Galloway and Tony Benn both gave fiery speeches that pulled no punches in their criticisms of Blair, Brown and Bush and the criminal war in Iraq. John McDonnell, a left-wing Labour MP who launched a leadership challenge against Brown over the issue of the war, also spoke. So did an ex-member of the British Special Forces.

After the rally, we all filed-- very slowly-- down Whitehall to Big Ben chanting"Gordon Brown's a killer too" and "Whose streets? Our streets". Hordes of police flanked us the entire way and held up the march at various points; indeed, at one point looked like they were going to make some arrests but ultimately- as far as I know-- the whole thing came off without incident.

Pictures to follow.