It’s best to consider this a lubricated first draft.

On the face of things having a political meeting at 5.30pm on a Saturday is a bit counter intuitive. Maybe not. By my reckoning there were about 200 people in the Brady Centre for the launch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Tower Hamlets branch. The audience was a good mix of people from the borough in terms of gender, ethnic background and political affiliation.

Eight speakers on a platform is probably a bit much but no doubt there was a strong reason. Betty Hunter from the PSC kicked off by explaining something of the PSC’s history and approach. Kiri Tunks spoke on behalf of the local teachers’ union branch and said, among other things that her visit to Gaza had changed her life and that the demonstrations in other parts of the world were seen by Palestinians and uplifted them. A local councillor spoke and said nothing you could disagree with but nothing particularly insightful.

Viva Palestina’s Kevin Ovenden explained how the February convoy was conceived and described the plans for this December’s. He reinforced Kiri’s points about the impact protests outside Palestine have and painted a vivid picture of what the convoy will achieve.

Ken Livingstone gave a good account of how the Labour Party was eventually won over to accepting that the Palestinians had right on their side, illustrating this by reminding the audience that the original decision to recognise the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people had been carried with a margin of 1% at conference. By contrast Livingstone argued that Blair’s tacit support for the attack on Gaza cost him his leadership.

George Galloway did something of an old pals’ act with Livingstone, reminiscing about how he had drafted the Labour conference resolution and contrasting Livingstone with the pro-Israel Johnson. Perhaps rashly, he said that the former mayor would have been critical of the cops who attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators with batons. My recollection is that Livingstone was fairly muscular in his defence of the cops’ right to shoot young Brazilians. On the other hand he explained how the idea for the convoys had been sparked by the East End’s support for Republican Spain.

Two hundred people at a meeting on Palestine organised by e mail and word of mouth is a real achievement. Tower Hamlets PSC has a future.