Thanks to Richard for the photos.
For a long time the gap between the size of the movement against climate change and the scale of the issue for humanity has been a real contradiction. Previous demonstrations in London pulled numbers
in the low thousands and the trend over the past three years had been down. That changed today with the series of events organised by The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition. Press reports of 20 000 are rubbish. It was not easy to gauge but a figure of over 50 000 seemed more realistic.
It could be that today’s demonstration in London marked the arrival of climate change activism as a mass movement. There were large numbers of contingents from universities, churches and NGOs. There was a small but visible trade union presence and it was evident that many of the people there had been brought by organisations of different sorts, in a way that was reminiscent of the early days of the Stop the War demonstrations. The litmus test of how broad a movement’s reach is might be the fact that the organised left makes up only a tiny fraction of its participants and that was true today.
Unhappily I had left my spangly blue wig, boa and face paint on a bus yesterday and so wasn’t able to participate in the blue theme of the day. Yet countless thousands of people had daubed their faces or were wearing blue clothes or boas. It’s one way of giving a sense of belonging to a large group and shows that there was a high level of organisation and coordination in a way that was different from most other demonstrations.
The demands of the official demonstration reflected the politics of the coalition and have a distinctly NGO flavour. “Protect the Poorest, Act Fair & Fast, and Quit Dirty Coal now, to inspire the deal the world needs.” These are more abstract than what the Campaign Against Climate Change was raising for in its rally at the start of the event. It calls for a million green jobs and 10% cuts in carbon emissions by the end of 2010 and neither pretend to offer a critique of capitalist productivism. Yet you can’t help thinking that for most people on that demonstration these nuances are pretty irrelevant. At the moment they are simply thinking “climate change is real and serious and the world’s rulers are not doing anything about it.” That’s why they took to the streets. Paradoxically the story of the hacked emails probably made a few turn up who might not have come in the first place.
We can predict with near absolute certainty that the deal that is stitched up in Copenhagen next week will not rise to the challenge of what has to be done to prevent capitalism’s changes to the planet’s climate. The positive thing is that it finally looks like that a movement on the scale necessary emerged from its chrysalis today.
Oh and the Climate Camp has set up in Trafalgar Square.
Liam redux 
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