Corralled

In Spring there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in
the air. Now it's autumn and falling fruit, and the long journey
towards oblivion. Except it isn't : we're not going gently into that
good night.
We're an awkward squad of several hundred thousand crammed into a
sidestreet of Bloomsbury, with less bonhommie and euphoria, more
purpose than the spring walk to Hyde Park.


In spring there were stars of Holllywood, of international
causes, of the Poetry Circuit. The anti - war poetry fest at the
Bloomsbury theatre was full of blue - stocking young women with their
professor mums and dads; ghosts of past scenes, like Bob Davenport who
taught Dylan songs in the Sixties; Adrian Mitchell and Micahel Rosen,
in front of our eyes going in and out of a swing - door time - warp of
1967 and now, now and then; and at the pre - rally rally in the Quakers
Meeting House there was Bianca Jagger and the President of Algeria, the
only one who had really been around and was old enough to feel the cold
and need to wear a coat on a warm Spring night, but who gave the
youngest speech? And Tony Benn. And now, there's just
us.


We are huddled in a premature twighlight caused by clouds
bunched above our cul - de - sac of tall buildings, and wan, faded,
lime - coloured, oval leaves bristling thinly in the chill breeze.The
stiff, elegant trees are Rimbaud - poetic, but I wonder how they will
look if there is a blood - bath here shortly. How, if the police
charge, the avenue will mock its autumn self, usually the setting for
unhurried students who've come early to restart love affairs with one
another or themselves, now packed with grim, worried faces looking for
answers up in the sky because we can see nothing but similar faces all
around us.


Itis half past three, and we should have left at two. I'm not
where I wanted to be, marching free, I'm stuck in a crowd so cramped it
is a machine which badly needs oiling.Which grinds us against each
other, making us say " Watch out " when we mean " Piss off ". The
professional anarchists sense our fear and irritation building, and are
in like a rat up a drainpipe : " Let's charge them. Charge ! There's
more of us than there is of them ! "


That's because they're all hidden in huge white vans and
coaches, out of sight, waiting for us to get angry and make a mistake,
Stupid.


But I don't call the anarchist stupid : he may be a
policeman. like the one who wouldn't let my ill friend get to a toilet
on the spring march. Bloomsbury's never frowned on anything, including
Fascism. Everything gets a disdainful smile, including this
Machiavelloian delay, now that the anarchist has shown his hand too
early, and the crowd can react to him instead of the unseen police :
another twenty minutes and maybe sheer irritableness would have caused
some fights, but, thank God, as I'm right next to him and he's flexing
his fists, he's blown it.


The anarchists' problem is that there aren't enough of them
to form a phalanx, because a charge now would cause mayhem. We're stiff
and weary of an hour and a half's not marching. Then suddenly we can
go. The crowd - machine unpacks and cranks.


The anarchist stares into the middle distance like a wino
with an empty bottle.But now that we've got our democratic right back
to march from A to B, nobody's listening to him.He slinks off like a
Dirty Mac brigader, as if maybe a cup of tea and a porno magazine will
console him for the lack of a riot. Everyone else is relieved,
including a group of younger anarchists who've drunk too much liquor to
do anything except scour the streets of Bloomsbury for somewhere to
pee. So now they're as anxious as me to get this protest over with and
go home to tea.