There I was sat in a bus, kettled on the Oxford Tube while trying to escape from Victoria to Oxford early on Saturday afternoon while the whole place (Central and western London) was gummed up by a procession of inbound coaches bearing legions of mainly state sector workers plus assorted others bearing a number of local complaints about life under "the cuts" to join young Ed plus old Brendan and other kings of the rustbucket union industry cluttering up the streets before having their jamboree in Hyde Park. Oh, and of course there were various groups of supporting, and I mean supporting, Beeb reporters and film crews bringing it all to our screens at home if only we could get there.
Following in the footsteps of Unite's BA cabin crew who claim to be up there with the heros of Iwo Jima in their struggle to avoid "Imposition" "More work" etc, Ed attempted to rally the non attending nation by comparing this parkland picnic to "the struggle" (The Left have to struggle from birth to death. No wonder they tend to look so dismal) of the suffragettes,the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid campaign etc upon whose shoulders the ralliers were,he said,standing.
"Wow, what a hero, what a charasmatic leader I am" must have been running through his head. For the unbelievers we may have wished that the weight he could feel upon his shoulders was the hand of the Metropolitan Police requesting him to move along as he was creating a public disturbance to the much larger number of people trying to exercise their democratic rights to move around , do their normal business or pleasure and put money into the London's coffers that afternoon. Doubtless his absent mate the other Ed,- the Balls one- was also secretly mouthing "Move along,- but not quite yet." There's no point in making an actual takeover bid yet with probably four more years of opposition to go is there?
Talking of the Met, the Beeb which was democratically giving pretty much equal air time to the few hundred intent on having tea at Fortnums, showed the boys in blue standing benignly by for quite a time while hooded youths and youthesses hoisted themselves up the front of the building from literally inches away. One almost expected to hear them say "Can I give you a hand up?". They certainly weren't saying "One more move sonny/lassie and you're in the back of the black van". We in our bus a couple of miles away were much more effectively kettled than they were.
Such is democracy. At least Mr Gaddafi took the trouble to have it all shown on Libyan TV (did he pay?) even if erroneously labelled as riots against Britain's imperialist intervention in Libya. He missed a trick there. He might have done much better taking the line: "Fellow Libyans fighting for democracy. This is what having it looks like on a Saturday afternoon in London. Is that what you really want?".
