A Tale of Two Marches

Yesterday I participated in the second political march of my adult life. (I never attended any during my child life, just to be clear, though I’ve often seen the phrase ‘adult life’ and felt it more suitable than simply ‘my life’) In comparison to the first that I joined, there was a stark difference in both the public mood, attendance, and general direction.

In the wake of the Brexit vote last June, there was a generally feeling of disappointment, confusion, and anger – most of which was felt by those who had voted Remain which made up a large proportion of Scotland. Scotland voted to remain in the European Union by a margin of 62%-to-38%, whilst the entire United Kingdom voted to leave the EU by a far thinner margin of 51.89%-to-48.11%. You can imagine the anger of those who voted Remain in Scotland only to see their decision taken out of their hands by voters in England. Within a matter of hours, the hashtag #IndyRef2 was trending across social media.

I was certainly surprised to see the result was for Leave that following morning. Like many people who had watched the referendum unfold and polls suggest it would be a close victory, I anticipated a narrow win for the status quo – the economic uncertainty of leaving the European Union seemed like the winning factor over immigration control. Those who expected such a result though underestimated the anger and resentment of those who felt abandoned by the government, seeking to punish them for this apparent betrayal in favour of Brussels by voting to leave the political & economic union that generations had grown up with.

The referendum was fraught with jingoistic and nationalist fervour, seeming to demonise immigrants in posters (Those were decrying across the political spectrum fortunately) but it seemed as those the nationalist genie was out of the bottle. Eurosceptics across the spectrum welcomed the result with celebration whilst Remainers were left wondering what to do now. In the face of this backlash, rallies and marches were soon organised to support the European Union.

The rally that I attended outside of the Scottish Parliament only a few days after the referendum must have been attended by several hundred people. An array of EU flags were being held aloft, with homemade banners and placards alongside them, calling for unity with Europe in the face of hate & xenophobia. Rather conversely though, unity was primarily with the European Union rather than with the United Kingdom – the nature of the vote that England and Wales had voted to leave, whilst Scotland and Northern Ireland wished to remain seemed to create a new kind of doublethink. Speeches were being given by MEPs, student activists, political organisations that were in favour of the EU and against the rhetoric of the Leave campaign with its hate-filled bile – not many of us could hear these speeches though, as there was no sound system available meaning it was an enormous crowd of people stood in the gardens outside Parliament trying to hear a single person shout.

It did gain attention though, as you could imagine such a large gathering of people with flags and placards would. I saw a few Scottish Labour MSPs in the crowd, including the party’s leader Kezia Dugdale – I would soon be photographed next to her, despite my shyness to ask for a selfie after a friend of mine enquired adding “He’s politically in love with you.” My face was soon as red as my Labour Party membership card. The mood of the rally then was optimistic – it called for hope, love, and unity in the face of fear, xenophobia, and separatism (Again, conversely given the large number of #IndyRef2 placards I saw).

A day or so before I saw an event had been organised for the following week – a pro-EU march leaving from the Mound to walk down the Royal Mile, before concluding with a rally outside the Scottish Parliament once again. With little else to do with my time, and my blood raised by the previous rally, I decided I would attend. With crowds of at least five-hundred strong at the rally in the immediate wake of Brexit, one could only imagine that a better planned march would have far greater attendance. I was very much mistaken.

The march was a delayed start to begin with. After waiting twenty minutes more than had been planned, the two-hundred or so of us there made our way down the Royal Mile in what seemed like a far more meagre and weaker version of what had been hoped for. The weather was not the dry, light grey sky of the week before either – it was cold & damp, no doubt one of the reasons that attendance was comparatively poor. The only improvement from the rally was that a microphone and speaker system had been brought along, together with megaphones, though they seemed less necessary now as the crowd’s numbers dwindled in comparison to the first rally.

I believe there were two key issues with the comparative failure of the march & second rally. Firstly, time had passed. The anger and resentment at the Brexit vote was intense in its initial days; social media was a flurry of bitterness between both sides as Remainers and Leavers argued with one another, the political maelstrom had been opened as David Cameron would shortly resign, Labour was soon consumed into another bout of civil war, and the whole British political establishment looked lost and feeble, except for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. But as someone once said, “A day is a very long time in politics”.

A week later, there was still confusion over what Brexit meant (And there still is that confusion despite Prime Minister Theresa May repeatedly informing the world “Brexit means Brexit”) but the result had been tacitly accepted by many people. Whether they liked it was another matter entirely, however it was clear that a second referendum was not a popular notion amongst the public despite a public petition calling for one growing in signatures by the minute. With less anger over the result, they were less inclined to attend.

The other matter is something that is a key point of British politics; general apathy towards Europe. If, in 2015, you asked someone in the street for their thoughts on Europe they would probably have a nonplussed response of general dislike but nothing deeply passionate. Nor would you find many committed Europhiles either, with those in favour of remaining not being able to tell you much about its organisation or specific benefits. The evidence for that is to look at voter turnout for the European Parliament elections. Whilst in France and Germany, turnout is quite high, in Britain it rarely goes above 40%. It was summed up equally well on social media; “They send heart surgeons to Brussels, we send Nick Griffin.”

However, Brexit had been the turning point for a major political shift on a worldwide scale. The right-wing populist genie had been released but Brexit was not to be its coup de grace – that would happen in November with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. If Brexit was a shock to the world, Trump was a full-blown cardiac arrest coupled with 10,000 volts of direct current.

With a campaign on protectionism, isolationism, and nationalism, it seemed like Trump was going to be Brexit dialled up to 11. Optimists thought we might see a different Trump upon entering the White House – he was now President-elect and the rallying cry to his supporters was no longer necessary as he had won the election. This was short-lived though. His victory tour across the US saw his rhetoric from the campaign continue as he decrying his political opponents as ‘enemies’, inciting anger towards the political establishment of which he was now leader, placing the blame on the elite and foreigners.

In my first podcast, I talked about my thoughts on Trump’s executive order to ban Muslims from seven Muslim-majority nations. To say I was angry during the recording might be a slight understatement. The next day, I attended an anti-Trump march that had been hastily organised in the wake of his ban on Muslims entering the United States and his state visit to the United Kingdom later this year. With only a day’s notice, attendance could go either very well or very poorly. It was being held in late January in the evening – it would be dark & cold, with the weather forecast predicting rain. I was amazed by the final thing.

Thousands turned up with a greater array of anti-Trump placards, posters, and banners that I had ever seen – from official ‘Stand Up Against Racism’ to homemade ones with statements such as ‘In Scotland, Trump is a word for a fart’. The speakers were passionate, from across organisations that were deeply moved & affected by the ban; Muslim student organisations, black political student officers, and Maggie Chapman, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, as just a few examples.

The march down to the Mile seemed to show the wave of love for refuges as chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here’ echoed and rippled through the crowd. Onlookers waved and held banners in support of the marchers. This march had tapped into the anger from the Brexit voted that could be more tangibly directed at a single person – President Donald Trump. It was also vastly different from the march in support of the EU as it part of hundreds more taking place across the UK and the world that same night.

The mood did shift though, or so I began to think. The chants in parts of the crowd changed from ‘Refugees are welcome here’ to ‘Donald Trump’s not welcome here’. What had begun in protest to Donald Trump and in support of those being victimised & persecuted, was slowly shifting into a general protest against the man himself. Whilst I am no supporter of Trump or any of his politics, the mood from one of love & compassion to anger was slightly unsettling if only for fear of what passionate people can do when deeply angered. My worries were proven wrong though – there was to be no drama during the march.

By the time I arrived outside the Scottish Parliament, half of the march had already arrived with the remaining half still making its way down the Mile. More speakers, armed with microphones and speaker systems, rallied the crowd though the numbers made it difficult to make out what exactly they were saying despite the audio system provided. There was no mistaking their passion though; the crowd would frequently breaking into applause and cries of support for their words, even if many of us could not actually hear those words.

When the rally ended and the crowd began to disperse, my friend whom I’d attended the march with alongside his fiancée, jokingly asked me “So, Trump’s not president anymore?” The joke aside, the march was a stark contrast to my previous experience in June. The first seemed like a false start, though last night’s seemed to be real starting gun.