When the Nazis came

Sir Gerald Kaufman
House of Commons.  15 Jan 2009

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came...a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."


IDF BodyCam  Gaza 2024

Atta Ibrahim Al-Muqaid, aged 73, who was deaf.

I'm in a far right group spreading poison ... thumbsup

Saturday was a soggy day in London town.  (Strange no crooner has had a hit with a song with that title.  :)

I'd resolved a few days before to go on the local demo.  It looked within my ranging distance, starting just up the road and finishing at the bottom of Tott Ct Rd.

The weather forecast was grim but the clips I saw of the PM having a nervous breakdown on the Fri eve made that an irrelevance.  https://twitter.com/Number10cat/status/1763625031945383973

So I went out to the rendezvous.  I dunno where everyone was hiding, the v.wet streets were empty.  I sheltered in an empty bus station as it bucketed down.

Suddenly, at the appointed hour, there was a crowd and off we set.

The abundance of umbrellas made it obv there were going to be few photo ops.

We hadn't got v.far up the Hampstead Rd when we passed this fellow.

I raised the fist.  He raised the fist and we both shouted "Resist".


We wound our way up the road towards Tott Ct Rd.  An ambulance. lazily drivivng in the wrong direction, tooted all its way past the procession.
As did a few cars.

There was loads of cops. Keeping their distance and amiably chatting among themselves, probably abt organsiational matters.  Ahem.
They did a good job of directing the traffic to ease the passage of the march.  There's HS2 (it goes on) road works and a major road junction along the way.

Of course there was chanting.  I dunno what's proscribed but I didn't hear any inhibitions about which prominent figure was what and what should become of them.  Also a lot of "Free".

Half way down Tott Ct Rd progress slowed and the chant changed to something I didn't recognise and couldn't quite make out. 
Then I realised we were passing Starbucks and two bemused tourists sitting at a table in the rain were having "Boycott Starbucks !!" shouted in their faces.

People come from all over the world to be in London in the rain.  That'll learn 'em.

The whole thing wrapped up near the bottom of Tott Ct Rd.  I tried to vid the whole crowd coming to it, so's I could get an idea of how many turned out.  I make it around 120 give or take a bit of double counting and the ones I missed.

The very end of the procession, and far behind, was this pair.  (low quality as a screen shot from the vid.  I so wish I'd asked them for a photo.)

A young mum and her youngster.  Obv she'd walked it at his speed.  I exchanged a few words with her and she was delightful.

He's gonna have something to tell his grandchildren.