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Nick Makes Poverty History

Rant // Nick // 12th July 2005

Sometimes you just have to do something spontaneous, possibly listen to your conscience, and try to make your mark on the world. It was with these thoughts that I decided on early Friday evening that I would go to the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh the following day. I had ummed and errred about it, with the usual middle class prevarication about whether I truly agreed with its aim, premises, political stance and so had ended up the day before assuming that there would be no flights, no hotels and no chance of joining in. I think that's the normal way us ABCs get out of doing anything. So on Friday afternoon more out of idle curiosity than anything else much to my surprise I found that I could get a relatively reasonably priced flight there and back. A quick call to the war office confirmed there would be no barriers to this particular assault and it was booked.

So here is my diary of the MPH march;

5:15 am: Swear at the alarm. It's far too early to get up.

5:20 am: After a brief period of internal monologue ('sod this, I'm going back to sleep') drag myself out of bed, happy that I packed the previous night.

5:30 am: With teeth brushed but not much else, jump into car and aim for Birmingham airport.

6:00 am: Arrive Birmingham airport with no clue as to how I got there

6:15 am: Check in accomplished, decide to go straight into departures as normally half the population of Walsall are going to Tenerife, and don't appear to understand the instruction to take of jackets and not have mobile phones in their pockets.

6:30 am: Walsall appears to have got the message. Realise that I have about three quid in wallet and the only cashpoint in departures is broken.

6:32 am: Spend remaining three quid on a gin and tonic.

6:45 am: BMI Baby have the first ever on time call for boarding in their history.

7:00 am: But still have to wait for someone.

8:20 am: Contrary to expectations, there is only a small queue for the taxi - most of the MPH T-shirt wearing crowd are being conscientious and taking the bus. OK, I know this is an anti poverty march, but I'm doing my bit putting into the local deprived economy - it is north of Watford after all. Am encouraged by cabbies story of the Royal Bank of Scotland being firebombed last night.

8:55 am: Arrive at friends flat in Stockbridge. Said friend still in pyjamas due to over enthusiastic celebration of the forthcoming march the night before. Resolve that if you're going to make poverty history, you should do it in style.

9:45 am: One bottle of Billecart-Salmon Champagne and one pair of Ted Baker moc-crocs donned later, decide that sufficient style has been obtained to leave the house. If you're going to save the world, do it in good shoes.

9:55 am: Buy another bottle of fizz on the way to another friends house for breakfast.

11:00 am: A quorum has been formed. We agreed that although there were many different viewpoints, numerous opinions probably conflicting on our aims, the basic premise of the gathering was well intended. Had more difficulty agreeing on slogans for a banner. "Make Poverty History" will be everywhere, so won't stand out in the crowd. All of the 'Free Trade' and 'Debt Relief' ones have the same problem. Strange conversation about G8 spots being eight times better than the normal ones. After debating the ins and outs of the Countryside Alliance, Pride and the Anti-War Coalition decided that "Gay Foxes Out of Iraq" was suitably obscure. Realised we didn't have anything to make a banner and were slightly deflated, but made a move anyway.

11:30 am: Edinburgh centre is strangely quiet. Most of the normal shoppers have boycotted, leaving the mix of marchers meandering bleary eyed from the night before, knowing there is a gathering somewhere but not really knowing where they are going. It's a strange thing - like festival goers emerging from their muddy cocoon into the light of a cold capitalist dawn. A horrible thought enters the mind that actually there is only going to be three normal people and a couple of hundred freaks in total. Plus the smattering of bewildered American tourists wondering if this the Tatoo or the Fringe. Only the quite subtle police presence and less subtle boarded-up shops in Princess Street suggest something more is about to happen. Notable that Ernest Jones has the shutters up but the posher jewellery shop over the road hasn't. Maybe just better insurance. We are all particularly impressed that Edinburgh Castle has a banner the size of a very large barn door up - certainly hits the target as an emotional uplift. Suspect mad Prince Charlie had something to do with it.

12:15 pm: We arrive at The Meadows - gathering point for the march. And it looks like a very busy festival. The main stage has a mixture of celebrities and African leaders making speeches together intermixed with an eclectic mix of bands. There is a meditation tent, a lost children area full of kids looking like they are quite happy to be lost and numerous bongos. First stop is the burger van though, due to champagne induced munchies. Start to feel I'm missing the point.

12:30 pm - 2:59 pm: Lots of meandering, taking in the atmosphere and failing to get on the march. There are some fantastic 'world music' (ie not mechanised merchandised TOTP trash) bands on, link-ups to the G8 concerts on the big screen and general good vibes. The official start times of the march (midday, second wave at one etc) are made a mockery due to the sheer volume of people - it was always going to be a continuous flow, and the first people started around half twelve. Within half an hour or so it was announced that the 'ring around the city' had been achieved and the noise was huge. The estimated numbers attending kept going up. We spent and inordinate amount of time queuing to actually start the march - the number of people started to hit home. Unlike the hoards trying to get into a concert there was no jostling, no frustration, we all just sat on the grass and chatted about where we came from and why we were there. When a group of Franciscans started singing next to us I thought I'd gone back in time to the summer of love - it really was that chilled.
As a side note, the Daily Mirror were handing out thousands of banners (complete with wooden pole) with the expected slogans on them. As a minor triumph against the advertising industry virtually every one had the 'Daily Mirror' logo on the top ripped off. I wonder if they contributed to the clean-up as the grass was littered with the off-cuts. Or if the wood was properly recycled - you could have made a Wicker Man sized bonfire with just one of the piles of discarded placards at the end.

3:00 pm: The minutes silence. Three flares are fired from the castle, all the marchers hold hands, and the silence is impeccable. More than 200,000 people, for once, shut the fuck up.

3:01 pm: What everyone was waiting for - the storm after the calm. Every whistle seller in Edinburgh has done good today, and at least made poverty history for themselves. Despite the hangers on, the confused messages, the missed points and the ridiculous irony of the money spent for such an event, for one moment it makes sense. My eyes were moist.

3:02 pm - 4:30 pm: We got on the march. It didn't feel like an anti-climax, as this was what we were here to do. All around the route the banners were up in shops, hung from houses (actually there were people hung from houses as well, but I attribute that more to laid back licencing laws) and general good will. I got bumped on the head by one particularly large banner held by a mountain of a man who could only be described as pure ebony in colour. He had the most striking scars on his forehead, not from torture but patterned, from a ceremony when he ascended to manhood in his village in Ghana. Normally most of us would just stare, but in that situation I just asked, and had the honour to met a lovely, gentle and thoughtful man who was concerned with the plight of his home. This to me was what it was all about.

4:30 pm - 6:30 pm: Finished the march to the sounds of an impromptu samba band in the Meadows. Billy Bragg did his set, finishing with 'One Love' backed by African singers. The 30ft high letters or 'Make Poverty History', made from a wooden frame with the tens of thousands of messages written on white cloth tied on were lifted into the sky. It was announced that more people were on the march in Edinburgh than were in London for the G8 concert. We were sated. Also saw the best banner of the day - "Down with this sort of thing".

7:00 pm onwards: We could have stayed, but with the early start, the beating sun that had made a rare appearance for the day and the feeling of a job done, we did what we always do on a Saturday night and went down the pub. The difference was we felt part of a community, and talked about causes, ideals and ethics rather than the usual littany of self-centered woes.

Postscript:
Will it make any difference? I don't know. In the Scottish Sunday Times there was a huge spread about the march on page one and two, four and a few other articles. In the English Sunday Times it was relegated to a quarter page article on I think page 6. Edinburgh only made the headlines on Monday due to a bunch of idiots in small numbers having a bit of a rumble. Today (Wednesday) the 'G8 Final Push' concert is going on at Murrayfield, with a star-studded line up, but unlike Live 8 has a late slot on BBC 3 where very few will watch. How much evidence of a self-feeding metro-centric frivolous culture do you need? The Socialist Worker crew were out in force on the day, treating it like a recruitment drive, there were so many chancers selling dodgy t-shirts and the sponsored food vans were a bit suspect. But still.... I'm glad I made the effort, despite the champagne-socialist way I went about it. If one policy change results that saves one life, it is a success - certainly for the owner of that life.

Some links of interest....

Make Poverty History

The web site with all the info

Live 8 - Live! in case you missed it

From a blog called Talent in a Previous Life, they sat and watched the lot. Crikey