Yes we were there. Three of us Kath, her sister Helen and myself who joined the Churches from Leith and had our own personal piper to march to the Meadows. There we joined with over 225,000 others, 99% of whom had the same motives and determination to make a peaceful statement that we wanted Poverty to become History.
The day was brilliant sunshine which was just as well as getting the march the going was slow because of the vast crowds. The atmosphere was carnival and we shared the picnic with what appeared to be a lot of people!
Moving down the Mound at 3.00 pm all the marchers stopped, the bands were quiet for a minutes silence to remember and reflect why we were there. This was very moving in such a vast like minded crowd.
Later in the day we went to a Christian Aid rally hosted by the Church of Scotland in the Assembly Rooms. The speakers were the Moderator of the Church of Scotland Rt Rev David Lacy, the Rev Dr Robert Aboagye President of the Methodist Church of Ghana, Gordon Brown MP Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Director of Christian Aid Dr Daleep Mukarji. Music came from an African band called Kakatsitsi.
This was a fitting and interesting end to our day. All of the speakers showed a determination and passion to work towards eradicating poverty. They were however realistic about the challenges and that this is not going to happen overnight.(a David and Goliath situation).We were advised to think of it in the same light as eradicating slavery.
This was a day to remember. When we got home we heard on the news and read the next day about the trouble and the awkward protestors.As ever they got more headlines. For those of us there on the day this gave a totally false impression. However it was a reminder of the forces at work in our society and why we all need to stand up if we want to eradicate poverty.
Good natured queues for everything- loos, drinks, but most especially for setting off on the march.
Incongruities- a puppet man with his "puppets against poverty slogan" and a banner proclaiming "anarchism is autonomy"- he was on his own so perhaps he's right. A good natured discussion on the march with a young man about the place of violence in protest- I threatened if he started anything, I'd slap him; luckily he saw the joke!
The sheer numbers- standing for an hour and a half to begin to march in the second group while the first one had returned. Hearing on the radio that the final marchers had just set off on their turn round Edinburgh as our bus home was nearing the Borders.The fact that what was happening on the stage was irrelevant as we spent so much time waiting to begin the march.
The pride of hearing our banner mentioned over the loudspeakers as they encouraged the vaste crowds waiting to begin the march as we were funnelled down into manageable numbers to fill the roads.
The feeling that nobody had expected so many! - and the number of police with nothing to do.
The photo is of the place we had got to in front of the castle when the silence took place at 3pm.
Twenty eight coaches, organised by the North East Coalition, plus others from individual church groups went to Edinburgh so that at least 1,500 people from our region were included in the 227,000 peaceful demonstrators.
The Meadows were full of people dressed in white and also colourful costumes (one dressed as a heap of dung plus dung beetle caught my eye!) carrying placards, blowing whistles and cheering. At 12:00 the march started on a two mile circuit around the centre of Edinburgh in the warm sunshine accompanied by the Newcastle Drum Band and various other groups. There were people of all ages and from all parts of the country and abroad in a noisy, good humoured but serious procession that seemed to be well received by the local people who had come into the city.
There were so many marchers that they were still starting after 5:00pm. At 3:00pm there was a one minute silence (apart from police and media helicopters), impressive in 227,000 people, followed by loud noise and the release of balloons representing the number of children who die due to poverty in an hour.
The Meadows contained “Make Poverty History”, “Trade Justice” and many other tents and stalls and two stages from which we were addressed by a number of speakers including Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Jonathan Dimbleby, Billy Bragg, Bianca Jagger, the Provost of Edinburgh and others. There were several musicians and other entertainers, some of whom meant nothing to me but were obviously well known to others (Daniel Bedingfield?) and the best for us was a band from Mozambique. So good on them all!
The whole event was uplifting and we pray that the G8 leaders are equally uplifted in their conference and have the courage to make the electorally unpopular decisions needed particularly to enable the poorest developing countries to trade their way out of trouble and to “Make Poverty History”.