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Occasionally something happens to our world which forces us not only to examine it through fresh eyes, but also to take another look at ourselves. Last week, we were particularly privileged: two such events came along in very quick succession. It was a ripe opportunity to draw conclusions from human nature.

The first was Valentine’s Day. However, it would be transparent and predictable if I spent a thousand words decrying romantic love. Just read any novel by Aldous Huxley: he’s already done it far better than I would dare. I wouldn’t be so gauche as to suggest that Valentine’s Day is a cynical commercialisation of love by greetings card companies. And, of course, it would be callous of me to venture that Valentine’s Day is merely a cult of guilt and fear, and that we are led to believe that if the net flow of cards between two people is any number other than zero, heartbreak and ruin will surely follow.

I wouldn’t even stoop so low as to enquire why Guildford town centre should need four branches of Clinton’s Sodding Cards. Obviously, Guildford is a happy town full of blissful people in two-ton people carriers ferrying their angelic little children from school to supermarket to their smiling loved ones at home. They can afford all the cards they want, and they have ample time to buy them. Any statement to the contrary would be only bitter and foolhardy. The idea that Tracy Emin could achieve commercial success by marketing a teddy bear made from barbed wire and human excrement as a cruel Valentine’s trinket from loved-up couples to their lonely, single friends, could never enter my head.

Instead, I found food for thought by visiting the anti-war protest in London on Saturday: a terrific opportunity to sightsee at a sombre pace, and to wave placards at the Houses of Parliament. Somewhere between 750,000 and two million people, depending on which politician you believe, marched to demonstrate against their collective responsibility for Iraq’s impending re-destruction. And, in small letters at the bottom, we also appeared to be campaigning for Freedom for Palestine.

There’s something immediately suspicious about calling a country by a name it hasn’t had since 1948. Isn’t that slightly inflammatory? If you wanted to protest against Robert Mugabe’s regime, would you go into London and wave a banner demanding ‘Freedom for Rhodesia’? And if this is a demonstration about human rights, why does nobody mention Mugabe’s regime? Or the questionable human rights records of any countries other than Israel, America, and Iraq?

Killing unarmed civilians is deplorable. Similarly, killing unarmed civilians is deplorable. Consequently, the slogan on Socialist Alliance Party banners saying ‘Victory to the Intifada’ was, at best, crassly misjudged at a peace demonstration: the intifada is exactly the kind of ongoing violent retaliation which we had dragged ourselves into London to try to avoid.

So I was uncomfortable with ‘freedom for Palestine’, as it implies that Israel is free. It isn’t. Civilians are imprisoned every day without questioning. They are bombed mercilessly by terrorists. Dependence upon American money does not make a country free; it enslaves it. Since there are now two generations of Israeli citizens who have no other homeland, Israel is no less entitled to freedom than is Palestine. Biblical precedent suggests that the country should operate a time-share scheme. Perhaps a whole new country should be formed. Both sides could take turns to run it, playing nicely together, and without resorting to warfare. They could call it something neutral: vaguely Jewish; vaguely Palestinian. I suggest ‘Frankenstein’.

The Daily Mirror ‘No to War’ placard also unsettled me owing to the ‘Daily Mirror’ slogan at the top. If a newspaper with scant history of intellectual debate suddenly picks up on a controversial subject and starts screaming about it, it is likely that it is a cynical attempt either to please its owner, or to sell papers, or both. I didn’t see why I should be advertising a crappy paper anyway, and glancing around at signs adjusted with untidy rips or with brown parcel tape, it seemed that many other marchers had come to the same conclusion.

Fortunately, there was a huge choice of placards available, so I went for a less controversial one, declaring simply ‘Not in My Name’. Still, this made me feel a little selfish. I think the slogan is based on the title of a film. Nevertheless, I would have felt better, and less conspicuous, if the sign had said ‘Not In Her Name’, with an arrow pointing diagonally downwards.

Many veteran demonstrators had apparently expected an Anti-Globalisation March. It seems that there is no shortage of people who will march for a cause just because it’s a chance to object to the government. Now, Saturday was a cold day, so the hand which wasn’t waving a placard was jammed in my coat pocket to keep it attached to my wrist. And yet, when I got home, I discovered that my pockets were crammed with Socialist pamphlets that I had absentmindedly pocketed throughout the protest. I recall that none of the dyed-in-the-wool Socialist leafletters walking around looked like Swampy or Mark Thomas: this surprised me. Overwhelmingly, they were men. But they were men of all ages, with short hair, nice smiles, and puffy coats: the kind of nice-looking people who are cast as child molesters in ‘Don’t Talk to Strangers’ videos at primary school.

After we squeezed through the gates of Hyde Park, we were standing shoulder to shoulder in the cold mud as far as the eye could see. A formidable sight indeed: a gathering at least twice the size of Woodstock. At the time, Charles Kennedy was delivering a speech over the public address system, using the march to push the anti-war agenda and to score some points for the Liberal Democrats. Then we had two or three backbench speakers, and I joined Middle England for ten minutes to feel threatened and vaguely horrified by the incitement to massive civil disobedience and revolutionary outrage that they were spouting. Now that’s not going to make the poor any richer.

I’m told that I’m middle class. So it’s hardly surprising that I have a soft spot for Socialism. I like to think we could find a realistic alternative to the system we have at the moment. It’s embarrassingly barbaric. It looks ridiculous when a handful of undemocratic companies have more resources and more political influence than most national governments. Yet, through most of the last century, a handful of large-scale experiments demonstrated that Socialism, as a system, doesn’t work. Socialism accounts for institutional tyranny by placing the government in charge of the means of production. Pretty early on, somebody must have realised that the government then becomes a hugely powerful institution itself which controls everything, and is just as susceptible to corruption. Cynicism may be easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.

There’s a school of thought which suggests that Marx might have had a point somewhere. But there has always been a dilemma which confronts Marxist revolutionaries, every one of whom, on several occasions, will be presented with two choices. The first is to continue to fight the system. The second, to succeed under it. From the look of those pamphlets, not many people have managed simultaneously to forsake a comfortable, quiet life, and to avoid embitterment. The majority of young idealists eventually defect. It’s human nature again. We’re never far away from saying, ‘Oh, sod it. We’re going to war. Let’s stock up with petrol, buy shares in British Aerospace, and remember that every cloud has a silver lining.’

Ken Livingstone was laudable in his ability to remain cool, objective, and jovial when addressing his audience, who cheered every declamation from every speaker, to the extent that we would have cheered a dog if it had bolted onto the stage. Livingstone didn’t mention civil disobedience once, and even responded to a sarcastic heckler about the congestion charge: ‘Isn’t it nice to walk through Central London without getting choked by fumes?’ To the delight of thick protesters like myself, he also explained what he was doing there, and why we were there. By this time I was jumping up and down to stay warm, and had heard the same half-stories from three or four charismatic but otherwise unconvincing activists. Livingstone’s reassurance, and his besuited respectibility, cheered me up a little. However, he was upstaged by Jesse Jackson. What Jesse Jackson’s speech lacked in substance, it compensated for in form. Slogans, poetry, preaching, and persuasion. The man has mastered large audiences. When you can’t think of anything to add to what you’ve just said, say it again. And again. And again. Until your audience joins in.

We turned as Jesse Jackson finished. It was getting dark. We were cold, our legs were stiff, but our spirits really were lighter. The turnout was inconceivably high. We expected the government to be intimidated, and they were. The Prime Minister was expecting, at most, one million people, and there was a tremble in his voice that evening when he announced that the protesters may as well have been cattle for all he cared.

Before this demonstration is buried forever, let’s get this straight. A government spends a considerable sum stockpiling enough weapons to destroy the world several hundred times over which it has absolutely no intention of using. Then, to further its aims abroad, it incites a revolution in Afghanistan, suggests that they grow opium poppies as a convenient cash crop, puts a fundamentalist regime in power, funds them, arms them, waits twenty years, and then bombs them. Twice. Whilst executing its own citizens who trade in the crop that they condoned. And then sends soldiers to Iraq. Twice. Without mentioning oil once. And that’s not even half the story.

What a peculiar species we are. Either we’re very stupid, or just as dangerously, we’ve become so inscrutably clever as to appear stupid. Although our civilisation is all but officially Godless today, it is now obvious that there is a celestial system of justice that is far beyond our control. Sleep peacefully. If we’re doomed, it’s because we deserve it.

Published in barefacts 1051 • 20 February 2003