Mass Protest

On March 26, somewhere between a quartre and a half a million Brits took to London's streets to protest the current budget cuts. The crowd included everyone from trade union reps to students to moms with kids in strollers. It took four hours for everyone to leave the start point on the Embankment. It was the largest protest since 2003, when people took to the streets to protest the Irag war. 

For the most part it was a peaceful protest, but a group of two to three hundred anarchists saw it as a chance to riot (not unlike what happened in Toronto for G20). The main target were banks, high end shops, and American chains (such as Starbucks). I wasn't in London during the march but happened to walk through some of the damaged areas the next day.

Fortnum and Mason (a high-end department store) and the Ritz Hotel were also targets.

The media handled the coverage in different ways. Most of the liberal-minded papers focused on the main march and put photos of that on the front cover. The more conservative papers put the anarchist destruction on the front cover and downplayed the peaceful march. The one good thing is the police managed to keep order without any brutality.

The main march finished in Hyde Park and some of the anarchist's paint made its way there too. One of the statues was badly defaced. It hurt my heart a little too much, so I couldn't take a photo of it. The main protest was originally billed as 'one of many' upcoming protests, but the anarchists may have ruined their chances for further marches.