Over 20,000 march in Belfast

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday February 17, 2003 11:26 by Davy Carlin W/Belfast SWP and Anti War Movement carlindavid at hotmail dot com

Tens of thousands take to Belfasts streets

Some of the media headlines: 'It was the largest demonstration of its kind Northern Ireland has seen'. It was Belfasts biggest ever anti war demonstration'. One simply said 'Historic'. Whatever the case it was a brilliant demo that brought Belfast centre to a standstill.

Just a few brief notes on the demo.

The march brought together many different trade union, student, community, political and minority groups amongst others from across the 'divide.

A number of feeder marches took place with one organised by the W/Belfast anti war group. We marched down the Falls with over 400 marchers in attendance on our way to the main rally. There were a number of speakers at the start which were a Sinn Fein Representative, a member of the IPSC and myself. As we marched down the Falls road others joined us, cars and taxis hooted their horns and huge banners hung out the Windows of the Falls Rd womens centre which read 'Don't attack Iraq.

When we marched up Royal Avenue in the City centre, by chance the Derry March was coming down another street after their historic four day march. The thousands of people amassed in the art college first applauded then cheered then joined in with our chants, a truly brilliant experience.

We all then marched to the city hall where the speakers were Mairead Maguire ,Jamal Iweida President of the Belfast Islamic centre, Also E McCann whose line used by Paisley in 1985 of 'Ulster says no' received huge applause and has feature widely in the press. Shool Students against War {SSAW} spoke representing the youth of the North and again they have featured much in the press. Finally the Irish Congress Of Trade Unions {ICTU} assistant general secretary spoke and amongst his speech in an unprecedented statement he personnally named and thanked the Socialist Workers Party {SWP} from the platform for their work within the coalition.

The march may have been historic but we now need to continually build it bigger.