A Podemos rally in Madrid’s main square last year
A march turns dissent into resistance
Marches express an ideal. Marching is the difference between a keyboard warrior and an activist. Marches confirm we are not helpless against corrupt authority.
I still see people suggesting marches are a waste of time. From where do they get that idea? Marches and rallies have an affect on the onlooker. The statement they make is, there is a large consensus who want to make a difference in society.
Marches can convince the indolent to be active. People feel comfortable belonging to a large group, especially if it is good natured, affable, the camaraderie genuine and heartfelt. Marches gather together people from all walks of life.
All for one and one for all, and all that.
To know the power of congregations of like-minded protestors you need only think of the Romanian crowd outside President’s Ceausescu’s palace that turned volatile. They had good reason. Their anger began a revolution. They realised Ceausescu and his wife intended to maintain a brutal, corrupt, dictatorial hold over the lives. They toppled the regime in a week that some thought invincible.
Marches are an indispensible civil liberty
Marches confront the power of the state. Ask Podemos in Spain. Ask any number of mass movements for democracy. Marches are the energetic outcome of a restlessness to be heard. And Scotland, one of the last British colonies, damn well needs to be heard.
The British establishment knows the worth of crowds and marches only they call them patriotic parades. They organise an anniversary parade or a solemn commemoration, get the faithful lined up to waft Union Jacks, and hey presto, blind, unthinking patriotism is restored, the wrong kind of patriotism supporting the status quo not democracy.
There is an irresistible dynamic to physical protest. Supporters of restoring Scotland’s self-governance and self-esteem know crowd power has a health benefit – it fills people with hope, it signifies the best in human nature, it raises the spirits. Happy people are positive people. And the walk is good for your mental health and well as your physical health. You learn from participating. You learn from others.
In addition, it demonstrates strength of support, political cohesion and resolve of purpose. Why else does the state determined to retain authority engineer police and mainstream media to downgrade numbers as a way of undermining that unity?
An English (and tourist) march and rally, only it’s called a ‘patriotic parade’
Martin Luther King swore by the power of marches
Marches have spectacular historical precedence: Martin Luther King discovered their potency early in his campaign for equal rights; Gandhi’s Salt March some historians believe was a watershed in India’s move to independence; The Long March (October 1934 – October 1935) of Mao Tse Tung was a march of a different sort, a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army. It altered the destiny of China.
For the participants, joining a march to BBC Scotland’s headquarters, for example, became a demonstration that symbolized the transition from passive dissent to protest.
On internet and in newspaper we can be ignored, our anger muted. Those demonstrating outside the BBC cannot be interpreted any other way than a protest at BBC inadequacies in representing properly and honestly Scotland’s political and cultural aspirations.
To those holding power over us above and beyond that which they were given there is nothing more certain to concentrate the mind than a phalange of marchers approaching you demanding civil rights.
Marches are an antidote to Westminster tyranny
Active resistance is confidence boosting. It need never resort to violence. Violence will frighten and alienate some who can be reached with reason and example. The sight of Orange Order and BNP hoodlums beating up independence supporters in Glasgow stains British patriotism indefinitely.
How do we attain civil rights? We march. We congregate. We agitate. We cry liberty.
Resistance is persuasion. Marches are a manifestation of optimism to make things better.
Marches warn authority not to deter democracy!
- Glasgow: A march to restore Scotland’s civil and constitutional rights
Grouse Beater 
I was going to do a post on marches myself, but you’ve covered every point I wanted to make.
I don’t know whether this is just reluctance, or a whispering campaign deliberately attempting to sabotage the movement, but I’m all for marches.
Only common sense, Alharron, marches are a powerful weapon in the hands of civil rights activists. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk to people at meetings, or at hub stalls, in their living rooms, or on the internet.
And like you, I think there’s a subversive campaign to quell enthusiasm for direct action. It just appeared out of nowhere; suddenly supposed SNP supporters think we should stick to putting leaflets in letterboxes. Did it emanate from Bella Caledonia?
Anyhow, please go ahead with your discussion of marches. I’d be happy to read it.
Yeah, Scotland is oppressed. You could make the argument we are actually more oppressed than any other people because it is all psychological.
So while we get baubles designed to distract us like “free” elections, education, freedom of movement etc etc it is all really a ploy to keep us mentally in shackles and stop you getting commissioned by the BBC.
It’s an outrage.
Do I detect an element of sarcasm in your comments?
You switched ‘repressed’ to oppressed, a neat trick. I get the feeling from the tone of your toss-it-and-see remarks that you feel oppressed.
Incidentally, freedom of movement was summarily and severely removed recently, or did you miss that little skirmish while enjoying a vacation in Europe? Our education system has been under attack for years by unionist politicians, our welfare system controlled by London, and our separate law system usurped by the English supreme court.
Marches have damn all to do with me being commissioned for anything – so I presume that little dig can be categorised as a personal insult.
PS: Contributors who hide their real e-mail address get their arses kicked off the site. Please be advised.
Sorry I’m not there today. Couldn’t get the mutt looked after today: she’s getting a bit old for these big days out and she was away at Berwick all day Thursday!
Hope all goes well, I’ll be there in spirit!
First ever march I was at was anti-war Iraq, Glasgow. I believed Blair had to change security arrangements, fly out by helicopter because of size of crowd.
Saw YouGov poll post Brexit, not much change independence. I feel more depressed than 2014.
Work commitments – can’t make it march today Good luck all.
Big march, you’re rabble rousers, Small march, you’re apathetic,
Better to be damned for rabble rousing about something worthwhile than not caring. Either way, this is Scotland, you will be damned, so why not rejoice while you do it
‘The British Establishment know the worth of crowds and marches’…
So much so that they turned off the cameras or the link to the views of George Square today.
That wee bit gathering must have REALLY bothered them = )
They seem to have a problem with that Live Stream link – soon as it registers a Saltire it switches itself off.
I was actually living in America, New York, as a child when the programme we were watching, I recall it was The Wild Wild West, was interupted to announce the assassination of Martin Luther King. The impact was astounding.
Thank you for including the Freedom marches of the Black Americans in your article.
I remember back then, folk in America either decrying the marches as dangerous, uncalled for, downright unAmerican, or realising it was the stirings of something huge that was long overdue and absolutely had to happen.
We can now, not even begin to imagine what this world would like today if those marches had never happened.
Our marches for Scottish Independence are every bit as potent.
Thank you for your aricles Grouse Beater.
You and others like Tarinaich and Wee Ginger Dug have a wonderful way with words. Folk really want to read what you have to say, because it resonates.
You will all go down in history as voices of our future Scotland = )
Thank you for all the kind things that you have had to say. Warm regards. 🙂
Good stuff GB, nicely anticipating some of the patronising pish we’ve heard today.
I’ve long advocated the civil rights angle as a powerful tool for the indyref movement and hope to see it wisely used in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks, Ian. Getting good responses – over 2,000 hits so far. Pass the essay on.
Couldn’t get to the march, was opening a Festival exhibition , but something told me it had missed a punch. I got into some friendly banter with Wee Ginger Dug’s pet human, Paul Kavanagh, because my intuition sensed something was amiss. An hour ago I read the microphone and loudspeaker were crap!!!
(One microphone at a major rally?)
That’s akin to a novel with the last page missing, or a movie with no ending.
And we knew Glasgow’s corrupt and craven Labour would switch off the camera feed so the public saw only a handful of people in the square.
Question:- who was responsible for organising the end product?
All marches need to end with some sort of nonviolent confrontation. You are there to put your case to somebody or a group in authority.
The press will assemble ready to disseminate it if pre-warned some photo opportunity is imminent. Yes, it has to be organised very carefully, but if the march has not got an institution to face, a figure of authority, or some other authority symbol, it must invite a world class respected speaker to address the final assembly.
The uncertain, the genuinely curious, those keen to learn, and possible No’s who might be swayed to Yes, understand the concept of independence restored without another march. It’s the individual civil rights we have to highlight that are missing from our tactics, and we have to confront those who keep a tight grip of them. Marches can do that extremely well, if well organised.
Therefore, new marches need fresh objectives that people can understand without explanation, and moreover, identify with them too.
A march is for civil rights, not only group morale.
WGD was barely audible at the Wings stall, and it wasn’t a lot better even thirty feet from where he was speaking. In truth, Paul would’ve been better off with a megaphone.
A lot complained that there was specific end-point. No ‘finale’.
That said, genuinely grass-roots movements should reserve the right not to be predictably ‘professional’. Slickness of production and continuity did not, in the eyes of many, restore Tommy Sheridan’s credibility via the Hope Over Fear events.
By living we learn an’ aw that, as Patrick Geddes was fond of quoting.
Sheridan’s problems aside, a march needs a central focus, otherwise it dissipates all that energy.
I’m not disagreeing with you GB.
Perhaps the pay-off, in this case, was the BBC once again being forced to reveal its hand. As frequently discussed yesterday, in the Square and in the CH afterwards, the PQ demos were effective because they were on the Beeb’s doorstep and had to be acknowledged.
Methinks it won’t be long till we’re having another ‘day out’ on t’other side of the Clyde.
🙂
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A good read, Alharron. Many thanks.
The march had scared a good few who like a nation quiet and complacent. It is confirmation the ambition is gathering adherents, not losing them..
Hi SV –
Aye, the ‘Armadillo’ gathering with the ‘two-minute rumpus’ was, and probably remains, the biggest single gathering of Scots. Ever. And that’s despite there being thousands of Scots on the march in London on the same day.
Footage of the event is remarkably hard to find, despite there being constant helicopter presence from start to finish.
I was told, a good few years ago, by someone well placed to know, that Strathclyde Police, on the Friday evening, had an off-the-record ‘quiet word’ with the Labour Party high heid yins, and told them in no uncertain terms that Blair’s presence in the city was liable to lead to serious unrest. They knew how big the march was going to be, despite the farcical ‘crowd estimate’ they announced on the day (and which Tommy Sheridan made such capital of in what was probably one his best speeches: ‘Strathclyde Police canny count!’)
As a result of that ‘quiet word’, Blair was told to deliver his speech early and remove himself from Glasgow asap. He duly did, and had left the city before the march set off from Glasgow Green.
Blair has the look of a haunted man these days. And nice to hear the Scottish police acting like a sheriff in a western. “Leave yer guns at the jail, boys, an’ collect ’em when you leave town. Have a good time in Happyville.”
(New essays published at midnight)
Thanks: I, of course, agree. Why else the desperation that the EU referendum hadn’t changed things despite *hundreds* of anecdotes from former No voters now determined Yes voters? Damage control.
Sir,
You have said what I feel should be said. I just want to add that marches also build the critical mass need to turn dissent into resistance. Marches confirm solidarity; in the sense that not only others see the injustices like you do, but they are also willing to join the dissent and resist if necessary. We can take the Catalans for example. They march in hundreds of thousands every year and it seems futile at times. Now they are at a junction like the Scots. That kind of dissent will turn into resistance, and the first manifestation was the 1 October referendum. They may not be independent yet, but they too are closer to it that ever before.
We too are nearing that critical mass already. If you were to say that 10K would turn up in Dumfries to march for independence ten years ago, most would laugh their heads off. That figure was achieved and the earlier Glasgow one was impressive to say the least.
As we all know very well, Westminster can only be bent by this kind of sheer might. It will either nip in the bud as it always does (which is too late already) or it will compromise at the very last minute. Those on the opposite side should take heed. Either they compromise, like they did down the centuries since 1707 or they will be overwhelmed by this.
Personally I don’t think we are no longer in the mood to compromise anymore. Enough is enough.
ABU
Well said Grouse and couldn’t agree more. Something I posted a couple of months back on WGD:
“In this particular instance, outside of the fact that they bring independence minded people together for a much needed morale boost in pretty dark times? They illustrate, unambiguously, that for every negative and hateful misrepresentation that’s been put out there about them and what they stand for, their reality is the polar opposite of the myth created by less savoury media and political elements. These marchers prove beyond doubt that their political engagement can be positive, peaceful and carry impact. A joy and a privilege to be part of. What the people of these towns and cities will see with every peaceful march can’t be unseen and what they hear, can’t be unheard. For a movement that has rarely received fair or equal representation within the UK’s media or body politic?
You can’t buy that kind of positive imagery.”
Like you, I’ve always regarded mass marches as a great, possibly the best method, to show hope is alive. Hope is the one thing authority can’t extinguish though its tries hard to do it by its propaganda..
When the weather is so good I always regret not attending a march. I plan to make my usual low-key appearance at the Edinburgh march in October, if the weather is kind. Will you manage along?
Had a ball at the Glasgow march and I’ll do my best to get to Edinburgh.
Look forward to meeting you. If I can attend in my old jalopy, in the march, Saltire flying, I’ll do that.
There is, indeed, room for all of these methods of showing our preference.
We have never seen that from unionists, save the Orange Order Marchers, who borrow numbers from Northern Ireland and various English Nationalist groups. Even then 18,000 is their highest number recorded so far. They speak of silent majorities which I often look upon as euphemism for rigging the vote.
The 100,000 in Edinburgh was a conservative estimate (no pun intended). I was happy to walk in Edinburgh and what a glorious and peaceful and friendly sight it was. A credit to the type of Scotland we all want. I shall miss the Glasgow event but I wish you all good weather and a joyous day.
Thank you, Steve the Baker.
I hope to have one moving, immutable memory of the struggle for full democracy before that son-of-a-bitch called Fate goes and ruins the chance. 🙂
Actually our education system is a crock of smelly stuff. There is not ambition in it and we are being left behind by the rest of the world. I do science tutoring and thus have to get to grips with a lot of syllabuses. The Scottish science syllabuses are weak, unambitious and it starts at Nat 5 until at 18 our kids are a full year behind.
If we dragged the curriculum up to a proper, internationally comparable standard we could abolish the first year of University, saving lots of money and have 3 year degrees (4 for honours as we had in NZ, last year research).
Curriculum for excellence? Curriculum for mediocrity.