Ever since the Poll Tax riots and Margaret Thatcher’s exit from Downing Street, the Iron Lady’s most fervent opponents have been talking about how they’d descend on Trafalgar Square the first Saturday after her death. Although a washout only in the literal sense, last night’s ‘celebration’ to mark the end of Thatcherism was nothing like the carnage of the 1990 protest. The crowd consisted of the usual few troublemakers, bemused observers, hurt miners and the anti-everything brigade. At the gathering’s peak (~7:30pm) roughly 2,000 seemed to be present:
Like the impromptu Brixton party, on which I dropped in earlier this week, many of the attendants were simply there to mess about and have a party. Dancing, drums and drink were in copious supply. But unlike Brixton, there were some political causes — the NUM North East branch turned up — and statements too:
The atmosphere made it easy to forget this was a celebration of an 87-year-old’s death, as opposed to a low-grade music festival.
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