What do they want? Victory for Saddam

I’m bursting with excitement. I can hardly get the words down fast enough. There was an amazing occurrence in Hackney last week at a meeting of the Stop the War coalition. I swear this happened. A protester said something perceptive. You don’t believe me? No, really, I was there. He was an old guy with white hair and a lovely crinkly face. ‘The bigger the march,’ he said ruefully, ‘the bigger the insult when they ignore us.’ I almost fell off my chair in astonishment.

Nobody at the meeting disagreed. No one suggested a change of tactics. And none of that surprised me at all. For several months, out of curiosity rather than conviction, I have attached myself to the peace movement. An atmosphere of defeat hangs over its members. You’d almost be forgiven for thinking they’re content to let Bush go ahead.

Last Saturday I attended a warm-up demo at a cemetery in Stoke Newington. The plan was to raise awareness for the Big One on 15 February. I trundled up rather late on my bone-shaker but I was greeted by our quartermaster, Ben, with a warm smile of triumph. My attendance lifted our tally past the psychologically sensitive threshold of 17. He safety-pinned a huge poster on to the back of my jacket. ‘NO,’ it declared in stark white letters flecked with red to symbolise blood. Recognising a female friend, I wheeled over to say Hi. Her eyes scoured me coldly. She is aware that my feathers are not as pure as those of other doves – she finds my scribblings offensively glib. ‘All jolly silly, aren’t we?’ she muttered at me narrowly. After that she cut me dead.

We all tied white balloons to our crossbars and set off on the Tour d’Hackney. I was surprised that our route took us straight through Stamford Hill – home to 10,000 orthodox Jews.