The Last Patrol

Tomorrow I'm going on my first protest in quite some time. After spending a few years of my life religiously going on marches against the war in Iraq with no effect, and after spending some time with some direct-action types who were some of the biggest buffoons I'd had the pleasure of meeting, I became a bit disillusioned with it all. But one of the only good things so far about the Tories getting back in is they've given us plenty to kick off about already. As you may or may not know, public services across the board are facing crippling cuts through austerity measures to combat the defecit. This means the people who most need public services like the national health, police, social services, welfare, and so on will find themselves with less accessibility, less facilities, less feet on the ground, and more isolation and social poverty. There is a really, really, really, really simple solution that means we can keep public services as they are and that is raise taxes. The rich people pay a lot of tax, the poor don't pay as much. If you have money, you should consider yourself fortunate and not balk at the idea of helping those less fortunate. The only way Britain can be great again is by looking after one another, not shutting the doors and thinking only of ourselves. So I am protesting tomorrow at the Tory conference, and I hope to see tens of thousands of other people there with me, although I don't hold much hope at all and probably following this I will go back to grumbling at home. Because, as I've learned over the years, if there's one thing a plutocratically elected government won't do it's listen to the people they govern.

Anyway, while I was making my banner earlier I was reminded of one of the most memorable parts of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, a long, arduous and bleak journey through the 1972 presidential elections that all-round sod Richard Nixon won against seemingly everyone's efforts. Despite being batshit crazy, Thompson was also one of the most knowledgeable and passionate political commentators I have ever read. The guy can flit between subjects like nobodies business, and keep the readers interest through a 500 page political commentary with ease. This particular scene involves the Vietnam Veterans Against the War marching on the Republican conference that announced Nixon's candidacy, at the Fontainbleau in Miami, and contains some sound advice which has stayed with me since the first time I read it.

As I drove toward Key Biscayne with the top down, squinting into the sun, I saw the Vets... They were moving up Collins Avenue in dead silence; twelve hundred of them dressed in battle fatigues, helmets, combat boots... a few carried full-size plastic M-16s, many peace symbols, girlfriends walking beside vets being pushed along the street in slow moving wheelchairs, others walking jerkily on crutches... But nobody spoke, all the 'stop, start' 'fast, slow' 'left,right' commands came from 'platoon leaders' walking slightly off to the side of the main column and using hand signals...

The silence of the march was contagious, almost threatening. There were hundreds of spectators, but nobody said a word. I walked beside the column for ten blocks, and the only sounds I remember hearing were the soft thump of boot leather on hot asphalt and the occasional rattling of an open canteen top.

The Fontainebleu was already walled off from the street by five hundred heavily armed cops when the front ranks of the Last Patrol arrivedm, still marching in total silence. Several hours earlier, a noisy mob of Yippie/Zippie/SDS 'non-delegates' had shown up in front of the Fontainebleu and been met with jeers and curses from GOP delegates and other partisan spectators, massed behind the police lines... But now there was no jeering. Even the cops seemed deflated. They watched nervously from behind their face shields as the VVAW platoon leaders, still using hand signals, funneled the column into a tight semicircle that clocked all three northbound lanes of Collins Avenue...

For the first and only time during the whole convention, the cops were clearly off balance. The Vets could have closed all six lanes of Collins Avenue if they'd wanted to, and nobody would have argued. I have been covering anti-war demonstrations with depressing regularity since the winter of 1964, in cities all over the country, and I have never seen cops so intimidated by demonstrators as they were in front of the Fontainebleau Hotel on that hot Tuesday afternoon in Miami Beach.

There was an awful tension in that silence. Not even that pack of rich sybarites out there on the foredeck of the Wild Rose of Houston could stay in their seats for this show. They were standing up at the rail, looking worried, getting very bad vibrations from whatever was happening over there in the street. Was something wrong with their gladiators? Were they spooked? And why was there no noise?

After five more minutes of harsh silence, one of the VVAW platoon leaders suddenly picked up a bullhorn and said: 'We want to come inside.'

Nobody answered, but an almost invisible shudder ran through the crowd. 'O my God!' a man standing next to me muttered. I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively - for the first time in a long, long while - by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is always your watch, and once you've lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when its time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.