LONDON -- The day after Saturday's anti-war demonstrations here -- which drew anywhere from 750,000 to 2 million marchers, depending on whose estimates you believe -- The Sunday Times described the participants in Britain's largest-ever peace demonstration as "Middle England protest virgins." It was a perfect description because it captured that the protesters were not, by and large, the people one might expect at such a rally. They were professionals, members of the chattering classes, New Labour voters -- in short, people who are used to being listened to. But on the subject of war in Iraq, they are not being listened to by the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair. And that might explain why on Saturday afternoon, these "protest virgins" found themselves, of all unusual places, in the streets.
To be sure, this protest was about more than just war with Iraq: Long-standing disenchantment with the political process in Britain has been on the rise since the ascendance of New Labour in the mid-1990s. The intense competition for the center ground that has defined post-Cold War politics in this country -- with the consequent collapse of any credible parliamentary opposition to New Labour -- has left many voters feeling disenfranchised from the political system. And New Labour's systematic distancing of itself from mechanisms of popular participation -- such as organized labor -- that had defined the party in years past has only exacerbated this phenomenon. For many British liberals, this frustration appears to have come to a head over Blair's determined support of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Which is not to say that the usual, more ideological suspects weren't at the protests as well. The demonstration was organized by a number of left-wing and religious groups, and trade-union stalwarts and radical fringe groups turned out in force. Britain's various Muslim communities -- Arab, African and Asian -- attended as well. So did those veteran lefties, the glamorous Redgraves. But in the end, it was the young, middle-class professionals who seemed to be in the overwhelming majority. And it was their presence at the protest that signalled how little faith many Brits now have in their ability to make the political system responsive to the popular will.
One result of this political decay has been that the British media is increasingly styling itself as an unelected opposition to the Blair government -- something that was dramatically in evidence at Saturday's march. Though Charles Kennedy, the leader of the small third party of British politics, the Liberal Democrats, spoke at the demonstration, the media were more in evidence than any political group. The protests were, after all, being co-sponsored by the left-leaning tabloid The Daily Mirror, which also printed front pages -- emblazoned with slogans -- meant explicitly for use as placards at the demonstration. Meanwhile, The Guardian, a liberal daily, printed -- for the convenience of protesters -- detailed maps of central London, illustrated with arrows of the planned routes.
With the collapse of democratic debate at the parliamentary level and the Fourth Estate masquerading as an unelected opposition, it probably isn't surprising that so many nontraditional protesters took to the streets on Saturday. In fact, the anti-war rally is perhaps best understood as following in the tradition of another recent protest: the Liberty and Livelihood march of September 2002 (a demonstration against New Labour's attempts to ban fox hunting with dogs, perceived by some as part of a wider assault by metropolitan elites on rural livelihoods). That march saw the strange spectacle of the landed rural gentry rubbing shoulders with farm laborers -- at a protest of all places. What it shared in common with Saturday's anti-war demonstration was that it brought to the streets those who are very much used to being heard.
But why has this long-standing frustration with the Blair government (and British politics in general) dramatically burst onto the stage over the Iraq crisis in particular? Speeches that championed the French and German diplomatic stonewalling of U.S. policy routinely evoked cheers Saturday from the assembled crowds in Hyde Park. But when I talked to individual protesters, I found that they didn't know a lot about the specifics of the Franco-German position. Indeed, the cheers seemed to be less for French and German leaders' opposition to the war than for their democratic integrity in accurately reflecting the views of their publics in the face of unrelenting pressure from the United States -- something the Blair government has declined to do.
Since the end of the Cold War, political leaders have conducted international negotiations largely in the absence of a popular street theater of politics -- in contrast, for example, to the massive protests that accompanied Ronald Reagan's stationing of Pershing cruise missiles on British soil in the 1980s. But now the public is once again a factor, and a generation of young professionals who had never before hit the streets want their voices to be heard. The stakes for Blair and his government couldn't be higher -- not just because protesters don't want a war with Iraq but because they no longer have any faith in the British political system to stop it.
Philip Cunliffe is a freelance writer living in England.
