Photos: Huge Turnout for Unite For Europe March in London, to Tell Theresa May and Isolationist Tories that 16 Million of US Say No to Brexit
27.3.17
See my photos on Flickr here!
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On Saturday March 25, 2017, I joined tens of thousands of supporters of the UK remaining in the EU in Parliament Square, at the rally at the end of the Unite for Europe march that began at Park Lane, and I hope you have time to look at my photos, and to share them if you like them.
The march had been called to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957 by the six founder member states of what became the EU, but it took on an added poignancy because, this Wednesday, Theresa May will trigger Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, officially beginning the two-year process of the UK leaving the EU.
As I have thought ever since the Leave camp secured a small majority in last June’s referendum, the 16.1m of us who voted to stay in the EU need to work relentlessly over the next two years to try and make sure that, if we do leave the EU, we do so in a way that isn’t as economically suicidal as the “hard Brexit” favoured by Theresa May and her chief advisers — David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox — although my favoured end result, and one I will not waver from seeking relentlessly, is for the Brexit process to be halted when it becomes clear that there is no way for it to take place without destroying our economy.
The march and rally, I have to say, featured a huge number of young people, and was also extremely polite — although I hope that politeness can be shaken up if, as seems probable, Theresa May continues to be obsessed with driving the UK off a cliff.
For anyone wanting to know more, I recommend reading about the Labour Party’s decision to finally find a spine when it comes to Brexit, as reported by the Guardian, and as discussed by Ian Dunt, the author of the invaluable book, Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? I also heartily recommended Dunt’s article, ‘Everything you need to know about Theresa May’s Article 50 nightmare in five minutes.’
I also recommend the Observer’s fierce editorial from yesterday, which I’ll be cross-posting with further commentary very soon.
Also see the photo set here:
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
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2 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, linking to and promoting my set of photos (on Flickr) of Saturday’s huge Unite for Europe march and rally in London, just days before Theresa May triggers Article 50, the official start of the two-year process of the UK leaving the EU. For many campaigners, softening the economically ruinous “hard Brexit” favoured by Theresa May and her ministers is the aim, but for myself, and, I hope, as many as possible of the 16.1 million of us who voted to stay in the EU in last June’s referendum, my implacable aim is for Brexit itself to be derailed over the next two years as its outcome – an unprecedented act of economic suicide and the implementation of an insanely backwards-looking isolation – becomes ever clearer. NO BREXIT!
...on March 27th, 2017 at 9:31 pm
Andy Worthington says...
After my friend Ruth Gilbert was the only person to like this article on Facebook, I wrote:
Thanks for liking this article, Ruth. Unfortunately, no one else seems to care. I know many of my friends on the left here on Facebook support the UK leaving the EU. I can’t quite see how they still maintain that position after the alarming power grab by would-be tyrant Theresa May, the evident incompetence of the Brexiteers Davis, Johnson and Fox, the rise in hate crimes, the rise of everyday xenophobia and the more or less official relegation of everyone from other EU countries to the status of second-class citizens, the ongoing collapse of the pound, and the growing evidence demonstrating how disastrous Brexit will be for our economy, but there you go. That’s the insanity of the current political situation – even worse here than in the US, because Trump is so evidently incompetent, whereas here people think Theresa May is somehow a capable leader, when she’s not. I find it a very depressing situation, to be honest.
...on March 28th, 2017 at 11:31 am