Saying something is wrong ........ alternative histories .... part 3 on the march

Now demonstrations can be noisy, busy and in their own way a bit of fun.

Liverpool 1980

Of course there is always a serious side to the event, and that will always be uppermost in the minds of those who have made the effort to walk the streets, in support of an industrial dispute, or protesting at the actions of a government or events on the other side of the world.

But mixed up with all that earnest stuff, and the serious speeches there are the funny moments.

Sometimes they come from a witty banner, or a repeated chant which snakes its way down the line of demonstrators, and sometimes it is when the set chant goes wrong, which started with the impassioned call to action but stops halfway or is just never picked up by the surrounding people leading to a burst of laughter.

Manchester 1982

And there are the paper sellers which back in the 1970s and 80s when I marched would be everywhere, from those selling the Morning Star and Socialist Weekly to Militant, Red Dwarf and on occasion the journal of the agricultural section of the Communist Party.

The theory always was that the Left never actually generated much revenue from all the sales, because in most cases it involved individuals from one group buying the paper of another, in an act of fraternal generosity or just curiosity.  Either way it always struck me as a fine example of the redistribution of wealth.

Amongst all the paper sellers hurrying “up the line” to get to new potential customers there were the entertainers, who were a mix of the serious and the humorous.

I cannot now remember what the woman in the fur coat was talking about, but given the date was 1980 and Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister I can only assume the theme was a comic take on Tory policies.

Liverpool 1980

At other times there were those who harangued the marchers.  Some of these were supportive of the event, while others usually from the pavement hurled a mix of abuse and silly comments, which might be applauded or booed by the protesters.

And a side benefit for some was that they got to see the sights of a different city, from grand public buildings to glittering shops and hotels, although in some cases when the route was set to miss the most popular areas the scenery consisted of backstreets, closed warehouses and a line of industrial units.

All of which I rediscovered as I trawled the lost negatives which have sat in the cellar for four decades awaiting the technology to turn them into pictures and remind me of what I so often did during the 1970s and 80s.

And amongst the lost treasures there were the photographs of some of those who walked with me.

I always knew that in the collection there would be pictures of close friends, because of course they would have been on the same demonstration, but others were a complete surprise.

Birmingham 1983

So while I can still recall the Birmingham march with Tom and Keith, I was surprised to see Malcolm walking through Manchester selling papers and smiling back at me.

Such are the bonuses of uncovering that collection of “protest pictures”.

Location; Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham






Pictures; Saying something is wrong, pictures from demonstrations, 1979-84 from the collection of Andrew Simpson