*Demo etc today.

Up early as I had a photo shoot and meeting with Sian and John Gormley at Hyde Park. John is the Irish Green Party leader and Minister of the Environment in the Irish Government. Darren Johnson also joined us. John was quite interested to hear of our successes in London.

Working breakfast with Darren, who is also our GLA elections coordinator, then on to the anti-war demo in Trafalgar Square. On the way I nipped into the weekly coin fair in Villiers Street and picked up a few goodies for the Green Room.

We had hundreds of placards and thousands of leaflets to distribute as well as the usual networking. Romayne Phoenix and Jonathan Essex had done a great job in organising the stall and supplies. Ken Burgess alone gave out several thousand leaflets.

Speeches went on a bit. and were not terribly inspiring. Caroline Lucas, as ever, was great, George Galloway less so. He is going to lose a lot of support because of his recent homophobic remarks!

Respect (SWP) were there promoting their ‘Left List’ for the Assembly and there was a much smaller presence of Respect Renewal promoting their list for the Assembly. Most people were totally confused

4 or 5 people from London CND (I think) were giving out a fairly pedestrian leaflet supporting Ken Livingston and a Muslim group had a flashier leaflet also calling for support for Ken.

My estimate of the crowd was not more than 20,000, not the 50-60,000 claimed by the organisers. No doubt the police will estimate it at 5,000:-)

I had the honour to be accompanied on the march by Henry Wimbourne, who at 90 is the second oldest member of Barnet Green Party.