At noon, we gathered at the Podium on Church St. in a small CND protest. I held one pole of the large “Hands Off Iraq - Justice for Palestine” Merseyside Stop the War banner, complete with map and invading tank. Others were leafletting, debating with passers-by, or holding placards. Some Celtic supporters marched up to give us a cheer.

Then 50 girls from St. Julie’s Catholic High School rounded the corner, raced up and launched themselves onto the Podium, sitting down and chanting “We Want Peace”... “War, Hunnhh, What is it Good For... Absolutely Nothing”... “Don’t Attack Iraq”. With hundreds of their classmates, they had started off in a playground sit-in and then left school with the tacit blessing, or at least benign non-intervention of their teachers.

I went off to News from Nowhere to get tickets for the London demo. Radical bookshop worker Mandy Vere took a call from her 13 year old daughter Roisin. “Mum, I’ve walked out of school. We’re marching down Mount Pleasant! You’ll be getting a letter from the Head.” Mandy was bursting with pride. “And he’ll be getting a letter from me as well.” About how happy she is that her daughter is learning to think for herself and has the confidence to act on her growing knowledge of social issues... It must be quite a school.

I raced back to tell St. Julie’s to hang on for hundreds en route from Mount Pleasant. But it seems they just marched all over Liverpool - maybe never meeting up.

The rest of us came back at 5pm for the set piece. The cops were there too and it looked like they’d arrest us all if we made our move. So we milled around waiting to be nicked. By now, news of workplace actions was filtering through. 40 PCS Inland Revenue staff had walked out at lunchtime to deliver a letter to Sefton Council, demanding to know why they supported the war. A small group of PCS DWP had joined a few UNISON Social Services for a protest in the Dingle. Other UNISON Social Services staff in Fazakerly had walked out briefly, and plan to do so again. NATFHE lecturers at 4 Liverpool Community College sites had held brief protests outside. A South Liverpool health clinic was rumoured to have started the day with a protest. Someone said 50 CWU postal workers had gone out, and some Vauxhall workers. On Tuesday, we heard that building workers from the site by Lime St. Station had walked off the job and phoned the Stop the War coalition in London. The crowd on Church St. had Liverpool City Council UNISON and NUT banners, while Wednesday’s street blockade in front of Liverpool Town Hall had a huge PCS banner.

It wasn’t the Italian general strike or the Brazilian Port of Santos boycott of US and UK trade, but it was something and it could grow. And we had schoolkids - both Arab and Scouse - and university students, talking with trade unionists, leftists and aging hippies.

Suddenly, the students moved into Hanover St. There were enough cops to stop it. But they didn’t. Now 500 of us marched towards Lime St. Station. The Iraq-Palestine banner swerved right to block oncoming cars. “Whose streets? Our streets!” We filled the junction in front of Lime St. Station, blocking 3 lines of traffic. Some sat down in the road. Everyone waved their banners and chanted. “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your bloody war. Five, six, seven, eight, stop the killing, stop the hate.” “Say hey, say ho, Bush and Blair have got to go.” After a while, the ripostes got a hearing. “Say ho, say hey, this is not the USA” “Three, five, seven, nine, Freedom for Palestine”.

The police made no attempt to arrest us, or pick off whoever they thought was in charge of this anarchic happening. Instead, they went round the back of each traffic lane and cleared it by U-turns from the rear. When all the buses had reversed out, we were holding an empty fort. So we marched down to the Pier Head and blocked The Strand, lying down for a silent die-in below the Liver Birds and then rising up shouting. As soon as they sorted out that lot of traffic, we headed towards the Albert Dock. And this time a line of police vans faced us from the side, their lights glowing as night fell on the Mersey. So this is finally it, we thought. But it wasn’t. We marched up past the Army Recruitment office, the Queen Victoria statue and the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, and finally back to Church St.

Hundreds sat down in Renshaw St. I went home.

Take your pick. Were we allowed to do this because street protests are yesterday’s tactic now that the action is in Baghdad? Perhaps, but they let everyone know we’re still here, and let’s see what happens if workplace walkouts develop. Or, were we handled with kid gloves because the last thing Blair wants now is a riot?