Irish crew greets Dubya in London.

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Friday November 21, 2003 15:47 by Tim - Dubya welcoming committee in London at the mo.

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a small but vocal contingent of us travelled from Limerick, Cork and Kilkenny to London on Monday.
And we've done a lot of walking and stuff since.
Besides being invloved in the marches and attempting a direct action in Trafalgar Square we also staked out the American Ambassador's residence last night where George was having dinner with Lizzie Windsor.

There was oh... a million cops in bad humour... blocking the route.
Ironically they stopped us at the back of the neighbouring building - the London Central Mosque. (wonder what they think of their neighbour's banquet last night?)

We were physicaly pushed off the road by police who outnumbered us more than 10 to 1.
( the number of police on bush-watch duty is 14,000 - more than the entire Irish police force and more than the total number of british troops in Iraq)

I sneaked around the Mosque to check out the front of the residence which is in the posh Regent's park area.

The front gate was blocked and the bridge was covered in cops. the residence was flood lit.

I noticed that there is a canal through the park, with a small path - almost totaly unlit. thinking this was a way in i checked it out, and there, in the dark, eight dudes with machine guns in boats that hardly fit into the canal.

so we wait for bush to exit.

Two separate routes were to be cordoned off for this visit. and It was hard to tell which was the back up and which was the real route until the cavalcade got closer.
We walked down to marble arch and I noticed that the four lanes of traffic had to come to a halt as police motorbikes pulled across them.
Ordinary London traffic was stopped for ages at a green light, and we knew this was the route.

as we tried to cross the road, a very agitated policeman shouted at us and stopped us on the traffic Island and tried to corral us into a corner (which we resisted as we outnumbered the cops on the corner)

suddenly there appeared a few motorbikes and transit vans, followed by Lizzie Windsor in her royal limo. Quite a small cavalcade actually.

once they had passed the cops forced us back off the traffic Island. they continued to keep the traffic stopped so we knew Dubya wasn't far behind.

The cops treid to back us up further but some of us just waked down the street beyond him. We got followed so we could get across. That wouldn't have been a great idea anyway as the Gimp's convoy would simply speed up and turn on the windshield wipers as you bounce off the car.

Dubya's convoy was about three times as long as the Queen's -loads of transit vans of London cops, then the big black vans of the Secret Service, Dubya's Limo, another SS car and then the decoy limo, more SS vans, vans full of riot cops, and a bunch of minibuses of other staff (we could see the silhouettes of the people because of the Shop lights across the street)

We couldn't get across to him but we shouted and a cop even threatened arrest for blowing a horn at the limo.

Nice to see Bush visited a 'free country' eh?