"Make Tea, Not War" By ELBA KRAMER

A Peaceful Protest in Londontown
LONDON -- I was on hand in Hyde Park yesterday (Mar. 18) posing as Lowbagger’s London Bureau Chief to mark the second anniversary of the Iraq war.  I wasn’t the only person in drag.  There was a beefy looking chap with a clinical stare and a fleshtone wire in his ear who was as undercover as you can get in a short kilt.  The war itself was posing as a two-year-old, when by my count it’s at least an adolescent.  And there was a guy who looked like Marlon Brando from the Last Tango period, though the effect was partially offset by his delicately pinching a small sign reading “Make Tea, Not War.”

It was sunny, warm, and beautiful.  It’s not every lowbagger who knows that southern England is on the same latitude as Kodiak, Alaska, making winter in metro London practically a wilderness experience.  Well, it was the last official day of winter.  Everyone was happy.  Even the police photographer standing on the steps of the American embassy seemed glad to see us, if the length of his telephoto lens was any indication.

The BBC this morning is giving crowd estimates of between 45,000 and 100,000, and there are other estimates up to 200,000.  From my point of view, we were a bristly plump caterpillar a couple of miles long and twenty legs wide stretching from the park, curling around the embassy, and dipping its head in the fountains at Trafalgar Square, constantly buzzed by the busy bee of an officious police helicopter.

I kept a weather eye out for eco types, wanting to see if the greens here are a movement or if they’re just a side salad.  Back in the states, the greens have been rendering unto Caesar for so long it’s not clear what’s left.

In truth, we were a motley crew, and almost everyone had their say, commies, socialists, labor, greens, religious folks who do and do not think Abraham was a prophet, Kashmiris, pretty much anyone who could agree that sun feels good and war doesn’t.  As we strolled together, I stooped to take in a short Islamic gentleman’s observations on the prophets and on the excesses of Western culture.  This put my nodding head, paradoxically, in a more or less inescapable position for viewing some Irish women in green miniskirts just ahead of us, moving to the rhythms of the bongos.  Their version of the revolution apparently included some maneuvers from Riverdance.  “We’re fellow travelers,” I confided to the Islamic gentleman.  We all have to do our bit.

The black coffin we left at the American embassy and beside which people tossed flowers was a reminder that some people’s bits are bigger than others.

Afterwards, Liam and Sebastian pulled the sticks out of their Bush Number One Terrorist in World signs and played at being knights, chasing each other around the fountains and striking at each other vigorously while we pretended that they weren’t our children but probably belonged to the people with the Give Peace a Chance sign.  We scored some free pasta on grape leaves from the Hari Krishnas, poured some tea from our made-in-China thermos, and sat staring into its shiny domed surface as the sun gradually set on our little island at latitude 52.