You figure it out

What a march. Called at a week's notice, in the middle of the holidays, and we still got 100,000. Nearly all the coaches from outside London were full and turned people away. The police said 20,000, although this was a figure revised down from the 30-50,000 they were saying informally at 1pm _and loads more joined after that.

These police figures have a political edge. On February 15 2003 the police figure officially issued was 750,000. They later revised that to 1 million but not before Rupert Murdoch's Sunday papers had quoted the lower figure _ the only papers to do so. We put it at closer to 2 million, backed up by a poll and an urban geographer who calculated it was over 2 million.

So the aim is to minimise the protest, although it has less and less effect the bigger the marches are, because so many people go on them, tell their friends and family, and become used to _if no less angry at_ the under- or non-reporting.

Some of the media are rather predictable, though. I think it must be compulsory for BBC journalists to ask 'but it won't do any good, will it, what's the point of marching?' type of questions. Surely a more apt question should be directed at cabinet ministers. 'Why do you repeatedly ignore mass protests even though the protesters have a record of being proved right about Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror?' Some hope.

It's claimed Blair was in Downing Street when the march passed so he must have heard the cries and boos which went on for more than two hours as people stopped to lay children's shoes at the Cenotaph and then went to the rally in Parliament Square.

The march united a great wave of people against what is happening in Lebanon, Palestine and across the region. But even as it was ending, the press was hailing the possible UN resolution as reason for a ceasefire.

Today there's even more of that. The inconvenient opposition of the Lebanese government to a settlement which would allow Israel to occupy part of its country is blithely waved away. The presenter of tonight's Channel 4 News chided the Lebanese representative to the UN, saying surely the main thing is get a ceasefire.

How would we feel if Sussex was invaded and London bombed, and we were told that to stop the bombing we had to put up with the invasion? The fact that journalists can even put it like this shows how much they accept the government agenda.

The next couple of days can be very important, and those of us who demonstrated need to make clear that we don't accept a ceasefire which penalises Hizbollah, the Lebanese people and the Palestinians but allows Israel to continue its aggression. Peace can't be at any price.