Against the wishes of my parents, and with the support of the best teacher I ever had (who in English class earlier that week had said "If any of you need help getting to the march on Saturday, you can talk to me" - an offer I took her up on in the form of a one-day Travelcard and her watchful eye in the thick of the crowd) I went to the anti-war march in London in 2003. We went straight to Hyde Park, missing the actual march part of the proceedings - there were already hundreds of thousands of people in the park by the time we arrived. My main memories of the day are a mixture of slight fear (because of the number of people, especially when I was trying not to get lost in the crowd filtering into the park) and enormous pride (for the same reason). The pride was national pride, maybe one of the few times I really felt it - although I had a vague sense that similar protests were happening all over the world, I felt like we were going to surprise them all and stop this war. I was reassured by the fact that there were so many people my age there, mixed in with the old radicals, mums and dads, all singing and chanting and laughter and resolve - everyone looking out for one another. It's hard, given everything that followed, for me to look back and call it a great day. But it was a great day. And what happened after did an excellent job of shattering what little faith I had in "good politicians" at a formative age. Here's a good photo I found online: