The march begins: photo courtesy of Stop the War Coalition
PEACE campaigners appropriated the rainbow gay rights flag.
The march for peace was conceived as the effusive culmination of the three-day gathering of the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence; it would stitch together, for one day at least, the many fragments of the left in a joyful vision of Europe from below.
The first days of conferences had gone smoothly for the city, with few shops closed, and none of the foreseen disruptions or devastations. All fears for the safety of Florence were now heaped on the peace march, a strange target for apprehension. But media comparisons with the bloody riots in Genoa last year, fleets of police vans, and defiant posters (No Global? No Thanks) around entrances to the city, brewed an uneasiness felt by us all.
Hours before the start time, the crowds began to assemble outside the Fortezza da Basso, where the conferences had been held. The march would start early to allow each successive, huge wave of protestors to have its moment. My family took more time than most in choosing what banner to march under.
We were drawn to a bright red huddle, at the centre of which an old man was being smothered by kisses; he couldnt escape, breaking from one embrace and stumbling into another. He was the former head of ARCI, one of the big trade union groups, and in some danger of being loved to death in the swell. We decided the 200,000 strong ARCI delegation, and Rifondazione Comunista had enough support already.
We thought of tagging along with Emergency, the relief agency led by the charismatic Gino Strada, and my father rated the Jesus Is Walking With Us banner as not entirely out of the running. But it was a clown-faced brass band that won our hearts eventually, pausing in Piazzale Donatello to serenade a cluster of Somali toddlers held perched from an overlooking window. We joined the troop, and were flanked by photographers for the first hundred metres.
Away from the crowd, it was still possible to wonder if a man dressed in tight black combat clothes and paratroop boots who slouched by a wall, drinking heavily, could be part of the dreaded black bloc. On second sight, he looked sullen but unplugged, a streetfighter tamed by conviviality. Music of hope and redemption from Manu Chao and Emir Kusturica blared from speakers on a minibus adrift in the crowds. It was uplifting, a true carnival: popular celebration and radical protest hand-in-hand.
Italians formed the vast majority of this pan-European march. But as I pointed out for a country that voted Berlusconi to power again only eighteen months ago this was heartening rather than disappointing. Just then and there, it restored my faith in the opposition.
The reception from the Florentines themselves was remarkable. We saw an old lady open her polished oak door on to a packed street and offer use of her bathroom to anyone within hearing distance. We saw children and their parents passing out cups of tea and biscuits through their sitting-room windows, and walked under showers of confetti flung from overhead terraces.
Flags of peace were draped from balconies everywhere.
Acrobatic antics from a traffic light, mid march in a usually traffic clogged main artery
The fashion designer Roberto Cavalli not only stayed open, alone among his profession, but reportedly served a hot lunch to forty passers-by outside his boutique.
The people whose placards declared their pride as hosts of the Social Forum in Florence were hugged and had their hands kissed like dignitaries.
The march ended at the stadium, where a concert of the happening mixture of Italian folk/reggae/Celtic fusion got everyone dancing or at least jiggling in the crush despite the seven-kilometre walk.
Throughout the day the police who had so willfully antagonised the crowds in Genoa kept a low profile, parked discreetly in side streets, until the evening when they emerged to direct marchers to shuttle trains and the town centre.
As we walked homewards along the deserted Via Tornabuoni, lined with leading fashion houses, each more securely barred and bolted than the last, we thought back to a banner wed seen earlier: So you closed McDonalds, did you? We wouldnt have darkened your doors anyway. Such apprehension on the part of the citys businesses was not wholly unfounded after all, Jose Bove (champion of food sovereignty) had told Florentines at the ESF opening party not to worry, he wouldnt smash anything if they didnt misbehave.
In the papers next day, we read an account of the only violent episode of the day: a young man had thrown a half-brick through a window of a ground-floor storage room on Via Lungo lAffrico. He was restrained by friends and onlookers, who pushed banknotes from their pockets through the broken frame in compensation. Someone even scribbled an apologetic note to the proprietor. This was a peace march and all were determined to keep it so.
An ominous coda
The newspapers I saw all joined in the elation of the marchers. While I cannot vouch for television coverage, 90% of which is under direct or indirect government control, there was, however, one short but sinister epilogue. In what is widely considered to be a gesture of retaliation for the peaceful nature of events in Florence, twenty prominent anti-globalisation activists (involved in the organisation of the G8 protests in Genoa, over a year ago) were arrested the following week, on trumped up but serious charges amounting to very little short of treason. Seven have since been released; the others await specific charges in high security jails.
The delegation from the Scottish Socialist Party and Iain Ferguson - to the left, in suede Unless otherwise marked, all photos by Flora Roberts