Counting crowds

national | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Sunday March 21, 2004 19:45 by John Cunningham - Galway Alliance Against War

is not an exact science

I note that there is discussion on another thread about the size of yesterday’s anti-war march. I recall a similar discussion this time last year about the dimensions of the 15 February mobilisation —was there 80,000 or perhaps 200,000? I discovered yesterday that it is hard to be half-way accurate about such matters, much less definitive

Having travelled from Galway in the morning, I was very disappointed by the numbers around Parnell Square. At 3.15, there was certainly less than a thousand. On the march, stewards were mentioning numbers of between two and four thousand —I suspected exaggeration so I decided to try a count myself in Kildare-street. I counted 250, noted the space they took up, and tried to estimate subsequent blocks of 250. Not an ideal method, but I suppose we’ll never have turnstiles for protests.

My count yielded 5,250, with a few left over, which surprised me. There was nothing near that at the start of the march —nor was there, it seemed, at the finish.
Many protestors, perhaps as many as half of the Kildare-street crowd, joined in en route. Some, I’m sure, were delayed on their way, some made an impromptu decision to join in, some deliberately timed their arrival to avoid the tedious speechifying. Towards the end, too, one could see people drifting away to the pub or wherever.

The little computation indicated that all of the various estimates were correct. It just depended on when the count was taken. My 5,250 did not include those who abandoned the struggle before Kildare-street, nor the few who joined after it. And it did not include the dozens of protesting amateur photographers along the footpath. (Maybe the half-hearted anti-warriors who joined outside Trinity and went to watch the rugby on telly after a half-mile stroll didn’t deserve to be counted either).