Opinion: A year on, the Palestine solidarity movement must adapt to a widening Middle East war

On the first anniversary of Israel's war on Gaza, the Palestine solidarity movement held its 21st national demonstration.

Some 300,000 joined the march, according to organisers, making it one of the largest protests of the past 12 months.

Not that any of the marches have been small by historical standards. The smallest of them was 100,000 strong; the largest, on Armistice Day last year, attracted over 800,000 people.

Certainly, in the pre-Iraq war days, any cause that mobilised 200,000 people, such as the largest of the Vietnam war protests, the poll tax march of 1990 or CND’s 1983 anti-cruise missile demonstration, was considered huge.

But the Palestine movement has transformed the metric because no other cause this century has mobilised so many, so often, over such a short period. 

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