Young and old show united front

DUBLIN MARCH: "Bertie Iscariot - you betrayed us all" and "Stop Mad Cowboy Disease" proclaimed the placards as the crowd chanted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at the start of an anti-war demonstration in Dublin on Saturday.

As the marchers - estimated by the organisers at 10,000 to 20,000, but put by the Garda at about 3,500 - massed between the Central Bank and Trinity College, it was clear that the anti-war movement represented a very broad coalition.

Elderly women in wheelchairs, well-groomed, middle-aged couples and young people waved flags and roared with appreciation as the chairman of the Irish Anti-War Movement, Mr Richard Boyd Barrett, denounced Ms Mary Harney, Mr Ahern, Mr Tony Blair and Mr George Bush.

In the crowd, a larger-than-life effigy of what may have been Mr Bush holding a baby skewered through the eye with what may have been a coat hanger was waved in the air.

It looked across the street at the more mundane figure of the Statue of Liberty holding aloft not a flame of freedom but a submachine-gun.

On the platform, Mr Boyd Barrett urged the crowd to "peaceful civil disobedience", and claimed that their action would "make Bush understand that nobody has ever been liberated with bombs".

If that caused a flicker of wrinkled brows, it was left to Mr Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, to explain.

In a parody of the language of the US military, he said he became "shocked and awestruck" as the "parents of Iraq sat huddled with their children as 3,000 missiles rained down on them for the purpose of liberating them" .

Green Party TD Mr John Gormley said politicians of every party had been disgusted by the Government's attitude to the use of Shannon Airport by US military during the Dáil debate last week.

At 3.15 p.m., the crowd was asked to move off towards O'Connell Bridge, and return via D'Olier Street, in order to allow the speakers' lorry to move ahead of the march to Government Buildings.

By 3.25 p.m., the start of the crowd had accomplished this, but met the rest of the marchers as they returned to the College Green area.

The congestion was sorted out with a little assistance from the Garda who organised marching lanes.

Nobody paid much attention to one young man who heckled the crowd and waved a hastily amended placard reading "Don't Stop the War".

As the march proceeded down Nassau Street, the usual line of parked buses bringing US tourists to the Kilkenny Design store was absent.

People clapped on the street on the corner of Kildare Street as the march went by chanting: "One-two-three-four we don't want your bloody war!. Five-six-seven-eight this is not a US state!"

On the platform at Government Buildings, Mr Brendan Butler, of the Peace Alliance, said the Government was involved in an illegal war.

He said Mr Blair and Mr Bush would be found to be war criminals, and the Irish Republic was being made complicit in that. The Government had shamed the people through the use of Shannon Airport by US military and was not fit to rule.

A further march is planned for Dublin city centre on Saturday.