50,000 marchers transform grey streets

BELGIUM: The European Union may be unable to agree a common foreign policy or to harmonise rules on such sensitive issues of taxation. But on the evidence of recent demonstrations in cities as far apart as Vienna, Gothenburg, Barcelona, Copenhagen - and Brussels on Saturday - Europe is well on the way to agreeing a common aesthetic of protest.

In the world of political protest, red will always be the new black - although the combination of red and black is better still. Thus, most flags and banners on Saturday were deepest scarlet, with messages in boldest black.

More striking than the unchanging colour scheme, however, is the enduring appeal of the music and images of the 1960s and 1970s. On a European protest, you are never more than a few minutes away from a blast of Bob Marley - usually Redemption Song. And the protesters themselves are liable to break into We Shall Overcome or Blowing in the Wind without warning. Che Guevara is seldom far away either, his familiar features often printed in black against a red background.

This unrelentingly retro aesthetic is all the more astonishing when you consider that many of today's protesters were born after 1980. It is as if the 1968 student protesters marched behind a picture of Winston Churchill, belting out the hits of Dame Vera Lynn.

Neither the old songs nor the icy wind were enough, however, to deter more than 50,000 people from filling the streets of Brussels on Saturday to protest against the prospect of war in Iraq. The route could scarcely have been more dispiriting - from the drab brutalising of Brussels North railway station to the squalor of Brussels South.

The city's grey streets were transformed on Saturday, however, by wave after wave of marchers carrying giant flags, home-made posters and rude messages for George Bush and Tony Blair. They were a diverse lot, reflecting the ethnic, national and social mix in this most cosmopolitan of cities.

Many marched behind the scarlet banners of the parties of the left, others walked with trade unions and church groups. Many waved Iraqi flags but a group of Turks carried their own national flag - even though Ankara is expected tomorrow to approve the use of its territory for a US-led assault on Iraq.