{"id":533381,"date":"2025-10-28T14:08:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/533381\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T14:08:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:08:35","slug":"edinburgh-saw-one-of-its-biggest-anti-poverty-protests-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/533381\/","title":{"rendered":"Edinburgh saw one of its biggest anti-poverty protests in decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can never help but get excited like a child when I come back to Edinburgh. She was my first home, and she\u2019s never once failed to make my stomach drop when I emerge from Waverley.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time you\u2019d have found me busking on the cobbles down at the Cowgate on a weekend or listening to The OK Social Club croon in the Royal Mile Tavern. If you know Edinburgh well enough, I definitely got fired from a bar you like.<\/p>\n

Last weekend was a different sort of adventure, though.<\/p>\n

A huge anti-poverty demonstration in Edinburgh<\/p>\n

On Saturday 25 October, the city hosted several thousand<\/a> passionate Scots from all over<\/a> the country and beyond for what turned out to be one of the largest anti-poverty demonstrations in decades. The crowd was brought together by a metric shittonne of different organisations \u2014 from women\u2019s rights groups and anti-racism campaigners all the way through to the Church of Scotland:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the shadow of Arthur\u2019s Seat, all of us desperately trying to avoid being blinded by the rare Scottish sun, the throng assembled.<\/p>\n

By the time I landed at half nine in the morning, there were already hundreds of people milling around. Watching the steady stream filing down the hill, you could tell it was going to be a big one. What struck me most was how easily people from completely different worlds were getting along.<\/p>\n

You know things are going in the right direction when socialists with blue hair can march next to firefighters. Maybe it\u2019s that shared Scottish bond \u2014 that quiet frustration at being ruled by Westminster \u2014 but the unity on display was a real breath of fresh air:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Edinburgh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Something interesting is happening in grassroots politics right now \u2014 a kind of changing of the guard \u2014 and it was impossible to miss it this weekend.<\/p>\n

Younger and younger<\/p>\n

Yes, the crowd was diverse, but as the march filed past, it was the young faces that stood out. Not just people in their twenties, but teenagers \u2014 bright-eyed, angry, hopeful. For many of us slightly older, we\u2019ve realised that no amount of standing around listening to speeches is going to bring the change we need.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t ask nicely anymore.<\/p>\n

People have to demand the change they want to see and hold to account those who promise it \u2014 even if the only way to do that is with your body on the streets:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the procession made its way through the city \u2014 up the Mile and round the corner \u2014 I\u2019m laughing out loud to myself, thinking this is my job. I get to do this for a living. How fucking lucky can you get?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to get swept up in the electricity of it all. I almost feel sorry for the people standing at the side of the road, slightly flabbergasted \u2014 the Palestine flags, the shock, the horror. Such outpouring onto the streets. Why can\u2019t you do this quietly, at home, where I don\u2019t have to see it? Sometimes that makes me want to laugh; today it just makes me angry:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Edinburgh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As if there\u2019s some perfectly rational moral position you can twist yourself into, contorted in some way where you can\u2019t see Gaza<\/a> anymore.\u00a0 If ever you need to learn how not to give a fuck what other people think just go and stand in a group of people who think, controversially, that genocide is bad \u2013 give it five minutes and someone will come along and tell you you are wrong:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Edinburgh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A photojournalist\u2019s perspective on Edinburgh<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t really sure how to do this, to be honest.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I\u2019m not a writer \u2014 just a camera guy who says good words sometimes.<\/p>\n

If you want the nuts and bolts of the day, coming to me was a bad idea. But listening to Sai Shraddha Suresh Viswanathan, president of the Scottish NUS, speak on stage to the thousands who\u2019d finally filtered into the Meadows, it wasn\u2019t hard to see that this wasn\u2019t about nuts and bolts anyway.<\/p>\n

Politics now is visceral.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something I\u2019ve always thought \u2014 we on the left really struggle to tell a story without percentages and spitting out facts. And I know over 70% of asylum claims were approved after appeals, but calculators aren\u2019t sexy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You should be angry<\/p>\n

For people my age this just isn\u2019t academic. I\u2019ve paid for 18% of the house I rent in less than two years \u2013 it\u2019s not hard to get angry anymore. And in a world of apathy, it was honestly beautiful to see people standing in a field together \u2013 peaceful, happy, but aware and properly pissed off about it:<\/p>\n

\"Edinburgh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Later, while I was doing the rounds taking shots, I got chatting to a stilt juggler from Think Circus \u2014 a Leith-based charity that uses money from their circus shows to fund community events. Leith is a beautiful place, but it\u2019s changed so much over the past twenty years.<\/p>\n

We were reminiscing about the squats and artist digs that used to line Leith Walk and the people who used to live in them, pouring pints a few hours a week to pay the pittance it cost to have time to find out who they were. Where do those people live now? Maybe they\u2019re still here, but instead of discovering they\u2019re meant to paint murals on walls, they\u2019re selling their lives in Tesco to pay someone else\u2019s mortgage:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a thought that\u2019s upset me for a long time, to be honest but this weekend I realised those people still exist.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going through changes<\/p>\n

Maybe if they were twenty years older, they\u2019d have been painting on walls or playing guitar on the cobbles, living cheap while they figured out who they were.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sad they haven\u2019t had that freedom but I\u2019m happy for society that they\u2019ve found themselves instead as the young people pushing this scene forward \u2013 vibrant, creative, and angry in all the right ways. It makes this slightly oldish hippy a little more hopeful for the future:<\/p>\n

\"Edinburgh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thankyou Edinburgh; as always. It was beautiful.<\/p>\n

Featured image and additional images via the Canary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can never help but get excited like a child when I come back to Edinburgh. She was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,837,1144,1814,18744,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-533381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-protest","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115452191479621161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}