Bush, Blair marchers' targets
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Protesters march through London towards Hyde Park
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Demonstrations outside U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. CNN's Harris Whitbeck reports (February 14)
New faces join veteran protesters. CNN's Maria Hinojosa reports (February 14)
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- London's anti-war protests on Saturday brought the largest ever turnout of demonstrators -- estimated by police to be 750,000 and the organizers, two million. CNN's Rida Said watched the marchers and gauged their mood.
It was a bitterly cold day in London but that didn't stop up to a million people flooding the streets to demonstrate against a possible war on Iraq.
The march was led by some familiar faces among them the Rev. Jesse Jackson, veteran British Labour MP Tony Benn, Iraq-visiting Labour MP George Galloway and London's left-wing mayor Ken Livingstone.
The march was organized by three groups: the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Stop the War Coalition. Protesters were simply not convinced of the need to go to war even with a second U.N. resolution.
Many said the war was only in the interest of U.S. President George W. Bush, British PM Tony Blair and Israeli PM Ariel Sharon -- dubbed by some placards at the protest as the "real axis of evil."
Others had a slightly less serious message, one man held a banner telling Blair to "make tea not war." But it seems the majority were there for a cause they believed in.
One man told Reuters "My son, Sion, is in the Royal Engineers. He was suddenly sent to Kuwait this morning. I was supposed to see him off but it was more important to me to come on this march."
Americans among the protesters said that while they were patriots they could not support the rhetoric nor the actions of their government and were increasingly worried by their government's seemingly unilateralist approach to its politics.
The British organizers said they were highly concerned about Blair's relationship with Bush, and expressed the view that they felt he was clearly out of touch with how the British public really felt.
The outspoken Galloway said in response to the suggestion that France was part of Old Europe "I would rather be eating cheese and reading Sartre on the banks of the river Seine than eating popcorn with a born again bible-belt fundamentalist Republican administration in Crawford, Texas, execution capital of the world."
Also in one of the more popular speeches Jackson said that if the U.S. and Britain attacked Iraq they would "loose the moral authority to challenge China not to attack Taiwan."
We asked some protesters how they would think the best way to get rid of Saddam Hussein -- one man simply said "I would get rid of George Bush first." The protest is sure to have some impact on British Prime Minister Tony Blair but whether it will influence his decisions is yet to be seen.
