There was speculation afterwards as to where he’d laid his hands on a megaphone – did he take one everywhere, just in case? – but he brushed the question aside, saying only ‘Someone put it in my hand,’ never adding who or when; never mentioning Peter Judd. And when the camera caught him raising it mouthwards, the resulting image became a photoshopped meme: Desmond Flint facing a tank in Tiananmen Square, planting his foot on the Moon, standing on a balcony in papal white.
As Judd remarked later, ‘History has an open-door policy. Any fool can walk right in.’
Flint’s appeal to the crowd appeared in several British newspapers the following day, though the punctuation differed in each.
‘You all know me – it’s Flinty. And I’m proud to be standing here wearing the same vest as the rest of you. The vest of the British worker, us who dug these very roads, built these very buildings all around you. The heart of London, this is – the heart of what used to be a great and proud empire. And I know why you’re angry, why you feel like kicking off. I do too. I do too. Because that birthright, that word “Great” that comes before Britain, we’ve seen it trampled in the dirt, haven’t we? We’ve been lied to and talked down to for years. And I’m as angry about that as you are, trust me. Because I’m one of you, and you all know that. We’ve stood shoulder to shoulder, we’ve drunk from the same flasks of tea. Nights like this, and worse nights too – nights when it was cold and wet, and it was only our knowledge, only the knowledge that we were doing the right thing, kept us out here, making sure our voices would be heard. Heard all the way down the road there, at the BBC – which ought to be ashamed of itself, pretending to speak for Britain – and all the way in the other direction too, in Westminster, where the fat cats spend their days with their noses in the cream. And we’re going to keep doing that, brothers. Yes, and sisters too. We’re going to keep doing that, and the day is coming when they’ll stop pretending to listen and actually open their bloody ears. And when that happens, I’ll be the one letting them know what we’re demanding. And you trust me to do that, don’t you? You trust me to see you right!’
In the pause he allowed here, a heartbeat’s silence filled the streets before the response arrived: a muttering that grew to a roar, accompanied by the stamping of feet, and the slapping of hands on the sides of cars and buses. Up the road, leaning against his taxi, Peter Judd nodded, appreciating the timing. You couldn’t call it oratory. But it was getting the job done.
‘Thank you. Thank you. I can’t tell you what it means to me, to know I’ve got your support in the battles that lie ahead. Because that’s what’s important. But right now, right this moment, what I want you to do is call it a night. I want you to call it off now, this legal gathering of like-minded citizens, and go back to your homes. I’ve been assured you’ll be allowed to leave peacefully, just as I’ve been assured that the police will be looking very carefully for those saboteurs, those victorious agents of provocation, who came here tonight to deliberately cause misrule. Not our people. Not our message. These people are the enemy, and they came here to make it seem as if we were the violent ones, that our protest is violent. Which it isn’t. It isn’t. We only want to have our voices heard. But for now, for right now, we need to make it clear that it’s us who’s the victims here, us who’s seeking justice. And we won’t allow our movement to be sullied, tarnished, by the enemy within.’
The unknown ‘victorious agents of provocation’ were another cause of speculation in the press, and the assurances Flint spoke of were as mysteriously sourced as his megaphone. But by the time the questions were asked, the answers had lost relevance. Once you have them by the headlines, as Judd had been known to observe, their dicks will surely follow.
‘That’s right. Just pack it away, now. It’s been a good evening’s work, because we’ve shown we won’t be treated like dirt, and we’ve shown how calm we can be when we’re provoked. So we can hold our heads high now, and we’ll be back, won’t we? We’re all coming back. Thank you. God bless. God bless.’
Channelling a televangelist for some reason, but it didn’t matter: the rousing cheer it produced put a seal on events. The crowd began to disperse. A few vests paused to nod to Flinty, or clap him on the back, but nobody tarried long. That would have been to tempt fate; to take what felt like victory and hold it to the light. Some things are best not examined closely.
