Former miners who say Margaret Thatcher decimated their communities will be joining socialists, travellers, students and anti-capitalist protesters at a demonstration against her legacy in Trafalgar Square on Saturday.
A delegation of ex-miners from Durham is due to attend the protest with the north-east area banner and others are expected to travel from former mining heartlands in Yorkshire and Wales.
The event, due to start at 6pm, being promoted through various Facebook groups, has gathered momentum this week as the row over Thatcher's legacy has turned increasingly sour.
Tensions were ratcheted up on Friday when mayor of London Boris Johnson said police were prepared for outbreaks of disorder. Speaking to LBC Radio, Johnson said: "We live in a democracy where people are entitled to protest, where they are entitled to have fun and do what they want."
However, the mayor became the first senior figure to raise the possibility of violence when he added: "What they can't do is, I think, use the death of an elderly person to begin riot or affray or that sort of thing. So we're getting ready for all that. The police are obviously going to be making sure that if people do break the law they will be properly dealt with."
For police the rhetoric around Saturday's protests and speculation about trouble at those events and at the funeral of Baroness Thatcher are some of the factors they are considering as they assess the scale of challenges they face.
Police are privately confident that their ability to analyse social media postings has improved since the riots of 2011 but there remains a nervousness about how peacefully the events will pass off.
Hundreds of officers will be kept "kitted up" and ready to be deployed rapidly at any flashpoints amid a determination among police chiefs that control of the streets will not be lost as in the 2011 riots or the attack on Millbank towers in November 2010, during student protests. Met bosses know a sustained loss of control of the streets would be damaging and lead to criticism, as will allegations of over-reaction against people peacefully protesting the Thatcher legacy.
There are no official organisers of Saturday's protest, which is the result of a historical quirk. Two decades ago, the anarchist collective Class War said there should be a gathering at Trafalgar square at 6pm on the first Saturday after Thatcher's death. In 1994, stickers and posters were printed promoting the event, which was then presumed a distant prospect.
Class War has long since disappeared, but the date appears to have stuck. Ian Bone, Class War's most famous former campaigner, admitted he was suprised at the attention he was getting, including invitations to appear on morning television programmes. "As one of the few Class Warriors still about, I thought it was my duty to speak up on behalf of the event," he said. Media outlets have been mentioning the details of Saturday's scheduled protest all week. "It's been brilliant," said Bone, who estimates up to 2,000 may attend.
David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners' Association, said miners from the north-east would be among the protesters. "There are some ex-miners coming down for the protest in Trafalgar Square and they are taking one of our banners down – the north-east area banner. They are trying to get a Yorkshire banner to go down too so I think there will be quite a few down there."
He said there was a still a great deal of anger over the impact of Thatcher's policies in former coal mining communities: "She destroyed our communities, she destroyed our villages, she has destroyed our pits and she tried to destroy our dignity … Her reign was a disaster for the mining communities."
Tony Smith, who woked as a miner in a Nottinghamshire pit before it was closed in 1989, said he understood the argument that it was inappropriate to celebrate an elderly person's death. "But the strength of ill-feeling is so deep it overrides any reservations," he said. "We've lived under Thatcher's shadow for many years. It split families right down the middle and that resentment is still going on."
John Mulrenan, 58, who was an active trade unionist during the 1980s said he would be joining lots of his former colleagues and comrades in Trafalgar Square on Saturday night. "We made that pledge 25 years ago that when Thatcher was no longer we would get together and we have been in touch to arrange it. We are not talking class war here, we are talking about normal, concerned, politically active people who remember the devastating impact of those years on working people."
Marc Vallee, a photographer who has documented protests in the UK for over a decade, said. "The fact broadcasters like Sky News have been announcing there will be protests at 6pm on Saturday is huge. You can't buy that kind of publicity.
You can never predict turnout at protests, but from the people I've been talking to, I'd say we're looking at thousands - and that includes types you might say are more combative."
In addition to London-based activists, the Guardian has spoken to peoplpe attending from Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Doncaster and Norwich. They include students in their 20s, staunch leftwingers and radical anarchists. Among them are likely to be students who participated in the 2010 demonstrations that brought London to standstill, most were children during Thatcher's reign and some had not even been born.
Michael Segalov, a Sussex University student activist, said groups from Goldsmiths College, University College London and Kings College were attending the demonstration.
A middle-aged anarchist attending from Norwich said: "Anyone I used to knock around with when I was young, living as a traveller, would be tempted to go down. We just hated her so much: her policies, everything she stood for. People say that protesting her legacy is offensive. I am so bloody offended to see the state put this woman on a pedestal."
Facebook sites have been set up to organise parties celebrating the former prime minister's death. One group, Maggie's Good Riddance Party, claims it will hold a "right jolly knees-up" outside St Paul's Cathedral on the day of the funeral and calls on people to turn their back on the procession as it passes by.
However, there is agreement among most far-left and anti-capitalist campaigners that Saturday will be the main day for protest; few appear to have genuine plans to disrupt the funeral, which takes place at 11am on Wednesday and will be heavily policed.
Val Swain, spokesperson for Netpol, a police monitoring group, said: "The Saturday protest is certainly an event that people are traveling to. I know personally of at least two or three carloads going down from south Wales, but there could be more."
She added: "I have a feeling that police will want people to demonstrate on Saturday, rather than the funeral. They're used to dealing with large public order events in Trafalgar Square – big protests and New Year's Eve celebrations. The view among a lot of activists is that if they even turn up at the funeral on Wednesday, they're likely to get arrested. That's discouraging people from even talking about it."
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/12/...ts-weekend-thousands
