Was the total of marchers nearer to 100k than 500k?
Were 100 passing by every 3 seconds?
Last Saturday’s TUC march was a major political event – but how many were actually on it?
Over the past seven days we’ve seen the estimates grow and grow and a figure of half a million is gaining currency. But is that anywhere near to the actual total?
For it to have been the claimed half million then more than a 100 marchers would have had to have passed by every three seconds for the full four hours. That simply did not happen.
Just check out the above YouTube video and the ones linked to it and it’s clear that the “flow” of marchers was not on the scale of 100 every three seconds. I have looked at about a dozen of them to try to count how many marchers passed by a fixed spot for the stated period.
Because of the camera angles or that you are not getting a full shot doing a precise count was not always possible but the most I was able count on the videos in any three second segment was 40. My average count was 27.
Given the march is supposed to have taken a total it then becomes quite easy to extrapolate a total of just under of 130,000 to 140,000 marchers.
That’s a an impressive number and shows the scale of feeling and the ability of the TUC to mobilise union members. But talk of half a million is just bunkum.