Fact or fiction? 250,000 attend anti-austerity rally in London

According to the organisers 250,000 people attended the anti-austerity rally in London on Saturday.

In March 2011, following a TUC rally that was claimed to have attracted 250-500,000 protestors, I wrote:

As for the estimated attendance on Saturday, I would treat that with a gigantic pinch of salt.

According to the TUC, between 250,000 and 500,000 people attended the rally. Taking its cue from the organisers, the BBC reported: "It is estimated more than 250,000 people from across Britain have taken part in a demonstration in central London against government spending".

I have very good reason to be sceptical about this estimate. In October 1983 I stood on the roof of an office in Whitehall which gave me a bird's eye view of a CND march in London. According to the BBC, it was estimated that one million people took part in the march and subsequent rally in Hyde Park. Bizarrely this was far greater than even CND's estimate of 400,000.

They were both wrong. The group whose roof I was standing on belonged to an anti-CND outfit called the Coalition for Peace Through Security (CPS). Julian Lewis, who was director of CPS and is now MP for New Forest East, takes up the story:

"The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had, in its time, managed to rustle up more shouters on the streets than most: it turned out about 150,000 and 100,000 in 1981 and 1982 respectively, and characteristically claimed a quarter of a million on each occasion.

"In order to frustrate yet another such cavalier exaggeration in October 1983, the Coalition for Peace Through Security commissioned an expert photographic analysis which showed the true figure on that occasion to be approximately 98,000 for march and rally combined.

"So as to show 'progress' on their own grossly inflated estimates for the previous two years, the CND had felt obliged to claim 400,000 – a total ruled out as absolutely impossible by our aerial survey."

Without a similar survey I don't know how anyone could estimate accurately the number of people at Saturday's rally, but you can be sure that neither the TUC nor the BBC will have erred on the side of reality.

The same is true of Saturday's rally. The real figure is certain to have been far below the estimated figure banded about by organisers and for once even the BBC wasn't falling for the hype: 'Tens of thousands of people have taken part in anti-austerity demonstrations in UK cities'.

Guido has more here: No, 250,000 people did not protest on Saturday.

The reason this matters is that campaigners make all sorts of ludicrous claims and, in many cases, the media is happy to repeat them without questioning them.

The smoking ban, for example, was introduced on the back of the fictitious estimate that 11,000 non-smokers were dying every year in Britain as a result of "passive smoking".

I could list many more 'estimates' and 'guesstimates' that bear little relation to real life - public health campaigners are especially adept at this form of propaganda - but I genuinely haven't got time.

Another day, perhaps.

Comments

[Joyce]

I remember now and again that I still haven't contacted R4's "More or Less" which scrutinises the stats behind HMG pronouncements, media reports etc to ask them about those lives saved by being protected from passive smoke - and then I remember that I think they'll just spin it....

There is a site, the name of which I can't remember, which fisks dubious numbers.