The AUOB Aberdeen march – an amazing scene

Revised 2 September 2019 – see footnote.

I have long been a sceptic of the claimed attendance at AUOB (All Under One Banner) marches and rallies. Their latest effort in my home town of Aberdeen on Saturday 17 August gave me the chance to apply a little local knowledge to my scepticism.

My day kicked off with this image:

You’ll notice it was posted at 1.25 p.m., just before the march was due to begin at 1.30 p.m. You’ll also doubtless be impressed with the size of the crowd and their evident enthusiasm even before they’ve started their long trudge down Union Street.

The only problem is the picture isn’t of Aberdeen. A simple enquiry on Twitter brought forth the definitive answer from numerous respondents (thanks, people) that this was the lower end of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It had even been used once before by The Guardian newspaper. The confirmation provoked a reluctant admission from @ScottishPoliticsNews that ‘This is a generic indy march photo … Thank you for your feedback.’ Hmm.

Still, the image did remind me that every AUOB march I’ve seen reported had generated pictures of similar enthusiastic flag-waving masses. And sure enough, at 6.24 p.m. the same day this image appeared on Twitter:

By 7.42 p.m. it had been reposted by one Neil Mackay with some added hyperbolic prose. Mackay says he’s one of the founders of AUOB and he must be the survivor from their recent inter-necine warfare:

Mr Sands (see above) turned out to have been the photographer who took the image. He had placed it on his Facebook page Scotland’s Folk just before he copied it to Twitter. Here it is in its original form:

© Thomas Sands Photography

His Facebook page says ‘All the photos I take are free for you to download’ so I’ve done just that. The image is central to what follows.

Unlike similar photos of massed marchers in other towns and cities, I know the site of this image very well. Sands’ photo gives a false (indeed a stunningly misleading) impression of the march, but to understand that it’s helpful to know the local geography. Here is a map showing Union Street. You’ll see I’ve annotated it underneath with features I mention later in this post:

• A – Gathering point for march (off map)
• B – Western end of Union Street
• C – Eastern end of Union Street
• D – Castlegate with the Mercat Cross
• E – The College, in Albyn Place
• F – St Nicholas kirkyard
• G – Junction of Union Street and Broad Street
• H – Town House
• I – Union Terrace Gardens
• J – Music Hall

To give context to the march, those taking part gathered in and around some public gardens off the left of the map (A). They then proceeded down the length of Union Street, which is about 1.25 km long, (from B-C on the map), before a more informal gathering and dispersal in the Castlegate, which includes the Mercat Cross (D). The organisers had wished to continue to the beach for a rally, but this was vetoed by the police on road safety grounds.

In a reply to the original version of this article (in the comments below) the photographer, Mr Sands, confirmed that he had taken his  photo from just by the Brewdog pub near the Castlegate end of Union Street (opposite the Town House at point H on the map). It must show virtually the whole length of the street because just behind the council’s (non-political) banners over the street you can see this building:

which is shown on Google street view like this:

and which is part of The College, an old church building converted into a bar. It is at point E in Albyn Place, just to the West of Union Street.

On the right-hand side of the photo you’ll see what appears to be a tall imposing neo-classical building:

In fact, it’s the façade of St Nicholas kirkyard, a city centre cemetery (shown at F on the map) and in reality looks like this:

© Copyright Bill Harrison and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence

The façade is a grand total of 122 metres long.

The two images are so different because Mr Sands has taken his photo with a zoom lens that gives a large depth of field, that is to say parts of the image close to the photographer and much further away are both – more or less – in focus. It also has the effect, as can be seen from the images of St Nicholas kirkyard, of making things that are further apart, in this instance the columns of the kirkyard façade, look much closer to each other than they are in reality. The same is true of the people in his picture of the AUOB march. The dense crowd of marchers seem to fill the length of Union Street, their mass emphasised by the sea of flags they carry.

Other photos show that the reality was somewhat different, for example:

taken at point G on the map and posted on Twitter by @AirdrieForIndy.

But how long was a march that seems to fill a packed Union Street throughout its length?

If you look carefully at Mr Sands’ photo, you will see at least three vehicles to the rear of the marchers, a yellow truck flanked by two taller trucks:

All have their hazard lights flashing and undoubtedly mark the end point of the march somewhere along Union Street. Someone with knowledge of road closures in the city centre has confirmed that they are part of the council’s routine clear-up after events, removing barriers and road closure signs.

The front of the march is also clearly included, in the foreground of the photo, because there is a glimpse at the centre-bottom of the letter ‘B’ on the banner:

that was carried at the front of the march (also posted on Twitter by @AirdrieForIndy):

But better than this, and thanks to @Fyrishsunset on Twitter, we can see a very different view of the march, taken at 2.14 p.m. from the Aberdeen city council webcam located on top of the Town House at point H on the map:

Three points can be made about this photo:

1. the three council vehicles mentioned above can be seen far behind the marchers. Because of the quality of the image, it’s difficult to see precisely where they are but my guess is that it’s somewhere adjacent to Union Terrace Gardens, I on the map: the buildings to the vehicles’ right are probably on the West side of Union Terrace adjacent to the Gardens
2. unlike the impression given in Mr Sands’ photo, the vehicles are a substantial distance behind the last marchers, who are followed more closely by a single vehicle, probably a police car
3. also unlike the impression given by Mr Sands’ photo, but supporting the impression given by one of the photos above, the marchers do not form a solid mass of humanity but are spread out with substantial gaps where they do not fill the width of the street.

So, less than 45 minutes after the scheduled start of the march, it had proceeded in its entirety more than half-way down a street only 1.25 km long.

I have no personal idea of the number of marchers that would fit into that space but as usual with AUOB events a range of estimates have appeared:

• by the organisers – 12,000
• by a small group of unionist counter-demonstrators who attend each AUOB march – 2,563
• by Police Scotland – 4,000-5,000 (cited on the BBC website)

After I wrote this, someone brought my attention to an Independence Live video of the whole march passing the Music Hall on Union Street (J on the map). First come a few dozen ‘Yes bikers’, followed by a long gap then a pipe band and the march itself. It ends as the three council vehicles I describe above pass the camera. The whole event takes a mere 27 minutes, with the march proper following the bikers not passing the camera until about 15 minutes in.

How many marchers can pass a single point in 12 minutes? For the AUOB claim of 12,000 marchers to be correct, 1,000 people would have had to pass that point every minute. To put it another way, that would be two whole battalions of British infantry every 60 seconds: it’s impossible. Even assuming the mid-point of my preferred police estimate, 4,500, would require 375 marchers to step smartly past the Music Hall every minute. In this context, the unionist group’s oddly precise estimate of 2,563 marchers – about 213 every minute – starts to look realistic.

Expressed like this, the spectacle starts to seem quite pathetic. If we assume generously that the actual number of marchers was a median 4,500 it was, frankly, a feeble turnout in a city, Scotland’s third largest, with a population of 228,000 people. Moreover, many of the participants seem to comprise a travelling body of supporters that treks around the country to each AUOB event. If a generous 70% of the marchers here were Aberdonians, the conclusion must be that less than 1.4% of the local population marched for independence. Put another way, 98.6% of the locals couldn’t be bothered to turn out for a Saturday afternoon dander for the cause so many are supposed to be passionate about.

I’m sure Mr Sands’ picture will be used time and again to provide an iconic image of the march and to promote its success. It is striking as a photograph. But it does not tell the truth about what was a relatively small event that must have disappointed its organisers. Whether Mr Sands means it to or not, it will be used as a piece of misleading propaganda to add to all the other misleading images and claims that come out of AUOB events.

Remember all this when you see any photograph of events showing the unstoppable march of Scotland towards independence. It’s not happening.

Footnote 2 September 2019. This revised version takes account of information I received after the original article was published, in particular (1) I have incorporated conclusions drawn from the Independence Live video referred to and (2) I have removed a suggestion (it was no more than that) that Mr Sands’ photo might have been ‘doctored’: it wasn’t, and I acknowledged that to him. These issues are touched on in the comments received on the original article and which I have left below.