Plain speaking is needed: AUOB lie about the size of their marches

On Saturday 5 October, All Under One Banner (AUOB) held the last of several marches they organised this year in various towns and cities in Scotland. As the tweet above says, they claim ‘over 200,000’ people took part.

A general air of triumphalism pervaded the online comment accompanying the march. The figure of 200,000 was cited by numerous people and much of the media: Joanna Cherry SNP MP went further and claimed 250,000 marched.

The purpose of this short post is to demonstrate simply that the figure of 200,000 cannot be true. It is not a misunderstanding or a misapprehension. It is simply a lie.

I caught AUOB perpetrating exactly the same exaggeration when I examined their August march in Aberdeen. There, they claimed 12,000 marched. Police Scotland estimated 4,000-5,000. Thanks to a video posted on social media by an independence-supporting group of the whole march passing one fixed point, I came to the firm conclusion that considerably fewer than 4,000 took part.

Luckily, there is a similar source of information that allows me to challenge the AUOB estimate of numbers marching in Edinburgh.

Colin Mackay, STV’s political editor, observed the event and posted this tweet at about 3.00 p.m. on Saturday:

(I say about 3.00 p.m. because his tweet was stamped as 9 hours old when I copied it, sadly you might say, at midnight later that day)

Apart from the error of ‘he’ for ‘the’ (we all perpetrate typos in the heat of the moment) and the obvious explanation that ‘Parly’ means the Holyrood parliament building, the message for the purposes of this analysis is crystal clear – the march took  ‘about an hour and a half to pass this single point’.

For what follows I assume that this reputable professional journalist is telling the truth, as I’m sure he was.

If 200,000 (actually ‘over’ 200,000) people on a march pass a single point in 90 minutes, that has to be an average of over 2,200 every minute, or nearly 40 every second.

Just try to visualise a single point at the bottom of the Royal Mile which has those numbers passing it every minute and every second. It’s impossible, a fantasy.

If the marchers were 40 abreast (they weren’t) it couldn’t be done even if they were marching at a military pace (which they also weren’t).

If anyone wants to refute my arithmetic, feel free. I will happily post your calculations as a comment on this post.

So what numbers might have been involved?

Still accepting Colin Mackay’s ‘hour and a half’, if there were, say, 50,000 marchers, over 550 would have had to pass that same point every minute, that’s almost a battalion of British Army infantry. In sixty seconds. Again, physically impossible.

If there were 25,000, almost 280 would have passed the same point every minute.

This seems more like something that is physically feasible if still optimistic. It is one-eighth of the claimed 200,000 marchers.

The BBC put up an article on their website in the immediate aftermath of the event (Scottish independence: Thousands march in support of Scottish independence) that says

neither Police Scotland nor the City of Edinburgh Council was able to give an independent estimate of numbers.

The city council did, however, issue an estimate of numbers marching in a similar event AUOB held in 2018 – 20,000 when AUOB claimed 100,000. I suspect their estimate would have been as good as any; after all, consider how many marches, processions, demonstrations and large crowds they have to cope with every year.

If a similar ratio applied this year, there would have been about 40,000 marchers in Edinburgh on 5 October although I still think that’s way too high. It would imply 450 people passing that one point every minute for 90 minutes non-stop.

Anyhow, whatever the true number, a simple calculation shows that there can only have been a fraction of 200,000 people marching at this event, which is why in contrast to my normal cautious language I call AUOB’s claim simply a lie.

I’ve already seen some of the comment online being deployed to counter scepticism about the size of the march  – it was ‘massive … joyful … [I was] blown away by the numbers … goose bumps all the way … the Royal Mile was a sea of blue … I was 45 minutes in and there was another 45 minutes behind me’, and so on. I refute none of this but it does not deal with the fundamental arithmetical point and the physical impossibility of the claimed 200,000.

All this matters because the truth matters. As they say, if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one and if you tell if often enough, people will begin to believe it. Current and former SNP elected politicians attended the AUOB march. Some have cited the 200,000 figure. Nicola Sturgeon endorsed the event – from a safe distance, it has to be said. For the more naive, all this will add credence to AUOB and its lies. Don’t be taken in.