"Will there still be peace when this is printed? 'Ask', said Jesus. On that Saturday about a million people were asking for peace. The group from our parish met at Mortlake Station at about 11am and lost each other very soon in the crowds. Waterloo Station was all people - no space at all. It could have been quite frightening if we had got impatient, or pushed, but we didn't.

"By the time we got to Waterloo Bridge it was well after 1pm. We looked out over the Thames, at a tide, not of water, but of people moving over the bridge and both sides of the river, so dense that there was no road, just people and their drifting banners, some with tabloid-type slogans and some thoughtful personal messages. There was a punk with a notice saying unprintable things about politicians and near him, a nun with a notice on which was written a prayer.

Pax Christi

"On Westminster Embankment we found a bus shelter for a few minutes rest. We saw, high up, Pax Christi, white paper doves floating silently on their white canes and Quaker banners saying wise things. We watched a young woman climb far up a heavy Victorian memorial and give the statue its own placard. It read, 'In war, only the innocent suffer'.

"From time to time, great surges of clapping and whistling moved down the procession and we sang Taize chants. We met up with Lucy a philosophy student, and Sam, a mathematician who had started out from Sheffield at 5 am.

"We seemed warm enough on that freezing day. But the other sort of warmth was much more.

"However different we all were, in ages, race, or beliefs, for that day, we were all together, hoping for the same thing - peace, not war."