If they try leading from behind they may finally catch up with us

THE MOST striking feature of Saturday’s protest march through the streets of Dublin wasn’t its size, huge though that was. It was its spontaneity, its individuality.

That march was as valid an expression of citizen power as I have ever seen.

From all over the country, people had come to express a view. There were almost no two placards the same, and there was no evidence anywhere of orchestration. A number of the political parties had mobilised their members and activists, but if you add up the card-carrying members of Labour, the Green Party and Sinn Féin together it probably didn't account for more than 2,000 people. Yet more than 50 times that number marched. No political grouping can claim to have inspired them, and no party can claim to lead them. They were citizens exercising a democratic right and duty. For many it was the first time they had ever sought to express their citizenship that way.