Protesters gather to vent their anger at PM (Blair)

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They range from the very young to a woman of nearly 101 and had already started arriving last night, by train, foot, bicycle and on horseback. A multitude of protesters, harbouring anger and indignation over some of the most basic tenets of the Government's foreign, environmental and judicial policies, will gather today, on the eve of the Labour Party conference in Manchester, for one of the biggest public protests the city has seen in modern times.

About 30,000 people are expected to mass in the city ahead of a three-hour march, under the banner "Time to Go", aimed at challenging Tony Blair's stance on a number of emotive issues: the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Government's response to the bombing of Lebanon this summer, the next generation of nuclear weapons, the building of new nuclear power stations and the deportation of failed asylum-seekers.

The protest was well under way at lunchtime yesterday as scores of people joined an anti-war "peace camp", set up by Military Families Against the War (MFAW) on Thursday afternoon. The protesters appear to have benefited from Manchester City Council's decision to refuse them permission to camp at Albert Square in the city centre on safety grounds. Facing a showdown with MFAW's Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon died in Iraq two years ago, the council found a compromise location in St Peter's Square on the opposite side of Manchester town hall. The Labour council leader, Richard Leese, tried to smooth things over by arriving to declare the camp open, but the furore created by the initial refusal had boosted the camp's tents to more than 20 by yesterday afternoon.

At 1pm today, their occupants will join the protest march on a route which circles the large city centre "island" - encompassing the Manchester International Conference Centre, the G-Mex centre and the Midland and Radisson hotels - which has been closed to the public for the duration of the conference.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1705613.ece