‘Pants to Poverty'? Making Poverty History, Edinburgh 2005

July 2005 saw 225,000 people march through Edinburgh in the city's largest everdemonstration. Their cause was the idealistic injunction to ‘Make PovertyHistory’ (MPH). This paper presents an analysis of the MPH march, focusingparticularly on the interplay between protestors, the police and the media.Drawing on ongoing research, it interrogates the disjunction between projectedand actual outcomes, paying particular scrutiny to media speculation aboutpossible violence. It also asks how MPH differed from previous G8 protests andwhat occurred on the day itself. The paper considers three key aspects: thecomposition and objectives of the marchers (who was on the march, why they werethere and what they did?), the constituency that the protestors were trying toreach, and the media coverage accorded to the campaign. The intent underlyingthis threefold focus is an attempt to understand the protestors and whatmotivated them, but also to raise the question of how ‘successful’ they were incommunicating their message.