On Saturday 30th of May, a beautiful sunny afternoon, seven local SPs visited the org on Deansgate in Manchester, bearing only the bare minimum of picketing paraphenalia - some signs, a stack of flyers and some petition forms. Despite the fact that we had fewer than half as many picketers as last time, we did rather well - about 300 flyers distributed and 150 signatures collected.
This time, the Scientologists seemed to be better prepared, and showed some confront - a couple of them went around taking our pictures (for which we all posed nicely) and asking for our names (and we gladly gave them some names to play with). At the start of the picket, one guy had a long talk with me, asking who was behind the picket. I told him the truth - that I organised it - but he seemed to want more, refusing to believe that a bunch of people with no group allegiance would all get together to protest out of "the goodness of their hearts". I decided not to tell him about the Deutschmarks and Prozac muffins I'm putting in a claim for. He also asked me where I got my data from, and eventually left, seeming to be rather annoyed that I was better informed than he was.
Some highlights of the picket - the police came out only once, asking us to keep the noise down because local office workers had complained. Since I had actually seen people going into neighbouring office buildings, I stopped shouting quite so loudly, relying on talking to groups of people individually - the foot traffic is light enough along there that this is as effective as shouting in any case. I talked to a couple who were on their way in for their first course (in fact, I made them ten minutes late for it - sorry!), and urged them to "think for themselves". We got a lot of supportive comments again, including one person who stopped and asked to join us at the next picket. Throughout the picket, people (maybe six or eight altogether) kept coming in and out of the org, including the young man who had been writing down "our" names - he seemed to be quite a good humoured guy, he smiled and took some flyers, though whether he read them or tore them up (like the frustrated woman who came out of the org to talk to the police to be told we were perfectly within our rights) is another matter. Towards the end of the picket, they put out their "Free Personality Test"/ "Free Stress Test" sign, and several people, including the couple who had been there for their first course, stood watching us from the Org doorway. At about half past three, the photographer returned from the 1 hour developers with our snaps. If I'd managed to catch up with them on their way there, I'd have given them some cash to get an extra set of prints. Oh, well, I'll have to make do with my own photos. We bade the doorway lurkers a cheery goodbye as we left for the pub at four. Next time, with any luck, we'll have weather as nice as this week and the same numbers as the first picket (no, people aren't losing interest, poor timing on my part meant half a dozen who had been on the first picket were otherwise committed).
All in all, a good time was had by all again, and we especially enjoyed posing for photos. We'll be going back in a few months.
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