London is braced for street demonstrations today against President Bush's continuing state visit to Britain. Frank Millar, London Editor, reports.
Organisers of the Stop The War coalition predict more than 100,000 people will join the march past parliament, up Whitehall and into Trafalgar Square soon after Mr Bush's Downing Street summit with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. While police agreed the route for today's march because the coalition had staged entirely peaceful protests before the Iraq conflict, there are fears anarchist groups could seek to hijack the protest and force a confrontation in the heart of the capital.
By early yesterday evening, police had arrested nearly 30 protesters from about 500 demonstrating outside Buckingham Palace while Queen Elizabeth hosted the first of the two official banquets to mark this first state visit to Britain by an American president.
Key figures in the British establishment, including the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, were at the palace to celebrate the "special relationship" between Britain and the US.
The day began with the pomp and ceremony of the royal welcome but was otherwise dominated by a keynote speech in which Mr Bush vowed there would be no American "retreat" from Iraq.
Mr Blair, meanwhile, has ordered a review of palace security, announced by the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, following the Daily Mirror's revelation that one of its reporters - with a track record in security exposés, giving his proper identity but also using one false reference - had got a job as a palace footman and could have been serving breakfast to senior members of the US administration staying with the president and Mrs Bush at the palace.
Amid much embarrassment and finger-pointing between the palace and the Metropolitan Police, the authorities insisted that the journalist had been properly checked by police for any criminal record and by the security services for any terrorist connection. They said neither the queen nor the president had been in danger.
In a humorous start to his Banqueting House speech, Mr Bush said the last noted American to visit London had "stayed in a glass box dangling over the Thames" and that "a few might have been happy to provide similar arrangements" for him.