No war cries, no angry chants or veiled threats, no one picking a fight… just a throng of 105,000 standing in solidarity with the UK’s fearful Jews:

This was the front page news on the first print run of the Daily Mail last night, according to the ‘tomorrow’s headline’ slot on the late news and it remains the headline on the on-line edition this morning.

…the capital staged the greatest show of support for British Jews since the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End nearly 90 years ago.

Organisers put the total figure at 105,000, nor far short of half the UK’s entire Jewish population.

Except that these were not all Jews. Far from it. The whole point of this march was for Brits of all faiths and none to show solidarity with a community enduring a ten-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents since October 7.

By far the most common banners on display were those saying: ‘Shoulder to shoulder with British Jews.’

The police had little to worry about from a protest army whose leaders pointedly paused alongside the Cenotaph in order to sing God Save The King.

Just the day before, the capital had seen another weekly ‘Free Palestine’ rally, ostensibly calling for a ceasefire but – in the face of an actual ceasefire – attacking Israel, its leaders and Western governments for ‘colonisation’ and for their prosecution of the war against Hamas.

Read it all – and the selection of photographs is excellent. These are a few

More than 1,000 officers lined the route. But what was the route? No one seemed to have a clue. As comedian David Baddiel remarked later: ‘No one had any idea. It was indicative, as ever, of how Jews really don’t run the world.’

The fact that the public did not know was telling in itself. The police and organisers had kept it under wraps for fear of counter-protests – or worse, perhaps.

So, the throng set off down towards the Thames and then along the Embankment, up to Trafalgar Square.  Most assumed it would end there but it took a sharp left down Whitehall for Parliament Square. There, a truck with a sound system served as a stage for a succession of speakers.

Both the Government and Opposition had dispatched official representatives (Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, and Labour’s science spokesman Peter Kyle).

The chief organiser, Gideon Falter of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, assured those who ‘feared they had lost sight of the Britain they knew’ that the day represented ‘the real Britain’.

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis specifically lamented the suffering of Palestinians as well as Israelis, before warning that ‘a threat to the Jews is a threat to our entire society’.

Dignified and uplifting it might have been but no one wanted to call this a success. Close to tears, the broadcaster Vanessa Feltz summed it up to me: ‘I am sadder than I have ever been that we have had to be here at all.’