EVEN the lock keepers were on strike.

Boaters were left to navigate their own way along the Thames, as a small group of GMB members who man the locks joined the 6,000 strong protest yesterday.

They were symbolic of many other professions hardly associated with radicalism who were there too: radiographers, physiotherapists, podiatrists, weather forecasters and scientists from the Diamond Light Source in Harwell.

That was what made yesterday’s march different from the anti-cuts protests that have been held in the city since 2008.

There were many familiar faces among the hardcore of activists who man demonstrations on an almost weekly basis.

However, alongside them – or at least several metres behind the vuvuzelas and loudspeakers – were women in better-cut jeans and designer winter coats.

Ambling along, unsure whether or not to hold a placard, many were on strike for the first time and had never been on a union rally before.

Yet it is their quiet fury at the changes to their pensions that could prove more damaging to the Government’s battle for hearts and minds than the activists with the loudest voices.

Oxford Health manager Anne Dolan said: “This is the first time I have been out, and I just think the changes to our pensions are unacceptable. The Government is misleading the public in the way they make out were are all getting ‘gold plated’ pensions, when the average is £6,000 a year for most workers.”

Ms Dolan added: “I’m not a radical.

“I manage a team that does everything we can to make sure that essential care has been provided, but in the long term this is going to mean staff leaving the NHS.

“I know a lot of people here who I would never have thought would be on strike, yet they have come out.

“I have not heard one negative comment today and on the picket line this morning members of the public were bringing us teas and coffees.”

And Cherwell School teacher Michelle Codrington, 33, was also on strike for the first time.

“It has made me really angry,” the NASUWT member said.

“I have got a three-year-old, and I do not want her to have to look after me in my old age because I have not got a decent pension.”

The size of the demonstration surprised even the organisers.

Health workers marching from Headington, teachers from Marston Road, and local government employees from Manzil Way met an already large reception party at The Plain and set off across Magdalen Bridge.

Marchers stretched along the length of The High, from LongWall Street to Carfax Tower, before bringing Cornmarket Street and then Broad Street to a standstill.

Sixty-two-year-old Pete Fryer, a county council Unison officer who has been on demonstrations since he was 10, said he had never seen anything like it.

Whether we see the like again seems increasingly likely.