Tariq Ali: The New Anti-War Movement

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>CounterPunch
>September 30, 2002
>
>Taking It To London's Streets
>The New Anti-War Movement
>by TARIQ ALI
>
>London: Saturday 28th September. It was a beautiful clear blue sky. No
>mists but a great deal of mellow fruitfulness. The Stop the War
>Coalition--a united front that includes socialists of most stripes,
>liberals and radicals, pacifists and the moderate Muslim groups--had
>expected 200,000 people, but the mood in Britain was uneasy and large
>numbers of people, many of them conservative or even apolitical, had
>decided to swell the march.
>
>The week before the march, New Labour issued the so-called Blair dossier, a
>farrago of half-truths and stale facts was a very crude attempt at war
>propaganda. It backfired miserably. Blair was at his worst. The grinning
>disk-jockey in clerical mode. Everything reduced to a pseudo-morality tale.
>
>War-talk and piety is such an ugly combination. It may have convinced his
>ghastly cabinet, a bunch of mediocrities, most of whom would find it
>difficult to gain employment elsewhere.
>
>Blair prefers it like this: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed beggar
>is king.
>
>The DAILY MIRROR, a leading London tabloid devoted 8 pages to denouncing
>the dossier and Blair. This newspaper has turned decisively after 9/11, in
>sharp contrast to its rivals and 'betters'.
>
>The only pro-war piece in the paper, hallucinatory on every level and
>published to give the White House a voice, appeared under the byline of the
>former NATION columnist, Christopher Hitchens. The man with the
>Orwell-complex has fallen really low. He will fall further.
>
>No war in Iraq; Justice for Palestine were the themes that united everyone
>present on Saturday 28th September. Murdoch's Sky TV reported 400,000 .
>Irish radio insisted there were half-a-million. Channel Five News said
>'over a quarter of a million'. Only BBC TV reported the 'police figure' of
>150,000.
>
>Let's be modest. Let's accept that there were over 350,000 people who came
>from all parts of the country to show their contempt for Tony Blair and his
>backing for Bush's planned war against Iraq.
>
>I met people, old and young, who had never been on a demonstration before.
>Rites of passage. And the mood was one of defiance and anger.
>
>The new wave of trade-union leaders who have been elected to defy the New
>Labour Thatcherites were solidly against the war. Bob Crow, the
>40-something leader of the railway workers denounced Blair in vitriolic
>language. So did Mark Serotka from the Civil Servants Union and others.
>
>Then there was Tony Benn and George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn (the last
>two still Members of Parliament) [who] spoke for the Labour Party 
>members opposed
>to Blair.
>
>It was the Jewish sabbath. So the contingent of Hassidic Jews could not
>speak, but their moving plea for Palestinian rights was read by a young
>Muslim from Leicester.
>
>The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was also there strongly denouncing
>the Prime Minister. Many Londoners heaved a sigh of relief when Blair
>refused to let Livingstone back in the Labour Party. No longer needing to
>suck up to the New Labour leadership, Livingstone shifted his position once
>again. Sometimes opportunism can lead in the left direction.
>
>Nobody on the demonstration was taken in by the talk of a UN-led war being
>somehow more acceptable than a Bush-Blair attack. The British peace
>movement, for one, will not be taken in if the permanent members of the
>UNSC allow their arms to be twisted and their purses filled by the Bushmen.
>
>Here the movement will continue. And when the bombs begin to drop there
>will be acts of non-violent civil disobedience all over the country.
>
>We need the same in the United States.
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