In the 1930s, Trotsky criticised the "peace" policy then being followed by the communists, pointing out that it was meaningless to talk about peace when the next few decades were clearly going to be primarily of wars and revolutions. He was right. The centre of the Labour party is the main force behind the sudden call for peace, a call which was entirely absent in 1999. How come they have suddenly rediscovered such 'principles' as they have ?
The call for peace is a class manouevre by the junior Blairites, akin to its Stalinist forbears. The aging Blair is perhaps beginning to outstay his usefulness to this new generation (being largely those who put him into power, the students, young managers, those from traditional Labour households and first-time voters ). One thing absent from the lage demonstration was any notion of SOCIAL revolution: all we had was flat policy positioning, and there was nowhere to be found any fundamental critique of the entire social edifice built by Labour in recent years ( ie class liquidation, with Labour being the self-styled "political arm of the British people as a whole", as Mr Sixsmith pointed out a few days ago). A sense of egalitarianism, so essential for a mass movement, was not there.
In short, we had no gathering for socialism (in the widest sense of the word) just the new wave of Blairites preparing to take over from the older variety. I dont see a new movement in the style of Vietnam or Paris in 1968; I see a new class emerging and consolidating itself. Call it a Bureaucracy, or Meritocracy, or Mangageriarchy, or Organizatiarchy, or Corporate State. Pick any of these terms, for I cannot claim to be infallible on these matters. All I reluctantly prophesy is that this movement will not stop the war OR bring about general social liberation. It has no intention of it.