"No Devastation without the United Nations" was how I titled it; there is nothing more disingenuous about calling for peace under the guise of expecting someone else to carry out the war. I quoted Trotsky, who exposed a similar ploy of the Stalinists in the 1930s when they were calling for peace knowing the next few years would ineveitably erupt into wars and revolutions. I suggested that any anti-war movement trying to base itself on a mass gathering of junior IT managers was doomed to fail, precisely becuase it didnt really WANT to stop the war at all, that in fact, far from being anti-Blairite, it was a new generation of neo- or post-Blairites preparing to take over from the aging Tony, and using a "peace" slogan as a piece of class-positioning. I pointed out that nowhere (with the exception of the marginalised anarchists) was there to be seen on that march any sustained, fundamental critique of the social liquidation policy being conducted by labour, the society even the Quango leaders talk of in loving terms as "Synthetic". (Yes, one said exactly that). "The Labour party aims to be the political arm of the British people as a whole" was how one document stated it long ago, and I also noted that it was picked up by Martin Sixsmiths recent documentary for the sinister piece of Stalinist rhetoric it really was. Unfortunately, most of the poeple on the march have acepted the parameters constructed by Blair. Any notion of complete social revolution has been forgotten, lost in the mists of tear-gas since 1968. "Our world is not for sale?" Mine was sold off a long time ago and you werent bothered, so i dont feel motivated to care much about yours! "Not In my name?" O, poor you. So if Blair and Bush do the bombing in the name of the UN, thats all right then, is it ? Even though you probably know nothing about the UN and how it really works. Just as at the TUC conference recently, when Blair spoke at the Labour party feast of filth yesterday, not one person dared to challenge his strident, self indulgent, rhetoric (which is all it was). You case was dismissed. He's won. Whatever you were hoping, its too late. This is the New Clear Dawn, moving quickly from the old social-democratic "stop-go" into something much more sinister. A new oligarchy, using a similar technique to that of the "Victorian" age, ruling through social measures rather than any overt politicization.
Unless notions of natural egalitarianism are prevalent among the movement, it cannot succeed. When marchers are more concerned with what they feel to be their own petty position within society to be more important than building a genuine movement against the whole neo-capitalist
edifice, I regard their motives with extreme suspicion. Moreover, many of them were quite happy to support NATO a few years ago, so Presumably there are good wars and bad wars ? In fact, no, all wars are awful events. I break with this movement now. If I am to place my personal poisition at risk for political principle, I want to have some confidence in the people with whom I march. I have none whatsoever.