Last evening's demonstrations got harrassed by the police becauseof the simple reason that there were far too few of us. For a city the size of London seven million we shopuld have been able to organise a mass demonstration of tens of thousands to totally pack out Parliament Square. The reason we didn't was the fault of focusing most of the energy into building local actions many of these local actions were only a few miles from Parliament Square like the one inBrixton thus reducing the numbers. The SWP dominated Stop The War coalition focused most of itsenergy into building student occupations of university buildings as if that would do any good!

The left in this country are pathetic they don't know how to organise proper direct action, they failed to stop the Vietnam War, The Falklands War, The Gulf War, the war on Serbia and the war last year on Afghanistan. We need much more militant actions to stop this coming war with Iraq!

what's needed is a million PEACEFUL people to march on london, militancy will only serve to split the current unity of the protest movement and put a great number of people off attending marches & other actions.

Don't forget - the cause is peace!

The "cause" isn't "peace" if peace means letting 34,000 under-5s starve everyday, and we quietly waste our lives in pointless unfulfilling jobs watching those we love being crushed by depression, alcolholism, anxiety...

The fight against this war is a small part of the fight against all forms of oppression and domination - the war to end all wars. For good.

A million people marching peacefully will achieve fuck all. The Govt happily ignored 400,000 - why would they pay attention to a million? We've gotta make ourselves heard. We can't expect our leaders to stop the war for us -we've gotta do it *ourselves* by putting our bodies on the line and blocking roads, military bases, trashing army recruitment centres and sabotaging equipment.

Only direct action can stop this war!

And on the demo FIT (Forward Intelligence Team) officers were recorded saying "pick out the leaders and get them nicked". Not that we have leaders of course. For more info on FIT and the Met check out

Demonstrations won't stop the war as politicians tend to do as they please and when a war is over, not matter how unpopular, issues quickly get forgotten. Demonstrations appeal to a government that doesn't care. The only thing that will stop war is military defeat, which entails the slaughter of thousands of "Our Boys" - young lads from the north who have joined the forces for better job prospects and to gain a sense of pride and belonging. I met one of "Our Boys" who fought in the Battle of the Somme. He's been bitter all his life that so many young lads were slaughtered because of decisions made by politicians. "I wish the politicians had just been put in a room and forced to fight their own battles", he told me. Whatever anyone may say, while there is a capitalist system that relies on violence to maintain profits, there will always be war. The Iraq war will happen and hundreds of thousands will die and there's nothing we can do but use demonstrations to clear our consciences.

I went to the 400,000 anti war demo a few weeks ago and after strolled back down Oxford St. where there were millions dociley getting on with their consumption and subservience-what we really need to do is stop this- a convergance type demo-on a saturday so everyone can attend-when they have to start boarding up their tills we'll get some rethinking.

La Lota Continua

Large demonstrations will not stop the war ... at least not alone. But a demonstration serves as a focus for a large movement. It can give something to work for and a large demonstration will inspire the movement. Not to mention that a large demonstration nessesarily involves a large number of people actively taking political action.

The large demonstrations and ressistance against the war has had an effect. The US is trying hard to get the approval of UN to wage war. If the ressistance against the war hadn't been that large and active, they wouldn't need to get aproval from UN.

If the war is to be stopped, though, there is need for a collective strikeaction against the war - a general strike.