hey wot ever your on try to cut down too much of anything is bad for you.... try something that brings you down nice and easy, like errrr camomille tea or something chill ...

go to straight to Cumdown Town do not pass go do not collect bag of speed.

Violent anarchists hold London to ransom. City of blood. Horror in Hyde Park. Fear of a city under seige. Should I carry on?

This isn't your protest any more, Mr mask-up. This is the protest of the actual majority of this country. Because of that it's a lot more frightening for Mr Blair and his cronies, whatever they say in public. Because they can't fall back on the old "They were mindless thugs" spin.

Idiots like you would be prepared to throw away this advantage for the sake of a few minutes of anger-venting. You would be prepared to allow your actions to be reflected as the intentions of many, if not most.

This is about peace. Geddit?

The US embassy was guarded by people wielding sub-machine guns. Only a fool like you could think that getting past them could be 'easy'.

Why on earth didn't we trash the US embassy? It would have been so cool to let the world know that, far from being US stooges, we are against the Bush gang just as much as any other country.

It would also have warmed the marchers up no end, physically and in spirit, and could easily have been one of those major historic turning points in US-UK relations.

I'm actually non-violent (believe it or not!), but I also believe in sticking up for yourself, in this case sticking up for the future of the planet!

Solidarity+best wishes,

baz

Harlequin (who we all know is a copper) is doing his usual agent provocateur thing. Its all about making political protest 'angry' so that we don't carry precious middle england with us. Well piss off you sad faliure of a human being.

"Harelquin" - this is not news. it's once again your view. we know your views by now so please stop posting to the newswire and keep it for those people who want to report their actions and campaigns, instead of your fantasy armchair comments.

thankyou.

This wasn't your day mate. It was a day for everybody. It was about numbers not actions. If you want action there's plenty of opportunities coming up with lots of protests and disobedience planned at military bases around the country. I suggest you go there.

A much better question would be why so few people attended the ARROW sit down blockade, I thought there would be at least 2000 people. The first timers I met there were inspired by it. Shame there were not more of us.

Could harlequin tell us what he did to build the fantatic demo on Saturday? Is he really part of the anti-war movement? How many coaches he help organise? Put up or shut up! You do not represent the vast majority, just a few fools. If you want to organise storming a viciously guarded embassy - go ahead and organise it you wanker.

What struck me as truly astounding was the docile masses filling slowly past the Houses of Parliament, without so much as throwing an egg or water balloon. We should have stormed this building, the seat of global misery, exploitation, war and injustice.

Instead, one million wimps are allowing this war to commence, physically unchallenged. So what if they bring out the tear-gas, water cannon and rubber bullets, or fire their submachine guns? This is WAR and WE are the TARGET!

In our name, they're gonna blitz the Middle East with real ammo anyway, WMD's!

FIGHT FOR WHAT'S RIGHT, or die trying.

No one is stopping you organising your own protest! All we ever hear from you boneheads is complaints that the organised protest wasn't effective/violent/exciting enough. You are all talk and no action.

So why not get off your arses and sort out your own event with your own priorities and aims instead of hijacking someone elses and then moaning about it when you are in the tiny minority and don't get what you want.

Either DO SOMETHING or SHUT UP!!

Don't worry about it folks.

The warmongers, right-wing press, agents provocateurs etc.
know they've lost the public argument and are obviously getting desperate with their rather lame attempts to scupper this expanding, and very influential peace movement.

Nothing can stop us now, hold tight people. :)

desperate? they should be.

the point now is that a) millions of people support the anti-war movement b) for each person on the marches around the world there will be several others who did not make it c) this gives a real legitimacy to those who would like to take direct action against the war...

...so see you at a military base in the coming weeks, or blocking your local high street, or...

Perhaps a 2,000 people sitting down and refusing to move would have been great (it was however very very cold) and perhaps 20,000 storming or at least surrounding the US embassy would have been historic - but clearly the time was not right - it did not happen.

So what now. We've shown the extent of public feeling against this 'war' and we perhaps we even have the makings of a mass movement (for a change) so do we ruin it by promoting elitist 'violent' hardcore action or do we find a war that EVERYONE can participate effectively against the war.

History shows that a successful social uprising must not only have the support of the majority but also have the participation of the majority.

There are two main targets for us to consider here that we can have an influence on. The labour government and the US economy.

Blair is out on a limb and we can knock him off. Take away the UK support for US military action and the US will become even more marginalised. Disgruntled Labour party members could organised public burning of their party membership cards or perhaps form an 'old' labour party [better still, just ditch party politricks completely and join the real revolution of DIY politics].

We all know the role of capitalism / the oil industry and therefore consumerism in this so-called 'war'. We can withdraw our financial support for the US corporation and in fact the entire US economy which is the driving force behind the US government and it's foreign policy.

We can organise and promote mass boycotts of the likes of Esso/Exxon and other major US companies such as McDonald's and CocaCola.

Another idea that would also nicely address our unsustainable use of the worlds resources is to declare now that on the onset of war, we will voluntarily put ourselves on rations. By cutting our consumption to the essentials we would send an extrememly powerful message to the UK and US governments. There is NO BOUBT that WE COULD DO THIS and that if we did do it on a large scale WE WOULD WIN!

"by not turning the anti-war march into the biggest riot this century"

- the peaceniks ensured that the millions who marched in london will energise millions more back in their home towns instead of having pointless arguements about violence vs non-violence

- they ensured that everyone felt included

- thay ensured that arrests were kept to less than ten

- they ensured that on the biggest global day of (anti-war) protest ever there were not hundreds injured or even killed

- they ensured that the press and gov scum cannot simply write the protests off as being full of extreme nutters who only want a riot regardless of cause

- they ensured that support will continue to grow

Also, it wasn't just london. The total figure was something like 10 Million around the world. So let me guess Harlequin, around 9,997,500 people let the iraqi people down by taking part in the largest co-ordinated global protest ever, while the odd few thousand who did fight the cops and petrol bomb buildings are the only true peace activists, right?

Get some fucking perspective man!

It is true that agent provocateurs try to goad the anti-war movement into over-the-top, adventurist actions that discredit the movement. However, it is also true throughout history that violence and repression have been the response of ruling elites to mass protest. The anti-wear movement should not assume that the warmongers will always tolerate peaceful mass protest. If the movement seriously threatens its war plans it WILL use violence to suppress it.

To cut a long story short, in Britain, the wealth extracted from the British Empire enabled the British ruling elite to cushion the British working class from the worst effects of poverty. There is poverty in Britain, of course, but not on the scale of, say, India or Africa where millions of people live in makeshift shanty town dwellings. Whenever things started to get out of hand, the British employers had the resources to throw money at the problem and thus avoid a revolutionary situation from developing.

This reserve of wealth enables the British state, even today, to build in checks and balances to the system. This means that it can nip threatening developments in the bud before they get anywhere near a revolution situation. For this reason, talk of revolution has always seemed slightly laughable and ridiculous in Britain. The far left has always been tiny and a bit of a joke. Even after the mighty Russian Revolution of 1917, the British Communist Party was tiny (never more than a few tens of thousands--not hundreds of thousands)) compared to CPs elsewhere. Today, the revolutionary left is only a few thousands weak.

In the last decade the British economy has one of the longest periods of growth in history. This has enabled the Blair government to buy off and pacify key layers of the working class. This period of growth is ending, however.

Does this mean that the British far left should give up and abandon its efforts to build a mass revolutionary movement? Absolutely not. But it does mean that British revolutionaries should acknowledge the size of the task before them and build this understanding into the tactics they use.

We should all understand that Ghandiism can mobilise a lot of people--look at the demonstartions we have just witnessed on the 15th February. But the original Ghandiism succeeded only in replacing one set of exploiters--the British--with another set--the venal, home-grown elites that currently preside over the most abject, grinding poverty, hundreds of millions of shanty-town hovels, and 60% illiteracy in India. Ghandianist pacifism has failed to bring about a lasting resolution of the basic needs of the Indian poor.

Real political developments in mass class consciousness have always come about in war situations. The 1905 Russian revolution developed in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war when a mass peaceful hunger protest was violently attacked by the Czarist state forces. A workers council (soviet) was set up in Petrograd later Leningrad) with Trotsky as its chairperson. The 1917 Russian revolution developed when the Russian army deserted en masse in revulsion at the slaughter of World War 1. Workers councils were agains set up in petrograd and ij other cities also.

Peaceful mass demonstrations that have been on the receiving end of repression provide the conditions for a development in mass conssciouness--an understanding that the violence of the ruling elites must be restrained and neutralised and that this requires the arming of the workers. A policeman's club is a far more effective instrument of political education than a thousand lectures.

The British anti-war movement does not understand any of this--yet. It will only learn this lesson by experiencing, at first hand, violent repression by the state. If the British ruling elite had been foolish enough to violently attack the demonstration on Saturday (as the police did in New York City) it would have opened the eyes of many peple to the existance of the fist that hides behind the kid glove. But the British establishment is possibly the oldest, wisest and most experinceed ruling class in the world and on this occasion at least it did not act foolishly.

It is not necessry to "manufacture" artificial violent confrontations with the British state. They will come of their own accord when the British state feels seriously threatened by the rising tide of the anti-war movement and the growing armed resistance in the Third world. A real revolutionary development will come in the aftermath of war--especially if Britain and the US get embroiled in a Middle Eastern war, or several such wars ("one, two three Vietnams"). If the British and US armies become over-extended and have to bring in conscription or if they start to lose the war as in the case of Vietnam, this will strengthen the role of the anti-war movement and create the conditions for an actual revolutionary situation. Either that or it will force a withdrawal and a defeat on the war-mongering nations.

an inspiring lecture from the rev left, yawn...

boredZ is absolutely that - a boring prat

harliquin has nothing to say either - no reply to my challenge

The pair of you should get a life, or piss off

Harlequin supported the Countryside Alliance March and slagged off the last anti-war demo in October for not being as big. Harlequin has also in the past posted links the the Socialist Party.

So here we have someone on one hand supports the Countryside Alliance, an organisation formed and bankrolled by the landed gentry to protect their old feudal pastime of chasing foxes, hares and deer with dogs and running over other people's land.

But then he says we should have had the biggest riot in History - i don't think Lord Rich Bastard from the Countryside Alliance would approve.

Just where is Harlequin coming from?

Don't you watch RIcki Lake?

Anyway, I took my kids, as did many people, violence simply wasn't an appropriate expression.