The House of Commons debated British participation in the American attack on Iraq. Blair carries majority with help of Conservatives, but is confronted with the largest parliamentary rebellion in the history of Britain: about 140 Labour rebels in an antiwar vote of 217

That Labour managed to contain the rebellion depended entirely on the government asserting that this was a de facto 'vote of confidence' in Tony Blair, a life and debt matter for the party. There were threats and promises which may well unravel.

Britain will go to war, but Blair has received a body blow: the weight of dissent within his own party means that if anything goes wrong, as it surely will, either in terms of the numbers of Iraqi victims of the bombing, or a betrayal of the terms given to the Commons anything can happen.

What matters now is to bring our opposition to war into the streets. There can be no more business as usual while this illegal and unnecessary war is being prosecuted. We all have to decide what kind of stand it is appropriate for us to take. But stand we must.

This war is, as we have been told by the Americans themselves, only the beginning of a cycle of wars. These wars will be accompanied by an increasing scale of political repression at home. The definition of "terrorism" in the laws passed around the world in late 2001 is so extensible, that it can be used by scrupulous and unscrupulous governments in an infinite number of ways.

The Iraq War will happen, and the Anglo-American armies will conquer Iraq, at least for a season. But the struggle against this war is only one battle in our fight across the generations for a world of peace and justice. We won against slavery in the nineteenth century, we won against colonialism in the twentieth, we won universal suffrage, we won on civil rights, we won on Vietnam, we won on apartheid, and we will win. We are right, and we have the world and time on our side.