Not Just Another March
stopwar | 14.03.2006 16:14
Demonstrate March 18
Troops Home From Iraq,
Don't Attack Iran,
Defend the Muslim Community
Assemble Parliament London
12 noon
Troops Home From Iraq,
Don't Attack Iran,
Defend the Muslim Community
Assemble Parliament London
12 noon
We cannot give back Iraqi lives extinguished or ruined by those acting in our name. At the very least, we must demand that those responsible for this epic crime get out of Iraq now and that we have an opportunity to prosecute and judge them, and to make amends to the Iraqi people. Anything less disqualifies "us" as civilised.
John Pilger
- 200 Demos across the world
The London demonstration is one of many taking place across the world. There will be protests in more than 200 cities and towns on every continent, including Baghdad and Basra. Three years after the start of the war, more than 100,000 deaths later, with trillions of dollars spent on the biggest armed robbery of a country since Hitler's Blitzkrieg and more war ratcheted into view, we must once again show that world public opinion is the 'second superpower.' (New York Times)
- a different demo
This demonstration will be quite different to the usual marches to or from Hyde Park. Parliament Square will be full of trestle tables where demonstrators can add their names to Tony Benn's letter to the UN and Attorney General calling for the war mongers to be brought to account. For those with mobile phones there will be the opportunity to text your name to an electronic counter set up at the Rally. There will be street theatre, cartoonists and music.
- a different route
The march will set off along Victoria Street, passing the Attorney General's office on its way to Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. The list of speakers will include some as yet to be announced surprises.
Tony Blair may have a President and his God on his side. We have the solidarity of each other and outrage and justice on ours.
John Pilger
- 200 Demos across the world
The London demonstration is one of many taking place across the world. There will be protests in more than 200 cities and towns on every continent, including Baghdad and Basra. Three years after the start of the war, more than 100,000 deaths later, with trillions of dollars spent on the biggest armed robbery of a country since Hitler's Blitzkrieg and more war ratcheted into view, we must once again show that world public opinion is the 'second superpower.' (New York Times)
- a different demo
This demonstration will be quite different to the usual marches to or from Hyde Park. Parliament Square will be full of trestle tables where demonstrators can add their names to Tony Benn's letter to the UN and Attorney General calling for the war mongers to be brought to account. For those with mobile phones there will be the opportunity to text your name to an electronic counter set up at the Rally. There will be street theatre, cartoonists and music.
- a different route
The march will set off along Victoria Street, passing the Attorney General's office on its way to Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. The list of speakers will include some as yet to be announced surprises.
Tony Blair may have a President and his God on his side. We have the solidarity of each other and outrage and justice on ours.
stopwar
Homepage:
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
Comments
Hide the following 19 comments
Yes, a petition too!!
14.03.2006 17:24
THERE WILL BE A PETITION TOO!
This march won't be like the huge march of Feb 18th, there won't be over a million people, in fact there is unlikely to even be 100,000
But there will be lots of opportunities to feel good. There will be lots of bits of paper to put your name on and newspapers to buy and politicians to listen too and pledge support to.
Anyone who thinks that the Stop The War has become merely a front for recruiting for the SWP will be proven wrong because Respect will be there too and some other wacky little communist type partie with ancient banners and quickly forgettable names.
And anyone who think that STWC mishandled the energy of the anti-war movement on the run up to the invasion of Iraq by stifling attempts to mobilise effective civil disobedience will have to eat there words when they see the big display in the part counting the amount of money the peace campaign it giving to mobile phone companies by taking part in the electronic counting gimmick. That will demonstrate just how strong and passionate the antiwar movement embodied by the STWP really is!!!
SO THERE!
foot soldier
sigh.
14.03.2006 20:03
Steffan
e-mail:
baboonpower@hotmail.com
Petty sectarianism?? LOL
14.03.2006 20:56
Perhaps for some, simply the idea of working in a coalition that include the SWP is reason enough to slag off the STWC and that would in deed be sectarian and petty.
However, it is more likely that the reasons people have for distrusting the STC and not wanting to waste their time trying to be involved in them might have something to do with the the history of discouraging and sabotaging attempts to organise mass civil disobedience and direct action at a point in time when it might have made the difference between the UK joining the US in invading Iraq or not.
That isn't a petty reason at all.
Like the USA's 'coalition of the willing' the coalition part of the STWC is pretty much a joke these days. The vast majority of local peace groups that were around before the invasion no longer exist. The ability for people to get involved in the STWC is very limited unless you are approaching from the party ranks and towing the party line ('direct action is elitist!').
What sense does it make to become in involved in this discredited group that squandered the massive energy of the antiwar movement and now insists on doing nothing but repetitive A to B marches in full cooperation with the state?
amazed
SWP - Monopolise Resistance
14.03.2006 21:43
Someone
Homepage:
http://www.schnews.org.uk/monopresist/monopoliseresistance
OVERTHROW THE CRIMINAL REGIME
14.03.2006 22:09
by Jordan Thornton
How About A Protest YEAR?
ALL POLITICIANS DISCREDITED
14.03.2006 23:09
Or you could also try to preserve Life on Earth by collapsing the Global Economy. It might be just not too late to do that. But it nearly is. Will certainly be too late so soon.
DC
not sectarian, critical
15.03.2006 00:35
Writing about the mass civil DISobedience that brought down the Poll Tax (17.5 million people at its peak), Danny Burns said "the labour party leadership feared to cross the line of 'legitimate' protest because they hoped to be in government in the future, and they expected their own laws to be obeyed" (2). The same is true of any political party - no matter how 'revolutionary'. A revolutionary State is a contradiction in terms, and all political parties seek State power.
However, stopping wars neccessarily requires the subversion, and ultimately the destruction of State power. Its up to us to build autonomous networks of resistance against the wars. We know StWC will try and sabotage this, thats why they are allowed to exist, while the cops/arms dealers try (and fail!) to ban disobedient stuff like Smash EDO (3), who seem to show one of many possible ways forward.
(1) Quoted in Gary Mason, The Official History of the Metropolitan Police, Carlton, 2004, p.56.
(2) Danny Burns, Poll Tax Rebellion, AK Press, 1992, p.25.
(3) www.smashedo.org.uk
(A)
Marching on and on
15.03.2006 07:10
Marching in national demos against war is STILL IMPORTANT, but after Feb 15th no one really believes it will change the mind of the warmongers, evil doers and bad men in governemnt. But it's still imprtant to send a message, both to the government and the people of the uk / world. Even my dad believes the war was wrong now - at the time he approved of it and had a go at me for 'not supporting our troops' - now he believes the best way to support brit troops is to bring them home. I'd like to say 'told you so', in fact I have, he agrees.
I'll probably go on the march, I might not, I still strongly disapprove of the war against iraq.
I went on the last few marches more out of a sense of duty than belief it would change anything.
Still, same could be said for a lot of direct actions stunts innit :)
As to 'this march is different' - well that's just laughable, I could almost believe it was posted by someone just to elicit anti-march postings!
Mike
Allied troops in Iraq are keeping the peace, they can't be withdrawn too soon.
15.03.2006 10:00
Moderate
Why not do your own thing then?
15.03.2006 16:24
Occasionally getting together with 11 mates and chucking eggs at some cops, then spending the next six months slagging those holding regular meetings and protests for being 'soft sell-outs' looks pretty lame frankly.
So yeah, I'll be on the march for sure:
Mr Spoon
interesting....
15.03.2006 16:26
Steffan
e-mail:
baboonpower@hotmail.com
Usual SWP contempt for direct action...
15.03.2006 17:45
It's tragic, the British left. In the run up to the war people were carrying out direct action against military bases in Britain involved with the war. Planes took off from those bases to murder Iraqi families. Police broke the law to prevent protest at these bases. Brave people got attacked and arrested and iof more had we could have effectively intervened to slow down the murder machine.
How did the Stop the War Coalition react to this? It refused to discuss supporting direct action against the war effort at its steering committee, repeatedly. SWP people in local groups used their usual undemocratic methods to keep direct action off the agenda and ensure their routinism won out, with occasional 'actions' that were no such thing and stopped as soon as the direct action movement was beaten by the police/swp. Lindsay German, the STWC's convener, and her SWP mates wrote numerous articles condemning direct action as 'elitist'. When the frankly disorganised forces that wanted to go beyond the meeting-march-sell paper ritual of the left were beaten you could almost smell the relief from the SWP and their sidekicks as the pressure came off and it was back to business as usual with marches getting police permission again, nvda being stopped and the SWP rewriting history, claiming to be the wave they rode.
When it matters, from the poll tax to the war, the SWP and their like CONTROL dissent, they don't lead it. End of.
Boris
International demo
16.03.2006 13:02
These same people who criticise the STWC are the same people who hate the SWP (sometimes I think they hate the SWP more than BUSH and Blair). What exactually did the direct action people want to do? It would be futile to attempt to stop the war machine in action by going to military bases and vandalising warplanes. Have you ever heard of the state?, think of 1984 when thousands of miners attempted to do direct action, the state came down on them like a tone of bricks.The answer lies in numbers not just a few brave individuals carrying out action on behalf of the rest.
There has never been any movement that has managed to stop a war immediately, it will take time. STWC has managed to mobilsie military families against the war, even an SAS has refused to fight, this is the new development and a big turn out on the demo will encourage the anti war forces further.
red letter
Blinkered red leter
16.03.2006 14:33
"We call upon all to mobilize on March 18, 2006 for a day of global protest against the occupation of Iraq, as part of the global campaign that will continue until the foreign troops in Iraq are withdrawn."
As you can see, the call from the WSF was for a day of global PROTEST against the occupation of Iraq, and while this could be mean demonstrations, there are of course many other types of protests that could result from such a call. The STWC only knows how to organizing rallies and demonstrations and just like Red Letter, it is incapable of thinking beyond that and indeed, in the past has actively undermined other initiatives.
typical
so do your own thing!
16.03.2006 17:45
Meanwhile the rest of us can join the international protest:
Mr Spoon
Pick fresh ground for short attacks
16.03.2006 17:49
Do not fight om ground prepared by the enemy as the Miners did. Study Chu Teh's methods. But now you have to collapse the Capitalist economy to stop the wars they rely on to keep it going.
Study the implementation of the anti-Japanese boycott they had in China in the 1930s.
DC
What would you do?
16.03.2006 18:13
Any offers?
No War
Some people have the RIGHT answer?
16.03.2006 18:29
May 15. Premier Tsuyoshi Inukai of Japan assassinated. (By members of the Young Officers of the Army and the Navy and the Farmers' Death-Band "who are opposed to weakness and corruption in government and to capitalism." Ibid., pp. 423-427; State Release 1932, No. 138; p. 499.)
YKW
Red Letter,
16.03.2006 18:56
Nobody is claiming that a few people smashing a warplane stops the war, so thats a straw man. 10,000 people occupying RAF fairford would cause a few logistical problems though. Marches show the size of public anger, but theres no need to meekly seek police permission - even 300-person marches by Smash EDO in Brighton just declare their route in advance and go ahead, and the police are forced to 'escort' - the cops aren't stupid enough to wade in then and they definately wouldn't be with 100,000+ in central london, so an unauthorised demo won't be offputting to 'fluffies', people with kids etc, plus it would appeal more to all the people I meet (non-activists) who are against the war but don't see the point in polite, consensual, obedient A-B marches.
'Numbers' in themselves are just that. Up 'til feb 15th 2003 many people, myself included, thought if you get a critical mass our 'democratic' government would either listen or somehow spontaneously cave in. 2 million didn't do it, I spend 50 hours a week at work, I value my (relatively) free time, so do people I know who went on F15 (eg my family, workmates etc), I/they don't see the point in trundling along in the cold to hear George Galloway preach to the choir. Thats why numbers are steadily down since F15. How many numbers is enough? 3 million, 5 million, 60 million (general strike!)?
Of course we need a mass movement, but why a mass civil obedience movement? And it is a bit hypocritical to say the least for Leninists (workers' vanguard and all that) to call direct action elitist. Storming the winter palace anyone? Maybe the Bolsheviks should have repeatedly walked up and down outside in ever declining numbers until the Tsar realised he was obviously being unfair and undemocratic?
A question, how do we stop a war *solely* by means permitted by the State that is waging it?
(A)