On 24 Feb 07, scores of thousands of people demonstrated against the war drive of British and American imperialism, calling for no replacement of Britain’s nuclear weapons systems (amongst other demands). There were no counter demonstrations in favour of updating the four-strong Trident submarine fleet and its obscene payload of mass slaughter missiles.

Eighteen days later, the House of Commons voted on replacing the UK’s weapons of mass destruction. Despite the biggest backbench revolt by “New” Labour MPs since the Iraq War vote, the UK imperial ruling class got the result they were after, courtesy of the warmonger Bliar and supporting Tory detritus: around UKP100 billion will be spent maintaining the biosphere-jeopardising terror weapons till 2050 (at least). And a few thousand people protesting on the day of the vote itself was never likely to change the course of history: in the dog-eat-dog pit of global imperialism, the military intimidation of rival powers still holds sway, and nothing intimidates more than sub-launched multi-warhead ballistic nukes.

But since some protest is (arguably) better than none, here’s some pix taken with my new camera, on which I obviously need to practice to improve my night-photo ability. I began with the mass cycle ride from the London Critical Mass [1] regular starting point under Waterloo Bridge, and ended in Parliament Square, tightly hemmed in by some jumpy cops.

What's Next?
On Sat 17 Mar 07 you can join in a discussion around “Only class struggle can stop the drive to war” - 14:00-17:30 at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R – a Public Forum created by the International Communist Current [2]

On Tue 20 Mar 07, why not join in Pre-emptive Peace Strike #1 - “Don’t Attack Iran” [3], on the anniversary of the attack on Iraq? Be in Parliament Square, Westminster, London from 10:00 for some anti-war peaceful direct action.

For a fresh and refreshing look at why targeting protests at Parliament is barking up entirely the wrong political tree, I recommend “The parliamentary sham” portal at the ICC’s website:  http://en.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/20

In International Solidarity,

Tim D Jones

[1] London Critical Mass:  http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/ - next mass ride, Fri 30 Mar 07 (see website for details and why you should join in)
[2] International Communist Current Public Forum:  http://en.internationalism.org/node/2047
[3] Pre-emptive Peace Strike #1 - “Don’t Attack Iran”:  http://www.peacestrike.org.uk/index.htm
[4] We Are Everywhere by David Rovics:  http://members.aol.com/drovics/everyl.htm

All these photos are 'CopyLeft'.
This means you are free to copy and distribute any of my photos you find here, under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 -  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Attribution: tim_d_jones[at]yahoo.co.uk

NB: for Indymedia upload purposes, the photos shown here are lower resolution copies (max 640 pixels, JPEG 50) of higher resolution originals (up to 3072x2304 pixels, JPEG 85); to request full resolution originals, please email tim_d_jones[at]yahoo.co.uk quoting caption name(s).