"The global protest against the Iraq War on 15 February 2003 was a pivotal moment in recent history"

That's true. It was certainly the day when many people realised pretty starkly that such monumental protests don't change anything and governments don't listen to mass protest marches. So the demo itself was not monumental but the slow move (again) towards direct actions and horizontal organising and the future Climate Camps, G20 and other protests was definitely a much needed breath of fresh air after the failure of a million people to Stop the War. Also the Gaza demos which heralded finally some actual antagonism and ruckus on the streets of London. Lastly the student demos of 2010 and so on. Not that those examples amounted to much and were not fraught with contradictions and problems but at least they open a half-decent space for people to find their own voice in an attempt to find many collective voices. Within this ongoing trajectory we can consider Occupy as a continuation of the attempt to find a different way to do things as flawed and difficult as it was.

I also seem to remember a book of the F15 demo being rushed out by some group or another which was remaindered pretty soon after as no-one bought a copy! Why would they buy a colourful picture book of a massive failure?

The failure of the anti war movement surounds the single issue of the legal right to initiate force, which is what sets a nation state apart from private business. The vast majority of those who opposed the war support the right of the state to initiate force in principal and oppose the right of individuals to physically resist the initiation of force by the state.

These peoples wages are paid out of force taxation rather than free and voluntary interaction between individuals. These people are public sector workers whose livelihood depends not on free market social demand, but political will to force other people to others to pay them. In effect they accept gifts from the mafia. While they do not like what the mafia is doing, they attack anyone who threatens their bread and butter.

That is why the socialists will always oppose rebellion and usher us back into line.

No civil disobedience? None at all?! In 2002 in the build up to the war on Iraq, Tony Benn made a speech in Trafalgar Square where he said that if bombs dropped on Iraq, we should try and bring the country to a standstill. StWC took this up and did encourage people to walk out of work and school students to walk out of school on the day that the bombs dropped out. The school students movement was particularly impressive with hundreds of walk outs against the war, one of the largest and widest youth protests till the student protests of 2010.

StWC groups up and down the land were involved in road blockades too, I recall in 2003 in the middle of the invasion our StWC blockading petrol stations under the slogan, No War for Oil and blockading the city centre.

It would be fair to say that StWC up until the 2009 war on Gaza perhaps overly fetishised A-B marches, and was perhaps sometimes conservative in tactics no doubt partly due to wanting to hold together a very broad and diverse mass movement, in the period of 2003 many anarchists felt that demonstrations at RAF bases should be targetted & for more direct action, StWC leadership were less keen at the time.

StWC should be commended on taking a clear stance against islamophobia and drawing many muslims into the movement taking on sections of the left who wanted to throw up obstacles to working with muslim communities. StWC also had a clear understanding of imperialism and over 2001 built up links with the Egyptian working class movement.

The failure of mass demonstrations to stop the war meant by 2009, masses of people were far more unruly in protesting the war on Gaza, in many ways, StWC (and other elements of the anti-war movement) by 2009 were setting the tone for a more militant movement to follow against austerity. The national demo called by StWC included a mini-riot/stand-off with the cops at the Israeli embassy, tear gassing and kettling of a section of the demo, dawn raids and clampdown on hundreds of young muslim protestors in the aftermath. Many StWC groups stormed local BBC studios to protest refusal to screen DEC Gaza humanitarian aid appeal & it was StWC activists at places like SOAS who kicked started the wave of Student occupations that was to set in place many of the networks who organised the tuition fees protests of the following year.

Back to 2003, 3 key things that could have made a big difference in stopping the war were
1) Parliamentary rebellion with large numbers of MPs voting against it. Didn't happen, today while the majority of the public want out of Afghanistan, only a handful of MPs have opposed the war.
2) Mutiny in the armed forces - Didn't happen, but there was an unprecedented level of unease in the armed forces., high levels of AWOL, leading to the Armed Forces Bill in 2006 to crack down on soldiers refusing to fight in occupations. StWC played a key role role in encouraging the formation of Military Families against the War
3) General Strike/Strike action - A traditional criticism of the Socialist Party of StWC is that it should have called a general strike, funny 'cos with a huge economic crisis, attacks on pensions and cuts, their members on union execs called off strike action over pensions because of inability to get co-ordinated action with other unions.
StWC did encourage the formation of anti-war groups based in workplaces, there were workplace 'walk outs' on the day of the invasion, was an instance on the eve of war of fifteen Aslef train drivers in Motherwell, Scotland, who refused to move arms and ammunition, scuppering plans to move arms by rail to send them to the Gulf. The drivers refused to move ammunition between Glasgow and the Glen Douglas weapons dump, but StWC wasn't able to surmout the weakness of the organised working class movement

If those one million or so people had rioted-totally fucked up London-there is no way the terrorist government woud have sent troops to Iraq. Therefore those who did not riot are responsible for a murderous invasion. All I remember from that boring march was the asshole stewards holding hands with the cops to prevent any proper action. STWC was invented to make you think you were doing your thing against the war when really you were doing jack shit.