The protestors held placards saying ‘No Justice – No Peace: US and UK Out of the Middle East’ and charging Bush and Blair with War Crimes, but most eloquent were the thousands of photographs they carried of Iraqi children who had become victims of the ‘Allies’ cluster bombs, tanks and snipers. From school students to striking fire-fighters, Muslim organisations to anarchist groups, the demonstrators showed their contempt for the lies of the Blair government and the media, chanting ‘You call it liberation – we know it’s occupation!’ and ‘Exxon, Esso, BP, Shell, take your war and go to hell’.
While some of the avowedly ‘apolitical’ demonstrators who had swelled the ranks of the pre-war marches had inevitably fallen away disillusioned with the government’s brazen indifference to public opinion, the anti-war movement itself had belied the predictions of the media and consolidated itself in the intervening weeks, emerging as a powerful, left-led political force which is unlikely to be washed away by the current tide of colonial-style triumphalism, and will be able to adapt and continue to grow as the situation in Iraq moves from open war to imperialist occupation, balkanisation, and new bases for domination of the entire Middle East – and America’s lethal drive for global hegemony enters its next phase.
The emergence of this movement will clearly have a lasting effect within Britain itself. While the ‘conclusion’ of the war in Iraq has saved Blair’s skin for the moment, in the long term it is unlikely that he can politically survive the massive erosion in grassroots support within the Labour Party which his imperialist adventures with Bush have brought about, and with the pretext of Saddam’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ now thoroughly exposed as an opportunistic lie, even the less than principled MPs of New Labour are demanding answers. However, more significant in the long term than Blair’s political future is the revitalisation of the left which the anti-war movement has brought about. Even more than the earlier anti-globalisation initiatives, post-September 11 developments have finally forced the issues of imperialism and racism to the top of the agenda for the mainstream left, and considerably strengthened it as a result.
Particularly significant has been the radicalisation of large sections of school students, many as young as 15 or 16, who organised mass walkouts from their classes, and on the day the war on Iraq officially began, converged in their thousands on Parliament Square for a sit down protest which stopped traffic for most of the day, braving police harassment and brutality. These students, among whom girls are at the forefront, have continued to organise despite threats that they would be expelled from school on the eve of national examinations, with the schools being urged by the government to treat participation in anti-war protests as truancy! Schools, in which political discussion has traditionally been taboo in Britain, are becoming increasingly politicised arenas.
And of course, even as Blair, Home Secretary David Blunkett and their captive media continue to project explicitly racist views of ‘Muslim’ youth as alienated from ‘democratic’ political processes and potentially violent, large numbers of young people from Muslim backgrounds – mainly of South Asian origin – are participating in the anti-war movement. Barriers between communities are actually being broken down by a common opposition to Blair and Bush’s war.