A report from London
MORE THAN 40,000 people took over the streets of central London on 13 October in the biggest ‘Stop the War’ protest here so far, ending in a huge rally overflowing Trafalgar Square. Originally called by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, with the participation of all the left parties, the demonstration brought together people from a range of different sections and perspectives, including students, trade unionists, the anti-globalisation movement, Asian and Middle Eastern communities, ongoing anti-imperialist and anti-zionist campaigns, and ad-hoc anti-war forums like Media Workers Against the War, in a passionate and angry expression of opposition to the war. The demonstrators chanted slogans like ‘Justice – No War!’, ‘War and Globalisation! Resist! Resist!’, ‘Bush, Blair, CIA, How many kids have you killed today?’, and invoked the Gulf War with ‘George Bush! We know you! Daddy was a killer too!’
The demonstration – the largest protest to have taken place in London in recent years – with its thousands of placards reading ‘Not in my Name’, was unquestionable evidence of a widespread dissent from Tony Blair’s policy of ‘shoulder to shoulder’ subordination to American foreign policy and his own role as George Bush’s self-appointed ambassador for an imperialist war. Several other major cities also saw large anti-war demonstrations: in Glasgow for example, 4,500 marchers staged a mass sit-down outside the British Army recruitment centre. Other recent anti-war events include a ‘teach-in’ organised by students and staff at SOAS (part of London University) aimed at informing students in all the London colleges about the issues of the war. Meanwhile another national demonstration is planned for 18 November.
The ‘lowest common denominator’ of the anti-war movement, opposition to the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, is far more widespread than the British government is prepared to acknowledge. In fact, beyond the movement itself, there are increasing levels of doubt and fear among the general public, with many people believing that Tony Blair’s initiatives are unnecessarily making Britain a target for terrorism, apprehensive about the possibility of mass conscription if the war continues, and horrified by the mounting evidence of carnage inflicted by the ‘Allies’. Meanwhile the movement itself is gradually taking on a more clearly anti-imperialist position as more people become aware of the need to analyse and expose the U.S. policies which have created and now continue to intensify the current crisis.
Media coverage of the protests confirmed the level of self-censorship currently operating in the British media. Some reports of the demonstration even felt it necessary to state that it represented the views of a ‘small minority’! Particularly insidious was the British and American television crews’ selective filming of the most obviously Muslim contingents within the demonstration, who were then portrayed as Taliban sympathisers. The reality is that the war has intensified the specifically anti-Muslim character which racism has acquired ever since, on a global level, the US identified Muslims as the new ‘enemy’ in the early 1990s. It is anger against this racism, rather than genuine support for ‘jihadi’ groups, which has brought large numbers of working class South Asian youths to the demonstrations in Britain. More than ever, Muslims are being demonised as fanatics, terrorists and drug-dealers.
Meanwhile, as in India, the war is being used as a pretext for new repressive anti-terrrorist legislation, and the threat of internment for people from West and Central Asia is looming. And the war is also being used to justify a renewed attack on refugees. (With typical hypocrisy, the British government which is daily denouncing the cruelty of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime – and nightly bombing its people – still maintains Afghanistan on its list of countries from which refugees will be automatically refused entry to Britain).
At the same time, in order to maintain the facade of a ‘pluralist’ and ‘multicultural’ society during this crisis, liberal sections of the New Labour establishment are calling for ‘tolerance’ of ‘non-western’ values. This implicitly perpetuates the view that the war is about a ‘clash of civilisations’, between the West and the so-called Islamic world. For organisations like South Asia Solidarity Group, it is vital to challenge this view and expose it as a cover for the consolidation of American interests across the world, and to seize the opportunity created by the anti-war movement of building a sustained anti-imperialist initiative among Britain’s South Asian communities
– Kalpana Wilson