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CounterPunch
September
30, 2002
Taking It To
London's Streets
The New
Anti-War Movement
by
TARIQ ALI
London: Saturday 28th September. It was a beautiful
clear blue sky. No mists but a great deal of mellow fruitfulness.
The Stop the War Coalition--- a united front that includes socialists
of most stripes, liberals and radicals, pacifists and the moderate
Muslim groups----had expected 200,000 people, but the mood in
Britain was uneasy and large numbers of people, many of them
conservative or even apolitical, had decided to swell the march.
The week before the march, New Labour
issued the so-called Blair dossier, a farrago of half-truths
and stale facts was a very crude attempt at war propaganda. It
backfired miserably. Blair was at his worst. The grinning disk-jockey
in clerical mode. Everything reduced to a pseudo-morality tale.
 War-talk and piety is such an ugly combination.
It may have convinced his ghastly cabinet, a bunch of mediocrities,
most of whom would find it difficult to gain employment elsewhere.
Blair prefers it like this: in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed beggar is king.
The DAILY MIRROR, a leading London tabloid
devoted 8 pages to denouncing the dossier and Blair. This newspaper
has turned decisively after 9/11, in sharp contrast to its rivals
and 'betters'.
The only pro-war piece in the paper,
hallucinatory on every level and published to give the White
House a voice, appeared under the byline of the former NATION
columnist, Christopher Hitchens. The man with the Orwell-complex
has fallen really low. He will fall further.
No war in Iraq; Justice for Palestine
were the themes that united everyone present on Saturday 28th
September. .Murdoch's Sky TV reported 400,000 . Irish radio insisted
there were half-a-million. Channel Five News said 'over a quarter
of a million'. Only BBC TV reported the 'police figure' of 150,000.
Let's be modest. Let's accept that there
were over 350,000 people who came from all parts of the country
to show their contempt for Tony Blair and his backing for Bush's
planned war against Iraq.
I met people, old and young, who had
never been on a demonstration before. Rites of passage. And the
mood was one of defiance and anger.
The new wave of trade-union leaders who
have been elected to defy the New Labour Thatcherites were solidly
against the war. Bob Crow, the 40--something leader of the railway
workers denounced Blair in vitriolic language. So did Mark Serotka
from the Civil Servants Union and others.
Then there was Tony Benn and George Galloway
and Jeremy Corbyn (the last two still Members of Parliament)
spoke for the Labour Party members opposed to Blair.
It was the Jewish sabbath. So the contingent
of Hassidic Jews could not speak, but their moving plea for Palestinian
rights was read by a young Muslim from Leicester.
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone,
was also there strongly denouncing the Prime Minister. Many Londoners
heaved a sigh of relief when Blair refused to let Livingstone
back in the Labour Party. No longer needing to suck up to the
New Labour leadership, Livingstone shifted his position once
again. Sometimes opportunism can lead in the left direction.
Nobody on the demonstration was taken
in by the talk of a UN-led war being somehow more acceptable
than a Bush-Blair attack. The British peace movement, for one,
will not be taken in if the permanent members of the UNSC allow
their arms to be twisted and their purses filled by the Bushmen.
Here the movement will continue. And
when the bombs begin to drop there will be acts of non-violent
civil disobedience all over the country.
We need the same in the United States.
Tariq Ali
is an editor of New Left Review and a frequent contributor to
CounterPunch. This article is extracted from his new book The
Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads And Modernity,
published by Verso.
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September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
An Entire
Class
of Thieves
Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra
and Shatila
Amelia Peltz
Anniversary with Life
in Palestine
Susan Martinez
By the Hand
of the Father
Ben Tripp
Advice from
a Polemicist
Adam Engel
From Above:
Forgetting bin Laden
Chris Clarke
The Ann Coulter Test
Tariq Ali
Doing as the
Romans Did
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Bush Victory
in Iraq
Ralph Nader
Greed Without Limits
Thomas Croft
The Life of Jim Cummings
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen:
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Episode One
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Poet's Basement
September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
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the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master Jean
Chretien's
New York State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
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Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
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Salam Rahal
The Rape
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Richard Falk
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War with
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It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
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Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
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September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
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Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
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Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
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William Cook
Yet Another
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Israel's Other Voices
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