[Reader-list] London (UK)- a first hand report of the 3,000 strong anti-war meeting on Friday.

[Harsh Kapoor]

Dear Friends,
here is report  that might interest some of you
best
Harsh Kapoor

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----- Original Message -----
From: hilary wainwright
Sent: September 22, 2001 1:44 PM
Subject: They do occasionally organise good meetings in London - a 
first hand report of the 3,000 strong anti-war meeting on Friday.

My friend Jane Shallice was so inspired by this first major peace and 
justice meeting that she woke up at five to write these notes. I 
thought i'd share the inspiration with some firends in the great 
cities of the North - and in the rest of the world! love Hilary



Last night I attended the meeting called at the instigation of the 
Socialist Alliance to protest and organise against the war.  There 
were in the end about 2500 - 3000 people stuffed into the large hall 
at Friend's Meeting House and swarming into other overflow meetings 
and crowded into the gardens outside. The speakers therefore were on 
a carousel of speeches.  A truly brilliant turnout.

Bruce Kent spoke first, as he said he is usually described as being a 
'veteran peace campaigner'; and the words that he spoke were 
immensely sombre. "I have a sense of dread in my heart ..I have a 
horrible feeling that the momentum that is developing is aimed at 
ending all states who sponsor terrorism."  He argued that there must 
not be retribution in our name. There has to be the recognition of 
the International Criminal Court, a need for institutions of global 
justice, not the international institutions of capital, like the 
World Bank and the IMF. There should be security improved but not at 
the expense of others security. His greatest fear in the present 
situation was that nuclear weapons are central to this conflict.

Will Self, who was present had been asked to speak, and he said that 
he was no political activist, it is only the opposition to war that 
got him to meetings. He was concerned that we must be talking and 
arguing about the need for justice and not war, explaining that in 
talking to a woman he knew through his children, she had said that 
she was most terrified that her children would be killed in the 
horrifying way that she had witnessed on Sept 11th. She was 
thoughtful and when he replied that for him he was most frightened 
that such terrible deaths would be what huge numbers of children on 
the other side of the planet would experience. The movement for peace 
had to be non-partisan, and had to be clear in its campaign that 
there was a separation of responsibility between the American people 
and the American government.  (Huge applause).

The next speaker was Helen John, the vice chair of CND and a woman 
who since 1994 had been campaigning against Star Wars at Menwith 
Hill.  For her this would not be war but indiscriminate murder. The 
whole operations taking place would be coordinated by the American 
Space Command which depended on Fylingdales and Menwith as well as 
other British locations of US military bases.  The response to the 
Afghanistan situation ought to be flying in aid and relief.  Admiral 
Carroll, an American peace campaigner had visited Britain last year 
and talking about the dangers, which we are facing with the 
developments around Star Wars, and he called for more Greenham 
Commons.  Clearly she thinks that this is central to any activity.

Liz Davies, the woman who had been a member of Labour's NEC, and who 
resigned from the party earlier this year and spoke for Socialist 
Alliance, made a really excellent speech.  She laid out clearly the 
reasons why we had to build a huge opposition to the Bush / Blair 
war. One of the points that she made about the effects of terror was 
that when you looked at the effects of bombings and the destruction 
of popular regimes there was a case for indicting Kissinger. The 
hijackers purpose could be a desire to provoke a counter attack, 
wanting to polarise the world.  The response of the Americans would 
accomplish this precisely. When talking about the way that the events 
of September 11th had affected cultural events, sports, financial 
operations and all activities, there was one event that was 
completely untouched by it, the International Arms Fair went ahead - 
the one group of people who would be making profits from the 
violence. It was these companies that when the whole of the stock 
market was on the slide their shares were rising, and it was such 
companies that when she had argued on the NEC that the party ought to 
not invest in them, and should be looking to ethical investment, was 
sharply informed that there would be no such policy. The voices of 
the grief stricken relations who were urging others not to create 
their anguish and loss in other people who were innocent of all 
crimes, had to be heard. She ended in saying that in the name of 
democracy we would be seeing the curtailing of democracy, and in the 
name of stopping terror, our states would become terrorist states. 
 This opposition to the war was the greatest challenge for the left 
and the peace movement. (This is really truncated because she spoke 
so well I was quite transfixed but I will try to get a copy - one 
thing she argued was that there had to be acceptance by the Americans 
of the International Criminal Court, which they currently could not 
do as they were harbouring Kissinger! Let me know if you want a copy.)

Jeremy Corbyn, an exemplary socialist and still one of the few MPs to 
speak for us, started by looking at the British press, one of the 
least informative with little intention to debate or to provide 
alternative views of governments and their actions. It was a press 
that whilst pretending to be repelled by it, had a style of reporting 
that was xenophobic and racist. Clearly 'deeply troubled' by Bush, 
who he thought to be 'deeply dangerous', and who would say that this 
is not the work of Islam, whilst using the word 'crusade', with all 
the connotations that it held. He then talked about the way that when 
America had supported and created the extremist groups and leaders 
and the record of this over the last thirty or forty years.  He said 
Kristy Wark had bravely suggested on the evening of Sept 11th , that 
what goes around comes around.  When you have created such people and 
funded them, they might just turn against you. In looking at the 
causes of this attack, without doubt one of the issues was the fifty 
years that Palestinians had been living in camps, waiting for their 
return. Whatever one thinks of Iraq, it has not been helped by 10 
years of bombing. The Vietnamese had fought and eventually won - at 
great cost to their own people but aided by the worldwide opposition 
to the US. This we need to build today.  He said that a  quarter of 
the world population is living on less than a dollar a day (restated 
by a  World Bank spokesman said last week), and he ended by saying 
that "the world could be different, it could be fairer, it could be 
more just".

George Monbiot talked about the way that dissent is now becoming more 
difficult when dissent is more and more crucial. When the 
globalisation movements were beginning to form, dependent on civil 
liberties which we had gained, we were now seeing them being 
restricted. He called for an end to sanctions, for the end to the 
support for despotic regimes and for the end to the dirty wars such 
as those in Colombia.

John Rees, an SWP member and the editor of one of their theoretical 
journals, talked about the horror that all felt when witnessing the 
events of the 11th September. But then argued that the cost of the 
Stealth Bomber is $2.3B, and these were being commissioned by a state 
that was unable to afford a decent health service for its people. 
 The $40B being allocated for this enterprise would fund decent 
health, education and transport. Speaking of Blunkett here, on a day 
when they were tightening the laws on asylum seekers they were 
threatening to go to war in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries 
in the world and one which produced huge numbers of people seeking 
desperately a safer place to live. He made the point that when South 
Africa was the state, which formed and practices apartheid, a deeply 
racist and oppressive regime, there had never been any suggestion 
that the sate should be overthrown by mass bombing.

Tariq Ali was the last speaker and he certainly rose to the 
importance of this situation.  Clear, confident, drawing out the 
ironies, counter posing the apparently obvious with its shocking 
reality, he spoke brilliantly.  He opened talking about the grotesque 
simplification of the slogan, "You are either with us or you are for 
terrorism". Having seen the withdrawal of the British in 1947, we are 
in a time when we see their return. With all this rhetoric of war to 
defend civilisation he recalled Gandhi1s reply when asked what he 
thought of Western civilisation, "It would be a good idea". This 
whole project is one of recolonising the world, with the globalised 
strategic forces.  He then spent some time asking why Blair had 
joined the Labour Party at all, being a man who came to life only 
when there was a war, offering hope and sustenance. Why hadn1t he 
joined the army and could have become a chaplain and gone with the 
troops to all the wars and been able to offer sympathy and support 
and unctuous words all the time.

However he believed that the US was now intent on revenge and blood 
lust, wanting to settle many accounts.  "If they topple the Taliban, 
I for one shall not be crippled by remorse", but the way to remove 
them is by supporting the people of Afghanistan to do the thing 
themselves. It is worth recounting the ironies of history, who 
created the religious boarding schools which trained the Taliban? 
 America, Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani military regimes. It was 
these forces that armed the mujahadeen and urged them into 
Afghanistan to fight the jihad to get rid of the Russians. Bin Laden 
himself was trained by the CIA and sent off to Afghanistan.  The 
Pakistanis had asked Saudi Arabia to send a Saudi prince to lead the 
jihad, "clearly there were few volunteers", but they found Bin Laden. 
It was he who fought the war and wiped out all the secular forces 
within Afghanistan, the last leader being Najeeb Ullah, who was 
slaughtered and publicly disembowelled in a most horrific manner. The 
western leaders stood around and did not open their mouths.  It is 
important to recall that they did not find any of these regimes 
offensive - until last week.

But at times like these the important thing is to ensure that people 
are told the truth.  The history that they are being given is at best 
partial and at worst false.  If we take the west at their word - that 
they need to destroy regimes that give succour and support to these 
groups - then they should be looking to act against Saudi Arabia and 
Egypt. But they do not want to embarrass their friends who guard 
their oil. The world of Islam is not different; it has experienced 
all the heat and flames of the twentieth century.  We have only to 
look at Iraq and Indonesia. Indonesia with the largest communist 
party outside the communist world which was completely wiped out in 
the sixties with American instigation and support.  In Iraq, the US 
backed Baathist regime wiped out the CP and the hugely well organised 
oil workers.  Who was installed to accomplish this?  Sadam Hussein.

Any movement against the war must also call for the end of the 11 
years of bombing and sanctions against Iraq.  A war which has now 
gone on longer that the Vietnam War.  But also there has to be a 
political solution for the Palestinian people. He finished by reading 
a poem by Nizar Kabani, a Syrian poet who had died during the first 
intifada.  

It was a most powerful and brilliant speech.

I therefore got up at about 5am having to write up the scraps of 
notes and get them out

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