[Reader-list] ongoing protest

[Alice Albinia]

Dear Reader List,

I’m writing from London on the eve of the resignation
of Britain’s International Development Secretary,
Clare Short, over the British government’s ‘handling
of the war with Iraq’. In her resignation speech Clare
Short accused the British Government – and in
particular Tony Blair and Jack Straw – of many things
that others have said more eloquently (and with better
timing) before. But I thought it was worth writing to
voice some of the sense of delight that many British
citizens – particularly those who protested, angry and
ashamed, at what our Government has done in Iraq –
will be feeling tonight as her grim accusations are
uneradicably beamed into millions of living rooms
across the country. 

The resignation of a not particularly bright British
politician may not seem hugely significant as millions
of Iraqis  die for want of proper hospital care and
food, and as Coalition Forces, armed with
state-of-the-art technology, commit crimes against
humanity. Clare Short of course said what everybody
who protested against the war in Britain and elsewhere
has long maintained – that the war is illegal, that
the British-American post-war Iraqi ‘interim
government’ is illegal. (She also claimed that she was
‘deceived’ by Jack Straw and Tony Blair; that the
Prime Minister is ‘obsessed by his place in history’;
that he has ‘undermined the people’s respect for our
political system’.) And thus, I can’t help celebrating
tonight, at another well-aimed attack on the
catastrophic behaviour of the British Prime Minister.

If there is a predominant feeling, as a reluctant
British citizen, of deep shame, anger and despair at
our elected leader’s War, I also think that there is a
slight, tenuous glimmer of hope at the movement for
peace which this Bush/Blair machine gun of war has
simultaneously set in motion. During the most recent
march against the war in London, veteran protestor and
Labour MP Tony Benn described this Peace Movement of
2003 as the biggest in his lifetime. That is surely a
pretty significant – nay, hopeful – statement. The CND
spokeswoman was clearly delighted by the sea of
cheering faces and wave of applause that greeted her
demand that Bush/Blair ‘destroy their own weapons of
mass destruction’. Three girls from the group
‘Schoolchildren Against the War’ spoke passionately of
the turning tide of youth apathy – and warned Tony
Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon that ‘we are the
future generation’ and ‘your end will come soon’. Most
striking of all, perhaps, was the vocal Muslim
representation. 

When the overtures to war began, and the Stop the War
Coalition was formed, my London borough of Stepney was
postered, flyered, stickered with peace-slogans and
war-information in English, Bangla, Urdu and Somali.
There were volunteers handing out leaflets in
Whitechapel High Street every weekend, and on the
Peace marches, the blue and red ‘Muslim Association of
Britain’ banners were among the most prominently
displayed.  Any of the other marches or protests I
have attended in Britain over the last seven years
have been marred, for me, by a sense of cliquey-ness,
or exclusivist extremism. But on the massive February
15th London Protest all my friends in Britain marched
– including (a random selection) my mother, my
landlady, the cashier from my bank on Whitechapel High
Street, and Naj, a ‘Bangladeshi-Briton’ (his words)
who runs a grocery shop at the end of my road. This is
truly inspiring. The marriage of Tony Blair’s
deceptive smooth-talk with George Bush’s leers and
jeers has worked wonders for the average citizen’s
appreciation of politics ('they tell lies'... 'it's
shit'...). 

Michael Moore, who made the Oscar-winning documentary
'Bowling for Columbine' about America’s gun culture
(and who was booed by the glitterati at this year’s
Oscars for criticising Bush in his acceptance speech),
pointed out the correlation between the US’s
neo-imperialistic bombing campaigns and its horrifying
record of domestic gun-murders in this excellent
documentary film. On the day that the Columbine
high-school massacre happened, America had just
dropped more bombs over the Balkans than any other day
in the conflict. Moore makes it abundantly clear that
a country’s foreign affairs – as well as its enormous
Defence Budget – does have a dangerous and unfactored
impact on national pysche. (It is possibly no
coincidence that London has recently seen a massive
increase in gun-crime.) And so, if warniks round the
world need reasons other than the deaths of countless
Iraqis for why Britain/America should not have gone to
war, then maybe Peace as a form of mental development
and internal self-defence might persuade them.

On April’s March for Peace through London’s Parliament
Square, past Downing Street, down the Mall – and under
statue after statue of British soldiers and statesmen
sitting on horses, brandishing guns and waving swords
in the air – banner after banner showed grainy
blow-ups of horrific scenes from Baghdad and Basra,
downloaded from Al Jazeera – not the BBC – stapled
onto sticks and waved in the sun. (Meanwhile, you
outside Britain who probably despair at the partiality
of the BBC probably would also not believe the level
of criticism it received in UK, during the war, for
being ‘too pessimistic’, ‘too depressing’, even too
‘pro-Iraq’. One tabloid labelled it the Baghdad
Broadcasting Corporation.) My point is that if a March
for Peace which brings together people who get (and
understand) Al Jazeera, and those who don’t, as well
as Muslims and non-Muslims, grannies and bank
cashiers, bankers and anti-capitalist protestors, and
all sorts of other people who probably would never
have had the chance, let alone the inclination, to
meet on London’s streets before, then I think we are
on to something good – instead of something
unremittingly, unbelievably, undemocratically
dreadful. 

At the moment, it may seem like meagre compensation
for British/US foreign policy. But popular protest has
in the past achieved acts that far surpass the simple
task of ousting two war-mongering political leaders.
We can do it if we want to, and much more besides. 

Alice



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