Reflecting the Voice of the People

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Reflecting the Voice of the People

Declaration of the People's Assembly for Peace

Bringing together those united for peace and against Anglo-American warmongering was the main achievement of the 12 March People’s Assembly for Peace.

With a 50ft banner proclaiming the People’s Assembly, Central Hall in Westminster, Central London, saw the launch of what many participants and speakers considered the authentic reflection of the voice of the people. Up to 1,500 delegates and representatives of political forums, peace and Stop the War Groups, youth and students organisations together with political organisations, trades unions, political and social forums, collectives of women, pensioners, schoolchildren, national minorities, religious organisations and many political personalities, discussed the impending aggression against Iraq.

Immediate action was agreed with the adoption of a declaration for peace, the announcement of further action by youth and students, and peace campaigners, who will be joined by organised workers in a campaign designed to stop the country immediately the aggression begins.

Adorning three balconies which surrounded the hall and main stage reflecting some of the breadth of the movement and those seen at the historic February 15 anti-war march were banners were Islington Green Party; Birmingham Stop the War; City of Plymouth Unison; Stratford No 1 Branch RMT; Hammersmith and City Line Branch RMT; Waltham Forest T & G; Stop the War Coalition; Labour Against the War; Greenwich; Greenwich NUT; Daily Mirror; Bristol Defend Asylum Seekers Campaign; Globalise Resistance; RMT; CND; Professional and Commercial Service Union.

The chairperson, Andrew Murray, opened the Assembly saying that its aim was to represent the views of the millions of people who marched on February 15. The vast majority of people are against this war, he said. Their voice will be heard. Each session began with an intervention by a political personality. RMT General Secretary Bob Crowe and his Communication Workers Union counterpart Billy Hayes joined Tony Benn, Bianca Jagger, MPs Alan Simpson, Alice Mahon, John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway. All reflected the strength of opposition to war and the action against it seen in many different circles. Both Bob Crowe and Billy Hayes described actions their members may take in the event of war and the attempts that could be made to criminalise the actions of their members.

Representatives and delegates of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Socialist Party, Operation Black Vote, Liberal Democrats, Independent Newspaper Group, the National Union of Journalists, Lambeth College Staff, Stockwell Stop the War, Teeside against the War and Wimbledon College of Art contributed to the session discussing the Declaration of Peace and the Function and Purpose of People’s Assembly, and Adrian Mitchell representing Poets Against the War recited Don’t Go to War a poem for peace. Though not speaking on behalf of her employers Save the Children UK, a delegate of a Staff Group described the inevitable humanitarian catastrophe the planned aggression will cause. A delegate from the Wimbledon College of Art best summed up the session in describing the growing mobilisation of students in action against the war. Her own college had seen large and successful actions and she reminded everyone that a movement of millions of people has the power to change events.

National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) leader Paul Mackney led a session chaired focusing on the role of the United Nations. He reminded the delegates that his union had agreed to participate in mass actions, teach-ins and lunchtime meetings to oppose the war.

Interventions were made by the Green Party, the Socialist Party, the Richmond campus of the American University in London, the Coalition for Palestine, the Campaign Against Euro Federalism, the Assistant General Secretary of ASLEF, a representative of the London Fire Brigades Union, Billy Hayes General Secretary of the Communication Workers, of London UNISON, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, an RMT delegate, a University College London Hospital worker, the Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Americans against the War and the moving testimony of a Falklands War veteran. Other Interventions by Stop the War groups from Plymouth and the north of Ireland described direct action and local experiences; as did a youth representing schoolchildren from Surelands School in Glasgow. The CAEF delegate recommended Peoples Assemblies be established throughout the country to both express the people’s will and co-ordinate anti-war activity.

The highlight of the session was the interventions of schoolchildren and youth from Queensbridge School in Birmingham, Camden School for Girls, Mark Rutherford School and Pimlico School. All inspired delegates with accounts of their mass actions and participation in the March 05 Students Day of Action.

Other interventions made by delegates from Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities. Calling for support for the March 22 National Day of Action at Fairford Airbase. Oxford University’s student delegate described the imposition of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act on the entire geographical region to criminalise opposition to the US Airbase.

Further interventions were heard from Workers Power, the London Federation of Green Parties, Sixth Form Delegates of Elliot School in Wandsworth and a representative of the Steering Committee of the Stop the War Coalition.

Closing the day’s events George Galloway MP greeted delegates as the people’s Parliament. Far from being an irrelevant talking shop, as critics had denounced it, the Assembly spoke for Britain whilst the House of Parliament talked for George W Bush, Galloway said.

Refuting Blair’s latest pronouncements on "unreasonable vetoes" in the UN Security Council Galloway listed the 30 times the United Kingdom government had used its own veto power. What followed was a shameful record mostly supporting apartheid South Africa, its armed interventions in Angola and Namibia; defending the colonial government of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, and US armed aggression in Latin America, Libya and other countries.

March 12 was a day of militancy and vigorous opposition to war reflecting that the voice of the people must and will be heard.

Stop the War Coalition Article 13 March 2003

1500 people attended the People's Assembly on 12 March 2003. The following declaration for peace was passed unanimously.

We urge all groups to:

a) Place it as an advertisement in their local paper.

b) Deliver it to their MPs

c) Invite local authorities to endorse it

d) Reproduce it as a leaflet

e) Use it as a basis for a petition

DECLARATION OF THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY FOR PEACE

This Assembly of representatives of the British people, gathered under the threat of impending war, declares itself against any attack on Iraq by the British and US governments and asserts that any such war will not be undertaken in our name.

Representing the views of the great majority of our people, as demonstrated in the historic marches on February 15, the Assembly:

* Believes that no case for war has been made, that the war threatened is in defiance of international law, and holds that it is possible to resolve the present international crisis by exclusively peaceful means.

* Condemns the British government for its military support, almost alone in the world, for a US-led attack on Iraq and believes that the government has thereby ceased to represent the interests of the British people on this issue.

* While unreservedly condemning the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and supporting the cause of democracy in all the countries of the Middle East, expresses its solidarity with the civilian Iraqi women, men and children who will be the main victims of any war.

* Urges Members of Parliament to act in support of this policy of peace, believing that a failure to do so will represent a dereliction of their democratic duty and an abrogation of representative democracy.

* Believes that in the event of war starting, the Prime Minister should resign.

* Invites all the British people and their organisations to express their support for this declaration and take whatever action may be required to ensure its adoption as the policy of our country.