Tens of Thousands on the Move against War and Aggression

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Tens of Thousands on the Move against War and Aggression

Neither Spectator nor Victim – Defend the Rights of All!

            Speakers at the rally included Lindsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and John McDonnell MP, who emphasised, “We want all British occupying troops out of Iraq immediately and we don’t want any threats to Iran. We want a peace prime minister, not a warmonger in 10 Downing Street.” Other speakers included Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, Respect MP George Galloway, Judith LeBlanc, the co-chair of the US United for Peace and Justice and Venezuelan MP Augusto Montiel; Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Bob Wareing and John Trickett; Green MEP Caroline Lucas and Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans; Paul Mackney, the UCU lecturers’ union joint general secretary, Billy Hayes, the CWU communication workers’ union general secretary, and Keith Sonnet, the assistant general secretary of Unison; Rose Gentle of the Military Families Against the War, playwright David Edgar, Dr Daoud Abdullah of the Muslim Council, Ismail Patel of the British Muslim Initiative, and Noreen Fatima of Stop the War’s Muslim Network. Speakers were introduced by Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War Coalition. He called on people to attend the Stop the War Coalition’s People’s Assembly in London on Tuesday, March 20.

            I think it is very important to reflect on the fact that the government is attempting to create and incite divisions in Britain.   The aim is to attempt to shatter the coherence and resistance to the wars of occupation and attacks on rights and freedoms as well as to the attacks on social programmes, the environment and the all-round well being of the people and render the people as spectators, or victims.

           The depiction of the people as spectator is to say that history is made by someone else other than the people, that people are denied decision-making power and that the executive in power are the ones in the know, that tough decisions have to be made which are unpopular.  It is a dictate that people should not have the power and should not be allowed to influence the course of events. That the government wants to assign us the role of spectators was very clear when they ignored the just demand of the demonstration of two million against the invasion and occupation of Iraq on February 15, 2003.   That the people defined these demonstrations in Britain and throughout the world as a defining moment in the unity of the world’s people against the warmongers turned it into its opposite and placed the issue of the demand for an anti-war government centre stage.

            The depiction of the people as victims is that again the victims are powerless, and are also isolated, that this is just an issue to do with them and not the polity as a whole. The role of victims is to complain and in the polity at large just to list how bad things are.  That the government wants to assign people and communities the role of victims is very clear in the feverish atmosphere of disinformation where they try to inculcate suspicion and prejudice, giving priority to prejudicial statements and reports. It is the case that the state is singling out those of the Muslim faith and outlook for attack under the guise of waging war against "Islamic extremism" and then criminally carrying out arbitrary arrest and detention with “anti-terror” laws. To call such measures “laws” is also travesty of justice itself when they are based on racial profiling which require little or no evidence, reducing legal process to one of the denunciation by secret police just as in the Middle Ages.

            The antidote to both roles that the ruling circles are trying to assign to the people as spectator and victim is that the whole polity in Britain has to put forward solutions and strive to become the decision-making force. So the issue for the anti-war movement and all movements of the people is to take a bold step together in defence of the rights of all.

            In this context of the government attacks on the polity and its unity, the government tries to brand the resistance to their wars in Britain and the world as "extremist" and calls on the "moderate" forces to defend its "civilised" values and defend the status quo which they claim are the values of the “host” community.  This “way of life” of the “host” community is also used to attack the whole polity. The backward line, or backlash, to upholding the rights of Muslims, or other national minorities, is that no one upholds the rights and way of life of the “host” community, i.e. what is sometimes described as the “white working class”.  

            Defending the rights of all smashes this. No culture is second to any other.  This way of life of the people and values of these sections of the people united in the anti-war movement, the youth movement and the workers’ movement – it is these values of the people which are in the ascendancy, which are a threat to the values of the executive power whose values are disintegrating in the modern world and which they try to impose by force.  In this context, these old values of multi-party democracy (“representative democracy” as opposed to involving people in decision making), free-market economy (neo-liberal globalisation as opposed to an economy that meets the needs of the people) and rights based on private property (as opposed to being human) are fraudulently represented as universal values or those of the “host” community.

            In conclusion, the resistance movements of the people in Britain and throughout the world is the order of the day – this is why people will once again take to the streets of London on February 24 against the warmongering government of Tony Blair.  Also, it is a reflection of the growing resistance in the United States that over half a million demanded that the troops be brought home in Washington two weeks ago.   In these mass anti-war manifestations of the people, the decisive issue the anti-war movement has to take on board is not to stand aside as spectator or victim at the hands of the executive, whether that be Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, or someone else.  The issue is that the whole polity in Britain must put forward solutions and strive to become the decision-making force and bring to power an anti-war government.  A government that puts in place arrangements that are pro-people and put the interests of human beings at the centre of all policies.  So the issue for the anti-war movement and all movements of people is to take a bold step together in defence of the rights of all.

Bring the troops home from foreign soil!

End the attack on humanity!

Defend the rights of all!

 

* Silence is Shame! is published by South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition. This issue, "Neither Spectator Nor Victim", was released on the eve of the No to Trident - Troops Out of Iraq national demonstration in London. Website: http://philiptalbot.members.beeb.net/ststwc.html