People's Democracy

AFTER the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the United States, the British prime minister was the first leader, internationally, to jump in support of the US - without consulting his cabinet, the defence strategists and the Opposition.

But after about 20 days, Blair has found that he has actually acted in haste while offering support to the Bush Administration.

With reports now coming in that London could be a possible target, the British Administration has taken a cautious approach towards war and destruction.

In fact there are reports that some of the ruling Labour Party MPs have asked the PM to adopt the French and German line - of tacit support only. But the disturbing part is that the Blair regime in its curious desire to make friends with the Republicans in the United States (who historically lean towards the Conservatives) - is now unfolding its real agenda also.

The Home Secretary David Blunkett has recently announced plans for compulsory multi-purpose identity cards for the British residents. This is a move that was originally planned by the Conservatives under John Major in 1995, but had to be shelved under public pressure, since this move is seen as "targeted against the ethnic minorities".

Such opposition is still there - and it remains to be seen how the present regime moves in this direction.

Now labour not surprisingly, is acting in a manner similar to other US allies like the Israelis under Ariel Sharon.

However, the call for strikes against Afghanistan by the US and Britain, finds little support in the UK. A rally in Central London last Friday has given a big boost to the movement against war.

At just a few days’ notice over 2,000 people packed into, the Friends Meeting House, opposite the capital’s Euston Station. According to the organisers, there hasn’t been a meeting like this in London for at least 20 years.

Speakers like journalist George Monbiot, and Jeremy Corbyn MP, spoke to the 1,200 people crammed into the main hall. They then hurried across to address 300 people in an overflow hall, and yet more hundreds who had gathered outside.

Editor of Socialist Review, chaired the meeting in the main hall.

"We are meeting for reasons we all understand - the terrible events in Washington and New York," she began. "Most people reacted with horror and fear to those events, and feeling for the thousands of people who died. But many people are also fearful that the response of George Bush and Tony Blair will not be to deal with the problems which caused the attacks, but to cause the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands more people. They are threatening the destruction of Afghanistan, and possibly a wider conflagration in the Indian sub-continent, Iran and the Middle East."

A key theme echoed by most of the speakers was that the meeting proved that a large and serious anti-war movement was now possible.

Veteran peace campaigner B K argued, "This meeting is the answer to all the media people who say that there is no opposition to the war."

He spelled out what most in the hall also felt:

J C is one of the Labour MPs who has spoken out against the war. He said at the meeting, "I have been reading feelings of people around the world organising peace meetings and rallies - all over the US, in Europe and in India." He added, "The media reporting is deeply dangerous. It unleashes the forces of racism. This is not the work of Islam. But if people use the language of a war of ‘civilisation’ against ‘barbarism’, then lower forms of life in the US and Europe will then get the message and take it out on mosques. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder with all victims of racism."

J R of the Socialist Workers Party said, "I don’t think that any one of us in the peace movement will have watched those live TV pictures of the disaster at the World Trade Centre without human sympathy for those who suffered." He then went on to ask, "How could something like this take place?" and explained, "There have been hundreds of thousands of lives lost around the world of people whose graves are unmarked and unmourned. Those people-Iraqis, Palestinians, Serbians-died because of the policy of the US. There has been no minute’s silence for the 500,000 Iraqi children killed by sanctions."

And he argued, "This war will make another human catastrophe. The biggest military state in the world will savage a poor, desperate country. The whole region will be destabilised. The recession will be made worse."

The arguments put by these and the other speakers gave people the confidence to go out and carry the anti-war message to as many others as possible.

Part of the British press too has begun writing against the dangers of war, and similar meetings have taken place in other parts of the country also.