The March: 12-2pm Saturday, September 28th, 2002

The crowds were gathering as early as 10am. The TV news teams were live from 11am. The police were visible and not encumbered by riot gear - a good sign, generally. The Embankment was crammed to overflowing as the official start approached. 1.30pm. The side streets were almost as full as the main thoroughfare.

As the march went along the bounds of any discernable agreed route were broken. a combination of soft policing and vast numbers sent alternate marches, as large as the main crowd, through Mayfair's back streets.

The marchers were more or less docile. This was not an angry march - even the more extreme Moslem factions were in good humor. Whistles were blown by small boys, indulged happily by all about. Sporadic chanting could be heard. Banners flew.

This march was seemingly "entirely peaceful and harmonious". However, as always on British marches, under the surface others forces moved. Throughout the marching mass, evenly spread out, were hundreds of Stop the War banners. All were accompanied by similar numbers of SWP banners. The Socialist Worker movement, a movement that appears to contain no Socialists and no Workers, were closely associating themselves with the anti-War coalition. Were they linked? If so, how strongly? The ordinary British newsreader will ask these questions, and will undoubtedly decide that they are inextricably linked and that therefore they should reject the Coalition out of hand.

It is ever so. The SWP gain members from amongst the disenchanted by appearing to be right-minded and right on. The forces for real change lose these young impressionable people as they become fodder for the cynical band-wagon cellular fascist movement that is the SWP [or Globalize Resistance as they are often incarnated]. As these folk learn that the movement they are joining is less that flexible and less than interested in real change, most of them will leave politicking altogether. This is the function in the British State of the SWP.

As the marchers approach Hyde Park, where the speeches will be made, the police presence increases. Armored trucks are visible. Tall cranes carry huge video cameras. The ever-present helicopters circle lower.

The police funnel everyone through the small Park entrance by Marble Arch. The SWP tables, and supporters with bullhorns, form a further cordon, acting as a turnstile for all who wish to proceed further into the park. Recruiting - supposedly for the movement, perhaps really for the State?

The rest of the park has small groups of independently affiliated groups scattered through it, mostly Moslem. These are the people with legitimate causes to promote. They are the ones who would never be allowed the freedom to do what they need to if they joined the "official" British campaign group blocking the best pitches.

The level of naivety that allows this coexistence of mutually destructive ends - those who wish to see real social and economic change, and those who wish power within the old-fashioned Stalinist movement - is fairly high. The golden era of British protest is long gone. The hard lesson seasoned campaigners learnt have mostly been lost - all are ready to believe that everyone is on the same side.

The Speeches: 2pm onwards, Hyde Park

The stage looms nearer, and the speeches are beginning.

Every speaker makes a connection between the proposed War and the Palestinian cause. Since it is obvious that the Great Power that is the USA sees it's control of the region, and its access to oil, as aided by the client state Israel's continued hegemony in the Palestine, few would object - up to a point.

Tony Benn, the only "real" socialist in Britain according to some, said that "Of course we want disarmament in the Middle East, but its got to be a proper balanced disarmament, we must see an end to the sanctions against the Iraqi people who have suffered so much over the last few years." These are the humanist sentiments that the majority here will agree with. The factors that are important in this crisis are not lost on people either.

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, speaks for all when he points to "Hypocrisy and double standards as America retains its neo-colonial hold on the oil-producing regions of the world, and it is a disgrace that once again Britain is running along like a little lap dog behind Americas imperial interests." Lovely rhetoric, capturing the public mood very well. "If Bush and Blair are so concerned about human rights abuses around the world, they could have started changing regimes like Burma. Not a word about Burma. Because it's all about oil." Tony Blair "does not have the support of the British Labour Movement", proclaims Livingstone. Is there still such a thing?

The oil factor features in all speakers analysis. Mohammed Sarwar, MP, says "Bush is only interested in two things in the Middle East. The first - he is only interested in oil. You will know that Iraq has 100 years of oil reserves. And united states of America has only 11 years of oil reserves, and Britain has only 6 years of reserves, so this war is about oil not about terrorism..." Though there is a little murmuring about his statistics - some of us remember what the Falklands War was about, and what it has gained Britain [who will hammer that Antarctic Agreement as soon as it is deemed necessary...] - the crowd basically are in concord.

The Palestine factor is unavoidable. Azmi Bishwara, a member of the Knesset, points out that the use of US force to change regime and control oil economy is used versus Iraq - and, via Sharon, in the Palestine. Both of these were ex-British colonies, giving Britain a moral duty that Tony Blair will not honor. Any action in Iraq should be aimed at liberation from occupation, not a war for a country. This has nothing to do with democracy - "Israel is a colonial state, not a democratic regime", he says. The US in the Middle East are continuing their policy of "mass destruction with aid".

However, the rhetoric, once it begins to move in this direction, gains its own dire momentum. Although John Pilger has proclaimed the people in this movement "represent the true moral mainstream of political life in this country" and that "today a taboo has been broken - we are the moderates - Bush & Blair are the extremists", the face of another extremism is barely held in check here.

Michel Abdel-Masih, QC (representing the Palestinian Community - which part though?), is the first to show that some in the Coalition are more interested in hijacking public support and goodwill for other ends. He is a good orator, and therefore a dangerous one.

"I have a message for you - the statistics are wrong - Sky television has just announced there are over 400,000 people - let me tell you - let me tell you - let me tell you - this is a victory for the people of Britain, this is a victory for the people of Britain........ Let us preach democracy. We are against the war - We are against the war - We are against the war..... Let me tell you another thing. We have a message for you from the People of Palestine. From Jenin from Ramallah from Jerusalem from Bethlehem from Nazareth from Fiper, the chant will be Free Free Palestine! Free Free Palestine! Free Free Palestine!" The crowd chants too. "...They can't say that Iraq is in breach of UN resolutions and therefore war is capable of being waged against it. Let me tell you - the only country that has breached every resolution is Israel, ... if we fight war against any country it is Israel - Let me tell you another thing... If there is a war criminal it has to be Sharon... Long live Palestine Long live Palestine Long live Palestine"

Disillusion and Hope

There are few facts here that many would take issue with, but it is, as they say, the way you tell them. The pitch changes. The tone changes. The rhetoric is laid on thicker. It amounts to "We will destroy Zion. We will bulldoze all Israel - all Jews - into the sea". Let me tell YOU - you have seen the face of this Coalition, I have seen it's underbelly, and it is as bad as the US and Tony Blair. Swapping one pogrom for another...

As you'd expect, a coalition necessarily conjoins many parties, who cannot all see thinks in the same way. The anti-Zionist tendency escalate their felt presence. People begin to leave, though yet more are still arriving in the Park from the tail-end of the march. As much may be lost by days like this as is gained. Salma Yacoub, of the Birmingham Stop the War Coalition, notes that "Never before have we had a position where an anti-war movement was this strong even before a war was started." From what I can see she may well be right. But the last twenty years have done untold damage to the civil resistance movement here. The one-issue events lauded by the likes of Earth First! are only positive if they succeed in politicizing those involved. The seventies were last decade that saw large numbers of politicized people in Britain, and most of those are no longer up for it. Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone are "of course" honorable exceptions, unless you see them as - like the SWP - the safe pseudo-establishment rebels. We have lost the knowledge needed to negotiate and survive the factionalism that the anti-Zionists in conjunction with the extremist old "left" [ie, the SWP] will create, just as we have lost the ability to live off the land and survive in a non-Supermarket society.

With luck, this anti-War movement, which is drawing together more people than anyone might have expected in this apathetic country, will just barely glean enough from the experiences of a previous generation to survive and grow, and to find fertile ground to develop a cohesive critique of the world today.

"The only threat to this world is George W Bush. He has broken more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in the last 2 decades, it experiments illegally with biological weapons of its own and has refused access to weapons inspectors, it has undermined the international criminal court and refuses access to foreign observers to Camp X-ray in Cuba, it is now ready to wage war on Iraq without a mandate from the UN security council. And yet Bush says America is a peaceful nation. If that is the case why has it been involved in wars every year for the last 50 years. America has a long history of invading other peoples countries, Vietnam Cambodia, Grenada, Panama - now it has unleashed a war without end - a war against 'terror'", says journalist Yvonne Ridley.

This is true, but is also partial. It acknowledges no truths outside the sixties radical tradition. It is out of date in that it offers only a partial explanation, and no solutions. Here's hoping that this time around positive and relevant discourse can begin that transcends this tired rhetoric, and gives it its proper and proportionate space in a new world view for the twenty-first century - a world view that provides positive answers for all. Let us not allow Bush, Sharon, Hussein and Blair on the one hand and conventional Marxists, Luddites and the SWP on the other to turn this new century into a rerun - and an unavoidably bloodier rerun at that - of the Twentieth Century.

I went home.

– Paul Illich