|
South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition meeting, 1st Tuesday, June [03/06/03], Trinity House Social Centre, South Shields, 7.30pm
Present
Alan N, Alan T, Alex S, Nader N, Philip T, Roger N.
Apologies
Anna S.
Agenda
Nothing formal.
Matters Arising
General Discussion.
The present world situation was considered. It was suggested that a well-known British statesperson had been paid a large amount of money by corporate interests to deliver over British public opinion to the American corporate cause. As with many such claims, the question of substantial evidence was a vexed one and the possibility of smears had to be considered. The cultural, financial and corporate backgrounds of some of the world’s leading political players were considered - much of the details matters of public record, some not so.
The question arose: “Who exactly are the G8?’ Suspects included the ruling ‘elites’ of the USA, U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Russia, and either Italy or Spain.
G8 Counter-Summit.
Alan Newham, our representative at the previous weekend’s events in and around Evian and Geneva reported back hot-footed from the counter-summit, as well as from work and family-childminding commitments. The efforts Alan had made to attend our meeting tonight were greatly appreciated, and his report was warmly received.
Alan said that more than 100,000 people had attended the counter-summit events, of whom contrary to mainstream media reports [which seemed mostly intended to discredit the radical cause] only a few dozen had been violent troublemaking wreckers. He said the atmosphere had been warm, friendly and positive with local people being generally welcoming and supportive. He said there was a noticeable difference to this counter-summit compared with previous ones, due to the increased influence of the anti-war movement.
Alan said that a mini-forum on the war in Iraq and associated matters had reflected ‘the way people are thinking around the world’, which was predominantly against the US-UK invasion of Iraq something not always very apparent to the people of Britain.
There had been speakers from all over Europe, as well as S.E. Asia, Africa, and America.
An American speaker had indicated that US public opinion was not a narrow, uniform slab of small-minded, insular, nationalistic / corporate-capitalist, right wing prejudice.
An African speaker, from the presently war-troubled Ivory Coast, had emphasized the interconnected nature of anti-war efforts. She had used the phrase ‘your fight is our fight’.
Alan highlighted the background issue of translation. Native English speakers tended to take for granted the efforts of others to learn and speak English, without making enough efforts to learn other languages themselves. He gave an example of an interesting translation process that had occurred at the counter-summit, in which a speech by an Iraqi Arabic speaker was translated into French then from French into English with perhaps some content being lost or distorted in the process. Nevertheless voluntary translation workers at the counter-summit deserved praise for their efforts in helping to bring people together via shared communications.
Finally Alan reported a further link-up between STSTWC and George Galloway and showed us pictures of George speaking in front of our banner. He said that in a speech to a counter-summit forum, George had suggested that the anti-war movement had marched to the top of the hill on 15th February this year, and was refusing to march back down again.
Alan said he would produce a written report for the website as soon as possible.
Organizing matters.
Alex emphasized the usefulness of formalities suggesting a more formal agenda for our meetings and other activities would enable us to make more productive use of the time available. He also mentioned the importance of self-discipline which helped to maintain efficiency when organizational arrangements were relatively unstructured. He distributed telephone numbers from various contacts list as an aid to maintaining contacts with people who were unable to attend meetings regularly.
Website.
Philip encouraged people to contribute items of all sorts for inclusion on the website. It was agreed that the website was still in an early developmental stage, with much improvement still possible.
Newsletter.
Website to be used as developmental environment for potential future physical publications. Efforts to be made to reach out to potential contributors from allied groups and individuals.
Notice
Sunderland Stop the War Group, Public Meeting, Sunderland Civic Centre, 7pm, Monday, June 9th,. Key speaker Jeremy Corbyn MP.
Next Meeting
Tuesday, 17 June, 2003.
+
Public Meeting. Sunderland Civic Centre. 7pm, 9 June, 2003.
Organized by Sunderland Stop the War Campaign.
Attended by about 50 people. [Average age of those present: probably nearer 50 than 40].
Lead-off speaker was North-Easterner Yunus Bakhsh, of Unison, SWP, etc. Yunus surveyed the present situation in Iraq and the wider world. He said people were wondering: ‘What next? Where next?’ There was a general sense, spreading far beyond the anti-war movement, of people having been lied to and betrayed - because of the ‘lies’ told by Tony Blair and others in the run up to the war. Yunus said: ‘The people who most believed Tony Blair now feel most betrayed.’ He ran through the way in which the course of events seemed to have been manipulated by the right-wing American ideologues behind the so-called ‘Project for the New American Century’. But he also pointed out that it was possible to overstress the conspiracy theories. ‘Often they are just lurching from cock-up to cock-up,’ he said. Yunus said that as regards Iraq, the priority was to end the occupation by the USA and UK. He mentioned a piece of graffiti written on a wall in Iraq: ‘All done? Go home!’ For the longer term, the priority was the stop the next war: ‘We may not have been able to stop this war, but we must continue to fight to stop wars in future.’
The central speaker was Jeremy Corbyn, radical Labour MP from North London, and a key figure in the development of the Stop the War Coalition in the U.K. He surveyed the history of the recent anti-war movement in Britain - from impromptu rallies at bus-stops, through early mass meetings at the Quaker building on Euston Road, London, to the great rally on 15th February 2003, and onwards. He stressed that one of the most significant aspects of the coalition was the way local groups linked up to form a national group and the way groups from different nations linked up to form a movement that was ‘truly international’. Reviewing conditions in Iraq, he mentioned a visit he had made to a scrap-yard there after the Iraq/Iran war. The debris of that war had included shell-casings carrying names of ‘all leading arms manufacturers’ from around the world. This evidence revealed much about the background components of modern wars - and the challenges in overcoming hugely powerful corporate interests faced by the anti-war movement. He argued that what was happening now in Iraq was something new in history: the privatization of a nation by external force. The US-UK were, by conventional standards of international law, ‘occupying powers’ - having invaded a sovereign nation without international sanction. Yet they were not meeting conventional obligations of occupying powers, which included maintaining basic systems of order as well as public utilities. What was happening was essentially a ‘privatization’ by corporate interests - and the privatization was not just of the oil industry but of almost every aspect of the country. ‘What we are witnessing in Iraq is the externally imposed privitization of an entire country by an invading force - the first time this has happened in history.’ Jeremy then reviewed the ways in which Tony Blair and others had manipulated public opinion in the lead up to the war. He focussed on events in parliament on March 18th when the final vote sanctioning British involvement had taken place. He said that on that day ‘the word’ in parliament was that if 200 Labour MPs rebelled against the government line, then Britain would disengage from the impending US-lead war. In the end around 130 Labour MPs rebelled. The government had concentrated its efforts of persuasion on MPs known to be potential waverers - ignoring the people like himself whom they knew could not by swayed. [Jeremy mentioned, in passing, a wordless passing encounter between himself and Tony Blair on that day.] He said the main tactic used had been face-to-face meetings with Tony Blair himself - with Cherie Booth sometimes providing a support act - at which the prime minister had made direct person-to-person ‘trust me, there are weapons of mass destruction’ promises. Waverers seemed to have been won over by Tony Blair because they wanted to trust him when he implied that ‘he knew something they did not know’ - but could not reveal what it was for reasons of ‘secret intelligence’. A number of MPs won over in this way now wondered whether they had been hoodwinked. Jeremy went on to outline how civil liberties had been undermined during the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ - particularly via mechanisms of detention without trial on the word of unnamed ‘security sources’. He told a story of a detainee he had met who had come to the UK as a refugee to escape exactly that sort of ‘arbitrary use of authority’. He said the ongoing work of the anti-war movement included a ‘duty’ to defend civil liberties in Britain and around the world against this kind of abuse. We should also be keeping up the pressure for an independent inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the war, as well as linking up with Iraqi groups with a view to a united campaign to end the occupation of their country peacefully. Above all else, the international nature of the anti-war movement should be celebrated and strengthened in every way possible. The challenge was: ‘To hold together a diverse coalition of groups and individuals - a coalition that is not in itself a single political party.’
The meeting then opened up to general discussion.
One speaker pointed out that as all present were broadly supportive of the anti-war movement the meeting was essentially an exercise in ‘preaching to the converted’. ‘How do we reach out beyond this room?’ he wondered. Practical suggestions included conversations with family, friends, workmates, and organizing within and through supportive groups, political or otherwise.
Members of the Sunderland group said that their regular city centre stall had been attracting more interest and support in recent weeks. Whereas there had been some hostility during the war, people were now more generally sympathetic - apparently because there was a wide feeling of having been lied to over the war. Several people who served in the war had been drawn to the stall, and had expressed scepticism, based on their own direct experiences, on the government’s claims about ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
Continued link-ups with anti-BNP activity and other forms of opposition to ‘hatred preaching’ were suggested as important ongoing activities. One speaker pointed out that a troubling anti-Islamic feeling was lurking in the undercurrents of general public consciousness - born out of a mix of ignorant prejudice and the often crude mainstream media reporting styles on issues relating to the war, terrorism and to maters such as asylum seeking. There was a crassly false link being made by too many between Islam and terrorism. The government had done little to discourage such prejudices, and had often seemed to inflame them in various ways.
Several speakers said it was important to speak out boldly about things people did not necessarily want to hear - and which might cause some offence. By speaking out boldly and honestly the wider truths of the present situation would emerge.
One speaker, basing what he said on personal experience and on academic research by himself and others, said that darker skinned Britons, of all faiths, and including those with no particular religious faith, often felt themselves ‘typecast’ by the prevailing modes of public discourse. He also said that due to the media representations the war in Iraq, and the wider so-called ‘war on terrorism’, seemed to be being waged against ‘people with brown skins’. In reaction to this, although he was not a religious believer himself, he sometimes felt himself drawn emotionally towards the more extreme militant Islamic factions in the Middle East and elsewhere - who sometimes seemed to be the people most committed to fighting purposefully against this perceived ‘victimization of people with brown skins’.
A representative of the Native American tradition argued that modern America, founded on the suppression and slaughter of native Americans, remained essentially a ‘white supremacist state’. It was a fact that most wars American had waged around the world were against ‘non-white’ peoples. It was pointed out by another a speaker that a distinction should be made between the American government and the American People - many, even perhaps most, of whom did not strongly support George Bush and his mostly war-mongering advisors. The truly wide-spreading ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the American People were in fact better represented by/in the anti-war movement than in the inner circles of the present American government. It was also notable that the core elements of the US anti-war movement included veterans of the Vietnam war and the first Gulf war both of which had involved deceptions and betrayals , most particularly of those called upon to do the actual fighting.
On the issue of ‘tolerance’, one speaker suggested that while everyone carried prejudices, at heart most people were essentially decent and tolerant. She said people often revealed their underlying tolerant decency in small ways, rather than in grander seeming gestures or in ‘politically correct’ statements. She cited the example of people attending a non-religious general public event at a local non-conformist chapel building. It had been accepted without question by all those present at the event that a raffle was inappropriate because the brand of Methodism practised at that chapel included opposition to gambling. There had to be many similar examples of such small ways in which people showed respect for others’ beliefs, even when they did not share them - and perhaps even found them quirky or somewhat ridiculous. She suggested building a better, more peaceful, world depended as much on such small-scale polite decencies as on larger-scale ‘politically correct’ actions or gestures.
Discussion turned to the question of: ‘How radicalized have the younger generation become as a result of the anti-war movement?’ It was noted that there were not many people under-30 present at the meeting. One speaker suggested that the ‘radicalization’ had been at best ‘partial’, and that most young British people remained politically indifferent. Others suggested that a more significant change had occurred. It was without doubt that many younger people had spontaneously involved themselves in the movement. Some had found political interest that had previously been dormant, and if, as some thought, the events in 2003 represented the start of a ‘sea change’, the young people who had been most involved might become rallying figures in future radical movements. However, it was also suggested that many of the younger people involved in protest events had been, effectively, ‘kids enjoying good clean rebellious fun’. Jeremy Corbyn gave the jokey example of some children in his own constituency who were know to be rare attenders of school in the normal course of events, but who had ‘turned up to school for the protests just to walk out with everybody else’.
There was some discussion on whether or not people were generally ‘suckers for lies’. A speaker argued that there was something ‘comfortable’ about some lies, which soothed consciences and helped people to evade troubling realities - which was perhaps why politicians and others in power seemed able to sell lies, half-truths, and dubious myths to the people so easily. Other speakers pointed out that a sense of being lied to, generally and systematically, eventually undermined all faith and left people feeling cynical and disillusioned. Most present at the meeting seemed to agree that people eventually, even if sometimes reluctantly, preferred hard truths to ‘soothing’ lies - and facing up to reality rather than avoiding it.
In his summing up, which closed the meeting, Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘Telling the truth now is one of the ways we can stop the wars in future.’
A collection of £105.59 was raised on the night to support the continuing work of the Sunderland Stop the War Campaign.
[Philip Talbot, 20/06/03, 21/06/03]
+
LINKING UP WITH IRISH PEACE CAMPAIGNERS
In Dublin’s fair city, in mid-November 2003, all around the main shopping areas there were notices about the Irish anti-war movement and their plans to blockade Shannon Airport on December the 6th because the American military have been using this airport as a pit stop for aircraft on route for Iraq.
Meanwhile, I was looking for any information about protests against the state visit of George Bush in London at that time - I had tried the various web sites that were suggested with no results.
While making my way back to the hotel on Wednesday night, 19th November, I spotted a flyer posted on a lamppost informing me that there was to be a demonstration outside the American Embassey on Thursday the 20th protesting about the state visit of George Bush in London.
Time was short I had to find where the Embassey was situated and make plans to get there. As it turned out there was no need to worry as the area was not too far away from the City centre, in an area called Ballsbridge.
While preparing to go to the embassy I passed the eternal flame which was commissioned by Amnesty International, the flame is housed in a spherical sculpture of chains welded together and around it’s base is the text:
THE CANDLE BURNS NOT FOR US, BUT FOR ALL THOSE WHOM WE FAILED TO RESCUE FROM PRISON, WHO WERE TORTURED, WHO WERE KIDNAPPED, WHO DISAPPEARED, THAT IS WHAT THE CANDLE IS FOR.
This text immediately brought to mind the ‘souls without rights’ who are held in camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay
We arrived at the Embassy where about 150 people were making their presence known.
There was people of all ages, nationalities and religions with a common bond to unite them.
There were home made banners as well as the usual printed ones and the rainbow flags proclaiming Peace in different languages.
I spoke to a young man who informed me that the protest was arranged at very short notice in support of our brothers and sisters who are demonstrating all over the U.K. against the visit of George W. Bush.
When I had a good look around I noticed several men observing the protest from a distance. Many people present were carrying cameras to record events. Not all of them were members of the press or general public.
People were invited to use the megaphone to address the crowd and there were several speakers from the Irish peace movement as well as an American speaker who spoke with passion expressing his anger and shame for what his country was doing.
He asked the assembled crowd not to forget that there was a huge peace movement in the USA but the outside world does not get to know about it.
When our American brother was finished a young Italian man spoke of his dissatisfaction of his country’s involvement in Iraq and calling the present Italian leader Berlusconi ‘a Facist’.
The crowd were thanked for their support and slowly dispersed under the watchful eyes of the ‘observers’ who were still standing on the periphery.
Alan Trotter [November, December 2003]
|
