your lot damaged the anti-war movement by using extremist slogans such as victory to the insurgents or victory to Hezbollah. While well-intentioned, such slogans are idiotic. You have nothing to offer that any people in Wales will seriously listen to.
Lewislewis, sometimes it's correct to challenge ideas even though it might prove unpopular - often people respect you more in the longterm. RESPECT is proud to stand in this prophetic tradition. For example, on 7/7 the nationalists refused to link the London bombings with British foreign policy unlike RESPECT who clearly and unequivocally spoke truth to power. When I was a member of the SWP on 9.11 we had a front page of our newspaper that called it the "Bitter Fruit of Imperialism" such a slogan was quite unpopular with many sections of the public (I remember someone buying the newspaper just to tear it up), however I think we were absolutely right to argue this and by the time of the London bombings such views had become mainstream. We also argue against racism towards asylum seekers even though it's not popular with the electorate. And I think we are right to argue for the right to resistance to imperialism too. You see this is the fundamental difference between us - you favour a politics that panders to prejudice, I favour a critical discourse that challenges peoples ideas and "common sense".
In fact, we always argued that the slogans of the broad anti-war movement should be "bring the troops home" and for an immediate withdrawal of troops. Indeed, I myself, argued against the proposal that Victory to the Resistance should become a slogan of the anti-war movement, not because I disagreed with it, but because I felt in the current context it wasn't effective to mobilise a troops out movement. Nevertheless, RESPECT has been quite right to challenge patriotism, oppose references to "our troops" in the anti-war movement and to strongly challenge the racist argument that Iraqis don't have the same right to resist occupation as say the French or Italians in the 1940s, even if this means fighting against the British army. We were also right to defend the courageous resistance of a small group of irregulars (Hezbollah) against the 4th largest military in the World (the IDF). But we never argued it should be a condition to join the marches and meetings organised that people shared this view. Indeed, during the marches in Wales quite different perspectives were put forward with Leanne Wood AM stating, "As a mother I must condemn Hezbollah" while a RESPECT speaker stated "Hezbollah are not a terrorist organisation. Hezbollah are a national liberation organisation. They are the only force that stand between Beirut and Tel Aviv. And I want them win because Israel is an apartheid state founded on subjugation". What's interesting about liberals is that they believe that they have a right to peddle their badly thought out views but want to supress alternative views. We defended the pluralism of views within the anti-war movement and our right to present our socialist analysis.
(On a tangent: Would Lewislewis not agree that it is somewhat hypocritical and hillarious for Leanne Wood to condemn "as a mother" Hezbollah, but has nothing to say - "as a mother" about a huge UK Military Academy being built in the constituency she represents? You know the Military Academy that will chanel profits to Raytheon who manufactured the cluster bombs that now cover Lebanon and will blow the limbs and legs of children for years to come.
This reminds me of a talk I attended by the muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan. He was asked an interesting question by a concerned young person who stated support for the Palestinian and Iraqi people but their understandable concern at the violence associated with the resistance of these people.
Tariq made a pointed comment that it was our silence that was responsible for the violence. He said, maybe if we had resisted the war more in the colonising countries (where we don't have to resort to violence)then the colonised wouldn't have to resist so much. He stated that rather focusing on the opressed who actions we can have little influence on we should focus on the oppressor who we could influence.
That's why Leanne Wood is so morally reprehensive because she criticises the resistance of the oppressed while colluding with the military-industrial complex at home. If - as a mother - she condemned Hezbollah AND St Athan's we could respect her position. Though I don't think we should ever equate the violence of the oppressed and oppressor as equal)
Who were the forces who damaged the anti-war movement?
I think it was the LibDems who were put forward by the mainstream media as the "voice of the anti-war movement" and then derailed it by their support for the war once it began, their support for the wider war on terror and their fudging of the question of ending the occupation. Unfortunately, the radical anti-war movement didn't manage to get it's voices into the mainstream because of the wall of resistance from the establishment (For example, Greg Dyke fought to make sure that Stop the War Coalition representatives weren't interviewed by the BBC and banned BBC employees from attending the Feb15th demo).
I would say it was the British political class who have tolerated a situation in which the only heads to roll over Iraq were Greg Dyke, Andrew Gilligan and George Galloway MP. As someone recently stated, it was if during Watergate, Deep throat had resigned rather than Nixon! The British political class are actually more spineless than the Americans in the Vietnam era.
I would say it was the hypocritical politicians who queued up to speak on Stop the War platforms in the run-up to the war and then forgot their opposition once it began. The Labour politicians who spoke stirring anti-war words at Stop the War Coalition meetings and then in parliament failed to vote for an Iraq inquiry.
I would say it was the politicians who have supported the Military Academy and consistently fudged the question of an unconditional withdrawal of the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
I would say it was trade union bureaucrats like Andy Gilchrist who called off strike action in the run-up to the Iraq War so as not to embarras the Labour government. The TUC was supposed to call a special conference to discuss the Iraq War days before the invasion - this mysteriously disappeared.
There were also the liberals who joined all the marches in the run-up to the war and then abandoned the anti-war movement as soon as the bombs started dropping. Many of them - because of patriotism and nationalism - believing it was "wrong" to oppose the war when "our" boys were dying. That's why it is so important to challenge the idea that oppressed people don't have the right to resist.
I believe that the Stop the War Coalition has made many mistakes and perhaps could have done many things better, adopted different tactics, maybe encouraged more mass direct action, but I don't accept that this is the main factor in why the biggest protest movement in history didn't stop the war, I think it is more to do with the lack of "social weight" of the movement, nor do I believe that the "extremism" of the anti-war movement has been a key issue.
