Stop the War Coaltion

This is a mirror of the Stop the Stop the War Coalition which is no longer online. Thie site was authored by a British leftist and provides invaluable insight into the STWC. It is mirrored with permission of the creator.)

Part One

A Personal Journey Through the Stop the War Coalition

The phone rang.

The caller introduced himself as being from the local branch of the Stop the War Coalition. He was calling, he said, because I had signed a petition opposing the impending invasion of Iraq, and had indicated that I would be interested in receiving further information. The Stop the War Coalition would be running a stand on my local shopping street that weekend, and would I be willing to help out?

It was March 2003, and Britain was only a matter of weeks from a seemingly inevitable war against Iraq, for reasons that seemed unclear and inconsistent. The British and US governments were making themselves a laughing stock at the UN Security Council, declaring Iraq to be a threat based on the flimsiest of evidence, and I, like many people in Britain, was unhappy. I had already joined a protest march in my city, and had been pleasantly surprised, not only by the number of people who turned up, but also by the positive reaction from passers by as we marched through our city centre. Spurred on by this, I decided a couple of weeks later to travel to London for the famous February 15th march.

I don’t think any of the 750,000 to 2 million people (estimates vary, but whichever figure you want to believe, it was a hell of a lot) who marched, or at times it would be more accurate to say, shuffled through London on that freezing February afternoon will forget the experience. A gigantic swarm of humanity flowed from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park, with just about every section of society apparently in evidence. What one would call the usual suspects of protest demos - the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Alliance etc, etc - were certainly there. But also tramping through the London streets were church groups, trade unions, Lib Dems, environmental groups. Other people had brought with them banners declaring themselves “Americans against the war” or “An Israeli against the war”. My personal favourite that day was a teenage girl holding a segment of cardboard on which she had written, “My mum reads the Daily Mail, and even she opposes the war.” (Incidentally, you could say the same about my own mum too.) I arrived in Hyde Park just in time to hear the crowd addressed by the Revd. Jesse Jackson, who gave a speech so passionate and eloquent that I consider that moment, standing in the middle of a vast crowd, my face and feet numb with cold as the Revd. Jackson spoke with the force of a gospel preacher, as one of the most moving moments of my life. That evening, as I returned home, I felt that I had been part of something unstoppable, something great, something that would be almost impossible to defeat.

So, when the call came a few weeks after that, I readily agreed to help out. I arrived at the stall on the day, and spent an hour handing out leaflets and persuading shoppers to sign petitions. From that day, I became increasingly involved in the StW Coalition. I attended meetings, went on marches, stewarded coaches and joined sit-ins as the politicians ignored the will of the British public and the troops flooded into Iraq.

I left the StW Coalition about two-and-a-half weeks after the war started. By that time, there seemed little reason to carry on. After all, the war was almost over, and in a matter of days US troops would be pulling down Saddam’s statue in the centre of Baghdad. More than this however, I was prompted to leave because of the way the character of the coalition radically altered as the war progressed. Within a matter of weeks, even days, the StW Coalition practically imploded from a vast, diverse movement to an unrepresentative clique dominated by extremists. I saw some wonderful expressions of people power during my time in the coalition, but I also saw some disturbing sights that became more prominent in the coalition as time went on. I saw extreme views being expressed virtually unchallenged, and the coalition embarked after the war on a badly, thought-out, counterproductive “End the Occupation” campaign (which I critique elsewhere on this site). The StW Coalition, which once spoke for the majority of the people of Britain, now spoke only for a small, unrepresentative minority, peddling extreme views hidden behind a façade of respectability.

I vowed to have nothing more to do with the StW Coalition. A vow I admittedly wound up breaking when I decided to join the protests against Bush’s visit to London on November 2003. Despite this, I have created this website to explain the goings-on in the StW Coalition, and why it is necessary to pursue forms of protest that are not based around the narrow interests and fixations of a small cabal of extremists.

This website discusses a number of issues about the way the coalition operates. I look at the influence of the extreme left on its organisation and ethos, at its attitude to the question of Palestine, and I provide a critique of its “End the Occupation” campaign that it has embarked on after the war. Where possible, I've tried to reference what I say using online sources, so people can see that I'm not simply making it all up.

Go to Part Two

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