The mood was like that on Feb 15 but more serious. pluralistic, with different focusses for the protests, some around drummers, some around loudspeakers.
Greenpeace projected enormous slogans on a huge awning in front of a building that is being washed: "War is not the answer". "Not in my name."
Many of the banners of the political groups denounced imperialism.
One woman speaker from a modest stage denounced the middle east peace map as a sham and a lie. A US activist from the 60's emphasised how it had taken years to get the US unions lined up against the Vietnam war, but now they are coming forward much more promptly. The speeches were ended by Andrew Murray, from Stop the War Coalition emphasising that the demonstration this Saturday, along the same route as that of Feb 15th will be the most important demonstration of the campaign. He called on people to face the Houses of Parliament and shout No War! Blair out!
The paper of the small Communist Party of Great Britain, an organisation deriving from a Trotskyist background after the historical CPGB changed into Democratic Left, were calling on people to "Organise people's assemblies everyewhere. Fight for them to become an alternative centre of power." and "Replace the professional standing army with popular militias"
The larger Socialist Workers party had a number of stalls and were selling their paper with an article acclaiming "Labour's deepest crisis in generations: "What is needed now is for all those disaffected Labour supporters, trade unionists and anti-war activists to come together to build a powerful left challenge to New Labour. Blair can survive if opposition is restricted to parliamentary games and discontent in his own party which the hierarchy can sit on or dismiss.
It can be a different story if he and the New Labour machine are confronted with an organised left opposition that fights for them on every front."
I report. (I do not agree with what seems to me to be a diversion into the politics of the Labour Party rather than a widening into a campaign for global peace and justice. However we shall see.)
Chris Burford London
