The Stop the War Coalition has organised 19 demonstrations against the Bush “war on terror” since the autumn of 2001. Among them have been the largest political protests this country has ever seen. All of them have passed off without disorder or violent incident.
Today our protest has been banned. Three meetings were held with the Metropolitan police at which no objection was raised to our proposal to rally in Trafalgar Square and then march past parliament before dispersing (allowing marchers to lobby their own MPs).
At the fourth meeting – a week ago – the police suddenly advised us we could not go ahead. It would seem clear that this shift in attitude was the result of political intervention, from the Home Office perhaps but more likely, in this tightly controlled administration, from Downing Street.
The legal pretext is ancient laws designed to stop riots aimed at preventing MPs making their way to the House of Commons – laws that were not deployed against the Countryside Alliance, for example. Obstructing MPs is not, of course our intention. Rather, it is to galvanise our representatives into doing something useful about the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming menace of an attack on Iran, once they get there.
We chose today for the protest because it is MPs first day back after their prolonged summer break. MPs have, with well-known honourable exceptions, been the weak link of our anti-war movement. Pressure from parliament on the government to end the Iraq occupation or even account for the decision to go to war in 2003 has been feeble, even by comparison with the US Congress.
The government’s decision to attempt to wall itself off from this message today seems an odd one. It is only a fortnight since Gordon Brown promised the Labour party conference: “change to make the executive more accountable … Change to strengthen our liberties to uphold the freedom of speech, freedom of information and the freedom to protest.”
My own assumption is that in the frenzied pre-election spin of the last 10 days, someone felt that pictures of an anti-war march outside the Commons might cut across the prime minister’s cynical Basra photo opportunity with the troops, in the great game of electoral iconography.
Whether for that reason or another, this assault on the right to demonstrate has certainly had the effect of boosting the size of today’s march. People are never so keen to exercise their rights as when they feel they are under threat. That even goes for people who may not agree with everything the Stop the War Coalition has to say. So we are going ahead in a few hours’ time, now making a point about freedom as well as about war.
And if the government wants to risk pictures going round the world of British citizens being violently prevented from protesting against a criminal and unpopular war outside the seat of parliamentary democracy – well, those pictures will still be out there in spring 2008, 2009, or whenever.
The Stop the War Coalition has organised 19 demonstrations against the Bush “war on terror” since the autumn of 2001. Among them have been the largest political protests this country has ever seen. All of them have passed off without disorder or violent incident.
Today our protest has been banned. Three meetings were held with the Metropolitan police at which no objection was raised to our proposal to rally in Trafalgar Square and then march past parliament before dispersing (allowing marchers to lobby their own MPs).
At the fourth meeting – a week ago – the police suddenly advised us we could not go ahead. It would seem clear that this shift in attitude was the result of political intervention, from the Home Office perhaps but more likely, in this tightly controlled administration, from Downing Street.
The legal pretext is ancient laws designed to stop riots aimed at preventing MPs making their way to the House of Commons – laws that were not deployed against the Countryside Alliance, for example. Obstructing MPs is not, of course our intention. Rather, it is to galvanise our representatives into doing something useful about the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming menace of an attack on Iran, once they get there.
We chose today for the protest because it is MPs first day back after their prolonged summer break. MPs have, with well-known honourable exceptions, been the weak link of our anti-war movement. Pressure from parliament on the government to end the Iraq occupation or even account for the decision to go to war in 2003 has been feeble, even by comparison with the US Congress.
The government’s decision to attempt to wall itself off from this message today seems an odd one. It is only a fortnight since Gordon Brown promised the Labour party conference: “change to make the executive more accountable … Change to strengthen our liberties to uphold the freedom of speech, freedom of information and the freedom to protest.”
My own assumption is that in the frenzied pre-election spin of the last 10 days, someone felt that pictures of an anti-war march outside the Commons might cut across the prime minister’s cynical Basra photo opportunity with the troops, in the great game of electoral iconography.
Whether for that reason or another, this assault on the right to demonstrate has certainly had the effect of boosting the size of today’s march. People are never so keen to exercise their rights as when they feel they are under threat. That even goes for people who may not agree with everything the Stop the War Coalition has to say. So we are going ahead in a few hours’ time, now making a point about freedom as well as about war.
And if the government wants to risk pictures going round the world of British citizens being violently prevented from protesting against a criminal and unpopular war outside the seat of parliamentary democracy – well, those pictures will still be out there in spring 2008, 2009, or whenever.