BY PHIL HEARSE
LONDON — More than 50,000 people participated in a marched through this city's streets on November 18 to protest the war in Afghanistan.
Organised by the Stop the War coalition, the march was notable both for the much-increased labour movement participation since the last big anti-war action in October, and the large number of students and other young people who took part.
Among the speakers at the Trafalgar Square rally were veteran Labour left leader Tony Benn, Bianca Jagger, Labour MP Paul Marsden, and Paul Macknee, leader of the college lecturers' union NATFHE.
Benn told the rally that "we are witnessing the birth of a world-wide peace movement" and denounced the US-UK war effort as terrorism. Macknee received a rapturous response to his strident attack on US imperialism, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the reactionary Arab states which are part of the "war on terrorism".
Prominent among trade unionists present were delegations from the local government union UNISON, the Transport and General Workers Union, the National Union of Teachers, the rail unions RMT and ASLEF, the Fire Brigades Union. Hospital workers from various parts of the country also took part.
Also present were delegations from Muslim organisations (who made up perhaps 10% of the march), the Green Party and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Thanks to the decline of the Labour left and the disappearance of the Communist Party, the political complexion of such mobilisations has changed over the past two decades. The key organisers of the Stop the War coalition come from the revolutionary left, and particularly the Socialist Workers Party.
Despite the anti-war coalition's broad base of support, the political stamp of the radical left was all over this demonstration, with thousands of its supporters present in union and coalition contingents, as well as the contingents of the Socialist Alliance and radical left groups.
From Green Left Weekly, November 28, 2001.
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