Resistance Is Not Futile!

A demonstration estimated at between 30,000 and 60,000 strong marched through Manchester on Saturday, September 23, 2006.

The spirit of the demonstration transcended the occasion, namely a protest at the Labour Party Conference, and a message to Labour. Rather, it was a manifestation of how broad and deep is the opposition to the warmongering course of Britain, a course that is summed up and concentrated in the person of Tony Blair, who has carried out the bidding and been the champion of the vested interests of the rich and economically and politically powerful.

It could also be said that, being staged at the Labour Party Conference, the demonstration was both a manifestation of the organised workers who participated, including the trade unions who sponsored and supported it, and addressed to the broad section of the workers that the necessity is to break with everything that is old, put forward under the banner of "modernisation", that is again represented and epitomised by Tony Blair and his "Third Way".

The demonstration opposed and condemned all that the warmongering course of the government represents: its aggression against and occupation of the former sovereign Iraq and Afghanistan; its threats against and interference in sovereign states such as Iran; its attempts to wipe out the heroic resistance to the strategic plans of Anglo-US imperialism in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere; its militarisation of the economy in Britain including in particular the plans to replace the Trident nuclear missiles; its alliance with and subservience to US imperialism.

Above all, the sentiment of the demonstration and rally was to condemn strictly as war criminals the Tony Blair coterie, and to sweep away this rottenness, chauvinism and hypocrisy from British political life. In this respect, the message of the demonstration was summed up as much as anything by the call of the court-marshalled Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, who has upheld that the Nuremberg principles must be followed that it is a duty to disobey illegal orders: "Resistance Is Not Futile!"

This spirit of resistance and the determination to oppose what is unjust and criminal was also manifested in the Peace Camp of the military families. This is simply the spirit that not a single soldier must be sent to die in an unjust war, that all troops must be removed from foreign soil, and that the government must be held accountable for the deaths of its military personnel as well as the innocent victims of aggression and occupation.

The unity of the broad sections of the working class and people was also a hallmark of the demonstration. At its best, it reflected that the political groupings and the Muslim organisations which took part did not do so as representing ghettoised communities or to further some narrow interests, but as part of a broad and powerful movement nationally and internationally to end war, to resist oppression and to establish a society based on what is best in human beings. It is this consciousness which is making the anti-war movement so powerful, and is developing its momentum along the line of march of bringing into being an anti-war government.