As the 20 March anniversary of the invasion of Iraq again draws near, imperialism has never been more desperate to obscure from view the humiliation of its imminent defeat at the hands of the patriotic resistance forces.
There has never been a better moment for the anti-war movement to cast aside all prevarication and declare itself in solidarity with those whose courage and determination has brought our imperialist masters to such a pass. No single political step would do more to weaken the cords that bind the British working class to social democracy than such a frank assertion of solidarity.
At this crucial juncture, what is the response of the Stop the War Coalition?
After an earlier tentative proposal to mark the anniversary with a national demonstration, the StWC appears to have lost interest in the idea. Instead, the Steering Group is opting to draw attention away from the anniversary, instead tucking in behind CND’s plans for an anti-Trident demo on 24 February.
Whilst practical considerations might reasonably have seen the demo shifted to the Saturday before or after the actual anniversary of the start of the war, the decision to pre-empt the anniversary by an entire month, and to subordinate even the half-hearted ‘Troops Out’ slogan to the CND’s single-issue ‘No Trident’ demand, can only be political.
For Stop the War to choose this of all moments to turn its back on the triumph of the Iraqi resistance, doing its damnedest to lock the whole anti-war movement behind the narrow, bourgeois-pacifist agenda of the CND, demonstrates political cowardice of the worst kind.
Communists will of course be supporting the February march, and we urge all in the anti-war movement to do the same. Our watchword, however, will remain:
Victory to the Iraqi resistance!
