Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Carlisle shows the way

Socialist Resistance no3  |  page 13

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

A ing organsed by the Carlite Stop round 200 people packed a meetThe War campaign. queued to get into the Old Town Hall, where Labour MP Alan Simpson, a prominent anti-war campaigner, and Peter Doyle, regional organiser of UNISON, spoke out against the war.

Maxim Ford, from Carlisle Stop the War, said, "We never expected to have such a big public response. Public meetings in Carlisle like this seem to have dried up. But this was never about numbers; it was more a moral imperative to do this. This is not a pacifist organisation. This is an organisation that thinks this war is wrong and shouldn't actuAlan Simpson who is also chair of Labour against the War said. " The numbers of people who turned out has confirmed what I'm getting everywhere I go around the country. There is a real sense of disenchantment. If a war is fought I think it will be a short, massive, bloody war. The values of the west will be the values of the Wild West"

Peter Doyle from UNISON said, "People being here is the first step to standing up saying no more war. It is not simply about war; it is about all our priorities. Although we are not in the Middle East we will be directly affected by this war."

Carlisle Stop the War campaign which has only just been set up, has collected over 500 signatures against the war and has booked a coach to the demonstration in Glasgow on the 15th of February. Maxim Ford told Socialist Resistance that he has been inundated with calls from all over Cumbria in support of the campaign. stals in the town centre, where tures, and even got the support from local MP Eric Martlew when one campaigner was arrested for leafleting inside a shopMr. Martlew said "we must defend the right to demonstrate and protest". This is a change which we can see all over the country in the ranks of the Labour Party. Even the right wing leader of the Labour Group in Cumbria's county council is against the war. There is a growing feeling ordinary people can do something and it is effecting the

The daily paper in Carlisle has come out against the war, and ran an interview with Canon Richard Pratt, who said

"The idea of a pre-emptive strike is tantamount to anarchy. It just makes you think about the playground - I'm going to hit you in case you hit me." Stop the War - Around the World