Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Liverpool protests Rice visit

by Fisher Gate  |  Socialist Resistance no34  |  page 2-3

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.

Several thousand protesters gathered in Liverpool to demonstrate against the visit by US Secretary of State Condaleezza Rice. Rice had been invited to the city by

Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw as part of a tour of the northWCOL.

Throughout the visit, Rice and Straw were dogged by

protesters WInG made the Iraq war front- page news, locally and nationally. Sky News carried live coverage of the demonstrations.

The demonstrators were in a buoyant and festive mood, with an element of street carnival. Stickers proclaimed "Fab 4 not War", in a reference to Rice?' alleged admiration of the Beatles in their home city, while speakers boomed out John Lennon's anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance".

A rally on the steps of Liverpool's catholic cathedral drew together local and national anti-war speakers, and culminated in Respect National Secretary John Rees' call for action. An eight-page North West Respect newspaper to support the local election camDalous Liverpool, Manchester and Preston was well received, and Respect placards and banners were in evidence.

Some trade union banners were present, such as the TGWU and the Liverpool branch of the National Union of Teachers. The decision of local

SULLIC celebrities to boycott the event was cnecrea by lne crowd, as was the protest by local at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts to turn their backs on Rice and Straw to protest against the continuing occupation of Iraq.

The

demonstrators marched along Hope Street to protest against the visit to the Philharmonic Hall for a classical music concert, though even the TV news had to point out that security was so elaborate that Rice had to be whisked in out of shot of cameras. The next dav around a thousana promarched LESLEIS Blackburn.

The protests did much to reinvigorate the Stop the War campaign in the North West and Respect's campaign in the local elections will have Teceived a Doost Too. Harmondsworth, Around 200 people, mostly refugees, protested at the Harmondsworth detention centre on April 8. Speakers included former detainees from Yarlswood and refugees from Ethiopia, Uganda and Iran.

Phone calls were also taken on the speaker's platform from Zimbabwean detainees who were inside the prison. Police showed up in large numbers of around 80-100, with full camera units in an attempt to harass and discourage demonstrators and also blocked off access to the back of the centre so that those detained would be unable to hear the solidarity of those at the rally. Karachi, Pakistan The last leg of the Polycentric World Social Forum took place in Pakistan from March 24-29, attended by 35,000 people from 59 countries - a London add anything of substance". Charles Clarke released a press statement in late March which attempts to downplay the findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) regarding the death in custody of Christopher Alder in 1998.

Despite the IPCC's conclusions that "unwitting racism" played a factor in Alder's death, that the treatment of the family after the death was unacceptable, and that the investigation into the death was "inadequately resourced and directed",

Clarke maintained that calls for a public inquiry and a further investigation "would not