press and New Labour seek to undermine and destroy the anti-war movement. What is more damaging is when an
attack comes from within the movement
itself.
Mark Thomas's piece is in the tradition of
old-time anti-communist witch-hunts. Its
method is one of smear and innuendo and it is based on complete fabrication.
What seems to annoy Thomas most is that the SWP is a disciplined political organisation that produces and sells (very big crime) a weekly paper and has political ideas based on those of Marx and Trotsky (even bigger crime). The SWP, of course, can defend their politics against Thomas. But in order to pursue his attack on the SWP, he has distorted the history of the anti-war movement and of the Stop the War Coalition in particular.
It is necessary to deal with his economies of truth in some detail. 'The SWP dominated the Stop the War Coalition (STW)*
Stop the War is a genuine coalition. The steering committee was elected at an 800strong national conference in January and includes representatives from many different organisations. Thomas not only expresses reckless ignorance about the democratic structure of the Coalition, but more importantly shows his complete contempt for all those working in STW who are not in the SWP - in fact the vast majority. The SWP is, however, an important and hardworking element within STW. *The SWP would call a demonstration and then inform its [coalition] partners after the press release had gone out'
Thomas doesn't mention which demonstrations he is referring to. The fact is that the SWP never called a single national demonstration. The decisions on demonstrations were always taken through the STW steering committee on which the SWP are a tiny minority: 5 members out of 40. Once a decision was taken with regard to a demonstration - and this year there have been three (February 15, March 22 and
April 12) - a discussion took place with
CND and the Muslim Association of Britain
(MAB) as to whether they wished to jointly
organise or to support these demonstrations.
The decision to hold a demonstration on
February 15 was taken back in October last year. The date became an international one and there were demonstrations all over the
For March 22, STW and CND had a preexisting agreement to hold a national demonstration on the first Saturday after war broke out. The April 12 march was organised jointly with CND and the MAB. *The SWP actively undermined protests and demonstrations that were independent of them'
Thomas gives not a single example of this because, I suspect, there are none. Never let the truth intrude when you are in full flow. 'On the London demonstration on 22 March it was the SWP stewards who tried to stop protestors taking part in a spontaneous demonstration outside Downing Street'
There were no SWP stewards on the March 22 demonstration. It is not clear what Thomas is referring to here. Possibly it relates to the CND action outside Downing Street on the morning of the demonstration; if so, then there was agreement with CND that their action would end when the march started.
If he is referring to an impromptu sitdown by a section of the march, then he should be aware that the question of sitdowns was discussed at the open stewards meeting with stewards from STW, CND and the MAB present.
It was agreed that the march should be taken around sit-downs. The majority of marchers wanted to march, get to Hyde Park and hear the speeches. The stewards' role was to make that possible. Either way, the SWP was not involved. T the ant war movement to Weary homas distorts the real history of
This own pessimism. He considers the demonstrations to have been a 'massive tactical error'. For Thomas, it would have been better if we had just shut up shop during the war and not had any national demonstrations at all.
The reality was that the demonstration .... after the war broke out was the largest ever to take place during wartime. During the Falklands war and the first Gulf war there were demos after war broke out, but none on the scale of March 22. If we must take the 2-million strong march on February 15 as our benchmark, then we would never hold another national demonstration!
Thomas attempts to divide the movement by counterposing demonstrations outside military bases to national demonstrations.
This should be strongly resisted. The strength of the movement lies in its diversity and its unity. There are organisations which concentrate their work around the US and British military bases; this is not the focus of STW, although activists from STW attend those actions and they are advertised on our web site.
mass movement can engage in a A
broad range of work. At this time the most important objective is to maintain the unity of the whole anti-war and peace movement. At its last meeting the CND national council agreed that the joint work with STW and MAB should be continued, and this is certainly the position of STW and MAB
The Bush-led war on terror, although now 18 months old, is still in its early phases There will be further unprovoked wars. The situations in both Afghanistan and Iraq are unresolved and there is certain to be a continuing struggle by the Iraqi people against occupation, which we must support.
Our movement, which was able to mobilise such large numbers on February 15, will do so again. It is important to write honestly about the history of this period.
The Mark Thomas article does not do this; it is a destructive piece of work that should find its way to the nearest litter bin.