Dear marcher, please answer a few questions
David Aaronovitch
Tuesday February 18, 2003
If I'd been a marcher, I would gloat, too. Ever since the weekend it's been like one long sugary Coca-Cola ad: "We are the world, we are the people..." All those years demonstrating about everything from abortion to Zimbabwe and now, when there is the biggest demo in British history, I can't clap along.
Leaving the war aside for a moment, something is definitely happening. The past 12 months have seen three of the greatest public demonstrations in British history: last Sunday's rally, the Countryside march and the Queen Mother's walk-past. The governing cynicism of the 90s, as exemplified by writers such as PJ O'Rourke, has given way to the desire to give personal witness to historical events. It is now actually fashionable to pick up a placard with a slogan on it and walk for a few miles in the company of thousands of others. People want to say they "were there". I cannot see that as a bad thing.
Even so, some things get up an old marcher's nose. The Sunday Telegraph had no trouble in finding what it called "moderate" protesters, such as 57-year-old Chelsea businessman Jonathan Callow, who had been on only one previous demonstration - with the Countryside Alliance. Sourly, I wondered how he had resisted all those entreaties we had made for him to support the anti-apartheid movement after Sharpeville and Soweto, or to march against the endless Vietnam war, and yet now was turning out every three months or so. Another woman more or less explained it. "Saddam is not threatening us," she told the Telegraph reporter, "The government should spend the money on British jobs, hospitals and the rural economy." Not in my name. Not in my back yard.
So, in this moment of extraordinary success, I wanted to ask those who went on the demonstration some questions. I wanted to ask whether, among your hundreds of thousands, the absences bothered you? The Kurds, the Iraqis - of whom there are many thousands in this country - where were they? Why were they not there? When Tony Benn was confronted by a young pro-war Iraqi woman on Channel 4 news on Saturday night, why did he describe the organisations of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition as "CIA stooges"?
Did some of the slogans bother you? Do you really believe that this parroted "war about oil" stuff is true? If so, what were the interventions in oil-less Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan about? What did you feel about the marchers wearing stickers bearing the Israeli flag and the words "the fascist state"? Did you say to yourself, "Actually, there's only one fascist state in this equation, and it's the one we're effectively marching to save"?
If you got to Hyde Park, did some of the speeches bother you? How about the equivalence used by Tony Benn, as in, "If there are inspectors in Iraq, I want to see inspectors in Israel, inspectors in Britain and inspectors in America"? Name Welsh villages attacked with chemical weapons by British bombers in the past 20 years.
Do you agree with Harold Pinter that the US is "a country run by a bunch of criminals ... with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug"? Is there any word in that sentence, apart from Tony, Blair and Christian, that isn't quite mad? What about rail union leader Bob Crow's suggestion that the government be brought down by civil action? Are you up for that?
If you think that it's all nonsense but you don't mind, then perhaps you can explain the extraordinary speech by Charles Kennedy MP. Here is the boss of a top party, yet one cannot tell what his view on war against Saddam actually is. Instead his speech was all about how unconvincing Blair's arguments were. "I have yet," he said, "to be persuaded that the case for war against Iraq has been made." It's been made, Charles, and if you don't agree with it, why don't you just say so? Stop blathering on about how "people are suspicious and scared" and tell them what you think ought to be done. Or is there a serious case for war, but you didn't want to say so in front of a million demonstrators?
Back to those demonstrators, and just to ask, do you believe that Blair should act on your demands because so many people turned out on Saturday? If so, do you also think he should halt plans for the housing of asylum seekers in Lee-on-Solent because, at the same time as you marched, one-third of Lee's entire population took to the streets to demand no asylum seekers in their town? Did the way the demo was reported in Baghdad bother you? Not your fault, but did you have any worry afterwards that it might make Saddam more obdurate and not less? Or maybe, like Benn, you don't much care.
While we're about it, why do you think Saddam readmitted inspectors after nearly five years in the first place? Was it because he felt it was the right thing to do? Or was it because of the threat of force? If it was the latter, what does this tell you? Should your protest bear fruit, are sanctions part of your preferred containment strategy (should you desire one)? If not, what replaces them? What do you mean, you don't know?
Finally, what are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be - that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?
You could still be right and I could be mistaken. A war could be far bloodier than I imagine, the consequences far worse than I believe they will be. It is just possible that a new Iraqi government, instead of moving towards democracy, might be a corrupt oligarchy. All I can say is that the signs look relatively promising in both Kosovo and Afghanistan.
On the other hand, what if you are wrong?