A report by Communist Students member Robbie Folkard

This evening there was a quite interesting but uneventful rally held by Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition featuring academic Terry Eagleton, ‘Guardian’ journalist Seamus Milne and Socialist Workers Party leader, John Rees.

Most of the contributions were the usual deal, the importance and strength of Stop the War (in particular the notion that it was Stop the War that provoked the fall of Tony Blair!?) and the need for us to continue ‘building’. Seamus Milne talked of the “staying power” of Stop the War, despite the fact that the leaders may have stayed, but the majority of the two million people who took to the streets of London in 2003 had drifted on by. After spending most of his time discussing the neo-cons project to sustain US hegemony, Milne’s final call was that it is “now time to turn the heat up”- to kick Gordon Brown when he was down. This was echoed by most of the contributors who argued that the demonstration on the 20th could really ‘change things’. Really?

Terry Eagleton provided his usual witty contributions, and spent most of his time discussing state and terror. He argued, quite rightly, that ‘terror’ is a form of political authority, that creates states and is then institutionalised to defend those states- barbarism and civilisation are ‘two sides of the same coin’. He also talked of the fact that the conflicts which make up the ‘War on Terror’ are part and parcel of the system of advanced capitalism, something implied but never openly said by the others.

SWPer and author of ‘Imperialism and Resistance’, John Rees, made much of the hypocricy of the US and UK condemning Russia for attacking a ‘sovereign nation state’, when they were guilty of exactly the same offence. He argued that we were now in a period of a ‘new imperialism’ since the end of the Cold War, but that this period of a ‘unipolar world’ is in the process of being replaced by a ‘multipolar’ one- a fact apparently demonstrated in the Caucusus recently. The US ‘War on Terror’ is now destabilising the world relations of ‘major powers’ and consequently we are now entering into a much more dangerous period. He concluded that Stop the War must educate people about these developments and build up a movement to stop these processes, before the rivalry between the US and its regional rivals (such as Russia) turns into ‘hot war’- our central task is of course to stop the plans of ‘our leaders’.

While all the speakers and contributers spoke that we need to build a ‘movement’ to stop imperialism, the only strategy offered is to march and march again, such as on the 20th. The only alternative was offered by Jason Travis of Permanent Revolution and Bolton NUT, who talked of the power of working class action, and that the only force that will ultimately be able to defeat the imperialists is the working class- both nationally, and as part of an international working class movement. This contribution resulted, of course, in the usual murmurs of shock and derision by local SWPers. Injecting real working class politics into the anti-war movement is of course a complete no-no. It is fine to talk of imperialism, but never in the context of taking on capitalism as a system. The solution is of course the ‘broad movement’, not the international working class. When SWPers talked of an ‘alternative’, they meant an alternative to Brown and Miliband, not global capital.

Unless the logic of hiding your politics, hiding the real solutions, from people in a bid to build a bigger ‘movement’ is challenged, we wont be able to stop these wars let alone build the force needed to defeat imperialism and bring down capitalism and usher in human freedom and peace- a peace which the ‘movement’ is supposed to be all about.