CUT War Not Wages demonstrations that took place around Britain today could hardly be more important as we are dragged on a tide of propaganda towards a third world war.
The coming week marks the 20th anniversary of the largest march in British history — that against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Though it did not stop the war, it changed the country. The millions who marched against war were vindicated by the bloody morass of Iraq, the destabilisation of the region, the mounting evidence that not only were there never any “weapons of mass destruction” to find but that the US and British governments had lied through their teeth.
Parliament remained trigger-happy, and only a handful of MPs opposed the Libyan war of 2010-11. Hindsight damned that war too, though. And slowly public hostility to the “forever wars” of Bush and Blair began to register even at Westminster, as we saw when a bid to join the Syrian war was voted down in 2013 as Labour’s Ed Miliband took the brave decision to stand up to the warmongers.
This is a process the entire Establishment is now committed to reversing.
The Commons defence committee’s report on Afghanistan turns reality on its head: Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is presented as the disaster, not having invaded the country in the first place.
The horrendous oppression of Afghans, especially women, under the Taliban is all too real: but the goal of MPs like Tobias Ellwood is to portray Nato boots on the ground as the guarantor of other countries’ freedoms, as if it were not originally the United States that armed and unleashed Islamist insurgency in what had been a secular, socialist Afghanistan.
This is dangerous because Britain is getting closer to catastrophic conflict on multiple fronts.
Our involvement in the Aukus nuclear submarine pact with Australia and the United States, our provocative despatch of an aircraft carrier strike group to the China seas and our deepening military links with a rapidly rearming Japan show Britain’s leaders want to put us on the front line of any US-China conflict.
Back at home, the cross-party lionisation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Parliament this week makes it politically more difficult to oppose his demands for ever more powerful weaponry — though as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warns, the competition to outdo other countries in rushing deadly weapons to Ukraine is risky business.
Scholz was a victim of a press gang — including Britain — which bullied Germany into sending tanks to Ukraine. The demand has immediately risen to include fighter jets, though even Washington still advises against such an inflammatory step.
Last year, the White House briefed against Liz Truss, noting her support for escalating war with Russia was more about her own standing in the Tory Party than strategic interests. Now, disgraced ex-PM Boris Johnson is loudest in the “arm Ukraine” camp.
The motive of the brute who joked about “clearing the dead bodies away” after the Libyan catastrophe is not to help Ukrainians. It is his own political comeback. In this cause he is egging us to the brink of nuclear war.
It is outrageous that left and socialist MPs who otherwise see through this charlatan are taking up the same cry. Downplaying the very real risk of direct war with Russia is deeply irresponsible.
The Tories bulldozing our civil and political rights are not champions of democracy whose lead on foreign affairs can be safely followed.
Nor can the left plausibly combine support for increases in the military budget with support for the pay demands of nurses, teachers, rail and postal workers.
Brazilian President Lula declined to send arms to Ukraine by noting his war was against poverty, not Russia. It is past time the British left united around a similar programme.
