One year ago, on and around February 15, 1 million people marched in Australia against the impending invasion of Iraq. This was the biggest ever simultaneous global protest — more than 30 million around the world — and the biggest in Australian history too. It was an amazing and deeply inspiring expression of people's power.
While we did not stop the war, this great people's movement slowed and inhibited the invasion plans of the "coalition of the killing". The echo of this massive mobilisation still reverberates and continues to limit the choices that the US and allied occupiers have in their permanent global war "against terrorism". Despite 9/11, a majority of the world's people did not believe the lies and "anti-terror" hype coming from Washington to justify the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, and millions were prepared to come out onto the streets to make their voices heard.
Now history is confirming that we were right. The world was not under threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This war was launched on a blatant lie by the governments of the US, Britain and Australia. Our movement will take strength from this confirmation to become a visible force again. Since the "end" of the war, the movement did take a step back. Certainly, visible mass opposition to the Iraq war fell away, almost as quickly as it rose. Many people who marched last February thought that there was no point continuing to march, as the invasion had gone ahead apparently with success.
The ALP, late starters in organising an anti-war opposition, quickly capitulated once the invasion began. Only a small proportion of people who participated in the protests were involved in a political organisation that was working for ongoing changes in policy. As a result, it has been difficult to sustain a massive anti-war presence without consistent anti-war organisational and political support on a large scale.
The anti-war protests were marked by the preponderance of home-made placards and banners, a sign that this was a profoundly broad movement. Such semi-spontaneous mass protesting has been a feature of popular politics in Australia for at least the last five years. It was a feature of the anti-racist reaction to Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 1998, the community pickets supporting the maritime workers' union against government-employer attacks, the 1999 protests to stop the carnage in East Timor, and the mass support for the organisers of the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in 2000.
Most people who participated in these movements were sharply aware that this wasn't just some isolated injustice we were opposing. Most of us knew that each of these attacks was linked to the same agenda: the growing global domination of a very powerful and greedy corporate elite. We could see that this system was both unjust and unsustainable. Yet we were not able to come together as an ongoing and united resistance to the system as a whole.
One reason for the semi-spontaneous character of these movements is the fact that they challenge all the big political parties. In confronting the Liberal-National coalition and ALP governments, we continually come up against the same neoliberal policies. Also, there is considerable distrust of the conservative-led trade unions, because too many of them have proven to be unreliable as vehicles for resistance — and have been seen to be so for some time. As a result, there is even distrust of organisation itself. Can we organise without being corrupted and co-opted?
But a growing number of people who took part in last year's anti-war demonstrations have since decided that it is not enough to come in and out of political action with the rise and fall of campaigns around this or that issue. All around the world there are initiatives that take up Arundhati Roy's challenge at the recent Mumbai World Social Forum to become an ongoing global resistance.
One such initiative is the Socialist Alliance in Australia, which has united a range of groups and individuals to build an ongoing movement for progressive social change. We have identified our project as socialist — that is, we work for the replacement of the current profit-based system with a democratic, cooperative and ecologically sustainable society. However, we are still defining how we can win such change through a process of democratic discussion and collective experience. We are also active in initiating and organising broader campaigns and alliances to campaign around specific issues, such as opposition to the war in Iraq, in support of asylum seekers and against their mandatory detention.
We invite you to join us in this project.
Pip Hinman
[Pip Hinman is co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance national anti-war steering committee.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, February 18, 2004.
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