By IRNA,
London : History showed that protest marches and demonstrations would work, said Lindsey German, national convenor of Stop the War Coalition (STWC), Britain’s biggest peace group network on Saturday.
“All the major gains achieved in Britain – from the vote for workers and women, to the right to join trade unions, the right to demonstrate, the welfare state itself – were only granted as a result of protest, campaigning and struggles until they were won,” German said.
‘Many of those involved made great sacrifices, from the Tolpuddle martyrs transported to Australia for trying to form a union, to the suffragettes who went on hunger strike for their cause,” she added.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of English agricultural laborers seeking to gain better working conditions in the 19th century. Suffragettes sought to win women’s right to vote in Britain 100 years ago.
German said that the long tradition of suffragettes understood that “appeals to the better nature of politicians simply would not get them very far.”
“We should remember this when listening to the outrage about the broken windows of the Conservative Party headquarters on Millbank, when it was occupied by students on the anti-cuts demonstration,” she said in a reference to this week’s mass demonstration in London against trebling university fees.
Prior to the protest, the biggest in London since the height of the Iraq war, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats Simon Hughes tried to argue that change only came about by the power of reason and debate.
But the STWC convenor said that protests do work.
“By going on the streets, the students have asserted that there is an alternative to simply sitting back and accepting the hideous consensus which passes for political debate in most quarters.”
“Demonstrations also help to build confidence and solidarity among those who demonstrate – they establish that the protesters are not isolated but part of a bigger movement.”
“This has been one of the most important aspects of the anti war movement. It has created a culture of protest and a network of activists who have helped to spread the movement,” she said in a posting on STWC website.
German said the anti-war movement leading to the biggest protest marches even seen in London “helped build a mass consciousness in Britain, have got rid of Tony Blair, who was forced to agree to stand down as prime minister just days after the demonstration against Israel’s barbaric Lebanon demo in 2005.”
“They have helped fight Islamophobia and attacks on civil liberties. They have made future wars harder to justify,” she said.
With a government determined to destroy the welfare state while still justifying billions spent every year on the war in Afghanistan and on weapons of mass destruction, she said “anti-war demonstrators should be making links with the students, demanding to cut the war not education.”
Next Saturday, STWC is holding a national march against the Afghan war as it enters its 10th year to again press for the immediate withdrawal of British troops. One of the slogans is ‘Cut wars, not jobs and public spending.’
“We expect many students and school students, as well as peace activists and trade unionists, to be there. We need a lot more marching, as well as direct action, if we are to win a world that prioritises welfare provision and public services for all, rather than wars that bring nothing but mass slaughter and destruction,” German said.