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At
the end of last year I took part in an anti-war march
through Belfast City Centre. There were about 300
of us. From the sidewalks swathes of people, vastly
greater in number than were on our march, gazed upon
us. Some seemed puzzled, others plainly would rather
we were not disturbing their Saturday shopping routine.
It seemed Belfast was not against war at all.
After
9/11 we Belfast people had stood at the City Hall
silent, our thoughts reserved for those who had been
killed when civilian populations and air passengers
were targeted by, for the most part, Saudi Arabian
theocrats. It seemed, then, that Belfast would say
‘no’ to the slaughter of the innocent. But
in our lopsided perspective on victims, some were
more innocent than others. The children of New York
were to be afforded a status denied those of Iraq
and Palestine.
The
present war mongering political leaderships in the
USA and Britain hoped it would stay this way. They
did not want any equivalence between all the world’s
children. And they have lied through their teeth since
to ensure that their way would be the only way. Plagiarised
documents and allegations of links between Iraq and
Al Qaida have been thrust in our faces - and this
from governments that devise 'truths' to justify either
refusing the extradition of Augusto Pinochet or protecting
Henry Kissinger from war crimes tribunals. A number
of years ago Jacques Derrida said of politics that
it was `a privileged space of lying,' He challenged
'state truths' and the terms in which they were constructed
- `terms which serve to produce truth, rather than
reflect it'. He went on to ask `who tells the truth
in Yugoslavia, Chechenya or Rwanda?' - but why stop
there? One of the states being marched against
in Belfast on Saturday has inserted into human discourse
a word without equal for state truth - Widgery.
Perhaps
as a result of so much dissembling an alternative
discourse has been given life. A woman at yesterday’s
march told me that it was a protest against the systematic
lying of government. That could not have been true
for all in the crowd. One of the notorious political
liars of Ireland was reputed to be there - a man who
sports facial hair, it is said, only to stop people
calling him a bare faced liar. Still, I could see
her general point. The new discourse was asserting
very clearly that the right of Palestinian and Iraqi
kids to life is as sacrosanct as that of American
children. No discursive strategies, no rhetorical
manoeuvring, no appeals to a higher enlightenment
based sense of secular rationality can make it any
different. Henry Kissinger murdering Cambodian children
is no different from Osama Bin Laden murdering American
kids.
After
our pre-Christmas march I discussed the weakness of
support for the anti-war movement in Belfast with
a leading member of the city’s Socialist Workers
Party. True, it had an inauspicious start and had
fallen apart in disarray when in December 2001 the
squabbling sects of the sectarian Left each announced
that they were more anti-war than the others and to
prove it would go to war on the rest. But that alone
hardly explained matters. Building the movement would
be an uphill battle he insisted but one that had to
be fought. If we could put 500 people on the streets
for the march on February 15th, he said, ‘we
can build it slowly from there’.
I
never saw him at that march yesterday. One reason
for that was that the 500 he had hoped for was multiplied
beyond imagination. It was impossible to find anyone
easily in the mass that shimmied its way down Royal
Avenue towards the City Hall, where security quickly
locked the front gates unused to radicalism on its
steps. Lose sight of a friend for a second and that
was it - they would not be seen that day again. Tens
of thousands was how the BBC described it. It was
surreal. One moment, a former republican prisoner
was expressing his dismay at ’the small turn
out, there should be more’; the next saw us engulfed
in a human tidal wave surging against the beachheads
of establishment power. Sinn Fein were marching beside
the Workers Party although few could have told them
apart. And were they to have shouted 'up Stormont'
at each other any sense of difference would have eluded
us even further. And the sectarian sects of the Irrelevant
Left did not turn up to hand out leaflets explaining
that they were only there to tell us why they
would not be there at our objectively centrist bourgeois
demo, and urge us to construct the ‘socialist’
program -NOW.
But
it was the wit along with the human elements that
struck me more than anything else. One man dressed
as an undertaker advertised simply but effectively
'more wars please.' My toddler daughter Fírinne
sang in her own language along with the anti-war songs,
stopping only to play chase with my friend Aine. A
baby innocently singing was adding to the weight and
clarity of the message that the voices of Iraqi babies
must not be obliterated by the whining whistle of
British and American bombs. Barbara Muldoon of the
Socialist Workers Party was ecstatic. People were
hugging her. It was as much out of respect for her
efforts as it was out of their own sense of delight.
Three days earlier I had spoken to her in town - she
was taut with tension - would Belfast say 'no' to
war? Yesterday’s answer must have deafened as
much as pleased her. Her colleagues Mark Hewitt, Brian
Kelly and Davy Carlin were like dogs with two tails,
unsure of which one to wag. The relief on their faces
was evident.
One
common thread running through the marchers’ discourse
yesterday was about the Socialist Workers Party. The
amount of people willing to give it credit for putting
the event together was staggering. While many groups
and people threw in their lot there seemed to be little
doubt that the sorely rubbed shoulder at the wheel
was that of the SWP. If prizes are to be handed out
for effort the lion's share should shower upon their
ranks. As a party I do not support them, having little
time for vanguards and democratic centralism. But
their activists from this city have lain down in front
of Israeli tanks to protect Palestinians from certain
murder. Yesterday they were at it again, albeit in
circumstances unlike anything in occupied Palestine.
But their purpose and resolve were the same - halting
the onward march of mechanised mass murder.
Tens
of thousands of people walked the streets of Belfast
on a cold but sunny Saturday afternoon. While growing
anti war sentiment and spontaneity formed some part,
that protest did not happen by chance. Intelligent
planning and coordination played a major role. There
is now for the first time in decades a widespread
radicalism in Belfast which does not have its centre
of gravity within Sinn Fein. In fact there is a growing
belief that it is radical because it has managed to
bypass Sinn Fein. Can Belfast recapture the radical
soul it surrendered so humiliatingly when thousands
of its citizens danced like prize poodles for President
Bill Clinton in a Mexican Wave? Time alone will tell.
But for now - full credit must go to those indefatigable
activists of the Socialist Workers Party.
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