Report: 18th of March demonstrations in Dublin

dublin | anti-war / imperialism | news report Friday March 24, 2006 09:50 by Workers Power Ireland wpireland at revolution dot se

A critical report

Last Saturday the third anniversary of the US-led imperialist invasion of Iraq was marked in Dublin by a demonstration and march of up to 1000 people through the city centre. This turnout was a major disappointment and highlighted the inertia which has affected the antiwar movement since the highpoint of February 2003 when over 100,000 people took to the streets of the nation’s capital. Here you can read the report and find out how to download the flyer from Workers Power.

Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died to date as a result of the imperialist occupation and while the Iraqi people continue to suffer, it seems as if the Irish public are now more concerned with celebrating a long dead catholic saint than standing up to tyranny and the collusion of our government in the continuing rape and plunder of a once-proud nation. While the bourgeois-reformist speakers Michael D Higgins (TD for the Labour Party) and David Norris (Independent Senator) made repeated calls for justice and against the “illegality” of the war, the fact of the matter is that the United Nations, the body representing international capitalist law, stood idly by while the US led coalition forces were given a free hand to invade in 2003. Not only that, but in 1991 this great upholder of international “justice” imposed brutal sanctions on Iraq under Saddam Hussein, resulting in the deaths of up to 800,000 children over subsequent years. Unsurprisingly, these facts were not mentioned in the calls to international law and justice to be upheld. The antiwar movement has been consistently stymied by it’s willingness to pander to these reformist illusions and while Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party did make the point that the only way to overthrow the occupation was to build a mass workers party in Iraq, there was no mention from anyone on the platform of support for the Iraqi resistance or of the need to win the Iraqi workers and youth to a “revolutionary” socialist programme which could lead the way to victory and real democracy for all Iraqi citizens. Brid Smith of the SWP parroted the reformist’s criticisms of the Irish government’s collusion with the US military over Shannon airport and we were left with a list of “demands” read out by Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Antiwar Movement/SWP. All that these demands amounted to were pleas to the Irish government to denounce the US occupation and to deny the US the use of Shannon airport. It’s pretty obvious why many people stayed at home or went shopping rather than listen to the same old lifeless rhetoric being trotted out here. The irony of this all taking place outside the GPO, the site of the 1916 rising, was not lost on this observer for one.

On a positive note, there were many youth on the march and the left was well represented, with the Anarchists, the SWP, the Socialist Party and Labour Youth highly visible. Clearly there are many young and serious people looking for answers and leadership and the enthusiasm of the small crowd was encouraging. According to reports, the Anarchist contingent, in typically sectarian style, broke away from the main march at Grafton Street and held their own rally on St Stephens Green. While their obvious frustration with the Antiwar movement is understandable, the fact that they didn’t advertise their intended actions and didn’t attempt to bring any other groups or supporters with them shows that they are not capable of providing any serious answers to the questions posed by the continued imperialist occupation in Iraq.

Workers Power supporters in Ireland handed out flyers and sold the latest issue of Workers Power, which carries a front-page article on Palestine. The continued denial of justice for the Palestinian people was alluded to by many speakers and we must continue to press home the point that real democracy across the Middle East will not be achieved without ending the US-backed Israeli terror-machine’s brutalisation of the Palestinian people. In our leaflet, which can be downloaded from our website, we stressed that the only way of ending the continuing occupation of Iraq is by supporting the Iraqi resistance. Not just that, but we need to fight to wrest the leadership of the resistance away from the bourgeois-nationalist and Islamist forces who currently dominate it. Only by building a revolutionary vanguard of workers and youth in Iraq to take control of the resistance with the immediate goal of kicking the imperialist troops out or Iraq and with the long term goal of building a truly democratic socialist workers state in Iraq and spreading this revolution across the middle east can we hope to see real justice and freedom for all. These are the demands the Antiwar Movement needs to make now – no more pleas to Bertie Ahern and his gang of parliamentary cretins, no more illusions in the capitalist legal system enshrined in the UN – if we don’t take a stand now and turn the Antiwar Movement into an organisation giving active solidarity to the anti-imperialist resistance in Iraq and Palestine we will continue to see the opportunities presented by last Saturday wasted and the blood of thousands more Iraqi, Palestinian, Afghan and Iranian citizens will be on our hands.

We demand:

* The Immediate withdrawal of the imperialist occupation forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine

* An immediate end to US military flights through Shannon airport

* Support and solidarity for the Iraqi Resistance

* Reject the bourgeois puppet regime – build a revolutionary socialist party in Iraq!