The Peace Movement Wins Its Victory ( Peace Movement Chapter 5 )

The Peace Movement Wins Its Victory : Peace Movement Chapter 5

(continued from Anti War Music Festival and earlier chapters)

The Liberal Democrats were against the Prime Minister too, insisting on a legalistic approach, allowing the United Nations authority to deal with the rogue dictator at their own slow speed.

The opposition too was divided, many advocating an isolationist policy, young free market thinkers who regarded military action as a waste of taxpayers’ money and none of our business. The economy was doing quite nicely without creating a war. They and their colleagues in business were quite happy with the way things were.

There were however many in the official opposition who were keen to support the Prime Minister on this, a matter of national and even more significant, international importance. They relished the opportunity to add their weight to actions which they could see were significant in the world. It gave them a change from the routine calls for tax reduction and savings and the usual warblings about efficiency and how services could be run better. They could feel there was a real moral resistance about to take place here, in which the Dictator, shown to be ruthless so many times over by his bloody record, could finally be stood up to.

When it came to the crunch they could see clearly the difference between good and evil here, even if matters such as the conduct of business ethics and the treatment of workers and people, and the management of the economy tended to leave them a little confused. It was as if some Arthurian call to arms had made them see daylight again and awoken them from their parliamentary slumbers, given them something worthwhile to fight for again. They knew instinctively that the Dictator was a wrong one, spawned from a background of political turmoil and warlord thuggery. He cared nothing for people, not as individuals, or for damsels in distress. He had crossed over the warning lines again with the United Nations. His games with weapons inspectors had proved only one thing – that he could not be trusted!

The Russians, French and Chinese, all for their own, largely economic, reasons, favoured a persuasive negotiated approach. The Russians and French in particular had important contracts with the Iraqis in oil and weapons. The French were probably very afraid to antagonise anyone in the Arab world. Many of their economic connections were with the Arab world, and they liked to think they had political influence in the Arab world. Many of their own citizens were Arab by ancestry or origin. Most Arab governments were secretly telling them not to provoke the Dictator for they did not wish to feel his wrath either. His assassination squads were notoriously accurate when ordered to settle the dictator’s scores.

Publicly the Arab governments liked to keep on the right side of the dictator, encouraging an outward hallucination of Arab Unity and friendship, despite the fact that many of them were involved in the military coalition which ousted him from the illegal occupation of one of their Arab brethren a few years before. To a large degree they were aware that antagonistic statements towards their Dictatorial brother might undo their popularity with their own people, or factions amongst them. Some of them, in fact most of them, were not particularly popular with their own people, and statements which criticised fellow Arab states or curried favour with infidel Western governments were regarded with great anger on the Arab Streets, particularly the ill educated or fundamentalist religious streets. Some of them feared the possibility of being overthrown and replaced by governments which favoured Action – against the Western influence, against Israel, on behalf of the Palestinians, and in making their people more observant of religious principles, and against poverty.

The Prime Minister lost the next election anyway. Not a general election this one, but held within his own party, a vote of confidence, which saved them from political defeat at the next election and enabled Anthony, the idealistic leftwinger, to accede to the role of Prime Minister. The peace movement was having success. Thousands of people had taken to the streets of London to demonstrate the cause of peace; better to allow the politics of the middle east to take their own longwinded course than for one British soldier (or even Americans) to be shot or bombed in the anger of war. Arab lives were just as precious; better for them to live lives of political abstinence, adherence to causes most citizens, and particularly the well educated knew to be false, to submit to religious and political interpretations which laughed in the face of knowledge. Justice for the falsely accused of political crimes was not worth the loss of further life; struggle had already ended in the deaths of thousands, in one way or another.

Backbenchers from the Prime Minister’s party rose up in revolt, demanding a change of leadership, or at the least a change of policy. The Prime Minister should place the diplomatic responsibility for dealings with the Middle East with the supranational, representative United Nations; the solution to all ills and every conflict. Talk not war. Irresolute resolutions; endless monitoring; platitudes from the world’s diplomats, while the Dictator stayed upon his throne, issuing unfounded and half founded rhetoric to resonate in every Arab or muslim street.

The Prime Minister, a man of honour, chose to stand by his word. Refusing to concede his policy of support for the American effort to tame the Dictator, he determined that he must force his party to choose between leaders and policies, and risk failure.

More than one Minister from his cabinet resigned as the peace or war issue circulated through party, press and nation, saying they had reservations all along about the policy their leader tried to tie his party to.

The Prime Minister lost the vote of confidence. Too many of his party voted as they might have in their youth, for an idealistic peace, which matched the caution they felt in foreign policy matters. The day was approaching, they hoped, when no conflict or disagreement would need to be solved by war. All questions would be solved by resort to international law, the United Nations and economic progress. Presumably they thought there would be no Dictators or Revolutionary Regimes to resist the onward march of progress. Opponents combined behind Anthony, ‘the man of peace’, who was chosen to be the new leader by his party. Anthony won the vote by a large margin. The outgoing Prime Minister retired to the backbenches in despair.

The US President quickly realised America could not go to war alone without the British support. Few other nations were willing to give even verbal support to him, putting their faith instead in the hands of the United Nations diplomacy and the backdoor diplomacy of nations closer to Iraq in relationship. His own public support for war was not strong. The Peace Movement in America had broadened its base of support over some weeks. He bit his lip and bided his time, hoping the caution of other leaders would prove successful in persuading the Dictator not to arm himself or maintain weapons of mass destruction.

(The ‘Peace Movement’ saga will be continued soon)