I marched against the Iraq War - but the actions of Stop the War today risk fuelling antisemitism
4 min read
Stop the War has undermined the legitimacy of genuine protest.
Just over 22 years ago, British and American forces invaded Iraq in what was the second Gulf war, initiated by then US president George W Bush and then prime minister Tony Blair. The military action attracted intense controversy and, in the case of this country, an anti-war march through central London attended by more than one million people, including me. The march was organised by the Stop the War Coalition, which now seems to be known simply as Stop the War (StW).
Shortly after troops were dispatched to the Middle East, I was elected to the parliamentary committee which is the ruling body of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). Its six back bench MPs meet the Labour leader and raise questions on behalf of the wider PLP. As an MP who had repeatedly marched, spoken and voted against the invasion, my exchanges with Tony Blair tended to focus on Iraq.
I do not believe Blair misled the Commons or the country about the reasons for going to war. He was, in my view, wrong, but he was not a liar. But the invasion allowed a largely hostile press and a hysterically hostile far left to portray him and others as liars. They later moved on to claim that the Labour government had lied about other issues, and the denigration of that government and its MPs suddenly became a lot easier.
In fact, the then prime minister was the first to take the country to war on the basis of a vote on a substantive motion. It passed narrowly because 139 Labour MPs voted against, and so it needed the overwhelming majority of the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
I lost my seat in the election in 2005 and when I returned to Parliament five years later Labour was in opposition and Tony Blair had left Downing Street and Parliament. I have always felt that the Iraq war hastened the end of his premiership and contributed to Labour’s defeat in 2010. That should be a matter of regret. There were some real achievements during the Blair years which all Labour supporters should be prepared to praise and to give due credit to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the other ministers of the day.
On the other hand, the leadership of Stop the War (it should, of course, be renamed Stop Some Wars but Only Those We Don’t Like) take every opportunity to attack Labour among others.
I recently secured a debate on antisemitism in the Lords and intend to point out that StW organised a protest outside the Israeli embassy in London on 9 October 2023, just hours after the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis by the clerical fascists of Hamas and before the military response by the IDF had even begun. The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign went one better and on October 7 itself asked for permission to mount a protest against Israel. In my view the actions by StW and the PSC could be seen to have stoked antisemitism across Britain and undermined the legitimacy of genuine protest at a time when the rates of antisemitic incidents have been rising for years, So well done all round, comrades.
While there were other factors at work which have led to the rise of anti-Jewish racism, there is no doubt that elements in the Trotskyist left have played a key role. These were the people who denied that there was any problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership despite oceans of evidence to the contrary, who continue to defend the fascistic butchers of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and believe that anyone who wants to wipe Israel off the face of the map is virtuous. I still reel from the notion that the Labour Party, which I joined at 15, was for a few years a repository for this kind of vicious and homicidal hatred. But the reality is that it was, and all democratic parties require persistent vigilance against extremism.
