Britain’s Stop the War Coalition: Tying the working class to the pro-war Labour Party
By
Chris Marsden
21 April 2018
The UK’s participation in the US-led bombing of Syria has been met with widespread opposition among workers and young people.
Many did not believe Prime Minister Theresa May’s assertion that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma April 7. A majority rejected the claims of May, US President Donald Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron that they had acted out of “humanitarian concern.”
Since 2003, when the Labour government of Tony Blair dragged Britain into an illegal war based on the lies of “weapons of mass destruction,” anti-war sentiment has resisted all efforts by the ruling class to move away from the “Iraq syndrome.”
There has been no popular support for military operations by the UK, in Iraq, Libya or Syria and there is real concern at the whipping up of tensions with Russia. This public opposition to militarism forced the Conservative government of David Cameron to hold a parliamentary vote in August 2013, the failure of which prevented Britain from participating in planned airstrikes against Syria.
The role of the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) in the run up to the air strikes against Syria was to politically demobilise popular anti-war sentiment. The coalition directed all public protests by workers and youth to making futile appeals to parliament and—above all—backing Jeremy Corbyn’s personal protests against war made as leader of the pro-war Labour Party.
The STWC has been promoted as the semi-official leadership of the anti-war movement since 2003. Corbyn was its chairman until winning leadership of the Labour Party in 2015. All its protests since April 7 were conceived of as…