Airstrip One

The Times has put out a run of the mill expose of the Socialist Alliance. Two important paragraphs:

The Alliance was instrumental in the organisation of the main anti-war rallies and protests across Britain, and supplied key speakers who set the tone. The broad Commons consensus in favour of the war on terror has allowed the Alliance to argue that it is the only significant political movement fighting against it.

The Stop the War Coalition is run by, and in the interests of, the Alliance, allowing it to proselytise and recruit. It is only one of several organisations run by Alliance activists. Others include the anti-globalisation movement Globalise Resistance and the race-campaigning National Civil Rights Movement run by Suresh Grover, spokesman for Sarfraz Najeib, the victim in the Leeds United footballers’ assault case. But it has been anti-war protest, and the platform it has given Alliance supporters such as Tariq Ali and John Pilger, that has given the Alliance a particular opportunity to advance its aims to a mass audience.

They have links to a particularly poor set of anti war articles, if leftist polemic is to your taste.

However the main tone, that it is the unoriginal left that is providing the main source of foreign policy dissent (outside the European dimension) is sadly true. What those of us anti-socialist dissidents can do is less obvious. We obviously can't form a movement tomorrow, politcal activity will (rightly) be directed at the European dimension. It is a time for sharpening our analysis of foreign policy and offering a justification of the national interest.

It is the long haul for us.

Meanwhile by all means go to the demonstrations and teach ins, but realise that they are not about changing British foreign policy but merely about recruiting for various left wing factions.