THE SPLIT IN THE BRITISH ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

There's a big dust-up going on in the U.K. that threatens to split the Brits' large Stop the War Coalition, from which some trade union leaders have already resigned. It is the SWC that has sponsored the biggest street demonstration's in British history...Read the account of this ongoing crisis in the U.K.'s anti-war movement from today's Guardian...

At the heart of the controversy are two basic and competing charges. One, by the Stop the War Coalition (SWC), is that British labor's enthusiastic support for the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (previously plugged here on DIRELAND back in August, in a post on What the Protestors Should Be Saying), has compromised the anti-war movement and represents a sell-out to pro-war Tony Blair, since the IFTU wants the U.S. occupation to continue until free elections are held.

The other charge, by critics of SWC, is that the coalition is being manipulated by the orthodox Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which has formed a new political party, the Respect Coalition, in an alliance with maverick ex-Labour MP George Galloway (whom his critics have accused of being on Saddam's payroll--although that is a matter of some dispute, the charges destroyed Galloway's political credibility).... A highly critical history of the Stop the War Coalition can be found on the Brit blog Butterflies and Wheels....and yet another view comes from the group Workers Liberty, an anti-SWP grouplet of unorthodox Trotskyist inspiration, in a long and thoughtful Reply to the Stop the War Coalition that is followed by a raft of interesting comments on it by anti-war rank-and-filers....

Another voice from the other side of the pond is Fisherblog, who insists that the competing Iraqi union federations are divided on the issue of continuing for a time the U.S. ocupation. Brit Blogger Dead Men Left has the complete version of the Stop the War Coalition's statement attacking the Iraqi Federation of Trade Union's U.K. rep, Abdullah Muhsin, for supposedly lobbying the Labour Party's national conference "to oppose a motion, reflecting the unions' own agreed policies, calling on Blair to set an early date for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq." Muhsin denied this to the Guardian. But the 1.3 million member public service trade union Unison's website has a pdf version of a leaflet Muhsin distributed at the Labour Party conference saying the resolution which asked "for an early date for the unilateral withdrawal of troops...bad for my country, bad for the emerging progressive forces, a terrible blow for free trade unionism, and [it] would play into the hands of extremists and terrorists." And the organization Labour Against the War-- composed of anti-war MPs, local Labour Party branches, and individual Labour Party members--has an account on its website of the Labour conference vote on Iraq which accuses the Blair government of "arm-twisting," names the IFTU's Muhsin as a Blair cat's paw, and charges that "The leaders of the big four unions (TGWU, UNISON, Amicus, GMB) were crucial in defeating Composite 6 [the pro-withdrawal resolution]. They all came under attack from their own members for abandoning the policy adopted at the TUC Congress in favour of a date for the withdrawal of British troops."

This is all beginning to smell like the United Kingdom's anti-war movement is going to be shattered by a good old-fashioned sectarian faction-fight of the kind that has often destroyed the left's effectiveness....and this crisis comes right at the moment that Tony Blair is sending the famous Black Watch Battalion to reinforce the U.S. assault on Fallujah, an election-eve gift from Tony to Dubya...more to come about the civil war in the Brit anti-war movement on DIRELAND...