13.05.1999

Stop the bombing

Last Saturday’s national ‘Stop the bombing’ march in London, organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans, was the largest of recent weeks. Over 3,500 took part, around 2,000 of whom trooped behind the banners of the Socialist Workers Party.

Parliamentarians, including Tony Benn MP, headed the march. Pacifists of various stripes made up the leading section, followed by the large SWP contingent, personifying economistic social-pacifism. Although militant and raring to go, the SWPers were restricted by their leaders/minders into shouting slogans, such as that old favourite - ‘Welfare, not warfare’. National socialists from the Communist Party of Britain and the New Communist Party were only present in token numbers. Further back, the residue of the Workers Revolutionary Party were the most overt of the Serb defencists, chanting ‘Victory to Yugoslavia’.

Despite their minders, some individual members of the SWP were ready to engage with CPGBers, who tackled them about their party’s collapse in face of labour dictator Arthur Scargill’s announcement that he will be heading the Socialist Labour Party’s list in London for the June 10 EU elections. A few SWPers refused to discuss their party’s abandonment of the Socialist Alliance project - or anything else - now ‘not being the time’ to debate, in view of the Balkans war.

Saturday saw many Serbian flags, with a few national flags of Greece and Yugoslavia. Some nationalist Serbs marched in military forage caps; there were also several orthodox priests in black habits. This section reacted furiously as the march passed some 150 Kosovar counter-demonstrators. From some of the Serb nationalists’ comments, they would like nothing more than the opportunity to introduce a little ethnic cleansing to London’s streets; as we have now heard too many times, chauvinist shouts of ‘Kosova is ours, Kosova is Serbian’ came from the Serb nationalist and fascist ranks.

Kosovar counter-demonstrators were openly pro-imperialist. Union flags, stars and stripes and pro-Nato placards were more prominent than KLA banners. Shouts for Kosovar independence alternated with chants in support of Nato - an organisation which seeks to deny the Kosovars’ right to self-determination under the guise of a western ‘protectorate’. Despite rumours of a new anti-Nato faction within the KLA, there was no sign of it on this occasion.

Calling for independence for Kosova as well as an end to the Nato air war, internationalist comrades marched together, partly for security reasons because of previous threats from Serb nationalists. This contingent provided a healthy contrast with other groups of pacifists, social-pacifists, red-browns, Yugoslav defencists, Serb nationalists and fascists. However, somewhat contradictorily, this bloc contains such ‘anti-war’ elements as Workers Power, which called for a vote for bomber Blair’s New Labour Party in the Scots and Welsh elections.

Tom Ball