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["Salaam Blackmore" <blackmore@xxxxxxxxx>]

It is not just Marxists who will be marching -Salaam.


I'll be seeing you at the anti-war march on Saturday
By Armando Iannucci
(Filed: 13/02/2003)


You, Daily Telegraph reader, are a peacenik. An anti-war protester. Someone
who thinks that what Tony Blair is doing is contrary to the values you hold
dear in Middle England's green and pleasant land.

Moreover, to bloody Blair's nose a little (for you're now quite angry),
you're prepared to perpetrate the subversive act of getting out of bed on
Saturday morning, and marching against war alongside donkey-jacketed media
studies lecturers who came down on a bus from Sheffield.

You - yes, you - who've never even said the word "placard", let alone held
one, can see yourself walking in line with some rather frightening women
carrying hundreds of the things saying "Mums Not Bombs For the Sake of
Palestine".

Of course, you haven't realised this yet, but you are. The Stop the War
march is on Saturday, and by then you will have made up your mind. The night
before, out for a Valentine's dinner, you will have brought an otherwise
romantic evening to a close by declaring to your beloved that, by God,
you're going to do it. Just this once.

I could see it coming. I could tell from the way you kept catching yourself,
puzzled, staring at the radio with a sort of angry curiosity. "I keep being
told nothing's been decided, but the countdown to invasion is on all the
channels, reported like hard fact."

The first hint of hesitancy. Rather unsettling, this feeling, isn't it? The
suspicion that events as they're being presented to you don't quite cohere.
"Last week," you thought in passing, "we were being told that, if they find
something, we'll go to war. This week, we're being told that, if they can't
find anything, we'll go to war."

Normally, you'd push these momentary doubts to the back of your mind, but
not so readily these days. Too many questions keep forming in your head
("Last week, they said they were going to present evidence. This week,
they're saying they're not going to present evidence. Can I trust them to
know what they're doing?").

Very, very basic questions keep nagging in response to every hard-line
political pronouncement. This crisis has to be resolved one way or another.
"What is this crisis?" you ask. "Am I being really thick here, but what
precisely started it? Not September 11. What, then? Why are we having it?
After 11 years. Just someone tell us."

It's happening because Saddam's weapons of mass destruction pose a direct
threat to Britain and its allies.

"The threat was from al-Qa'eda, wasn't it? And Blair said there's no proof
of a link with Saddam? Why are we going after him instead of the terrorists?
And what are these weapons of mass destruction? And how exactly do they pose
a threat to Great Britain? Again, tell us. I'm not being wilfully difficult,
I just desperately want to know."

This dialogue goes on inside your head with increasing agitation. We know
he's got these weapons and we're determined to make him disarm. "Fine, isn't
that what the weapons inspectors are for? Just give them a bit more time."
He's stalling. This can't go on for ever. We've got to . . .

"Wait a minute. This may sound stupid, but why can't it go on for ever? What
precisely are the disadvantages of this form of stalemate going on for a
very, very long time, and how do they outweigh the disadvantages caused by
launching a unilateral war in the Middle East? What exactly, dammit, is the
problem with having lots and lots of patience?"

But the news agenda has to move on. These questions should have been
answered months ago, and I'm sorry if they weren't, but now, you see, we
have to take up so much space reporting that war is inevitable that
unfortunately there isn't time or room to revisit them.

"Well, make room. Unless you answer my questions I'll . . . I'll . . ."
You'll do what exactly?

Exactly. You're not the sort of person who does much. Making a fuss,
complaining. Demonstrating one's anger publicly is, well, demonstrating,
isn't it? That's the sort of thing your daughter does at university. You are
more restrained, less outwardly emotional, overall more tolerant.

"But that's precisely what's bothering me now. All this bluster and anger,
this lack of restraint, the language of attack. It's not me at all." It's
not terribly British, is it? This has come up among your friends, and they
tend to agree. But what can you do?

And that's when you begin to realise who exactly you are. You're the most
important person in Blair's Britain. You voted for him once (though maybe
not last time; perhaps you decided to stay at home. He really didn't like
that), and he'll need you again.

You were the one you thought he was courting. Now, you're not so sure. That
whole top-up fee thing was annoying. Just the way they went ahead and did
it, without telling us they were going to. But he really doesn't like it if
you disagree with him. He didn't like that fuel thing, or the Countryside
marches.

He keeps asking me to trust him, he wouldn't put lives at risk if he didn't
believe it was right. But he's always doing what he thinks is the right
thing. Like the Dome. Like private funding of hospitals. Like on Bernie
Ecclestone.

Do I trust him? He seems quite shifty on the euro. And now this. This is far
more important. And it just doesn't seem right. Do I feel Britain is safer
since we started threatening Iraq? Do I feel my job is safer? Will it help
us beat the terrorists?

"Trust me."

Do I? Do I feel this is the right thing we're doing? How can I tell him? I
know this is being bloody-minded, but how can I really annoy him? They're
expecting half a million on the march. They can't all be Workers'
Revolutionary Party members. A friend of mine said she's going. If a million
went, well, I don't know . . ."

The marchers assemble at the Embankment in London at noon on Saturday, and
Glasgow Green at 10am. I'm telling you this, Daily Telegraph reader, because
I get the feeling I'll see quite a lot of you there. Some of you might even
bring a friend and a placard.

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