Hi. The Fairfax library has found some more big protests to add to the list in Does peace have a chance?
On Australia Day, 1988, more than 15,000 Aboriginal protesters marched through Sydney to coincide with nationwide bicentennial celebrations. “While a crowd estimated by police at two million packed the harbour foreshore and Australians in other cities celebrated 200 years of white settlement, the marchers held a peaceful protest at the treatment of Aborigines past and present.” (AFR, 27.1.88)
And in September 1999 amid the massacre in East Timor after its people voted for independence, more than 25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne to hear Xanana Gusmao appeal to his Australian “brothers and sisters” to pressure the Howard Government to send in peace enforcers.
Library staff also pulled out clippings of protests during US President Lyndon Johnson’s parade through Sydney streets in October 1966. More than a million people came along to cheer, but 10 protesters threw themselves in front of the presidential car at the corner of Oxford and College streets. Outside the art gallery, “about 3,000 anti-Vietnam demonstrators booed, cheered and waved placards (but) the booing was more than matched by cheers and shouts of welcome by an equal number of pro-Johnson supporters among the crowd.” (The Mirror, 22.10.66)
Sylvia Harmon says that on Sunday Feb 16th all trains on the Sydney north shore line (from Hornsby to Wynyard) will be cancelled due to track work. They will be replaced by buses. In case the number of buses is less than required, people might like to make other arrangements for getting into the City. Also people might like to let everyone on their email lists know, so that they can pass the info on even if they’re not affected themselves.
On the eve of the weekend peace protests, here’s your thoughts.
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Michael Chong in Manly, NSW
In diplomacy nothing’s so diverse as
The mechanics of truth
You can even engineer in reverse
Evidence from proof
So shall we lose or confuse the plot
Of morality’s slender charter,
As we choose to undo the despot
With the tyranny of another?
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John Englart in Melbourne
I remember the Vietnam Moratorim marches in Sydney. I was a fifteen year old concerned about the inhumanity of the Vietnam War. Premier Askin came out and said “Run over the bastards”, referring to protestors like myself. Premier Askin was part of the problem and it was good to be rid of him from State Politics. I have never lost my sense of injustice I learnt during this period.
In 1985 I was one of the people who marched in the Palm Sunday rallies, along with my family, my parents and my brothers family. I was a veteran protestor and had hand painted a banner for this march. (a photo of the banner is at takver)
The world seemed to draw back from the brink in the late 80s and early 90s. But one thing I learned is that if you don’t get out on the street and be vocal and resist injustice then you are as good as accepting the necessity of injustice. Public protest does affect public policy of governments and other organisations, although the bureacrats and politicians will never admit this.
I’ll be out there this weekend – Melbourne on Friday in about half an hour – handing out an anti-war songsheet this time – along with my partner and children, friends and even a few work colleagues.
As I say on my Takver’s Soapbox site at soapbox: “The horrors of war are many, but at the level of the common folk there are no victors: it is the survivors who feel the human suffering and deprivation caused by the generals and politicians. It will be the families of the dead and injured in Iraq, as well as the US or Australia that will be forced to endure the ongoing consequences of war.”
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David Burnett in Melbourne
I’m just about to head off to the Melbourne peace march. I have also been utterly amazed at how many ‘non-protesters’ are going. There are scores going from here, including the CFO – the only fella ever seen sporting a suit round these parts – who is jumping on his bike and joining the Critical Mass. Bean-counters and Anarchists – where will it end? 🙂
This is exciting. Numbers in the streets is all we have left in this debate, I believe. Nothing gives pollies the willies more than the sight of thousands and thousands of voters who are clearly disinclined to vote for them!
Of course, there are exceptions. One large rally you missed in your list was the one opposing Jeff Kennett’s various policies (well – opposing Jeff Kennett, truth be told) in Melbourne in, ummmm, 1994? Not long after he came to power, anyway. In fact, this was the largest rally in Melbourne perhaps ever – I have no doubt that there were close to 150,000 people there. By the time the head of the densely-packed march had left Spring St, traversed Collins St all the way to Elizabeth St, moved a block to the north, and returned to Spring St, the tail of the march was only just setting off. Effectively, the rally filled more than eight major city blocks, and that’s a lot of people.
And Jeffery’s response? Effectively – “Bugger em.” And that he did…
Still, I reckon these peace rallies are enormously important.
Go peaceniks!
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Dell Horey emailed the pre-protest editorial of the British Medical Journal.
In praise of dissent
One hundred years ago Germany launched a war against quackery (bmj). “Public meetings will be held and addresses delivered,” reported the BMJ. Today Germany leads a campaign to halt the war against Iraq, and anti-war demonstrators will march in Berlin on 15 February. The war against quackery included a strategy to infiltrate the meetings of quacks, “in order to confute their arguments and expose their misstatements”. The organisers of the global anti-war campaign would wish for something similar.
But this demonstration is not confined to Germany. Over 300 cities will unite in protest against the leadership of George Bush and Tony Blair. Arabs and Jews will march together in Tel Aviv. New Yorkers will hold a stationary rally on First Avenue after a federal judge refused the permit for a march, citing “heightened security concerns”. More than half a million protesters are expected to converge on Hyde Park, London – which also happens to be the number of Iraqis predicted to die in a war. An 80 year old woman from Hampshire, too infirm to make the trip to London, has offered instead to lie down in the middle of one of England’s busiest motorways. Rarely have so many of the world’s inhabitants united with such clarity of voice: no to war, they say, but will two of our six billion fellow earthlings listen?
Advocates for war are quick to liken dissent to appeasement. A more apt analogy may be America’s war in Vietnam – a war in which the USA used Agent Orange and napalm. Many are convinced that Iraq has produced, and may even be hiding chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry. Many, though, are not convinced that an immediate war on Iraq will guarantee our future safety. The World Medical Association and the International Council of Nurses have joined other professional associations in condemning armed conflict, highlighting the catastrophic effects of war on civilians, especially women and children. A Canadian team this week reports that Iraqi children as young as four are fearful and anxious about the prospect of war (bmj). The World Health Organization and medical aid agencies have already produced gloomy estimates of the likely toll on the Iraqi people. Bush and Blair argue that many hundreds of thousands are at risk from a chemical or biological attack. The marchers are not persuaded.
Those in London will be tramping through a central area of the city that this week begins congestion charges for cars and trucks, following the example of successful schemes in Singapore and Norway. Ian Roberts suggests that Ken Livingstone, the politician behind this initiative, is introducing public health reform to rival that of Edwin Chadwick, who revolutionised sanitation in 19th century London (bmj). Chadwick’s opponents claimed there was “insanity in sanity” he had to fight to dissent. This week, hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of protesters will be participating in the most far reaching display of dissent that the world has seen. It should be recognised.
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John Nicolay (nom de plume)
Today’s anti-Americanism watch: Your reference to nuclear weapons is another example of your stance of extreme credulousness towards anything that reflects badly on the American government, coupled with utter cynicism towards any argument advanced in their favor. Think for a second: If you ran a country with nuclear weapons which you had no intention to use, would you tell your enemies that?
Much as it pains people who grew up as anti-nuclear campaigners to admit, the jury is now in, and deterrence works. How can you deter if you rule out using what you have, even in self-defence?
The other example of extreme credulousness you’ve shown over the last couple of days is your cargo cult-like acceptance of the Franco-German “peace plan”. Where’s the critical analysis of motives there? (I saw a French government spokesman on the BBC program “hardtalk” freely acknowledge last night that the French position was driven by its “interests”, which included its oil dealings with Iraq – remember, these are REAL interests in Iraqi oil, not merely hypothetical – together with the desire to prevent American dominance of international ecision-making). Where, too, is the serious contemplation of what it would achieve – at the least, surely someone should be able to point out what is different between this plan and the staus quo of the last ten years, during which time Saddam has grown steadily more dangerous and the Iraqi people have continued to suffer.
But on to the peace march…
If war is averted, isn’t it most likely to be because the members of the Iraqi regime become convinced that it is inevitable, and therefore try to save their skins by absconding (or knocking off Saddam Hussein)?
If that is the case, aren’t these marches actually going to make war MORE likely, by providing the Iraqi regime with food for their belief that the west lacks the fortitude to go through with its threats?
And is not the correct slogan for the rally not “peace”, but “war later”?
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John Passant in Kambah, ACT
John Howard is driven by the need to serve his class and their economic interests. The judgment he has made is that this is best done by supporting the US in its re-division of the world as the sole military and economic power. This re-division shuts out Europe and China – hence the German, French and Chinese reluctance to support the US.
This commitment to his class means Howard will plough ahead with war even if 300,000 turn out against the war. However, if the anti-war movement targets the flow of profits to Howard’s class, Howard may be forced to change his mind.
This idea is not new. During the Vietnam era, some sections of the anti-war movement adopted the slogan “Stop work to stop the war.” Such a slogan today would give hope to the people demonstrating that they can take action to stop the slaughter. If the union movement adopted the slogan and workers began to strike against the war, Howard could be forced to back down.
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Rod Lever in Glass House Mountains, Queensland
Rupert Murdoch, unable to restrain his excitement about an opportunity to make money from the war, has let the cat out of the bag. The war to him is about flooding the world with cheap Iraqi oil and launching another US economic boom. Buy Amoco. Buy GM. Buy News Corp.
Murdoch has never been noted for humanitarianism but there is something sick about a multi-millionaire who can’t see beyond making more money while others remove the remains of roasted and dismembered bodies of small children caught in the crossfire.
For those prepared to gamble on a quick, smooth victory for the American war machine, there may be money to be made in a stockmarket rally based on $20 a barrel oil. But the thought just makes me want to throw up.