War? Not In My Name

Written by Lynne Featherstone on Mon 24th Feb 2003

Lynne Featherstone with Charles Kennedy on the Stop the War march

Would applying duck tape to my sash windows actually stop any 'dirtiness' from a dirty bomb entering my drafty house - or would marching against the war be more effective? No contest! Off I went along with millions across the world in what was a scream of indignation at being propelled into war without the case having been truly made.

My older daughter came with me: she who rarely moves unless strictly necessary wanted to come. And I was thrilled. I hate the meekness of non-expression and indeed I was first politicised by marching against Maggie Thatcher and strumming a guitar singing the anti-war songs of the Vietnam years in folk music venues that, if named, would probably stir old memories. Rites of passage. For so many on the march, it was the first time they had ever done such a thing. Thus is politicisation.

On the crowded tube from Highgate up to Waterloo, where Liberal Democrats were congregating at the Royal Festival Hall to meet Charles Kennedy and then join the main march, there were a great fusion of different protesters. All sorts from ageing hippies to well dressed middle class ladies, babies against the war, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, political activists, Muslims and Jews and left-wing extremists. All humanity was there.

It would have made it even better would have been alongside the 'Stop the War' banners', the 'Not In My Name' banners, the 'Make Tea not War' banners (one wonders what Donald Rumsfeld would make of those!) - would have been if the 'Free Palestine' banners had also included a 'Safe Israel' slogan as well.

It seemed incongruous that, on a march against war, some people were calling for only part of a solution to the issue that underpins so much violence and trouble in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Although we moved briskly at the start of the march, within half an hour we had ground to a virtual halt. It became clear that our contingent, including Charles Kennedy, was never going to reach Hyde Park - let alone in time for the speeches. Charles was whipped off of the march and spirited away to speak in Hyde Park. Myself, Andy Kershaw, my daughter and several others siphoned off into the tube to try and make it in time.

Three of us made to Bond Street and then whipped along Oxford Street amongst people who had braved the West End against all advice and were trying to have a normal afternoon shopping. We made it to the rally, unlike hundreds of thousands of others. But we had missed the main speakers. After six hours we made it home to see the TV coverage and to see what message would be played out around the world. How very bizarre, even when you are at an event yourself, to have to go home and watch it on TV to see what happened!

Ken Livingstone blasted George Bush in the most uncompromising way I have ever heard a politician so do - and rightly so. Charles Kennedy spoke out, I felt, for a large swathe of us who feel uncomfortable with the Government's case, who don't believe we should go to war without the sanction of the United Nations and who feel damaged by the Labour Government's treatment of us with fake 'evidence' and a 'I'm Tony, trust me' approach to headlong war.

There were many different reasons for people to march. There were many different messages that people wanted to send. But the message I hope surfaces above all others is that on a single day in February 2003, six million people around the world got angry enough to stand up and shout - not in my name!