Galloway speaks in Manchester on future of anti-war movement - video

Galloway speaks on the next steps for the anti-war movements.

To see video clips of this event, go to:

http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?story=910

Chris Edwards
e-mail: drcce2002@yahoo.com
Homepage: http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?person=1514

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Comments

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What's wrong with the Green Party for an anti-war election choice?

They're far more reliable, and genuine, than the manipulative, opportunistic, and rhetoric driven Socialist Worker's Party which the STW coalion is a front for.

Andrew

shame...

28.11.2003 11:12

its a shame that members of the greens are taking such a sectarian attitude to the unity coalition which they would be welcome to be part of and doesn't intend to stand against good green candidates anyway

moti

Green Party / Stop the War

28.11.2003 12:33

I'm konfused.. I know the Green Party and the SWP don't get on (why would they, their politics are very different) but as far as I know they're both involved in the Stop the War Coalition. The strength of the anti-war movement is its diversity, innit?

kurious
Homepage: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

Green Party are Crap

28.11.2003 14:20

Let's face it the Green Party are at the right wing of the movement, they are predominantly middle class liberals with a conscience.

They have no links with the working class movement.

And they think the UN is the solution to all our problems rather than grassroots workers democracy.

They have not really been that central to the anti-war movement

The Incredible Hulk

Actually....

28.11.2003 14:31

...I take my earlier comment back, I was too harsh. Though I'd prefer to vote for the Green Party any day, than the SWP, if that group isn't intending to stand against decent Greens then fair enough. I was probably too quick to judge, but I didn't like the way they seemed to be claiming to being the sole anti-war voice.
I don't think the Green Party are that obsessed with the UN, I think that's more the Lib Dems, and as for all those damn middle class liberals with a conscience!....there is a lot of middle class people in this country, not being a downtrodden prole is hardly a punishable offence.

Andrew

Look it up

28.11.2003 14:33

All of you pathetic SWP-bashing sectarians (I'm not the Trots' greatest fan by the way, but its hardly relevant) ought to look up what the word "coalition" means.

And by the way, the record of Greens in government across Europe is hardly encouraging, unless you like the idea of privatisation and cosy little "pacts" with the centre-right.

Richard Whitely

Reply

28.11.2003 15:39

Obviously it is possible to be a socialist and middle class. Many great socialists have been middle class (and many have not).

I personally think the Greens are the Lib. Dems with a vague radical environmental gloss.

I'm sure they have some good people.

But they are pretty reformist, and their politics are pretty wishy-washy. The idea of anti-imperialism and mass action of ordinary people are foreign to them

The Incredible Hulk

"Coalition"

28.11.2003 17:04

Maybe I'm mistaken, but it always seems that the leaders and main organizers of Stop The War Coalition, are usually SWP members. This to me doesn't sound like a fair and democratic coalition. Is this the case? Anyone else experienced this?

"their politics are pretty wishy-washy. The idea of anti-imperialism and mass action of ordinary people are foreign to them"

Wishy-washy? I'm not so sure. On Iraq, for instance, the Green Party said the war was "illegal, aggressive, unnecessary, dishonest, hypocritical, unjust, exploitative, wasteful and likely to prove counter-productive". Now that doesn't sound particularly wishy-washy to me.

And if the idea of mass action is so foreign to them, why do they support these protests? Why do they even have links on their website to Indymedia and Globalise Resistance sites??

On a related topic:

"A Manchester Green Party activist will face court on Monday 1 December for refusing to pay the part of her income tax which goes towards military expenditure, including the cost of the recent attack on Iraq.

Birgit Völlm, a 38 year old psychiatrist currently researching at the University of Manchester, is withholding the 10% of her income tax estimated by the peace tax campaign Conscience to fund military expenditure. She will argue before Manchester City Magistrates Court that her human right not to play a part in war is being infringed, based on the recognition in 1916 of the right to conscientious objection.

Dr Völlm comments: "My commitment to peace not only means refusing to contribute to war, but also to promoting non-violent methods of conflict resolution and to eliminating the deeper causes of war, such as inequality and poverty.

?I believe people should pay taxes for peaceful purposes, but that no-one should be forced to pay for war."

Councillor Vanessa Hall, chair of Manchester Green Party, commented today: "The Green Party is entirely behind Birgit and others who wish to express a conscientious objection to war.

"While the Green Party isn't a pacifist party, we believe that people should have the option of putting their taxes into peace-promotion rather than into military expenditure." "

Andrew

Yes! Coalition!

28.11.2003 18:31

"It always seems that the leaders and main organizers of Stop The War Coalition, are usually SWP members."

!!!

It may seem to be, but if you only ever read a load of ill-informed sectarian twaddle then it will indeed "seem" so.

The STWC convenor IS, admittedly Lindsey German of the SWP. The chairman however is Andrew Murray of the Communist Party.

[useful info: The Trots and the Commies have rarely got along well in history but here they seem well able to work together - maybe 'cos they understand the word "coalition".]

Other leading lights in the STWC are CND [NOT a hotbed of the SWP, most of 'em that I know are nice liberal little ol' ladies], the Muslim Association of Britain [hardly the most Trotskyist of people] and an array of trade unions such as T&G and NATFHE, both of whom would piss themselves if you claimed they were some kind of "front" for the SWP.

Greens and all sorts are also represented. I know 'cos I've bothered finding out. I've been to the AGM, loads of other meetings and all the demos. Why not do the same?

And finally, since the SWP *is* the biggest far left group in Britain, don't blub if they end up with a high profile in national leftish coalitions. They openly talk about building support for their party, there ain't no hidden agenda.

Stop whinging and start Stopping the War! Ignorance is Piss!

Not a Trot but not Paranoid Neither

Technical feedback on video clips

28.11.2003 19:04

I encoded these Galloway video clips (see link above to the Oneworld site) for ordinary dial-up modems, not for broadband. That is why the screen size is so small. The screen size can be enlarged by right-clicking on the screen while it is playing and selecting "play in Realone Player", but the visual quality deteriorates as the screen gets larger. Encoding video clips to play online (i.e stream) is relatively easy for broadband connections. The real challenge is making video reasonably tolerable for ordinary 56k dial-up modems.

I would greatly appreciate technical feedback about how well, or badly, the clips play using 56k (or 33k) modems.

Do the clips play OK without pausing? These clips are very long (the first one is around 40 minutes long).

Do they keep stopping and starting ("re-bufferring")?

Any comments about visual and audio technical quality would also be appreciated.

I look forward to the day when everyone can afford broadband. Online video will come its own then and the anti-war movement will have a powerful tool to begin to counter the corporate monopoly of the media.

Chris Edwards

If you have probelms streaming the clips, download one from this site

28.11.2003 21:39

If anyone has problems playing the Galloway clips at the Oneworld video site, you can download the main clip from this alternatve site and play it from your desktop:

http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=36501&group=webcast

Chris Edwards

CND

29.11.2003 07:29

"Other leading lights in the STWC are CND [NOT a hotbed of the SWP, most of 'em that I know are nice liberal little ol' ladies]"

Actually the "leading light" from the CND in STWC, Kate Hudson, is now also in the Communist Party of Britain. That's the CPB, former Stalinists and editors of The Morning Star newspaper which until quite recently insisted on calling North Korea "Peoples' Korea".

I don't know if fellow STWC boss Andrew Murray of the CPB persuaded her to join, or if she's always been a closet supporter, but there you go.

dave

So joining the party of your choice is crime, is it?

29.11.2003 22:29

So, horror of horrors, a member of CND, Kate Hudson, joins a political party of her choice. Whatever next?

Perhaps, just to avoid this kind of thing happening in the future, we should ban all parties from participation in political life, following the example set by the World Socialist Forum (oh yes they have), Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin?

Gill

P.S.

29.11.2003 22:42

And, yes, I do realise that the Stalinists of the CPB still defend, to this very day, the tyranny in the Soviet Union which also banned political parties. But, Dave, you seem to suffer from exactly the same problem.

Gill

"Not a Trot but not Paranoid Neither"....

30.11.2003 05:31

...you wrongly assume that I haven't been involved in it all. I was speaking from my experience, and asking, quite genuinely, if it was the case generally.

A SWP member spoke to me about setting up a local STW group, and approached me about joining the SWP, funnily enough after I declined to join the SWP, the subject of the STW group was never again broached.

Andrew

The point is...

30.11.2003 13:24

That it is a STOP THE WAR coalition. Regardless of what people believe on issues from North Korea to the liquidation of the fucking kulaks, if people want to STOP THE WAR then they have every right to get involved.

You fucking whinging sectarian little maggots. What a waste of space you are.

Duh

Technical feedback on video clips

30.11.2003 22:45

Yes the clips stop/start with my 56k modem. I would suggest encoding at something like 40k instead of 48k if that was possible.

Brian B

Reds under the Bed!

01.12.2003 13:23

Everyone who reads the Guardian knows that the Stop the War Coalition is an SWP front. So are campaigns against the BNP, for Palestine, in defence of asylum seekers, against privatisation.. also the European Social Forum and this proposed new electoral coalition. And Galloway is operated by strings from SWP HQ.

So the logic is obvious. Unless you are a baby-killing Red Communist who supports every single atrocity ever committed by Stalin and Pol Pot, you must support the war, privatisation and the BNP and attack Palestine and asylum seekers. And under no circumstances get involved in either the ESF or Galloway's new coalition.

Mind how you go now.

;-)

Change of URL for video clips

07.12.2003 01:01

Because of a technical problem, the web-page for the video clips has changed to:

http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?story=930

Apologies for the confusion.

I am not a fan of the Stalinists of the CPB, but I felt that it was necessary to video and report Galloway's speech at this event.

I think the key point about the "Unity Coalition" proposed by Galloway is that it would be a coalition of independent organisations. That is, organisations like the Green Party, CND, MAB, CPB, SWP, SP. SA, etc., etc., could retain their organisational independence within a broader co-operative coalitional framework. If the only result was an agreement not to stand against each other in elections that would be a breakthrough, avoiding the farce of Brent East where there were four or five left grouplets standing on platforms that were not a million miles apart. If eventually it also led to a decline in small group organisational egoism, that would be even better.

By the way, several branches of the rail union (RMT) in Glasgow are reported to be donating money to the Scottish Socialist Party. If the anti-war movement in England and Wales got its act together, we could win the same support from RMT and FBU branches here too.

Chris Edwards