LONDON - Some 200,000 people demonstrated here June 6 for unilateral British nuclear disarmament and against the siting of U.S. Cruise missiles on British or European soil. This prodigious turnout was a tremendous slap in the face for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her war against Argentina.
All opinion had expected that the "Falkland factor" would completely undermine the mobilization, which was timed to coincide with Reagan's visit to London. Rather, the gratitude expressed to Reagan by Thatcher and her cronies for U.S. support to British aggression against Argentina was matched by the rejection of Reagan by this largely youthful demonstration.
The overwhelming sentiment of these youth was "for peace." Opposition to Thatcher's war was by no means uppermost in people's preoccupation. Nonetheless, there was complete openness to the slogans raised by many forces on the demonstration calling for the withdrawal of the fleet. There was a lot of attention when a large contingent of Socialist Challenge supporters marched into the final rally chanting "Malvinas, El Salvador, stop the bosses' war!"
Every featured speaker at the rally took up the need to oppose Thatcher's war. Arthur Scargill, newly elected president of the miners union. called for stepping up the antinuclear union, called for stepping up the antinuclear campaign through civil disobedience. "If governments are not prepared to take real steps for peace, " he declared, "then we in the general peace movement and in the labor movement are prepared to do so."
Scargill went on to attack the way the Tory press is glorifying Thatcher's war against Argentina. He asked, "Who could see nothing obscene in glorifying war and killing while opposing a 7 to 8 percent pay increase for health workers?" A popular slogan on the demonstration favored health workers presently fighting for higher pay against the government. Many chanted, "For peace's sake, stop the war, pay the health workers more."
The leader of the Labour Party's left wing, Tony Benn, concentrated on the war in the Malvinas. He declared, "we have seen the media become the mouthpiece of the military, making money out of bloodshed and drowning out the voices of peace, threatening democracy itself."
The war was also the theme taken up by Marxist historian E. P. Thompson, author of the best-selling antinuclear pamphlet "Protest and Survive," and one of the key figures in the rebirth of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Thompson had already made clear at a major teach-in held three days before the demonstration that in his view, "A peace movement that didn't stand up and fight when a war was taking place was worthless." At the rally he described the Malvinas war as a "textbook case of the process by which the pride of statesmen will lead us into World War III." He congratulated Thatcher for "turning round the situation where Britain, not Argentina, is nam. This accounts for the otherwise inexplicable ratio of Argentine to British casualties. able ratio of Argentine to British casualties. Moreover, British forces are using phosphorus bombs, which inflict appalling burns on their victims.
Other speakers included Terry Coven, spokesperson for the U.S. campaign for a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons. He assured the crowd that Reagan does not represent the American people.
The turnout on this demonstration and the support for other mobilizations planned during Reagan's stay in Britain are a sharp challenge to the cringing support to Thatcher given by Labour's official leaders. What has been proven is that hundreds of thousands can be mobilized against Thatcher's war. This could be translated into a major boost for Labour. Instead, as the June 3 special election showed, it is the Tories that are gaining as a result of the Labour leadership's spineless stand. On June 3, the Tories took a previous Labour seat, and Labour dropped into third place behind the Social Democrats. With a fantastically low 48 percent turnout, it is clear that most Labour voters stayed home.
It has never been more urgent to break Labour's support for Thatcher's war.