Peace is Union Business

Thirty million people from 316 cities in 60 countries all marching for peace — in London, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Prague, Zagreb, Rome, Moscow and Mexico City, Jakarta, Manila, Dublin, Berlin, Beirut, Bangkok, Bern and Brisbane whole families took to the streets - the old in wheelchairs, the young in prams.
Even McMurdo Station in Antarctica held a protest.
It was February 15-16, the International Weekend of Resistance — a globally coordinated action against the US led war on Iraq - and a time for workers once again to make peace union business.
President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Sharan Burrow called for unionists and affiliates nationwide to take to the streets. And they did, with the MUA at the forefront of the Sydney, Perth and Newcastle rallies.
“We’ve never had entire families march under our banner before,” said Newcastle Branch Secretary Jim Boyle. “It was the kids, the grandparents, mums and dads, boyfriends and girlfriends — around 300 all up – that made it the biggest MUA turnout here ever.”
In Darwin maritime workers joined thousands of others to brave a tropical downpour.
In Perth, MUA Branch Secretary Wal Pritchard addressed a rally of 100,000 on behalf of unions WA and in Sydney Assistant Branch Secretary Sean Chaffer was chief marshal leading a demonstration at least quarter of a million strong that shut down the city.
“It was recognition of the proud role this union holds in the peace movement,” said National Secretary Paddy Crumlin, who attended the Sydney rally alongside CFMEU National President John Maitland and a contingent of MUA members, veterans and families from Port Kembla and Sydney. “Our union has a commitment o ensuring our lives are characterised by peace and functionality, not war and destruction.”
The rallies worldwide were peaceful, but for scuffles with mounted police in the US and in Western Australia where a war of words erupted between arch conservatives and labour.
“They wrote letters to the paper calling wharfies and seafarers cowards and traitors,” said Wal Pritchard. “It’s not just a straightforward protest here. We’re calling for the government to refuse US warships anchorage in Fremantle harbour. And some unions have suggested that workers, especially maritime workers, should walk off the job to join future protests.”
That’s when things got nasty. While US labour attaches were quietly making polite visits to the homes of ALP leaders in an attempt to curtail political opposition to a US led invasion of Iraq, conservative forces rolled out the big guns against any hint of union rebellion.
“They started calling us industrial terrorists and accusing wharfies of treason, undermining the nation’s war effort in past battles,” said Wal Pritchard. “If maritime workers did not serve their country in WWII, then how did one in eight merchant seafarers die? How did 22 ships sink in Darwin Harbour with wharfies bodies trapped inside,” he told the crowd, also citing a letter from Major General Cosgrove thanking our members for their support during the Australian led UN peace mission in East Timor.
“I think this war is crazy,” war veteran and retired maritime worker Jim Mitchell, 89, told the Adelaide Advertiser.
He was not alone. Around the world war veterans, even Gulf War veterans joined the protests, marching alongside church leaders, environmentalists and students.
The Advertiser reported a crowd of 100,000 closed roads with some motorists abandoning their cars to join the march.
“Once again the banners and flags are being unfurled by the young stevedores and seafarers who carried them through the streets of Adelaide protesting against the insanity,” wrote Branch Secretary Keith Ridgeway.
“The MUA veterans are now older and are now marching down the same streets under their own banner,” he said. “They may not be as spritely as they were during the Vietnam War, but they still have the same determination in demonstrating and opposing Australia’s involvement in a conflict that has not been sanctioned by the international community.”
In Brisbane the MUA dusted off a giant caricature of John Howard.
“It attracted other protesters who posed for photos and also the media,” said Branch Secretary Mick Carr. “But I gave the best slogan award to a protester armed with a placard ‘Would the US care about Iraq if its major export was broccoli?’”
Other favourites were “We don’t need another Bushfire” “Fighting for Peace is like f… for Virginity” and ‘No blood for Oil’.
But Bush and Blair and Howard did not listen. Around midday on Thursday, March 20, the ‘deadline’ for the Iraqi president to ‘get out’, the first US missiles exploded in Baghdad, a botched attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein and end the war before it began.
By 2pm John Howard confirmed Australian special forces were in combat.
That night the Baghdad skies lit up and on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, the first US troops crossed the border. The invasion had begun.
“More like a massacre than a fight” is how Herald correspondent Lindsay Murdoch described the beginning of the war.
Around the world millions of people left their offices and took to the streets to protest a superpower attacking a debilitated and largely disarmed nation where half the population is under 16.
In Paris, French school students yelled ‘Bush murderer’, in Asia, the Middle East and European nations they waved anti US slogans and burnt the stars and stripes.
In Yemen three protesters and a policeman were killed in clashes and in San Francisco police arrested more than 1000 demonstrators, detaining another 100. In New York “September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrow’s” condemned the war as illegal and immoral.
North Korea accused the US of bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, while Pakistan postponed a state visit to the US citing “the sad and tragic developments in Iraq and deep anguish caused to the people of Pakistan.”
“People have not been fooled by Howard, Bush or Blair that this war is about disarming Saddam Hussein or removing weapons of mass destruction or fighting terrorism,” said National Secretary Paddy Crumlin. “The world knows it’s all about a US war motivated by the need of multinationals to control the world’s oil resources.”
Iraq is the world’s second biggest oil producer and much of its oil lies so near ground level it costs less than $2 per barrel to produce. Output is now about 2.8 million barrels per day, down from 3.1 million in 1991.
The Iraqi opposition has already promised that US and its allies “would definitely be favoured” in any new oil deals if they succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein.
It is a corporate war bankrolled by the US taxpayers to the tune of $175 billion for the military alone, according to US government estimates cited in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not to mention the estimated $1 billion that the Australian taxpayer has unwittingly funded out of our shrinking budget surplus – at the expense of health, education and tax cuts.
But there is no estimate of the cost in human lives. Nor is there any figure for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq, or the humanitarian aid relief needed for as many as 2 million potential refugees.
All the churches oppose this war. The Vatican response is a resounding “no,” a papal official told the Catholic Reporter.
“War is bloodshed, destruction, disaster and death,” he said. “I heard that at Sigonella (a US naval base in Sicily) 100,000 bags, the kind used for dead bodies, have been brought there, along with 6,000 coffins. Those are not for the Iraqi soldiers! We’re talking about incredible loss of life.”
“We have seen on TV that no plans have been completed for the sickening mopping-up operation of repairing broken bodies, broken minds, broken homes and broken hearts around the world,” said WA Secretary Wal Pritchard. “But there are fully completed plans for the takeover of the whole Iraqi oil industry.”
The US has failed to convince military and intelligence experts, much less Europe and Asia or the Muslim world, that there is any link between Iraq and al Qaeda and therefore any real justification for a war on Iraq.
A defence paper released in February shows that Australia has far more urgent matters closer to home — North Korea, rising Islamic extremism in South East Asia and the pending collapse of South Pacific states into violence.
Then there was Andrew Wilkie, a senior analyst who resigned from the Office of National Assessment (ONA) in March. ONA employs some 40 handpicked experts to sift through intelligence from ASIO, ASIS, the Defence Signals Directorate and the Defence Imagers and Geospatial Organisation. It is Australia’s top intelligence assessment outfit.
The Sydney Morning Herald (15/3/03) lists a dozen other defence gurus who have spoken out against a unilateral war. They include the former head of the defence department Paul Barratt, former chief Defence Force General Peter Gration, two former air chiefs, Air Marshal Jake Newham and Air Marshal Ray Funnell, former navy chief Admiral Mike Hudson, former vice chief of the Defence Force Admiral Ian Knox and General Alan Stretton, a veteran of Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam, general Sir Michael Rose, former UN commander in Bosnia and former British army chief General Sir Roger Wheeler — not to mention General “Stormin Norman” Schwarzkopf, who led the 1991 Gulf War.
Others see the greatest threat in Australia. Terrorism expert Clive Williams told the Herald that Australia’s high profile support for the US is undermining national security. He is not alone.
“There’ll be 100,000 or more terrorists sign up to Osama bin Laden – generations of hate directed towards the US and its partners in this undertaking,” warns Admiral Knox.
Nor will another Gulf War bring democracy. The New York Times cites US security sources seriously questioning that an overthrow of Saddam would lead to Middle Eastern dictatorships toppling one after the other — the new domino theory, already so thoroughly trashed after the Vietnam War.
A couple of years ago our nation barely featured on the political world map but now we are asking to be singled out for attack.
While the war hungary trio argue that it is necessary to bomb Iraq to prevent terrorism, the prevailing wisdom is that our unquestioning involvement in the US Crusade means Australia could well become a prime terrorist target.
It is not just the Iraqi citizens who stand to pay in blood. Australians too could lose more sons and daughters.
Bali may just be the beginning.