The anti-war movement we need

This was the last post I wrote about the alarming drift towards WW3: Escalation... 31.5.25. Never has any post I’ve ever written dated so fast because of the speed at which events are unfolding! They’re escalating at a frightening rate. Firstly, there was this attack on a train: Bridges collapse in two Russian regions bordering Ukraine, killing seven - Aljazeera | 1.6.25. Then, there was this: Russian Strategic Bombers Destroyed In Unprecedented Wide-Scale Drone Attack (Updated) – Howard Altman/Tyler Rogoway | TWZ | 1.6.25. Both of these events happened right before scheduled peace talks in Istanbul between delegations from Russia and Ukraine: Second round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks ends swiftly with no major breakthrough – Christian Edwards, Svitlana Vlasova, Victoria Butenko, Gul Tuysuz and Anna Chernova | CNN | 2.6.25. Unsurprisingly given all of this, the peace talks didn’t last long and certainly didn’t get anywhere.

It should be noted I now fully realise that many of the posts I write about the situation between Russia and Ukraine/NATO are going to be mere snapshots in time as events overtake, and sometimes shock us. As I write this piece, the world is still awaiting the response from Moscow to these attacks. So far, there has been radio silence. There has been a massive amount of speculation as to what form the response will take. The speculation ranges from sober assessment to absolutely alarmist. This post on X from a former National Security Advisor to the 45 POTUS, General Mike Flynn is one of the sober assessments of the danger that Ukraine has put us in:

So, it appears Zelenskyy gave the go ahead to attack parked Russian nuclear capable bombers without informing @realDonaldTrump (if true that our President was not consulted nor informed, this isn’t simply a breach of protocol. It’s a geopolitical insult and a warning sign. If Ukraine is willing to conduct strikes with strategic consequences without notifying the White House, we are no longer allies with coordination issues—we are co-belligerents flying blind).

You can read the rest of his post here.

I don’t particularly want to get drawn into commenting on the possible response from Moscow as I realise that when it comes to really understanding Russia, I do have a bit of a learning curve in front of me. This is something I’m trying my level best to address. What I do want to comment upon is the urgent need for an effective, broad based anti-war movement. Not least because it now appears that the country is being moved towards a ‘war footing’ after the release of the Strategic Defence Review: Defence review plans will make army ‘10 times more lethal’, says John Healey – as it happened – The Guardian | 2.6.25.

Obviously, it would have been useful to have had an effective anti-war movement in place a good few years ago to counter the deranged drive towards WW3 – a war that will have no winners. We have to accept the harsh fact that any moves towards building a broad based anti-war movement may well be too little, too late. Despite this, we owe it to future generations to try and get such a movement going.

The good news is that there are plenty of people out there who strongly object to the relentless drive towards WW3 and the militarisation of the UK. In theory, it should be easy to build an anti-war movement. The only constituencies in favour of going onto a war footing are the middle class liberals who have adopted Ukraine as their ‘cause’, the traditional ‘my country right or wrong’ armchair warriors, and those workers in the arms industry who will have years of steady work as a result of increased spending on ‘defence’. As an aside, concerning the workers who will benefit from a spending boost for ‘defence’, we’ve been here before as referenced in these song lyrics: Shipbuilding - Elvis Costello (1983).

What has to be noted is that opposition to an all out war with Russia and the increasing militarisation of the UK cuts across and beyond the political spectrum. It ranges from the rump of hard left groups who never sold out on their anti-imperialist principles all the way over to working class people who do not want to sacrifice themselves, or their sons and daughters, in a land war with Russia. It’s the working class who would be expected to provide the cannon fodder and from what I can gather, many of them would be opposed to and quite possibly, actively resisting any attempts to impose conscription. That’s assuming that the recent events mentioned at the start of this piece don’t lead to a nuclear exchange as a result of hubris and miscalculation. If it does, then all bets are off and it’s been nice knowing you…

The biggest barrier to building any anti-war movement is going to be the sheer diversity of people opposing the push towards WW3. Some of them will have reactionary sentiments that the hard left will find hard to accept. This reminds me of what I was told way back in the 1990s in a completely different political existence – namely that should any revolutionary situation arise, it has to be accepted that some of those rising up will have reactionary assumptions. I was told that this would not be the time to apply rigid political purity tests and that we needed to be open minded about who we worked with, challenging their assumptions as we worked alongside them. I would hope that given the existential threat we now face, this would still be the case. However, I realise that the 1990s was a very different place to where we are now in that people were more open to dialogue, and didn’t seal themselves off into self referential bubbles, eschewing contact with anyone who might have a different opinion.

I’m putting this piece out to test the water as to what the potential is for building a broad based anti-war movement. However, to be honest, given the diversity of those opposing the drive to war, what would most likely emerge is a coalition of different groups. Ones that would be willing to work with each other on an ad-hoc basis as and when the need arises. The only parallel to this I can think of is the coalition that emerged in the face of the Covid ‘crisis’ lockdowns, restrictions and the attempts to impose vaccine mandates. However, as many of you are well aware and as I wrote in this piece – It was never going to last so, we need to move on... 16.10.23 – it didn’t take much for this coalition to crumble. The lessons from that need to be learned so that experience isn’t repeated at a point where the success of a broad based anti-war coalition is vital to our very survival.