Stop The War – Hands Off Iraq: The protest in London against the US plans to invade Iraq on Saturday 30th March 2002 was I think the first of the really huge protests in London and across the world against the invasion then being planned by U.S. president George W Bush following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States.
The Stop the War Coalition had been formed shortly after the 9/11 attacks and had organised this protest together with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain.
It is hard to give any accurate estimate of the numbers taking part in protests as large as this, but I think there must have been well over a hundred thousand marching – much smaller than the well over a million that marched in London 11 months later in February 2003, but still a very significant number. It received very little coverage in the mass media and so it is now still difficult to find anything about it online.
By March 2002 the initial huge public sympathy with the USA over the 9/ll attacks had given place to a feeling that Bush and his “war on terror” was determined to attack Iraq at all cost even though it seemed unlikely that there was any real link between Iraq and Al-Qaida, and there was little if any evidence that Iraq still possessed “weapons of mass destruction“.
Iraq had ended work to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in the 1990s and most or all of its stockpiles had been destroyed. In November 2002 Saddam Hussein had allowed UN inspectors search Iraqi facilities for WMDs and they found none. The US alleged that Iraq had hidden them – and forged documents were produced about uranium. No WMDs were found during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003-2011 and US secretary of state Colin “Powell and George Bush eventually admitted Iraq had not had them.”
Despite then known facts, Tony Blair had decided to support the US invasion against the huge opposition from the British public. He and his government lied to parliament, most notably with the “Dodgy Dossier” and other documents. The dossier, “sexed up” by Alistair Campbell was largely plagiarised from a thesis by a graduate student at California State University, and contained many errors and unchecked statements, and contradicted much of actual evidence from intelligence sources. It should have ended the political career and any credibility for both.
Back in 2002 I was working with both black and white and colour film, but it was difficult for me to digitise the colour work – and I only posted black and white images on My London Diary. I still have only digitised a few of the many colour images I made at that time.
Included in this post are all of the images I posted on My London Diary and below is the short text I wrote to go with them. The files are small and they were posted across several pages as many then still accessed the web on slow dial-up modems. They are reduced versions of the images I filed to my agency, made by scanning black and white prints.The original post is still online, but adds nothing to this post.
The Stop the War, Hands off Iraq demonstration on 2 March was a large sign of public opinion. People were still leaving Hyde Park at the start of the march when Trafalgar Square was full to overflowing two and a half hours later.
Police estimates of the number were risible as usual – and can only reflect an attempt to marginalise the significant body of opinion opposed to the war or a complete mathematical inability on behalf of the police.
Tony Benn told us it wasn’t worth taking his picture – “It won’t get in the papers unless I go and kick a policeman” but he didn’t and was quite right.
Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos
All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.
