The socialist youth movement, Revolution, agreed this declaration at a meeting in London in October. It asking that the conference of social movements in Florence discuss and adopt it. We appeal to all those people who agree with it to sign it.
“For the second time in a year the war machine of the world’s most powerful state is preparing to attack a small country.
The USA is hell-bent on invading and occupying Iraq- with or without the approval of the UN Security Council. George Bush, and his ally Tony Blair, have set their sights on plundering the oil reserves of the Middle East as part of the drive to establish unchallenged US domination of the world and the global economy.
As the corporations open up the markets of the world to their exploitation, the military bases and “advisers” spread into more and more countries. It is a war for global capitalism and for imperialist domination. Bush’s war is not to defend the peoples of the world against terrorism or liberate the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. The endless US/UK bombing of Iraq, together with the savage UN sanctions, have terrorised and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. With their backing, Israel is terrorising the Palestinian people and occupying their land.
Bush and Blair can provide no proof that Iraq is either a centre for organising terrorist attacks, or that it threatens its neighbours with “weapons of mass destruction”, including nuclear and biological ones.
States that possess these weapons are active in the Middle East – namely the United Sates, Britain and Israel.These are the biggest terrorists. They have no progressive role to play in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. That is a task for the Iraqi people. The “war on terrorism” has encouraged every reactionary force on the planet. The governments of North America and Europe have attacked civil and human rights won over centuries – asylum, the right to privacy, and the freedom of citizens from police harassment – and have introduced imprisonment without trial. Racism and the persecution of Muslims or of any one with a “Middle Eastern appearance” have been unleashed by the press leading to an upsurge of racist attacks and murders.
We, the representatives of popular organisations, trade unions, campaigns for an end to world debt, poverty, environmental destruction, condemn this war. The same neo-liberalism and global capitalism that is at the root of these evils is at the root of the threatened war. We pledge ourselves to campaign across Europe to demand – with or without UN approval – DON”T ATTACK IRAQ. Starting with a Europe wide day of action against the war on . . . we will continue to campaign:
by means of mass demonstrations, civil disobedience and obstruction of the “war effort”;
• by means of boycotts of the state and corporate institutions of the perpetrators and supporters of this war;
• by campaigning for strikes in workplaces, schools and colleges.
Our aim is to prevent a war being launched. If we fail in this we will campaign by militant means to force its cessation and the withdrawal of the attackers. We hope our actions will encourage the resistance of the Iraqi, Palestinian and Arab peoples and help them to defeat the imperialist attack.
To them- from Florence- we send a message of solidarity and encouragement:
You are not alone! We will do everything in our power to strike the weapons of mass destruction from the hands of “our own” rulers. We must globalise the fight against imperialist war, just as the mass – and successful – anti-Vietnam war movement did in the last century.
We call on all anti-war forces, including trade union leaders, members of national parliaments, immigrant community and NGO leaders, to use their public tribunes, their access to the media, to summon millions to action against the war and to take a lead themselves in anti-war actions. We call on the grass roots, popular, immigrant communities, and labour movement organisations to co-ordinate their forces at local, national and international level to do all they can to mobilise millions against it.
We declare war on war and on the warmongers.