News » November 21, 2003

Not So Special

Protests question Bush-Blair lovefest

By Ian Williams

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in London on November 20 to speak out against Bush.

Share Facebook Digg del.icio.us Newsvine StumbleUpon Reddit Furl Propeller

The British tabloids once derided Prince Charles for allegedly talking to plants. His eccentricities continue. On November 18 he spoke to a Bush.

It appears, however, that the prince had to be careful what he said to this particular shrub. According to the Guardian, the British Foreign Office has been keeping the heir-apparent away from the United States because his outspoken pro-Palestinian views were considered a threat to the two nations’ “special relationship.”

Even Tony Blair, easily the most pro-Israeli prime minister Britain has had for 50 years, is reportedly miffed because he thought his delivery of British support for the war on Iraq was tied to some serious American pressure on Sharon to deliver on Middle East peace.

There is a self-deprecatory element to British patriotism. Flagwaving and such jingoistic displays are associated with soccer fans. “My country right, or wrong,” is not a common British concept—so it is difficult for many British to accept a prime minister who supports someone else’s country, right or wrong. It was one thing to see Clinton and Blair as ideological chums, both involved in a new political project of getting reelected while stiffing their traditional supporters, but even New Labour is so far to the left of George Bush it makes many British voters wonder what Blair is up to.

The street protests and widespread disillusionment with both governments in Britain are not anti-American. The British are quite prepared to support the United States when they feel it is right. But that same goodwill does not extend to Bush, whom many British believe is arrogant and ignorant.

During the Vietnam War, President Johnson used the IMF and other financial tools to force then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson to send troops. Wilson, although the pound was tottering toward its last days as a reserve currency, refused, not least because even without British military involvement the protests against the war were on the scale that Tony Blair is now subject to.

Johnson wanted British support then for the same reason Bush wants it now: To provide a multilateral fig leaf for Washington’s essentially unilateral escapade.

So what has Blair gotten out of the presidential visit? On the face of it, one has to look hard to see what Britain gains from sending its troops to die for unpopular causes. For example, the White House did not give Blair any deal on the British detainees in Guantanamo, who according to Blair’s government are being held illegally. Nor does it look likely that Bush will give way on the protective tariffs levied against British steel, despite a WTO ruling that they break international agreements. Events on the ground may have now inclined the White House more toward the British view that the occupation of Iraq needs to be internationalized—but that owes more to the unexpected tenacity of Iraqi fighters and their effect on impending American elections.

Bush’s speeches to the British, as they often do for international audiences, contained all the right noises about multilateralism, democracy and even on the Middle East. But infuriatingly irreverent as the British are to their own leaders, the 100,000-200,000 marchers came out on a working day to protest not just Bush’s presence in Britain but their anger at what he actually does, and their shame that Blair has made their country an accomplice.

Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush’s War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, now available from Nation Books.

More information about Ian Williams

Share StumbleUpon Facebook Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine Propeller Furl

subscribe to print magazine
stay in touch with our email newsletter

Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.
email this article to a friend

Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.
Reader Comments

Prince Charles will be further raked over the coals in the coming year. He openly opposes GM crops and supports organic farming. He is being portrayed as a fool in some parts of the press. He is not heard or taken seriously because the public find it so easy to disregard his voice because he is a royal, for starters.
Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone is reported to have refused to have anything to do with President Bush. I hope this reporting is true. What the hell is going on with the American public?

Posted by Kim on Nov 22, 2003 at 7:17 PM

It should be noted that on top of the 100,000-200,000 marchers in London, many thousands more protested in cities and towns throughout the UK.

I watched live the Bush/Blair speeches/press conference at lunchtime just after news of the atrocities in Istanbul had broken. After initially taking their words at face value my reaction became “wait a minute!...”. I remembered that even before the invasion of Iraq that Chomsky, and many others, had reported that both US and UK security services had warned that any invasion would be likely to increase, not decrease the threat of terrorist attacks.

Even a former CONSERVATIVE UK Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd had warned that invading Iraq ran “the risk of turning the Middle East into an inexhaustible recruiting ground for anti-western terrorism”. (Financial Times, January 3, 2003)

Much was made in the UK media , after the news from Istanbul, should the marches have been cancelled, should there have been a minute silence, etc. As many of the protestors later reported, they had no idea what had happened until they had returned home and seen the evening news. And as anyone who has attended such demonstrations will know their rather ramshackle nature precludes a quick response to such events.

Bush and Blair have created an un-necessary, horrible, bloody mess, which unknown numbers of innocent people, both military and civillian, will pay for with their lives.

Posted by Alan Ferns on Nov 22, 2003 at 11:57 PM

I am disgusted at what Blair has done in recent times, commiting british troops to appease the playground bully makes my stomach churn.
The article is correct inasmuch that the protests were not anti-american, there are good and bad people in all countries. The marchers marched to show their opposition to the way we were coerced into the Iraq invasion, with spin and lies, but eventually the truth will surface. We must demand a public enquiry

Posted by chris hogan on Nov 23, 2003 at 4:13 AM

Ken Livingstone, on the day Bush arrived, described him in a press conference as “the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen”. Go Ken. And I thought he was going soft because he was talking about rejoining the Labour party.

I was on the march. It was my first such protest - I would have been on the February march, but couldn’t manage to get there - there were about thousands of people ahead of me trying to squeeze onto trains at Cambridge station.

I certainly didn’t know about the Turkish bombings until after the march. And when I found out, and saw Bush & Blair spouting the same “no surrender” nonsense at the press conference, it just made me even more glad that I’d been there to protest.

The two of them just seem intent on sustaining the cycle of violence. They’re in a symbiotic relationship with Al Qaeda et al - each of them helping the other depict their enemy as “evil”. It’ll just end up with our religious lunatics leading us against their religious lunatics. Kind of like Israel vs Palestine on a global scale.

Listen to this quote from Blair. He’s getting scarier by the day:

“And let me make it absolutely clear for our position as well. We stay until the job gets done. And what this latest terrorist outrage shows us is that this is a war, its main battleground is Iraq. We have got to make sure that we defeat these terrorists - the former Saddam people - in Iraq and we must do that because that is an essential part of defeating this fanaticism and extremism that is killing innocent people all over our world today. And I can assure you of one thing, that when something like this happens today, our response is not to flinch, or give way or concede one inch. We stand absolutely firm until this job is done, done in Iraq, done elsewhere in the world.”

I could visualise Saddam Hussein or Usama Bin Laden making almost exactly the same speech.

Posted by Kevin Bracey on Nov 23, 2003 at 2:35 PM

Did Livingstone really call Bush “the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen?” What an idiot. That’s one the most assinine remarks I’ve heard in a long time.

Posted by James on Nov 24, 2003 at 1:31 AM
extended discussion >>>Continued...

Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 14 posts.

Appeared in the December 22, 2003 Issue

Also featured Tibet’s Gamble
The Candidates on the Environment
Manufacturing Discontent

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Ian Williams

Bolton vs. United Nations
Bush's mad cop–bad cop rusePosted on March 18, 2005
Bushs War Against the Military
George W. Bush so often invokes his nominal title of “commander in chief”… morePosted on October 24, 2004
Deserter at the Helm!
On September 11, 2001, I lived in downtown Manhattan near the World Trade… morePosted on September 14, 2004
The Sorrows of Dogma
The 9/11 commission is confirming what Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, Bob Woodward and… morePosted on May 14, 2004
Re-United Nations
U.S. admits U.N. role necessary for laying the electoral groundwork in IraqPosted on February 2, 2004