Saturday November 4th saw a large anti war demonstration march through Dublin city centre. This reflects growing opposition to the US war against Afghanistan following the bombing of Red Cross warehouses, a hospital and dozens of homes. The march also saw the first appearance of the new Anarchist Against the War banner.
Anti-war march in Dublin
Saturday November 4th saw a large anti war demonstration march through Dublin city centre. This reflects growing opposition to the US war against Afghanistan following the bombing of Red Cross warehouses, a hospital and dozens of homes. The march also saw the first appearance of the new Anarchist Against the War banner.
In weeks before the march anarchists in Dublin formed Anarchists against the War and distributed thousands of leaflets in the city centre and door to door in Stoneybatter and elsewhere asking people to attend. The leaflet ‘You don’t have to choose sides‘ is also available on the Struggle site as a PDF file. On the Thursday before the march we met up in Spacecraft to paint the banner.
The demonstration called by the ‘Irish Anti War Movement’ saw groups attending from all over the country including Cork and Sligo. Weekly anti war vigils in this small rural town have been attracting as many as 80 people.
Somewhere around 2,000 people gathered at the march starting point to listen to speeches from the usual range of politicians and personalities of the left (pics above and below). Although the Gardai had arrested two at a demonstration a couple of weeks earlier on Saturday they behaved themselves for the most part.
By the time the march had moved down O’Connell st and come back around to the final rallying point at the GPO the crowd had grown to over 2,000. After some more speeches there the crowd dispersed. According to Aileen "After the anti-war march in Dublin on Saturday, Anarchists against the War had a quick meeting. Reports were heard on the anti-war movement in Cork, Derry, Kildare, Limerick, Dublin, Sligo and Galway. It was suggested that it would be good to mobilise a strong anti-war presence at Shannon and the meeting agreed to see if they could get support for a national day of action at Shannon Airport. We also agreed to continue leafleting and postering with the anarchist anti-war message."
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WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )