This article looks at how direct action had forced one military airline out of Shannon in the context of how dependent modern wars are on long supply chains. This is used to argue that similar actions across Europe and the US could prevent the war from taking place. "In this war our rulers do not need us to fight as soldiers, they would like but do not require our support for the war. They do however need us to remain passive, for if we turn our disgust at this war into action against it then their war machine will grind to a halt."
Specialist topics: Iraq war
A front cover story for Workers Solidarity in 2002 on the use of Shannon airport for refuleing US war planes
Report on the massive anti-war march in Dublin February 2003 and the plans for the March 1st direct action at Shannon airport that developed out of the meeting that morning.
Millionaires go to WAR! – Expect world’s workers to fight for them!!!
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Review: Refueling Peace website
Refueling Peace is one of the many anti-war groups that has sprung up over the last year. They have defined themselves around a very specific purpose, to "monitor and stop US military flights refuelling in Ireland". The information gathering aspect of this is proving essential in moving the Shannon refuelling issue to the centre of the Irish anti-war movements.
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A plan for the anti-war movement
Polls show most people in Ireland oppose the war, and refuelling at Shannon, yet the government continue to provide support for the US and British war drive. This is yet another demonstration of how meaningless parliamentary democracy is. Unless we are talking of marches of tens or hundreds of thousands we won’t frighten the government into a change of policy. If the Iraq war is like other recent imperialist ones – where the actual fighting happens over a period of weeks rather then years – then its unlikely we will see tens of thousands mobilised. There is one way we can stop the war – this is mass direct action.
Report on January 2003 anti-war protest at Shannon airport during which an attempt was made to gain access to the runway and the roof tops of the airport were occupied.
George Bush’s claim that the war in Iraq was won last May now seems very premature. Saddam may have been caught but US troops are increasingly confined to their bases or to mounting large patrols out of them, at constant risk of ambush. But what is life like for the Iraqi workers caught under the occupation and all too often in the cross-fire?
At the end of the year the organisation called the Irish Anti War Movement went through an internal crisis as some of those involved tried to democratise it. When the Socialist Workers Party who controlled the IAWM responded by arranging the expulsion of some of its opponents from the committee most of the independent groups reacted by disaffiliating from the IAWM.
George Bush declared major combat operations to be over on May 1st, 2003. 139 US soldiers had been killed by that date. Two years later over ten times that number have died. No one knows how many Iraqis have been killed, as the Americans aren’t even bothering to count. Estimates like that published in Lancet last October suggested a likely death toll of around 100,000.