There was no militant
response to the war in Britain, as in most Nato countries (Greece seems to
something of an exception, but the protests were fuelled by nationalism and
encompassed the whole political spectre).
With a professional army, the war did not affect the lives of people
here in any significant way and was
merely something happening on TV, and the current political apathy in Britain
was surely no fertile soil for mass resistance against the war. Furthermore, the war propaganda of a new
humanitarian internationalism succeeded in silencing criticism and paralysing
opposition to the war, and the obvious lack of immediate economic interests in
the region helped underpin the image of Nato as the humanitarian peace dove who
only bombs to avoid worse suffering. Whoever spoke out against Nato's war was
denounced as a lackey of the Serb regime and compared with the appeasers of
1938. At the least, anyone opposed to the bombing of Yugoslavia was asked what
else one could do, since "we have to do something". Many on the left who still opposed the Gulf
war in 1991 now found themselves cheering Nato's war on the grounds of
preventing "the next Holocaust". We don't care what Ken Livingstone
and the likes do, but this was certainly a phenomenon not confined to Labour MPs
and newspaper columnists. At least, the
humanitarian card that belligerent politicians the media played made things too
difficult to take an anti-war-position. It is worth noting that the entire
"direct action"-scene, normally bursting "to do something",
was silent about Nato's war. There was a symbolic scene in Brighton, when a
several thousand strong animal rights demonstration passed the anti-war-vigil
consisting of a dozen people. SchNews,
the weekly news-sheet representing the direct-action scene, ran precisely one
article throughout the whole time of the war. For this political milieu it was
as if the war was not happening at all and one could go about one's business of
writing about trees, parks, GM food etc..[1]
However, the anti-war-movement
was a failure not only in terms of size, but also as far as its political
content is concerned. It was a bizarre alliance of remnants of the peace
movement, Trotskyist groups, some Labour left-wingers and sometimes even Tory MPs. One regretted every demo in London
one had attended together with this mixture which was completed by Serb
nationalists displaying their stupid flags. The only consent was the opposition
to Nato's bombing campaign; apart from that, Tories could moan about the
absence of a true national interest in the war, Labour MPs showed themselves
shocked that the sacred international law was broken, while Trotskyists chanted
their "welfare not warfare"-slogans, thus demanding the better
political personnel that is wise enough to invest "our" money
usefully into hospitals instead of bombing hospitals elsewhere. Though not
dominant, anti-American propaganda by old Stalinists also resurfaced: while the
British PM was the pace-maker calling for ground troops, the anti-war
demonstrations displayed nationalist
“Yankee go home”-placards showing the map of Britain in the colours of the US
flag.
On top of that,
many of the Trotskyist sects supported
the idea of Kosovan independence. Consequently, the focus of their
"critique" was to accuse Nato of having "sat back and done
nothing while the Kosovars have been systematically massacred and driven from
their homes". By idealising the nationalist terrorists of the Kosovo
Liberation Army as freedom fighters, by spelling out freedom as "nation
state", these sects reinforced the fundamental ideology of national
self-determination that dominates the conflict in the Balkans. The "independence for Kosova" Workers
Aid for Kosova demands is the definite formula for further ethnic
cleansing - this time against the Serbs,
who are already now leaving Kosovo.
[1] Two
characteristics of the direct action scene, though, make this failure no surprise. Firstly, it thinks in clear-cut
moral oppositions: good vs. bad. Secondly, it is based on the expectancy of immediate
effects of their action. Obviously, both things did not apply to the war since
there were no "goodies" and no realistic perspective of ending the
war through protests.