Mounting demonstrations against war have shown that there is massive public resistance and we have to salute all those who are taking part in the movement against it. However we have also to warn against false friends. Those who are campaigning (like the Daily Mirror) for war to take place only after a United Nations resolution are actually preparing us for war. Even if the USA goes back to the UN (and Blair has already backtracked from his pro-UN position) the USA has easily enough clout, both economically and militarily, to eventually get what it wants. If Syria can be bribed and coerced into an anti-Iraq resolution then any state can. The UN is not a peacekeeping body but a catspaw of the imperialist powers. If it ignores the US it becomes irrelevant. If it wants to be relevant it will do as the US wishes.

The way that Blair and Bush have ignored public opinion against the war also shows what democracy is really worth in these capitalist states. The “national interest” is to increase the wealth of those that own the nation’s means of production. The rest of us don’t count. And yet the Stop the War campaign made up as it is of the SWP, pacifists, Christians, Greens etc still pretends that a legal campaign is the answer to end war.

As we have said often, all the usual reformist channels will not stop the war drive. Prayers, vigils (with or without candles), letters to Bush, Blair or the papers mean nothing. What does mean something is the massive and concerted refusal of the working class to do capitalism’s dirty work. But this won’t come about ovrenight and won’t come about through the forming of this or that ad hoc committee in the style of the “anticapitalists”.

The consciousness of the need to overthrow this system will inevitably give birth to an international political organisation which will be different from all previous parties in that it will be the leadership of the revolution but not the leadership of any government. That will be the task of the whole of the working class after capitalism’s road to hell has been totally blocked.