The costs of war

Well it was another busy weekend. On Friday evening I travelled down to Brighton to speak at the launch of the national party's LGBT Manifeso with Peter Tatchell, Caroline Lucas and LGBTIQ Group Chair, Phelim Mac Cafferty. Lots of people from Brighton present and will report more on that once I get the pictures and speeches etc. Afterwards I went to the new library in Brighton to celebrate LGBT History Month with a musical evening called the 'Lavender Lounge' which was packed and featured a well known lesbian performer from Brighton - whom I had never heard of - called Starr. I have to say her singing was wonderful and included songs based on the history of Brighton and various local artists etc. I crawled back to London on the last train.

On Saturday I attended the Steering Committee meeting of Stop the War Coalition which lasted for most of the day. There were reports and discussions on the war in Afghanistan and how this will impact on the general election, Islamophobia and Iraq, and finishing off with a report on the organisation's finances. During one of the breaks I was approached by someone from Lambeth Stop the War and asked to take part in a hustings on the wars which will be held in April, in the middle of the general election campaign.

I spoke about the costs of the wars and how important it was to get this point across to the public. This was agreed by many speakers. There was a very emotional moment when a grandmother from Liverpool, who is an anti-war activist broke down while addressing the meeting. She held up a photo of her grandson, who has just left for Afghanistan, and told us that several months ago she invited six of his friends to her house for tea. Of those six, three have had their legs blown off and another has had to have his hips removed. These are the real and human costs of the war, which continues to bleed the country dry, both literally and metaphorically.

We heard from local groups around the country that people are signing up to the petitions for withdrawal of troops and one example was Yeovilton, where there is a naval base and much of the local economy is dependant of defence. Even there, soldiers and military families have been signing petitions. Stop the War is going to have a list of candidates standing in this election and will be asking them for their views on the war.

We also heard that David Milliband's roadshow has been dogged by protestors - the latest one was in Hammersmith - and that even those attending the meetings were very supportive of the demonstrators outside. I made the point that although the issue of the war is in fifth place or so on the lists of issues in the opinion polls for this election - once the link is drawn with the economic impact of the war, people's perceptions soon change. I am attaching some info here from Stop the War on the Steering Committee meeting and on the costs of this futile and unwinnable war.


http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1764/27/


The Independent article on the cost of war, mentioned at the meeting by Paul from Coventry, has been on the Stop the War website since it was published last July:

Cost to Britain of war in Afghanistan: £12 billion and rising fasthttp://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1383/27/

Two articles also on the website, making similar comparisons for the US between the astronomical sums spent on war compared to public service budgets etc are:

What you can do with 30 billion dollars

http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1663/268/

VIDEO: How to spend 3 trillion dollars on war in under 3 minutes http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1627/195/