Ten Years of Stop the War Coalition and the rising costs of War

Tonight, together with several other members of Green Left and the Green Party, I will be attending the 10th anniversary dinner of Stop the War Coalition. The dinner is not just to mark a decade of activism but also to fundraise for the campaigning work of the UK's leading anti-war organisation. It is appalling to think that the UK, along with the US and others, has been involved in a decade of wars. The situation is beginning to resemble the plot of 1984 where Eurasia is in a state of permanent war with Oceania. And at a time when the costs of wars continue to rise while our leaders tell us that there is no funding for anything else.

The links between the anti-cuts movement and the anti-war movement are obvious, and are made abundantly clear in this video appearance by David Swanson, noted US anti-war activist, who draws the clear links between Occupation Wall Street and the anti-war movement. These are the two campaigns to which I am politically dedicated at present as the fate of humanity and of the planet depend on the outcome of both of these titanic struggles agains the military industrial complex, aided and abetted by its corporate sponsors, and paid for, both in blood and cash, by all of us.