As the author of the book reviewed, I thought I’d respond to your comment.

You say “I find even the title of this book ludicrous. Blair probably shrugged his shoulders and had a good joke with Alistair Campbell!”

In actual fact the documentary record shows the march on 15 February 2003 – or more precisely the anti-Iraq War movement of which the march was the high-point – almost certainly did “shake” Blair and the Government and nearly stopped British participation in the war.

The level of Government panic and how close things actually were can be understood if you read the relevant sections of the following books: Alistair Campbell’s ‘The Blair years. Extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries’, Tony Blair’s autobiography ‘A Journey’, ‘Blair Unbound’ by Anthony Seldon and Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘The end of the party. The rise and fall of New Labour’.

To take just a couple of quotes from Campbell’s diaries:

10 February 2003: “TB [Tony Blair] could barely be in a more exposed place now. PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] tricky. Massive march being planned.”

7 March 2003: The Cabinet Secretary “quietly looking into how a JP [John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister] caretaker premiership would operate” should Blair be forced to resign.

This is broadly confirmed by a careful reading of newspaper reports from the time. For example, on 16 March 2003 – just a few days before the war started – the Daily Telegraph noted that a few days before the Ministry of Defence “was frantically preparing contingency plans to ‘disconnect’ British troops entirely from the military invasion of Iraq, demoting their role to subsequent phases of the campaign and peacekeeping.” (http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/reconsidering_the_march_that_failed)

I agree that more marches of a similar size – more direct action perhaps – would maybe have stopped the war. And that many people on the march became disillusioned with protest because of the march and its popularly understood failure.

My book is not an uncritical look at the anti-Iraq War movement – rather there are several chapters that include testimony from people who are critical of Stop the War Coalition, the SWP role in STWC. There is also discussion about the march’s effect on those attending in the long and short-term.

Kind regards

Ian Sinclair