One hundred thousand and counting - the day the Irish hit the streets

One year ago, anti-war protest s brought Dublin to a standstill. Deaglán de Bréadún gathers recollections of the day

One year ago, anti-war protest s brought Dublin to a standstill. Deaglán de Bréadún gathers recollections of the day

'No war on Iraq, no blood for oil, no US bombers on our soil" - it wasn't poetry but it rhymed. Protesters young and old chanted it on the Dublin streets as they marched in their tens of thousands on February 15th last. It was hard even for the organisers to believe the size of the demonstration.

Roger Cole, of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), had been appointed "chief steward" for the march and admits his expectations were modest.

"My estimate was 25,000 and the Garda Síochána thought the turnout would be 15,000," he says. "Both were reasonable, as the maximum in previous anti- war marches had been 2,000."

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But the marchers just kept on coming. Few would quibble with Cole's estimate that 125,000 people turned out in Dublin, and there were large crowds also in Belfast and around the country.

"We knew it was going to be big," says Richard Boyd Barrett, who chaired the Dublin demonstration. "But we never expected it to be that big."

"I was delighted," recalls Denis Halliday, a Dubliner who was previously a top United Nations official but resigned over the issue of Iraq. Speaking in Dame Street on "F15", the former assistant secretary- general worked the crowd with rhetorical questions, like a revivalist preacher. It wasn't just the size but the make-up of the crowd that pleased him.

"It was an extraordinary cross-section of Irish life," says Halliday, who was in charge of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq and resigned in 1998 because he believed UN sanctions were proving genocidal in their effect.

But it was the concern the marchers displayed for the population of a faraway country that impressed Boyd Barrett.

"It clearly showed that people don't have to be immediately, directly affected by an issue to come out on the streets and show their solidarity with people on the other side of the world," he says.

More controversially, perhaps, he believes the march was a by-product of an even wider movement and was a case of "the spirit and colour of the anti- globalisation movement finally hitting the shores of Ireland".

But no subsequent anti-war protest brought out anything like the same numbers. Boyd Barrett says there were two "very sizeable" subsequent protests in Dublin, but even he would have to agree that the demonstration of 1,200 souls at Shannon Airport on March 1st was a pale shadow of the turnout two weeks earlier. Like others, he likes to blame "sections of the media" for exaggerating the possibility of violence at Shannon.

He further criticises the media for highlighting alleged splits in the anti-war ranks. But he acknowledges that there are tensions within the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), which he also chairs, about the right approach for the future.

"There is a debate about tactics, the use of civil disobedience and direct action, as against a broad, mass, inclusive movement," he says. He favours the latter strategy, but does not believe the two approaches are mutually exclusive.

Meanwhile, Cole has his own explanation as to why numbers dropped off: "At least 50 per cent who had taken part had never taken part in any march before, and were unlikely to do so again. It was clear that the Ahern Government had decided to ignore the marchers and to destroy neutrality and support the war, so even my 10-year-old child said what was the point of yet another march."

Cole admits the possibility of violence on subsequent demonstrations kept people away. "While PANA made it clear it was totally committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means of protesting against the war, some anti-war elements disagreed and others were ambiguous, a process that I believe ensured that many people stayed away. The Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat tactic of branding the organisers as 'anti-American', and the threat that the US multinationals would pull out if protests continued also had an effect," he says.

But Cole believes the speed of the coalition's military victory was the key factor: "I suppose the main reason why the numbers opposed to the war declined over the next few months was because the American Empire had conquered Iraq and every two-bit journalist kept on saying the 'war' was over, so what was the point of demonstrating?"

Halliday opts for a more psychological explanation: "We Irish are really rather shy, and to march in public in your own home town takes a lot of courage." He also claims that, for the thousands who marched, there were many more who silently supported the protest.

"The fact that you can't sustain that sort of demonstration is absolutely understandable, and you need very special circumstances to do it. I mean, you can't do it again and again and again: people can't sustain that sort of commitment over a long period, they have lives to lead and other priorities," he says.

Could it be that people had second thoughts?

"No, absolutely not. And now, given what has happened since, many people must be very glad they were there, because certainly their participation has proven to be the right thing to have done. And those who weren't there must feel: 'Well, maybe I missed an opportunity to stand up and be counted.' "

Like other opponents of the war he now feels vindicated on the issue of Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction. But isn't he glad that the dictator is no longer in power?

"I am, but that is a decision that only the Iraqis were entitled to make," he says. He believes that if the UN had lifted its sanctions a decade ago, the Iraqis would have toppled Saddam. The even more brutal Suharto regime in Indonesia, for example, had been overthrown by the people of that country.

"I think the Iraqis could well have done that if we had given them the opportunity. But as we had all been saying for years, sanctions strengthened Saddam Hussein and weakened the Iraqi people," says Halliday.

Now the organisations which brought us F15 are planning a repeat worldwide performance, this time on March 20th, the first anniversary of the war.

Meanwhile, both Cole and Boyd Barrett are gearing up to run in the local elections in June. They are both candidates for Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council but for different parties: Cole for Labour and Boyd Barrett for the Socialist Workers' Party. But their record on local issues is likely to affect their prospects more than their anti-war stance.

Halliday, who visited Iraq twice in the run-up to war, refuses to go back for the time being: "I will not go there under US military, and illegal, occupation," he explains.

"It looks like there are elements who are encouraging civil war," he adds. "That is a tragedy for the country, the people and possibly the region. I think the answer remains the same: the US has just simply got to get out of that country."

Deaglán de Bréadún is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times