Mass protest in UK against "bombers" Blair and Bush

By Andrew Cawthorne

LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Waving anti-war banners and chanting slogans
against "Bomber Bush and Bomber Blair," tens of thousands of Britons flocked
to a vast peace rally in London on Saturday to oppose a possible military
strike on Iraq.

Joint organisers Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain
estimated more than 350,000 people took part in the rally at Hyde Park and a
preceding march from the River Thames near the British parliament.

Police put numbers lower, at 150,000. But that would still make it probably
the biggest peace rally in Britain since a huge anti-nuclear demonstration in
1981 drew a quarter of a million.

Myriad groups and personalities backed the march -- from "rebel" members of
the ruling Labour Party and the mayor of London, to trade unions, religious
leaders, artists, pop stars, rights activists and Gulf War veterans.

"Our message to the U.S. and British governments is that they would be very
foolish to defy a coalition of this breadth and diversity. Just sticking a
U.N. fig leaf on this does not make it any more humane," Stop the War
spokesman Mike Marqusee told Reuters as the march began soon after midday.

"It's the biggest peace protest in Europe for years."

Not surprisingly, protesters directed their wrath at U.S. President George W.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, America's closest ally in the
build-up of pressure on Iraq.

Washington and London are trying to get through the U.N. Security Council a
tough resolution which would give Iraq one week to accept demands to disarm
and 30 days to declare all its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

"Bomber Bush, Bomber Blair, we'll resist you everywhere!" chanted students.
Effigies parodied the pair as war-mongers. Protesters shouted "shame" as they
passed Blair's residence.

"Hopefully our leaders will see the huge feeling against the war," said Anne
Gleeson, a school catering assistant marching with her husband and two
children. All wore Palestinian scarves.

MUSLIMS JOIN MARCH

The demonstrators were rallying under two main slogans -- "Don't Attack Iraq"
and "Freedom for Palestine."

Ismail Adam Patel, head of the Muslim group Friends Of Al'Aqsa, said the two
issues were inextricable. "Until we solve the Palestine issue, we are not
going to get any peace in the Middle East. Why are we going after Iraq when
Israel has far more weapons of mass destruction?" he told Reuters at the
march.

Thousands of Muslims, from Britain's 2.5 million-strong Islamic community,
joined Saturday's march. Many protesters, from all strata of society, brought
children. Some Church of England ministers were also dotted among the
demonstrators.

Polls show most of Britain's 60 million people oppose their nation joining a
purely U.S.-led attempt to topple President Saddam Hussein. But the picture
changes if the United Nations approves such action, with about two-thirds
then in favour.

Most of Blair's critics dislike Saddam as much as the prime minister does,
but they say a war on Iraq would be an unjustified aggression that would
destabilise the Middle East, cement U.S. hegemony and snub international
public opinion.

Opponents also say Washington and London are behaving hypocritically given
their previous support of Iraq under Saddam in the years before the 1991 Gulf
War, and are refusing to admit their real economic motives for wanting to
control Iraqi oil.

"Clearly it's about oil and U.S. dominance," film-director Ken Loach said on
the march.

"If we go to war with Iraq, it represents the beginning of the era of
American imperialism, which is not what my founding fathers' vision was for
the United States of America," former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter
told Reuters at the rally.

The event was London's second mass protest in a week after a pro-fox hunting
march drew an astonishing 400,000 last weekend. Both marches passed off
peacefully, with just two arrests for public disorder on Saturday.

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