100,000 people marched through central London yesterday, Saturday 5 August, to demand an end to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and an immediate cease fire. The demonstration, called by the Stop the War Coalition in association with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the British Muslim Initiative, enjoyed strong support from London’s large Arab population, with large numbers of Lebanese people taking part in a demonstration that reflected all the diversity of British society.

The strength of popular feeling about the Lebanon war and about the complicity of Tony Blair, alongside George W. Bush, in Israel’s war crimes is shown by the fact that the march was organized in ten days. It followed an emergency demonstration in London a fortnight ago, in which more than 20,000 people participated, alongside large protests in most British cities.

The breadth of opposition was also expressed in the range of speakers at the rally in which yesterday’s demonstration ended. Among those who addressed tens of thousands opposite the Houses of Parliament were no less than four Labour members of Parliament, the human rights activist Bianca Jagger, the veteran peace campaigners Tony Benn, Bruce Kent, and Walter Wolfgang, George Galloway and John Rees of Respect, Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition, Ismael Patel of the Friends of Al Aqsa, trade-union leaders Billy Hayes, Mark Serwotka and Barry Campfield, Professor Manuel Hassassian, the representative of the Palestine Authority in Britain, and Craig Murray, ex-British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

The Stop the War Coalition is now organizing a demonstration outside the Labour Party conference in Manchester on 23 September. Its slogan is ’Time to Go’ - time for the US and Britain to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but time also for Blair to be driven from office!