Yassamine Mather On The STWC

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Friday November 02, 2007 16:06 by Mark Fischer

In the article blow Mark Fischer of the Weekly Worker interviews Iranian Socialist Yassamine Mather on the events which took place at the STWC conference.

How do you evaluate the development of Hands Off the People of Iran so far? The idea for such a campaign has been floating around in left Iranian exile circles for some time before concrete steps were taken about nine months ago. Its progress in that relatively short space of time seems to have been pretty rapid.

It has been very rapid progress. I was initially very surprised at the level of support we picked up. This has manifested itself not simply in the ‘soft’ form of people signing the founding statement, but with many people coming forward over the past few weeks to publicly associate their names with our protests against Stop the War Coalition exclusions.

I am pleased by how much commitment these people are prepared to show to the campaign. This is taking the form of protests to the STWC office, offers to stage meetings in areas where we haven’t had organisation before and letters of support and encouragement from both existing supporters and new people stepping forward. My own assessment is that Hopi is growing much faster than we expected, that it has the potential to grow even faster and - crucially - to put down some real roots in the movement.

So are you saying its present leadership is in danger of actually discrediting the anti-war movement?

Yes, I am. During the conference there were a lot of references to how at the beginning of the movement the same hall had been packed to the rafters and overspill meetings had to be organised. There were a lot of empty places on October 27, however.

This is an anomaly that must be faced and honestly accounted for. The actual percentage of people in Britain who are anti-war is now much higher than in 2003. The occupation is clearly a disaster. Even prominent pro-war journalists and commentators have publicly recanted and apologised for their support for this misadventure.

So what has happened to the movement? Why does the prospect of a new war now not mobilise in the same way? The answer is obvious - because the politics of the leadership of the movement are thoroughly disorientated and disorientating. There is no clear line about what needs to be done to oppose and stop the war on Iran - apart from the old favourite of more and more marches, of course.

Full text of interview at: