May, 1999

Battle of ideas over bombing of Serbia

by Dave Black

London-On Saturday, April 10 a march to support Kosova was called by Workers Aid for Kosova which several hundred attended. We marched in the rain across North London to Clerkenwell Green and a rally was held with Kosovars and leftist speakers on the steps of the Marx Memorial Library. Workers Aid announced that they are organising another convoy through Albania as part of a political campaign to open up a corridor for aid into Kosova.

The representative of the Kosova Information Center said, "We are the indigenous population of Kosova. We have never sought to displace other people but have always stood up for human dignity and human rights." The feminist writer Amanda Sebastyn said that she has been in communication with groups like Women in Black and that women in Macedonia have said that they are being kept in the dark by the state media which are not telling them what is going on.

She added that for the Macedonian regime to leave the refugees in that field was an act of murder. Macedonia, she pointed out, is an apartheid state. She apologised for shaking as she detailed the betrayal of those in Belgrade she had worked with in solidarity with Bosnia. Mark Osbourne of Workers Liberty denounced the Left for organising an event the next day in collaboration with Serb fascists.

LEFTISTS TAILEND SERBIA

That rally, on April 11, was sponsored by Tony Benn of the Labour Party and the Socialist Workers Party with its slogan, "Stop the Bombing!" It was attended by 3,000. We handed out a leaflet there entitled, "Why We Are Not Marching For Serbia." The SWP rallying point was intermingled with Serbs and their flags. As we passed one of their leaders, Alex Callinicos, a friend of mine asked him, "Hey, there's a spare Chetnik flag there. Are you going to carry it on the march?"

After about half an hour of passing out leaflets we met a woman from the Mumia campaign who told us the Kosovars were holding a rally at Trafalgar Square, the same destination as this march! We left right away for it. The police were keeping the Kosovars out of the square and had cordoned them off on the other side of the road next to Admiralty Arch. There were about 300 Kosovars, chanting "Out of Kosova, Serbian Police," "UK, USA arm the KLA," "We are ALL KLA."

FIGHTING ETHNIC CLEANSING

An old Indian man was distributing stickers which said "764055 Kosova Concentration Camp." He gave us some, which we put on our jackets. He explained to us that when he was 13 years old, his home in India was destroyed by Hindu extremists, his relatives killed and he had ended up on the streets in Pakistan, so he knew what ethnic cleansing was, and that's why he was here today. When he moved to England he married a European and he said he was now being targeted by Islamic fundamentalists for his mixed-race marriage.

Then the front of the "Stop the Bombing" march came along the Strand. We erupted in fury at the sight of a sea of SWP placards amidst Serb flags and target placards, the banners of the Left, and the Greens and the pacifists, Stalinists, and Welsh Nationalists. As the Serbs under Nelson's Column waved their Chetnik flags at us, we shouted back "Fas-cis-ti! Fas-cis-ti!"

Our relationship with the Left can never be the same again, but we felt great about having "served the writ'" on them. Hopefully some of them will know in their bones that they have screwed up and betrayed everything they believed in and maybe consider our position as an alternative. We should hate the sin, not the sinner, and stand our ground.

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