Not a good weekend for the Stoppers:
FEWER than a thousand protesters turned up to a Stop The War Coalition march in Edinburgh last night, disappointing organisers.
…..Meanwhile, police and council leaders hailed Saturday’s Make Poverty History rally in the capital, attended by 225,000 people.
Perhaps these two rather different protests are the context in which we should understand the bitter words of Stop the War leader George Galloway:
[T]he truth is that Sir Bob and Sir Bono, and some of the aid agencies like Oxfam, are in danger of becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They are in danger of being used grotesquely and cynically by the politicians.”
It would be very cheap to make any reference to Galloway being a “wholly owned subsidary” of any other political figure or to his supporters being “used grotesquely and cynically” wouldn’t it?