Dear Harry,

I write to you in response to your critical comments published in Johann Hari's column in the Independent on 7th January, against those of us on the left who like you, opposed the war against Iraq and now, unlike you, in opposition to the continued occupation by the US and the UK, support the resistance to that occupation by 'all necessary means'.

You also criticised our apparent failure to give 'urgent and increased solidarity to the Iraqi trade unions', for which we would be 'damned by history'. For decades you and I were part of a group at Sheffield University committed to studying, teaching, developing and practicing independent and democratic trade unionism under a system of free collective bargaining with delegates elected and subject to recall by their membership.

We constantly discussed the conditions necessary for this.  You argued  for a parliamentary democracy that decided on the legal rights of workers and the obligations these imposed on
workers and managers, exercised by an impartial state machinery, as the basic priority for trade unions once organised workers had formed them.

In Iraq, none of these conditions exist, nor can they exist under occupation powers that appoint interim governments, decide the timing and composition of elections, seize Iraqi state property, decide investment contracts, employ overseas contractors, suppress the right to demonstrate and march, torture and imprison without trial those who resist and destroy their towns and neighbourhoods unless they conform to a neo-conservative strategy of 'full spectrum dominance'.

The Stop the War Coalition does not impose on the Iraqi people the ways to organise under these conditions.  The invading armies use deadly force to impose their aims. Having destroyed the Baathist state as a deliberate policy, the US has failed to create a viable alternative, despite employing many of Saddam Hussein's ex-police chiefs, army officers and state functionaries, drawn mostly from the Sunni minority.

You will have seen in yesterday's Times (12 January) that a prominent Shia leader has stated his intention of purging the present interim state of Sunni participation in its leading ranks. This no doubt came as a surprise to Johann Hari, who describes the Sunnis as a resistance of the most reactionary kind on earth.  In reality, the great divisions in Iraq are not about religion, or about tribalism but about the kind of state and the polity that the US is trying to create. US policy in
reality is not to suppress civil war but to prevent the re-birth of Iraqi nationalism, a nationalism that continues to demand that the exploitation and sale of Iraq's oil should be to the main benefit of the Iraqi people and not to the global corporationism represented by US neo-conservatives.

We opposed the war because of the fragmentation and insecurity that the occupation would create.  We argued that Saddam's removal was the responsible task of the Iraqi people not that of Bush and Blair.  It would be made possible not by the shock and awe of invasion but by the mobilisation of
the same kind of mass popular forces that have brought down dictators and removed one party states since the collapse of the cold war equilibrium.

Only through these political actions can democracy and independent trade unionism be made possible.

However, the strategies of the Iraqi opposition are not decided in the offices of the Stop the War Coalition.  Whatever means that the opposition decides on, divided as it is over what kind of state and society it wants, is determined by the kind of methods the occupying forces decide to use to impose their aims.  These range from the destruction of Fallujah to the
attempt to build trade unions on the CIA influenced model promoted in the cold war and by the vetting of political parties
for the granting of funds and publicity in support of US domination.

The Iraqi ambassador in London predicts a more than 70% turn out in the election where security makes voting possible.  However, of the 285 groups and parties seeking election, none
represent the majority of Iraqis who in the face of all the bombs and bullets are urgently calling for an end to the occupation.

Our position is clear.  We support those calling for the postponement of elections until the occupation is ended.  We support those working for trade unions formed democratically by their members.  We practice open discussions on all these issues, without intimidation, as the majority sought at the European Social Forum.  We call for the troops to be brought
home. These measures we are convinced will lead to the end of the chaos that is already here.

You would help remove that chaos if you organised the opponents of the war in the PLP at least to demand the return to barracks of all the armies of occupation and urged the
government to proclaim a timetable for withdrawal, prior to the call for real elections, not the sham that is being presently imposed at the cost of hundred's of people's lives and limbs.


We hope that instead of attacking us in the face of history you will help us organise around these policies to mobilise for the demonstration against the occupation on March 19th in London and in all the major cities of the world.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Howard.