Let’s save time. If you are on this demonstration, you almost certainly share our belief that this war is wrong. If you’re watching the demonstration, there’s a good chance that you are one of the almost 80% who have woken up to what the government is playing at in Iraq. But what makes the anarchist case any different from the others? You decide. Here are the facts (at least as we see them).

Firstly, we are against this war because, in times of war, it’s usually the working class who have to pay with their taxes and their lives. This is true whether you’re an Iraqi worker or a British worker. Because of this, we see our interests as being the same as those of the Iraqi working class.

Secondly, we don’t believe that this war can be stopped. And even if it was possible, it would only be a matter of time before the next war. The fact of the matter is that governments actually need war. It’s good for business, it’s good for getting people to vote for them and it’s good for hiding things that they don’t want us to be talking about. It’s also good for reminding people about what happens when you stop cooperating.

Thirdly, we are concerned that people might be being led down the garden path by the anti-war movement. This war is not just about oil, it’s about power. Strolling around town with a few placards and a megaphone isn’t going to change the minds of the bosses and anyone who tells you otherwise is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land! The people who want this war don’t care about hypocrisy or shocking statistics about half a million dead children. They only care about money and power.

This war is just another example of capitalism in practice. It’s about getting rich off the backs of other people and about killing thousands of people so that the bosses can rule over us. That’s why they’re hell-bent on fighting it and that’s why we feel that stopping this war just isn’t going to be enough. We need to stop the warmongers, and we only do that by fighting them ourselves.

The same people who want to enslave the Iraqis have already enslaved us. They sell us a picture of freedom and happiness, but they chain us up with debts, rotten jobs, poverty, ill health, miserable lives and dependence.

If we’re lucky we’ll hardly notice the chains but they are there in the form of mortgages and debts. We’ll always have to buy more and work harder to buy into the happiness that they offer. If we’re amongst the unlucky ones, our chains are more obvious. They come in the form of lousy houses, third rate education, prison, drugs, unemployment and early death. When we fight their wars or support them, we’re defending the same people that treat us like animals.

This time, they’re showing us as plain as day that they don’t really give a monkey’s what we think. Protesting against war might delay things, it might even force the bosses to apply a bit of cosmetics to their ugly faces, but they’ll still carry on working us over and they’ll still carry on working over millions of people throughout the world. That’s why we say: