Skip to main content
Stop the War ‘politicised a generation and is more vital than ever,’ 20th anniversary conference hears
Stop the War's 20th anniversary conference

by Ben Chacko
at Conway Hall, London

THE Stop the War movement politicised a generation who continue to fight for peace to this day, Jeremy Corbyn told the coalition’s 20th anniversary conference on Saturday.

“Just as a generation was forged in solidarity in this very room during the Spanish civil war,” Mr Corbyn said at the Conway Hall, London, event — referring to the foundation of the Labour Spain committee in 1937 — “those who marched against the Iraq war and against the ‘war on terror’ have never forgotten it.”

The former Labour leader had the audience in stitches as he recounted his own experiences of the largest demo in British history, against invading Iraq on February 15 2003; he had agreed to speak at an anti-war demo in San Francisco 24 hours later and spent an evening shivering in the New York snow as his late friend Mike Marqusee, in whose flat he was meant to spend the night, was partying too loud with comrades fresh from that city’s demo to hear that he had arrived.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Burnt cars remain in the middle of a street following the re
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
Ben Chacko asks NIZAR TRABULSI of the now banned Syrian Communist Party (Unified) to explain the country's turbulent, and violent, post-Assad scene
Delegates chat as they leave the Great Hall of the People af
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
From renewable tech to alternatives to the dollar, BEN CHACKO was encouraged by an optimistic meeting held by the China Media Group this week
Similar stories
Kathe Kollwitz, Charge, sheet 5 of the cycle Peasants War, 1
Culture / 13 April 2025
13 April 2025
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
Features / 2 November 2024
2 November 2024
In a farewell interview with Ben Chacko, outgoing CND general secretary KATE HUDSON reflects on 21 years of leading Britain’s peace movement, tracing the evolution of global threats and peace activism from the cold war to today