15 February 2003 anti-war protests

According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 anti‑war protests, the demonstrations on 15 February 2003 being the largest and most prolific.

[12] Another important platform for the spreading call to demonstrate internationally occurred at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil which took place at the end of 2002.

[14] In Slovenia, roughly 3,000 people gathered in Ljubljana's central park of Kongresni trg, supported by the mayor Danica Simšič, and marched the streets in one of the largest demonstrations since independence in 1991.

[22][23] ATTAC Germany's spokesperson Malte Kreutzfeld was reported as praising the broadness of the demonstration, saying "The churches and trade unions have linked to make the coalition far broader than even the anti-nuclear missile marches in the 1980s.

The march went from Parnell Square, passing the Department of Foreign Affairs at St. Stephen's Green, and on to the Dame Street for a rally where popular Irish folk singer Christy Moore, Kíla and Labour Party politician Michael D. Higgins were among many speakers from the platform.

Protesters demanded that the Irish government stop allowing the United States military to use Ireland's Shannon Airport as a transatlantic stop-off point in bringing soldiers to the Middle East.

[10] 650,000 people (police estimate) took place in a final rally at which there were many international speakers including Kurds, Iraqi dissidents, Palestinians, a representative of the American Council of Christian Churches and an Israeli conscientious objector who addressed the crowd from a stage hung with Pablo Picasso's Guernica.

At the rally in Oslo the vice-chair of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) spoke from the platform claiming that "Bush only cares about American oil interests".

In the lead-up to 15 February, the Stop the War Coalition was organising the march from a small office donated by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education.

[35] Trafalgar Square was suggested by Jowell as the alternative venue, but the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone insisted it was of insufficient size.

[33] As the date for the march approached the BBC was predicting that around 500,000 people would attend, while StWC was hoping for numbers to top the symbolically significant million mark.

[citation needed] The police began the march earlier than intended on safety grounds because of the number of people who had arrived in central London.

Walthamstow Catholic Church, the Swaffham Women's Choir and Notts County Supporters Say Make Love Not War (And a Home Win against Bristol would be Nice).

There were country folk and lecturers, dentists and poulterers, a hairdresser from Cardiff and a poet from Cheltenham.All police leave in the capital was cancelled for the event, though Scotland Yard later said that it passed off almost without incident.

[33][47] RadioVague in conjunction with the now defunct CableRadio broadcast speeches, music and interviews from the event to the internet throughout the day using a satellite uplink provided by Psand.net.

[48] A sole person demonstrated in opposition to the march outside the Iraqi section of the Jordanian Embassy on the day – Jacques More a writer from Croydon – with a placard saying that, although a last resort, war is necessary "[w]hen evil dictators rule and murder their own people".

"[51] "One demonstration never overturned government policy overnight – or very rarely – and on something as strategic and massive as that", commented Seumas Milne in an interview with The Quietus online magazine in October 2012.

However, a week before the march, police claimed that they would not be able to ensure order and District Court Judge Barbara Jones ruled against allowing the route.

Speakers included politicians, church leaders and entertainers, such as actress Susan Sarandon and South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

However, NYPD spokesman Michael O'Looney denied the charges claiming that the tape was "filled with special effects" and that it did not prove the police had not been provoked.

[59] Other activists in California originally planned to hold a protest in San Francisco on the Saturday but they changed to the Sunday in order not to conflict with the city's Chinese New Year's parade.

They initially had some problems getting permission for the action, but on the Thursday before, a U.S. District court ruled that the planned nude protest was legal at the public beach.

[69] Around 3,000 people (SW estimate) joined an illegal demonstration in the Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur despite police warnings that any participants in a protest would face stern action.

The New York Times writer Patrick Tyler claimed that they showed that there were "two superpowers on the planet – the United States, and worldwide public opinion".

In the United States, the then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was reported as saying that the protests would "not affect [the administration's] determination to confront Saddam Hussein and help the Iraqi people".

However, the protests and other public opposition were seen as a key factor in the decisions of the governments of many countries, such as Canada, to not send troops to Iraq, [citation needed] and of Turkey to deny coalition use of airbases in its territory.

[82] The protests have also been cited as a factor strengthening the hand of the "uncommitted six" members of the United Nations Security Council - Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, and Pakistan.

In 2006, three years after the protest day, in an article arguing for people to attend a further march, Mike Marqusee put forward two counter arguments to this.

As examples, he stated, "People who took part in the non-cooperation campaigns in India in the 20s and 30s had to wait a long time for independence," and "There were eight years of protest and more than 2 million dead before the Vietnam war came to an end".

[85] This is echoed in the words of former Hizb ut-Tahrir organiser Hadiya Masieh who said of the non-Muslims marching in London "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?".