Talk:Stop the War Coalition
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[edit] Biggest demo in history?
Deleted: "The Coalition organised the biggest demonstrations in British history before and during the invasion of Iraq by U.S. and UK forces."
Not actually true as the Chartist demonstrations were certainly bigger and the number of people on the stop the war march is disputed.
Someone should actually write an article as opposed to listing objectives etc.
Alun Ephraim 12:22, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The turn out was believed to be up to 2 million. The police said 1 million. The police also underestimated the turn out of the chartist demonstrations. I believe it to be bigger than the chartist demonstrations although it would correct to say that the turn out is disputed. You should have edited the comment rather than just deleting it. Secretlondon 13:09, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Actually the police said 750,000. 2 million is certainly bogus, although 1 million is certainly possible. Alun Ephraim
Most crowd estimates are nonsense. The organisers tend to think of a nunumber and double it, the police use a formula based on area and density of the crowd, which I don't know has been proved to be valid.
138.253.102.141 13:40, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- (William M. Connolley 22:43, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)) As I recall, the Guardian commissioned a survey after the march. The numbers are large enough that it becomes statistically reasonable as a way to count. The answer was about 1.25 M. How big were the Chartist demos?
- Don't know but BBC reported 'Police said it was the UK's biggest ever demonstration with at least 750,000 taking part'[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm] So police must think Cartist demo=under 750,000--JK the unwise 19:11, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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- Maybe this depends on what is meant by "demonstration". For example, it is often said that 1.5m people came out to watch Winston Churchill's funeral. Similarly, several million people including at least 1 million outside Buckingham Palace gathered in central London on VE day. I am very sceptical about the "largest ever" claim as there is no objective data on historical events - how many people for example took part on the Wat Tyler rebellion? We have no way of knowing. MarkThomas 11:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Guiness Book of Records has it down as the largest ever. In all fairness the Wat Tyler rebellion cannot have had that many people taking part, not that many people lived in the same area of England that they could travel to within a couple of days to be in the same place, and of course if you're counting everyone who took part in the entire rebellion you should count all the demos across the country against the war in Iraq. Where I live, which is Lincoln, we had about 2000 people demonstrate against it here, there were demoes in every town and city. The biggest problem with estimating the size of the demo is that people were still leaving from the start point when it finished, it was so big some people didn't even get the chance to demonstrate.--Gothicform 10:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Pic I didn't use
(William M. Connolley 22:43, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)) I've uploaded a pic or two - it seems a shame not to have one. One I uploaded but didn't use is the eagle: it was a great banner and a passable pic but might perhaps be considered offensive.
[edit] Minor things
Dbiv did a good job with the "full copyedit and rewrite" but I don think that the this line is right; "this meeting also elected a Steering Committee which was dominated by members of the Socialist Workers Party" according to the GPGB article [1] article 40 people were elceted to the executive with only 4 being SWP members.--JK the unwise 18:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
While I can't disagree with you on the wording as it appears in the article, the role of the SWP raises questions which I think the article should address. There were (and are) many participants in the coalition deeply critical of its leadership (stemming in part from the power of a certain section of the anti-war movement). The article in its current form doesn't really address that. As one of those concerned people I think it should, however, I'm not sure as yet how to phrase it. I'll get back to you and maybe bounce some ideas around in here. Disillusioned kid 21:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Maybe something referencing this Guardian article [2] (which is probably notable where my opinions aren't) which I agree with some, but not all of? Disillusioned kid 21:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree. The article appears in places to be almost deliberately ambiguous.
WHO organised public meeting of over 2,000 people in the Friend's Meeting House in London, chaired by Lindsey German? Did German organise the meeting, or become involved in the capacity of editor of the Socialist Workers Party's magazine?
"StWC sought to join the Make Poverty History coalition of groups campaining [sic] around the 31st G8 summit, held in July of that year, for an end to poverty, but was prevented from doing so."
Seems like obfuscation to me. The implication in the wording suggests that this rejection of the StWC in joining Make Poverty History was wrong, or that people pulling the strings (the UK government, perhaps?) intervened unfairly in the matter. WHY were StWC not able to join MPH? (Annon user:172.212.12.34)
- Not quite sure how to make the wording more NPOV, that they were prevented from joining seems like a NPOV reporting of fact to me. The later sentence attributing reson to be that StWC to anti-gov' is correctly identified as spectulation.--JK the unwise 17:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
- I found this article Inside The Murky World Of The Uk's Make Poverty History Campaign from red pepper magazine which says, "The MPH Coordinating Team, which includes Oxfam, Comic Relief and the TUC, has also twice unanimously vetoed the Stop the War Coalition's (STWC) application to join MPH on the Orwellian grounds that the issues of economic justice and development are separate from that of war, and STWC's participation in Edinburgh on 2 July would confuse the message. It will be interesting, then, to see if Oxfam bans itself - it is currently leading a global campaign for an international arms treaty on the basis that "uncontrolled arms fuels poverty and suffering"--JK the unwise 19:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Criticisms re: Islam
- I was a steward on two of the marches organised by Stop The War and, while I support their immediate goals, I do think that it should be recognised that some coalition member organisations were extremely unpleasant. Like the fellow-steward from the Muslim Association who told me that he didn't see anything wrong with a banner covered in swastikas and the words "death to Jews", but that we had to take it down so the police wouldn't stop the march. Or the other group from the same organisation who told me that they didn't approve of "queers" being on the march.Vizjim 16:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations
Note: This article has a very small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 23:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Speculation about the future
I removed the following about the forthcoming Feb 2007 demo (from this section):
There seems to be little speculation about the size of this demo so far, however the increasing membership of CND recently, the larger local population, and efforts partly in response to a motion passed at the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) conference to expand the base of Stop the War may mean that this protest is larger than the previous one in Manchester.
It seems to me inappropriate to include speculation about the future, especially unreferenced. BobFromBrockley 09:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] During wartime?
Trying to de-POV this article and noticed that the demonstration section includes a phrase about the largest demonstration "during wartime" - I take it I'm right in thinking that there was no actual declaration of war and therefore this bit is wrong? MarkThomas 11:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
- The Iraq War article has the war starting on 20 March the demo was on Saturday, 22 March.--JK the unwise 14:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:StWC Logo.png
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