Ruben looks at the future of the anti-war movement and asks 'where can we go from here?'

Where can the anti-war movement go from here? First we have to address our problems. It's been difficult to try and make political criticisms of the Stop the War Coalition. People who tried were simply told 'we mobilised 2,000,000 people so there's clearly nothing wrong.' This just isn't true - there are some serious political and tactical issues that the STWC never faced up to. It may seem negative to focus on the bad aspects of the movement, but if we want to build on the good, positive aspects we have to deal with what's wrong.

Many people have drifted away from the organised anti-war movement since the war ended. They were part of a movement opposing a war, but now that war is over, that movement has lost its direction. Consequently, the size of our demos has shrunk from 2,000,000 to less than 100,000 in under a year.

How could we have stopped this rot? Can we stop it now?

The anti-war movement needs to go from having no political direction to having a very clear one. We need to do now what we should have been doing right from day one - putting our energy into building support and solidarity for democratic forces in Iraq; forces who struggled against Saddam Hussein's regime, forces who struggled against the war, forces who are now struggling against the occupation.

Why is this so important?

Well, basically, because there's no point in saying 'end the occupation' if can't say how you think it should be ended, who by, and what it should be replaced with. New, growing organisations like the Union of Unemployed in Iraq provide us with a perfect immediate focus for building solidarity.

Every month, Bolshy mentions groups like the UUI and the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq - and that's because building solidarity with the progressive resistance to the occupation is absolutely vital for anti-war activists.

Iraq is in total abject economic chaos. American corporations are just about to roll in to rebuild it, and in the meantime its working class is suffering with mass-scale unemployment and is being deprived of basic necessities like running water and electricity. This is the 'liberation' America's war and occupation has brought. Of course it was right to oppose the war, of course it's right to oppose the occupation. But there's little point in opposing the occupation if you don't have a better alternative.

For the anti-war movement to have a future, it has to look to those people in Iraq building that better alternative - trade unions like the UUI or feminist groups like the OWFI.

Bolshy supporters have always argued for the anti-war movement to have an orientation around the working class. This is still necessary now; working class organisations in this country - i.e. trade unions - must build political and practical solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

If the anti-war movement can successfully turn itself into a pro-democracy, solidarity movement against the occupation, the thousands who drifted away may start to return. Solidarity is a powerful force, and a working-class based solidarity campaign could do much to strengthen the organisations in Iraq fighting against the occupation, and for a democratic, secular society in the country.