On the weekend of 14–16 February 2003 more than half a million Australians participated in protest marches around the country against Australia's involvement in the looming Iraq War. This, the largest coordinated protest action in the nation's history, was the result of months of organisation and campaigning by coalitions of anti-war organisations and a reawakening of the once-influential peace movement.
One poll at the time found that 90 per cent of Australians opposed the war without UN authorisation.
For a brief moment, it appeared as if the peace movement might in fact keep Australia out of the war. However, Prime Minister John Howard resisted the pressure and on 20 March Australia formally invaded Iraq as part of the 'Coalition of the Willing' with the United States of America and the United Kingdom. What went wrong?
The movement benefitted from and contributed to a massive global uprising, the lack of UN authorisation, and hesitant but real opposition from the Opposition. But the timing of the campaign, during the middle of the electoral cycle when governments are least vulnerable to public pressure, reduced its chances of success.
The movement also suffered from a lack of social infrastructure: for all intents and purposes there were no 'peace movement staff' in the country before 2003, and even at the height of the campaign the union movement allocated only one person to work on it full-time. Researchers have demonstrated that coalitions need to mobilise and apply significant human resources in order to build enough power to win.
And while the wide and loose nature of the coalition helped mobilise large numbers of Australians, it constrained discussion and implementation of more disruptive tactics. Despite the unpopularity of the war, there were no concerted attempts at large scale noncooperation or intervention, such as strikes or acts of civil disobedience.
Before the war began, there were only two cases of nonviolent intervention across the whole country — the famous scrawling of 'No War' on the Opera House by two individuals, and a Greenpeace action to place the Prime Minister under symbolic 'house arrest' in the Lodge.
Some union leaders in WA did call for strikes to block the shipment of supplies, but were quickly silenced. All other tactics could be categorised as 'public persuasion' attempts, such as street marches and lobbying of MPs.
It could be argued that movement leaders were constrained in their choice of tactics by anti-terrorism laws and the culture of hostility to radical politics in the wake of the September 11 and Bali attacks. But nonviolent conflict researchers have identified that the more 'disruptive' tactics such as widespread actions of non-cooperation or intervention are crucial to success, even in democratic contexts.
Crucially, there were no large scale tactics anywhere in the country between the February uprising and the start of the war. The movement failed to build on its success by continuing to apply pressure on the Government.
It appears that the unspoken strategy of the movement relied on mobilising large numbers to express their opposition to the war, with a consequent effect on opinion polls concerning the war, which the 'democratic' government could not ignore and would therefore back down. The assumption was that if enough people opposed the war, the government would not risk going to war. This assumption proved false.
I say 'appears' because the most obvious problem for the anti-war movement is that neither of the two main coalitions actually developed a clear and coherent strategy for stopping the war. As such, tactics seem to have been chosen on the basis of familiarity and individual group preference rather than as part of a coordinated plan. That, ultimately, was the movement's greatest mistake.
The movement did succeed in many ways: it created an environment in which 90 per cent of people polled opposed the war, pressured the Labor Party to oppose the war, almost certainly restricted the scale of Australia's involvement, and indirectly but significantly contributed to all but three countries refusing to participate in the invasion and thus to the lack of authorisation for war at the United Nations.
Perhaps most importantly it led to widespread agreement that the war was unjust. Iraq was the first war in history to be declared unjust by the people and by almost all Christian leaders in the West before it had started.
We will never know if mass disruption in the form of strikes and civil disobedience would have forced the government to bow to public pressure. But we do know from decades of research into protest movements that two marches in each capital city in a four month period was bound to fail.
The failure to build on the success of the huge marches across the country on the weekend of February 14–16, due to internal friction in the very large coalitions, by lack of human and financial resources, and by a lack of effective strategic planning, meant an incredible opportunity was lost. As one anti-war organiser in the USA said, 'How can we think we are actually going to overtake a mindset of war by just waving some signs around?'
With thanks to Brian Martin and Ben Spies-Butcher.
Justin Whelan has been researching and teaching about nonviolent social movements for the past eight years. His Masters thesis examined the anti-war movement in Australia in the lead up to the Iraq War.