The announcement came in a week that witnessed renewed strike action by firefighters, a series of large-scale police raids against immigrants, and a steep drop in share values on the London stock exchange, down to its lowest level in seven years. On January 23 share prices stood at barely half their peak in 1999.

A quarter of the British army would be involved, Hoon told the parliament. The commitment would include an armored division of 20,000 soldiers. Some 6,000 troops of the Air Assault Brigade would join 4,000 Royal Marine commandos already on the way. Added to this are 5,000 navy personnel, and a doubling of the 3,000 air force personnel currently assigned to the "no-fly" zones in Iraq.

Military vehicles will include 120 battle tanks, 150 armored personnel carriers, and 50 artillery pieces. Helicopters and antitank units are also on their way. The naval force comprises a six-ship battle group headed by the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, with 16 Harrier jets and six helicopters, and includes a destroyer, a frigate, and a submarine equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

"This is a lot of kit (military equipment)," said a government official. "You do not send a force of this size and complexity just to send a diplomatic signal. If necessary, they will fight."

The "military now believe that war is inevitable," said one officer to the conservative Daily Telegraph. "Very soon Britain will have 20,000 troops in the Gulf and the United States will have well over 100,000. I can’t see them returning to Britain or America without being involved in some sort of action, whether or not there is UN [United Nations] backing."

While prominent government officials, including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Prime Minister Anthony Blair, meet with their U.S. counterparts, the UK’s Chief of General Staff, Admiral Michael Boyce, has visited Turkey to press for access to the country’s bases for British troops. Since 1991, U.S. and British planes have been flying daily patrols, including frequent bombing runs, over northern Iraq out of the Incirlik air base in south-central Turkey.  
 
Former colonial power
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Blair has made a series of high profile statements priming public opinion for an assault. On January 13 he said that while it preferred to walk "the UN route"--as demanded by the French and German governments--London was prepared to act in tandem with the United States and without a UN resolution.

Blair said that after Iraq, the UN would have to take action "systematically" against other "rogue states," including north Korea, alleging that the workers state had torn up international agreements on nuclear weapons.

Blair also answered critics who attack the government’s close alliance with the U.S. government, and who have gone so far as to describe the prime minister as "Washington’s poodle." London needs its special relationship with Washington in order to strengthen the UK as it competes with its imperialist rivals, especially in Europe. Defending his own nationalist credentials, he said, "I know there are a lot of criticisms of the relationship with the U.S., but I will defend that relationship absolutely and solidly, because I believe it is important for us and for the wider world."

In offering its backing to Blair’s stance, the traditionally pro-Conservative Party Daily Telegraph referred to Britain’s past and present role as a colonial and imperialist power. "Saddam directly threatens our interests and our allies," the January 14 Telegraph read. "His plans for regional hegemony menace some of our oldest friends: Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates.) His Scud missiles are within range of our sovereign bases in Cyprus....

"We have long-standing interests in Iraq itself as the former colonial power and, later, the chief patron of the Hashemite regime," continued the big-business paper, referring to the monarchy that was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1958. "We have intervened militarily in Mesopotamia five times since 1914, and on only one of these occasions--the Gulf war--did we act with the United States. We have a direct interest in ensuring that, post-Saddam, Iraq is again friendly toward the United Kingdom."  
 
Attacks on immigrants, workers’ rights
At the same time the government has unleashed the police on immigrants, using the so-called war on "domestic terrorism" to attack broader workers’ rights.

Blair seized on the cops’ claims of having discovered traces of ricin, a toxic chemical, in a north London apartment to defend proposals to introduce a national identification card. Describing as "inevitable" an attack on the UK by al-Qaeda, the prime minister said that the "first line of defense is security and intelligence."

Home Secretary David Blunkett echoed the theme. "I have authorized the security and intelligence service and our anti-terrorism branch to take whatever steps are necessary, controversial or otherwise, without fear or favor to take action to protect us," he told the BBC.

Government officials publicly backed a January 20 raid at 2:00 a.m. by 150 police on a north London mosque. The cops used battering rams and ladders to gain access as police helicopters, hovering overhead, raked the scene with searchlights. Documents, passports, identity and credit cards were seized, along with a stun gun, a replica firearm, and a tear gas canister.

Of the seven men arrested, six were described as "North African" and one as "East European."

Since September 2001 more than 200 people, the majority of them of Algerian origin, have been detained in Britain under legislation allowing the security authorities to detail non-Britons without trial.

While the measures were enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, their use has stepped up since last November. Government ministers and the media have chimed in with a propaganda blitz against immigrants. Blunkett described the tension around the increase of asylum seekers as a "coiled spring." The Sun newspaper has launched a public petition demanding the government take further measures to limit these working people from making applications for residency, complaining that "terrorists walk free in our own country."

An even larger-scale raid was carried out in north London on January 21 when 550 cops entered houses, grocer shops, and clubs in the hunt for alleged members of "Turkish heroin and gambling gangs."

Meanwhile, the government, appealing to the need for national security and vigilance against "terrorism," has used the drive to war against Iraq to attempt to inflame patriotic public sentiment against the firefighters engaged in industrial action over jobs and wages (see article below.) Ministers have accused the firefighters of jeopardizing the armed forces’ "operational capabilities."

London has deployed 19,000 troops as strikebreakers in an attempt to defeat the union. "The impact on those 19,000 who are engaged in fire fighting means they are not engaged in what they should be doing," said Hoon. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott called on the firefighters to abandon their January 20 strike "at a time of heightened concern about terrorism."
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. threatens Iraq with war in ‘weeks not months’
U.S. prepares bloody assault
Why antiwar protests don’t stop wars  
 
 
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