Letter to The Observer
Dear Sir
I wish to set the record straight with regard to the urban myth (which has become accepted as fact, due to constant repetition) that the Liberal Democrats opposed the war in Iraq from the very outset, as stated in your front page article ‘Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private’ – Observer, last week.
Even at the end of the day that saw over a million people march through the streets of London, to protest against the probability of Tony Blair taking us into the hostilities, Charles Kennedy (the then Lib Dem leader) declared during his speech in Trafalgar Square that although he personally was against the invasion of Iraq he could not say the same for his party. It was not until it was apparent that the war was a mistake that the Liberal Democrats took the liberally democratic stance to distance themselves from the atrocities.
The Green Party is the only political party that has consistently opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning (Respect were not in existence then) and has since insisted that there should be a full and open investigation, into why we embarked on this immoral and illegal enterprise in the first place. Nevertheless, judging by Mr Blair’s cowardly intervention, it appears that, yet again, the tax payer will be made to foot the bill for yet another costly and shameful charade.
Ashley Gunstock
