Photo Essay: Anti- Iraq War Rally, Sydney, 15 February 2003

'The Grim Reaper At War' (click to enlarge all photos)

When a borrowed Mac crashed in 2015, a local computer bloke was able to salvage some material but I thought thousands of photos in my collection were irretrievably lost. Last week whilst down in the dungeon, I was sorting through several boxes of books and papers to see if I could find my red hard back copy of Norman Mailer’s World War 2 novel The Naked and the Dead (1948) when I came across a cache of CDs. Amongst them was one simply entitled ‘Photos 18-2-03'. When I opened up the files I was pleasantly surprised to find dozens of photos that I took with the help of one of my sons when we visited Sydney to partake in the demonstrations against the sick push by George W Bush to invade Iraq in 2003.  

Here is a sample of some of the photos. I have used the original dark exposures but they can be easily adjusted:

'A White-Winged Peace Angel'

'Angel Bro'

The march began just after 1 pm. We climbed onto a bus shelter on Elizabeth Street near St James Train Station and took a few photos of the crowd. It was the biggest protest I have been to- estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000. It took the marchers one hour to progress only 100 metres. In the meantime, we stayed on top of the bus shelter:

'From The Bus Shelter'

The march eventually progressed to Hyde Park and others were redirected to the Domain closer to the harbour.

'Bush/Howard: Dumb & Dumber'

As you can see the crowd doesn't typically consist of ratbag communists but of moms & dads, and kids & ordinary people who want a better world- free from the whims of corrupt and self-seeking politicians:

 

The Prime Minister of Australia at the time, John Howard is referenced in many of the photos through protest signs. He incredulously told Channel Seven after the march: “I don’t know that you can measure public opinion just by the number of people who turn up to demonstrations. What I’m doing here is what I think is right for Australia. This is not something where you read each opinion poll or you measure the number of people at demonstrations”: https://www.smh.com.au/national/howard-rejects-global-protests-20030217-gdga9s.html

'Listen You Wanker'

'Coward Howard'

'Howard The Dickhead'

'Peace'

'Love'

We now know Howard and Tony Blair and Bush deliberately misled their citizens to concoct the lie that Iraqis' President Saddam Husain had "weapons of mass destruction" and used fabricated evidence as a pretext to invade Iraq. The invasion began on 20 March 2003, only a few days after the global protests. 

 

The march in Sydney was part of a global protest that included up to ten million concerned citizens in 60 countries and 600 cities:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests

 

Further research: Sydney Morning Herald article 17 February 2003: https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/from-the-archives-sydney-protests-the-iraq-war-20190214-p50xtd.html

In response to the rally. I wrote two poems 'The Road Taken', a parody of Robert Frost's famous poem 'The Road Not Taken' and 'NO HOWARD' after a sign I saw during the day. The poems were published by Social Alternatives (The University of Queensland) in their 25th Anniversary issue (Vol 22 No.1 Summer 2003):

The poems later became broadsheets and sold in limited batches of 20. Here's 'The Road Taken'. Click to enlarge:

Regards

George Anderson