We Are Many – but we weren’t enough

Daniel Nelson

We Are Many

Image by We Are Many

Fifteen million people are said to have taken part in 800 locations. Some guesstimates put the combined crowds at 30 million (though, like the mass anti-apartheid rallies, more people remember being there than actually attended). Whatever the real figure, the marches were a massive mobilisation, a heartfelt response to a war that was utterly unnecessary and has had terrible and continuing consequences.

If even a fraction of the participants see Amir Amirani’s exhilarating documentary, his eight-year investment in the film will have a well-earned payback.

He has combined powerful newsreel footage and crisply edited interviews and shaped them into a pacey narrative about the conception, planning and execution of the marches, particularly the one in London.

It gives a vivid picture of how the Bush and Blair governments cooked up the conflict and how the protest plans were turned into reality, with star turns from a range of participants including UN arms inspector Hans Blix, who clearly enjoys his unexpected celebrity, musician Brian Eno, politician Tony Benn, actors Danny Glover and Mark Rylance, entrepreneur Richard Branson, social commentator Noam Chomsky, film-maker Ken Loach, politician Jesse Jackson, Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin, Vietnam war protestor Ron Kovic and pundit Tariq Ali.

It features the honourable (British MP Robin Cook’s moving resignation speech), the belated (Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell: “We lied to the American people. I wish I had resigned”), the silent (then British Prime Minister Tony Blair declined to be interviewed) and the smirking (you know who). There’s plenty of humour, including stunts like the public ambushing of former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and a scientists’ protest in Antarctica – which cost the organiser his job.

It’s sharp, witty, informative contemporary history. The problem for Amirami is that after the uplifting speeches and rallying cries, after the starbursts of enthusiasm and hope, after all the talk about mass mobilisation and the power of the people, the invasion of Iraq went ahead.

Since part of the object of the film is to show that protest can be effective, that powerful political elites can be stymied, the final section sets out to show that the worldwide rallies were worthwhile – that, for example, they played a crucial role in the anti-Mubarak upheaval in Egypt and in blocking Obama-Cameron plans to bomb Syria.

We desperately want to believe such claims are true but they need a more careful assessment than can be given in a short documentary. The arguments about the rallies’ long-term impact have a slight feel of being tacked on to keep morale high (a vital part of campaigning life), but overall this is a tremendously entertaining, barnstorming, uplifting look at a memorable human day out.