No Blood For Oil
ON 8 February, International Socialist Resistance (ISR) groups will protest at British Petroleum (BP) garages across England and Wales to highlight the opposition to Bush and Blair’s plans to go to war for oil and to bring attention to Blair’s real priorities – the profits of big business.
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge
The Iraqi oil fields south of Basra produce prized “sweet crudes” that are easy and cheap to refine. Two weeks ago Pentagon sources said US military planners “have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to preserve those prior to destruction”. And still Vice-president Dick Cheney denies the proposed war in Iraq is a war for oil.
ISR has always highlighted the links that exist between big business and capitalist governments internationally. Like many of the anti-war demonstrators across the US and Europe we will be carrying placards bearing the words ‘No blood for oil’. We do not believe Cheney’s claims. The links between oil companies and government are strong and long-established.
BP chief executive, Lord Browne, has made it clear that his main concern about regime change in Iraq is that there is “a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in”. He sees it as an opportunity to boost the profits of his company.
In the US, a country that has been likened to “a patient on oil dialysis”, it is no surprise that Bush and many of his closest staff have oily backgrounds. US hawk and National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, used to be a Chevron board member and vice-president Cheney is the former head of the Halliburton oil services group.
New Labour also has its oil connections and BP seems to be Blair’s favourite. He added a peerage to Browne’s knighthood after he helped end the fuel protests in 2000. Anji Hunter, Blair’s former special assistant is now Browne’s director of communications. Lord Simon, chairman of BP until May 1997, resigned to become trade minister in Blair’s first government.
ISR opposes the threatened war for oil profits and the capitalist system under which a tiny super-rich minority make huge profits while millions suffer. Join our protests against ‘Blair’s Petroleum’ as part of ISR’s main campaign -‘Youth Against the War’.
We are fighting for a socialist world free from war and terror to ensure that the world’s resources, such as oil, can be democratically planned and used for the majority and not the rich few.
- ISR protest against BP Saturday 8 February, 1pm, BP garage, 83 Park Lane (nr Marble Arch Tube).
- Followed by protest at BP HQ, St James Square, London.
