There is a famous anti-war placard picturing Tony Blair with a machine gun in his hand and an overturned  tea cup on his head. “Make Tea, Not War”, runs the slogan.

Chris Nineham is doing just that. “Do you take milk?”, he asks. In many ways he's a very British radical.

And in many other way’s he’s not. As vice-chair of the Stop The War Coalition, he has a rather different take on one or two of our cherished national symbols.

“The red poppy was initially a response to the first world war,” he explains. “But there’s a danger  it’s being appropriated. Now the British army are trying to use it to rehabilitate their image and use it as a recruiting tool. Did you see, on your way here? There were a couple of squaddies in full uniform selling them at Victoria station?” He shakes his head.

Stop The War believes the red poppy has become a “symbol of war”. According to their website, “There is everything right about remembering the dead who die in futile wars. There is everything wrong about using the past dead to justify current wars”. Hence their current campaign to encourage people to wear white poppies and “reclaim remembrance day for peace”.  The white poppies are being sold at a fixed price; one for a pound, five for four pounds or twenty for twelve pounds. There’s a special Stop The War hotline that you can call to purchase them.

“We’ve tried to lay them as part of the official commemoration but the authorities won’t allow it”, says Nineham. “Local Stop the War groups have tried to negotiate with the British Legion, but they refuse to have anything to do with us. But we still get to lay them at other ceremonies, and we often get a really positive response. People like the white wreaths. Quite often they think we’re part of the formal ceremony”.

Does Nineham understand why some people may object to the stance Stop the War is taking on this issue? After all, the red poppy is the symbol of remembrance for those who in the words of that well-worn, but non-the-less accurate cliche, have made the ultimate sacrifice.

“I don’t accept that. We have lots of service families, relatives of members of the forces killed in action, who support our campaigns against the wars”. How many? “Oh, I’m not precisely sure. But there are several dozen families that have contacted us independently, and if you include the families we’ve approached ourselves it’s over a hundred.”

As an experienced campaigner though surely he recognizes this is a campaign that is putting him and his organization firmly on the wrong side of public opinion?

“No, I don’t agree. I think in terms of there being a sense remembrance day should contain an anti-war element I actually think we’re more in touch with public opinion than the British Legion”. Seriously? “Yes. It’s certainly true there is strong support for an act of remembrance, and that’s as it should be. But in terms of the appropriation of the issue, and the general opposition to the glorification of war we’re on the right side of the argument”.

Whether Stop the War is the right side of the argument is debatable. But they’re certainly not afraid to have it.

The “coalition”, as they describe themselves, comprises  the great and the good of the traditional left. Tony Benn is President. George Galloway and Tariq Ali are vice-presidents. Lindsey German is convenor, Jeremy Corbyn an officer. To a good neo-Blairite like myself, these are not so much usual suspects as hardened lags.

“It all came out of a meeting called days after 9/11 by myself and various others”, Nineham explains,  “on the basis that we calculated that the US and the western powers were almost certain to do something stupid. People were very frightened of that. And that assumption turned out to be true.” 

A meeting was called at the Friends Meeting House, and attended by over 3,000 people. “From that meeting we said we need to get serious about this, because this is obviously going to change geopolitics for the worse really. Basically we started campaigning then and there, first of all against the invasion of Afghanistan, and then of course against the invasion of Iraq, and unfortunately we’ve been campaigning ever since because the wars have been carrying on”.

Nineham identifies Stop The War’s supporters as primarily the trade unions, what he calls “peace groups” and “Muslim organisations”, as well as political parties and politicians. It is, he says, “a very broad civil society coalition”.

Who funds the coalition? “The bulk of it comes from individual members, but there’s a second tranch of donations from individual affiliates, including the unions”.

How much, I ask, does it cost to stop a war? For the first and only time in our interview, Nineham fails to provide a direct answer immediately. “God, I don’t know the exact answer to that I’m afraid”. Ballpark amount of their annual operating costs? Long pause. “I don’t want to give you the wrong figure”. Another pause. “Probably about a hundred thousand quid”. Peace at a hundred grand. Seems like a bargain.

I take Nineham back to that morning in September 2001 when the world changed. Where was he? “I was organizing a demonstration at Labour Party conference in Brighton that year; essentially an anti-capitalist protest. And I was down in Brighton when it all kicked off. I was negotiating with the police in this hotel. Then half way through these extremely tense and quite confrontational negotiations this police officer left the room in a hurry, then came back in and made this dramatic announcement ‘the US is under attack’.” He laughs.

And what did he think when he saw the images of what was happening in New York and Washington? “Obviously there was quite a strong element of shock and horror about it all. But that horror was tempered – or not tempered – combined with foreboding, because you just knew the people in the White House at the time weren’t going to let this go unpunished and there would be a reaction and a very ill considered reaction.”

The reaction, ill-considered or not, was the invasion of Afghanistan, followed inexorably by the invasion of Iraq, the latter creating the highest profile anti-war campaign for forty years. From 3,000 people in Friends Meeting House and 50,000 protesting the march on Kabul, Nineham was suddenly at the heart of a campaign that brought over a million people (he claims closer to two million) onto the streets. What was it like, as a campaigner, to be involved in something like that?

“It was all consuming. Very exciting at one level. Deeply inspiring, because various different protest movements had caught the public imagination but this was both bigger than those and also more sustained. It was also very engaging. We were having strategy discussions every day, trying to work out the weakness of the government’s argument, how best to exploit them, who your partners could be.”

As he’s speaking, you can sense Nineham reliving that moment. But despite the huge public response, Stop the War failed to do so. How did he personally feel the night he saw George Bush’s ‘shock and awe’ finally unleashed.

“I was absolutely gutted. But the worse night for me was the night of the vote in Parliament, because then you knew It was all over really. You knew there was a new phase of struggle coming on”.

Something’s been bugging me about Chris Nineham that I haven’t been able to pin point until that answer. He is articulate. Though many of the positions he adopts will be unpalatable to many, there is an intellectual robustness to his arguments. It’s also clear he’s deeply passionate about his campaign.

But there is something missing. His answers lack a sense of humanity. His response to 9/11 was, as he says, calculated. He chooses to emphasise his political, rather than personal reaction, to the events of that day. He selects as his most vivid memory of the end of the Iraq protest not the cruise missiles pulverizing Baghdad, but the ayes and noes in the Commons voting lobby.

Nineham would no doubt respond his humanity is reflected  through the causes he has chosen to commit himself to. And he may very well be right.

I leave Stop the War’s office and walk to get my train. As I board I notice my own reflection in the carriage window. I’m wearing a poppy. It’s a red one.

Tags: Afghanistan, Chris Nineham, Iraq War, Poppy, Remembrance Day, Stop the War Coalition