For example the mostly peaceful Shia rebellion managed to bring the elections forward

For example, the (mostly peaceful) Shia rebellion managed to bring the elections forward. A strong trade union movement could help to make the result of that election meaningful.And there is something practical that everybody who cares about Iraqis can do about it. The TUC has set up an online donation service for the Iraqi Trade Unions at .uk/ international. If just 5 per cent of the people who marched against the war supported the Iraqi labour movement now with their wallets, we could strengthen the hands of Iraqi democrats at a turning point in their country’s history.This isn’t about supporting the occupying forces.It’s about supporting ordinary Iraqis trying to get beyond Saddam and beyond the occupation Do it for the Iraqi people. The audience at the Social Forum booed and hissed him so loudly that he had to leave the stage.I know that right now the international left is a relatively small force, and it might seem odd to dedicate valuable space to the direction of this movement when much more powerful forces are ravaging Iraq. But I believe that, in the long term, a campaigning left is the only force that offers real hope on some of the biggest issues confronting the world: man-made climate change, nuclear weapons, extending worker’s rights and meaningful democracy, and reforming the disastrous IMF and World Bank, to name just a few. We may not like how we have got here but those on the left who do not give urgent and increased solidarity to the Iraqi trade unions will be damned by history.”It is time for this decent left to reassert itself.

He told me yesterday: “This brutal murder is a wake-up call for any on the left who still have illusions about the ‘resistance’. It was one thing to oppose the war, as I did on every occasion in the Commons – but we have moved beyond that debate. Peter Tatchell, for example, explains: “Sections of progressive opinion are wavering in their defence of universal human rights. Many leftists now support a ‘resistance’ that would bring to power Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists.

Is that what the left should stand for? Neo-fascism, so long as it is anti-western?”The Labour MP Harry Barnes knew Salih. If this force is hijacked by the likes of Galloway and those who vilify trade unionists emerging from the rubble of a tyranny, then there really is no hope at all.Some of the most honourable and consistent left-wing opponents of the war have already spoken out about this. John Pilger – who says he has “seldom felt as safe in any country” as when he visited Saddam’s Iraq – now openly supports the resistance on the grounds that “we can’t afford to be choosy”. The Stop the War Coalition passed a resolution recently saying the resistance should use “any means necessary” – which prompted Mick Rix, a decent trade unionist, to resign from the STWC on the grounds that this clearly constituted support for the murder of civilians. George Galloway has attacked the IFTU as “quislings” and described the tearful descriptions of one of their members of life under Saddam as “a party trick”.A few months ago, Subdhi al-Mashadani, a representative of the IFTU, came to speak at the European Social Forum in London. He also insisted on talking about the nature of the Sunni “resistance” – one of the most reactionary political forces anywhere on earth, consisting of homicidal misogynists, homophobes and supporters of Sharia law.