Stop the War have organised a protest outside of Tony Blair’s upcoming book launch:

“Tony Blair clearly thinks that by donating the millions he is being paid for his memoirs to the British Legion he will wash his hands clean of the hundreds of thousands of civilians and the 179 British soldiers killed as a result of war in Iraq.”

It won’t stop Peter Brierley, whose son was killed in Iraq, who says his aim is still; “that one day we will see Tony Blair in court for the crimes he committed. Peter famously refused to shake Blair’s hand at a memorial service for soldiers who died in Iraq, saying, “Don’t you dare. “You have my son’s blood on your hands.”

Deirdre Gover, whose son Kristian was also killed in Iraq, spoke to Blair at the same service: “I said to him ‘You have created an unjust conflict and killed my son’. And he said ‘Oh, let’s discuss it’ and he asked me if I understood about Saddam Hussein.” She walked off in disgust.

The money Blair is donating from his memoirs will be welcome for those soldiers it helps who have been seriously injured in Britain’s wars.

But no amount of money can buy Blair innocence or forgiveness for the series of lies he told against the best legal advice which told him the war was illegal under international law, or for his defiance of the vast majority of people in Britain, who protested in unprecedented numbers to tell Blair that his warmongering was “not in our name”.

On Wednesday 8 September, Blair will doing a book-signing at Waterstone’s bookshop in London’s Piccadilly to launch the publication of his memoirs. There has already been widespread criticism of his potential earnings from a book which will inevitably be an attempt to whitewash Blair’s monumental crimes, which should have seen him behind bars long ago.

But in addition, the cost of the security operation to protect Blair while he does the book-signing, is expected to be over £100,000 taken from the public purse, which will be added to the £150,000 a year we pay him for his pension and to fund his office.

Tony Blair is a war criminal who — if international law means anything at all — would have been indicted long ago. Which is why Stop the War Coalition is calling on everyone who is appalled at Waterstone’s giving a platform for Blair to promote a book which will inevitably aim to justify those crimes, to write to Waterstones by letter and email and call on them to cancel the book-signing.

In the event that they do not, Stop the War will organise a protest at the Piccadilly Waterstones on 8 September to ensure that the voice of the anti-war majority in this country is represented outside the bookshop, and will call on its local Stop the War groups around the country to organise protests at the same time outside Waterstones shops in their area.

Read this full article at stopwar.org.uk