Analysis: The people care about politics after all. It's just that on Iraq, not enough politicians agree with them, writes Mark Brennock, Chief PoliticalCorrespondentWhat was remarkable for the political establishment to observe was that tensof thousands of normally uninvolved citizens felt strongly enough towalk through the streets of the capital
As Fine Gael was holding a day-long conference at Citywest on Saturday trying to formulate policies that might attract voters, the largest public demonstration in over two decades was taking place in Dublin.
The Taoiseach was canvassing just a few minutes away in his own constituency. The Tánaiste was in Greece on EU business.
The Government parties and the largest opposition party were absent from the biggest public expression of political feeling for a generation.
It isn't that they missed an opportunity to identify themselves with the public mood: had they been idle on Saturday, they would have chosen not to attend. According to Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, his party is not necessarily anti-war, just anti-unilateral war.
"If the UN specifically authorises military action through a new resolution, I might end up voting to approve it in the Dáil," he said yesterday.
The Government parties are even further away from the anti-war marchers. Like Fine Gael, they may support a UN-sanctioned war.
But their current position is to leave open the prospect of supporting a unilateral US-led war as well.
The revelation in this newspaper last week that the Taoiseach and his Ministers were crafting all their statements on Iraq to leave open the option of supporting the US if it waged war without a new UN resolution was disparaged but - critically - never denied by Mr Ahern.
Government sources were reported at the weekend confirming that this position remains unchanged.
So it was left to the smaller parties and Independents to show that the anti-war sentiment among the population had some support among the politicians they elected.
The Labour Party leadership brought an impressive group of several thousand grassroots members and supporters through the streets.
The Green Party, Sinn Féin, Mr Joe Higgins's Socialist Party were well represented and were joined by a number of Independent deputies.
But the organised delegations from anti-war groups, political parties and trade unions provided only a small proportion of the total turnout.
What was remarkable for the political establishment to observe was that tens of thousands of normally uninvolved citizens felt strongly enough about the threat of war and Ireland's possible support for it to walk through the city on a Saturday afternoon.
The results of the Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll published on Saturday showed the level of opposition to the use of Shannon Airport in the build-up to possible war.
But the size of the demonstration showed how strongly people feel about it.
"The Government has badly misjudged the depth of anti-war sentiment," remarked Labour leader Mr Pat Rabbitte yesterday.
Strong governments sometimes take leadership positions at variance from the perceived public mood, sell them hard to a sceptical public and hope events will vindicate them.
However this is a Government whose opinion poll standing is on the slide and is widely perceived as having misled voters on the true state of the public finances.
It has not attempted to sell any position to the public.
Rather it has sought to minimise the debate over the use of Shannon rather than defending its use in an upfront way.
So if it ultimately finds itself trying to sell the public the idea of allowing the US to use Shannon in the course of a war not mandated by the UN, it will be starting from a very weak position.
The Government responded to yesterday's march in a typically minimalist way.
"The size of the march shows the people's desire for a peaceful resolution to the situation through the United Nations," was all a spokesman would say.
Confining itself to such a banal observation is consistent with the Government's overall policy.
This is to bear in mind the necessity of not upsetting the United States, while at the same time trying not to appear too out of line with public opinion.
If the UN ultimately mandates a war through a second UN resolution, the Government hopes it can be supportive of the United States, while also satisfying the Irish people that the war has international legitimacy.
Because it is desperately hoping for such an outcome, there is no room for high-minded statements of opposition to war along French and German lines.
It has no intention of publicly taking sides on the idea of US action without a UN mandate unless it really has to.
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, put this "pragmatism over principle" argument most clearly in a letter to this newspaper published on Friday.
In refusing to take a position on the morality of a US-led war, he said the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs "rightly refuse to fritter our credibility away in hapless grandstanding".
This view is that Ireland can have no practical influence, and so to take a moral position that annoyed the United States would be an example of "hapless grandstanding".
The concern expressed in Government circles is that US-based multinationals, who employ nearly 100,000 people in Ireland, could choose to deploy new investment elsewhere if Ireland was seen as unsupportive of America.
This may be a legitimate fear, but the Government would have to convince people that owners of large amounts of mobile capital choose investment locations on the basis of their position on Iraq rather than their tax rate. As the Taoiseach heads for this evening's emergency EU summit in Brussels he may reflect on the fact that while the EU heads of state and government may have little prospect of reaching a meaningful common position, their populations already have a common foreign policy in relation to Iraq. As the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, remarked last week: "The people of Europe have a common position. Whatever position their leaders take, the people want peace."