Organisers of the Stop Bush campaign are planning two of the largest public protests seen in Ireland in recent years to coincide with the visit of President George W. Bush to Ireland next month.
Announcing details of the two mass protests for Dublin and Co Clare, the Stop Bush Campaign said they aimed for numbers similar in size to the major anti-war protest in February last year, when more than 100,000 people marched in Dublin.
Anti-war groups are launching a countrywide promotion campaign in the run-up to the visit, including the distribution of 10,000 posters, and a fundraising concert on the weekend before the visit.
On Friday, June 25th, the President arrives in Ireland, and the Stop Bush campaign will stage a major protest in Dublin, starting at the Garden of Remembrance. The next morning there will be another large protest outside Dromoland Castle, where Mr Bush is staying and is due to meet the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, that morning. The protest will then march the five miles to Shannon Airport, from where Mr Bush is due to depart.
The Stop Bush campaign is organised by various anti-war groups and has the support of the Labour Party, Sinn Féin and the Green Party. Speaking at the launch of the campaign, one of the organisers, Mr Richard Boyd-Barrett of the Anti-War Movement appealed to the "majority of Irish people", who he said were opposed to the war in Iraq, to join the protests.
"With the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the massacre of innocent civilians and now the grotesque pictures of systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners, make it vitally important to stop Bush and his colonial war," he said.
Mr Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, another member of the campaign, reiterated its call for the Government to stop allowing the US to use Shannon Airport as a refuelling stopover.