September 9, 2010

The Poodle can’t go out

by

Tony Blair's book tour gets underway in Dublin

Tony Blair's book tour gets underway in Dublin

Well, Americans haven’t proven very adept at disrupting the book tours/victory laps of politicians who supped at the public trough and used the opportunity to ruin the economy in order to enrich themselves while also launching follies that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Witness the lack of support for Code Pink‘s courageous attempts to make a citizen’s arrest of Carl Rove during his book tour earlier this year. (See this earlier MobyLives report.)

In the UK and Ireland, however, the pursuit of war criminals is a much more popular enterprise. Witness the floundering book tour there of the man my English friends call George Bush‘s poodle, Tony Blair. To emphasize what Blair apparently considers to be one of his proudest achievements, the Good Friday agreement, it was decided to launch the tour for Blair’s A Journey with a first stop in Dublin. It didn’t go well, according to a report by Adrian Butler in the Daily Mirror:

Tony Blair had eggs and shoes hurled at him by protesters as he signed copies of his new memoirs yesterday.

The former Prime Minister was met by 200 demonstrators booing and chanting he had “blood on his hands” over Iraq and Afghanistan as he promoted A Journey in Dublin.

One protester, Donal MacFhearraigh, said: “Blair took the world to war on the basis of lies.”

… As he arrived demonstrators hurled shoes, eggs, plastic bottles and other missiles, although nothing hit him. There were scuffles as some of the crowd tried to force their way towards the store.

Two protesters were arrested and put into a police van. Others, including a wheelchair user, lay in the van’s path and riot police were brought in.

Blair spent about two hours in the Eason’s store before emerging to more shouts, boos and eggs. He was quickly driven away as a police helicopter circled overhead.

That was last Saturday. Blair’s next stop was scheduled for Monday in one of the UK’s biggest, splashiest bookstores: the flagship Waterstone’s store in no less than Piccadilly Circle. That one not only didn’t go well, it didn’t go at all. According to Hélène Mulholland in a Guardian report, Blair …

… cancelled a high-profile signing of his new memoirs in central London amid warnings that he would face a hostile reception from anti-war protesters.

…Blair said he had decided to scrap the London signing because he did not want to subject the public to the “inevitable hassle” the protests would cause or strain police resources.

Okay, bad start, but at least Blair got to bask in the love of invited friends at a “secret” launch party held at the Tate Modern last night — or did he? According to a report by Andrew Grice in the Independent ….

Tony Blair decided to postpone a party to mark the launch of his memoirs in London last night to head off a protest by anti-war campaigners who threatened to disrupt it …

… Campaigners against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had planned to demonstrate outside the Tate Modern and criticised the gallery for allowing the party to be held there.

Lindsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, said Mr Blair’s decision was a “big victory” for the anti-war movement. She said: “It shows he is running scared. The people who say we should not protest are denying us the right to persist in asking questions about the war and denying the rights of Iraqis who are still suffering because of Blair’s policies.”

Despite the fact that the tour is a nightmarish disaster, however, the book is nonetheless a smash success sales-wise (critics are lambasting it left and right), making Blair an even wealthier man. As a report in the Telegraph notes, on its first day of release alone, “hugely outsold all other books at Waterstone’s yesterday, becoming the chain’s fastest-selling autobiography ever, and shot to the top of Amazon.co.uk’s best-seller list.”

UK protestors remain undeterred, however. While they wait for Blair to come out of hiding, a protester named Euan Booth (here profiled in the Independent) has created a facebook page urging people to “Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops.” As Booth puts it,

Be part of a literary movement. Literally.

Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops

Make bookshops think twice about where they categorise our generations greatest war criminal.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

MobyLives