LOUD AND CLEAR: Protesters marching through Glasgow city centre.
THOUSANDS of peace protesters in Glasgow heard Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon call for troops to be withdrawn and the perpetrators of the Iraq war to be held to account at the weekend.
Ms Sturgeon was speaking at Saturday's rally on Glasgow Green organised by the Stop the War Coalition and supported by the STUC, Scottish CND and the Muslim Association of Britain.
Organisers estimated that around 5,000 people joined the march through Glasgow city centre, which saw representatives from trade unions EIS and UNISON, the Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity and the Communist Party of Britain taking part.
Opening the rally, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn slammed the MPs who had supported the war.
"I say to all those MPs who voted for the war consciously - where is your conscience now?" he asked.
Ms Sturgeon said that the war had caused many deaths, including many Scottish soldiers.
"We now have a government in Scotland which opposes the war," she continued.
"We demand an end to the war in Iraq and our troops brought home.
"We also demand accountability," the Deputy First Minister continued.
"If there is anything more grotesque than the war itself, this illegal war, it is the fact that the only three people to have lost their jobs over it were at the BBC, because they reported that the dossier was 'sexed up'," she said.
Veteran Edinburgh Labour MP Gavin Strang, a former Blair Cabinet minister, said that the war had been a bigger mistake than Suez and "the consequences have been more damaging for Britain and for the world."
Military Families Against the War co-founder Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq, vowed in an emotional speech to bring Tony Blair to justice.
"We'll follow that man wherever he goes.
"He might be out of government, but he's not out of our lives," she said.
SSP leader Colin Fox called for an immediate withdrawal of troops and a switch of spending from war to peaceful reconstruction.
"Reconstruction of Iraq is not done by soldiers but by engineers, road builders, power workers, building workers, teachers, doctors, nurses and friends," he insisted.
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