In October 2001 North-East England anti-war activists gathered at the Monument in central Newcastle to protest against the invasion of Afghanistan - which started the openly aggressive phase of the USA/UK- led so called ‘war on terror’. At that time, here in the North-East, as elsewhere in Britain and around the world, the Stop The War movement was being born to oppose the crudely violent and counter-productive style of foreign policy known as the ‘war on terror’.