It's the kids I feel sorry for. Young teenagers who grew up after the fall of Communism and when the worst of the IRA atrocities were over.

They have also enjoyed a decade of almost unprecedented prosperity. Now war is being started, with all the uncertainty that involves and they don't like it.

So they are out on the streets and in the playgrounds saying their piece for peace but they are too young to vote or make much of a difference.

If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the Battle of Baghdad will certainly not be won on the playing fields of Longhill School in Rottingdean.

I can never remember an issue, not even Suez in 1956, on which the general mood of the people was so much against the majority feeling in the House of Commons.

There are all sorts of complex reasons for this and many of them are bound up in Tony Blair.

Some feel that after winning two general elections by enormous majorities and with a weak, divided Parliamentary opposition, it's up to the people to oppose him on a matter of principle.

Within the Labour ranks, many activists kept surprisingly quiet as Blair led them to victory after 18 years in the wilderness and repeated the trick four years later.

Now his poll ratings are starting to fall, they feel justified in saying in voices above a whisper they never liked what he was doing and they like it even less now.

Blair has also been trapped by his own spin. He and the Government used public relations to such devastating effect on issues that didn't matter much that, ironically, many ordinary people have found it hard to believe the Prime Minister on the subject he feels more passionately about than any other in his political life.

No one I have spoken to over the last few weeks when Iraq has been on many people's lips has had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein, but unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War years, he is not perceived by many to be a threat to this country.

He may be to his own people but the reasoning is any weapons of mass destruction he possesses would be unlikely to reach many or any of us.

Few have a good word to say either about George Bush.

While charismatic Democrats like Bill Clinton are often admired in the UK for their faults, we find it hard to warm to folksy Republicans like Ronald Reagan or Bible bashers such as Bush junior.

He is seen to be inflexible and targeting an enemy in revenge for September 11.

Peace protesters have also won the propaganda war. It was easy for them to do so. Blair and Bush will be vilified as soon as they spill one drop of Iraqi blood while it doesn't seem to matter how many Iraqis Saddam slaughters.

Peace is perceived as virtuous while war, even under the guise of liberation, is not.

Some who are opposed to the war such as Robin Cook are coherent and eloquent. But more are confused and inchoate. Ask them what the alternative is and the answers are often weak.

Responses range from anti-American rants by playwright Harold Pinter to pious hopes weapons inspectors should continue indefinitely or lifting sanctions would somehow soften Saddam's steely heart.

It has taken so long for war to start there has been time for anxiety and fear to build up.

There is an almost palpable feeling of relief among many that something is happening at last. There's also a closing of the ranks to back those in action.

Everyone, whatever his or her view, will hope the conflict will be over as speedily and painlessly as possible so Iraq can be freed from tyranny.

Kids can then use the fields to play on rather than demonstrating.