LONDON -- A few thousand antiwar protesters gathered outside the House of Commons last week to lobby members of Parliament, to take part in a silent vigil or to attend one of several -- to the annoyance of those who would have liked unity -- antiwar meetings.

The day before this event, the first in an escalating campaign against war on Iraq, tens of thousands of British soldiers were dispatched to the Persian Gulf. No one outside the tight circles of military control and intelligence knows what the game plan is for the troops. A shrinking minority of British people, down from over half to under a third, supports British involvement in an attack against Iraq if it is undertaken without another U.N. resolution.

That proviso may be an unnecessary cavil, expressing British unease about an attack. It says people here do not want to act simply as an unthinking support arm for U.S. foreign policy. It says people here are not convinced that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein constitutes a threat to his neighbors or anyone else outside Iraq. It says we don't really care what Hussein does and says, it does not affect us. It says any attack against Iraq would be understood as an attack against all Muslims everywhere and the very existence of the Islamic religion and communities. It says Britain does not have the money or the manpower to launch wars against anybody. It says the Middle East is so unstable that any intervention could provoke terrible mayhem.