LONDON -- In March 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently believed that there was an imminent threat that Iraq might use weapons of mass destruction. A majority of British voters were accordingly persuaded that Britain was probably justified in taking part in an attack on the tyrannical regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Most people would like to have seen another United Nations Security Council resolution and many felt that the U.N. inspectors should have been given more time. But there was general recognition that the Iraqi regime had violated previous U.N. resolutions.
The declaration by President Jacques Chirac that France would veto any further U.N. resolution and the frantic efforts of his government with German support to recruit opposition to a new resolution had the unintended effect of strengthening British popular support for the prime minister's resolution.
In Britain, only the Liberal Democrats, a minority party, opposed the war from the beginning, although a number of Conservative and Labour members of Parliament were critical of the government's decision.