Weekly Worker 222 Thursday January 8 1998

Letters

Stalinist sewer

I’m amazed that despite the consolidation of one of the most undemocratic and authoritarian regimes ever seen in the labour movement of this county, the Weekly Worker is still calling upon socialists to remain in the SLP. This is surely an example of hypocrisy in the extreme. Was it not the Weekly Worker who called upon Labour lefts to join the SLP on the basis of the fact that constitutional change in New Labour had rendered socialists in that party powerless? By the same token Scargill’s SLP constitution has rendered the left of his party equally as powerless as their New Labour counterparts - as was so crudely demonstrated by events at the SLP’s 2nd congress. So what’s the difference? Why offer two conflicting pieces of advice for almost identical situations?

My personal view, which has been reinforced by the 2nd congress, is that the SLP has outlived its usefulness. It is no longer a progressive force and will hinder the future regroupment and growth of the socialist movement in this country. Surely the advice you should be offering to the SLP left is to stop wasting their time and energy on a struggle they can never win and turn outwards to the wider movement - including the Labour left, the Socialist Party, the environmental and anti-racist movement and trade unions - and begin the work of constructing a genuine, broad-based, militant, anti-capitalist organisation.

Leaving the SLP and “doing a Driver”, as Dave Craig so eloquently put it, is not the sin you seem to imply. I did not quit the SLP because I was a coward or because I wanted to hide away in sectarian isolation. On the contrary, after leaving the SLP I became involved in the work of the Socialist Democracy Group, who are trying to create a non-sectarian, broad-based socialist movement, which we originally hoped the SLP could have become. In our short existence we have already attracted supporters from the SLP, the Socialist Party and Socialist Outlook and I am very confident about our future prospects.

When struggles against Blair erupt, as they surely must, when allegiances to New Labour come under strain, socialists will not be looking to join an organisation equally as authoritarian and dictatorial as one they have just turned against. They will be looking for a democratic, broad-based organisation with the freedom to openly debate and discuss ideas. The idea that the SLP may still experience further growth and development is therefore a fallacy. Workers and communities in struggle will, I venture to suggest, bypass the SLP as soon as they get a sniff of its festering internal regime. So what’s the point of marking time swimming against the tide in Scargill’s Stalinist sewer? Socialists in the SLP and any other organisation should be working with progressive forces such as the Socialist Democracy Group, to bring about the regroupment and growth of our movement.

Cllr Ian Driver
London

Messy analysis

Individuals who have little interest in a given subject should probably avoid voicing any opinion in public. More often than not, instead of some bracing insight, the contribution is reminiscent of the middle class football expert on the Fast show.

Ted Jaszynski argues (Letters Weekly Worker December 4) that it was the New World Order that forced the republicans to the negotiating table: “Perhaps Sinn Fein/Irish Republican Army thought of doing a Cuba or Vietnam before the USSR collapsed as a rival to imperialism.” Yeah, right up to the collapse of the USSR the IRA were convinced that the armed struggle would be on its own sufficient to drive the British into the sea. There would be no face-saving negotiations. Absolutely not. Why, our supporters on the British left would not hear of it. No, nothing short of unconditional surrender will do. And that’s final.

Which is why in 1979 Gerry Adams declared that military victories were not an option for either side and in the early 1980s was the architect of the Armalite and the ballot box strategy. Probably talking bollocks as usual, eh, Ted?

In the interim the war was prosecuted not to drive the British into the sea, but to force meaningful negotiations by making the statelet ‘ungovernable’. To force constitutional change is the objective of the current negotiations. Changes “that may be short of the goals of Sinn Fein, but would be perfectly in keeping with our primary objectives at this time”.

Given the pivotal role played by the good old USSR, as anyone in Ardoyne and the Short Strand will tell you, it is with remarkable insight that the republican movement set in motion the peace process strategy in 1987 (and according to the Weekly Worker its own capitulation) in anticipation of the collapse of its ‘anti-imperialist ally’. Mystic Meg must be a Provo?

The entire peace process, like it or not, is a Provo strategy. It was Adams who initiated the contact with Hume, not the other way round. It was the republicans who got the Americans in as a balance against the Brits. It is the republican movement that called the ceasefire in 1994. Major did not even know there was going to be one. He did not know there was not going to be one either. These facts are now widely acknowledged.

But according to Ted it is the British “ruling class that is united in its approach to the Irish question in general and the peace process in particular, while the catholic/nationalist population is divided”. How united is a ruling class when its prime minister is continually misled by his own security services? Was it an oversight that nobody told Major?

If the peace process was sponsored by imperialism, then why did they cause the 1994 ceasefire to collapse? Similarly, on whose evidence is the division amongst nationalists to be based? If they are so divided, why is the resignation of a dozen people from a Sinn Fein branch in County Louth international news? Because the Brits want it to be. This at a time when the loyalists, armed by British intelligence, are shooting lumps out of each other and nobody bats an eyelid.

Far from being united, the British ruling class are still not clear on how to respond. Some clearly want out, but do not want to be seen to have left. Others would like a settlement, but not at any price. While some will pay any price not to have a settlement. So like any strategical withdrawal, it is proving messy and contradictory.

An apt description of the Weekly Worker analysis. According to Ted anybody “who confronts the state peacefully or through force of arms have the unconditional backing of communists”. Only when the peaceniks begin to believe that “progress can only be made through negotiations” do they risk the forfeiture of this unprincipled support. Because thinking along those lines causes you “to view potential disrupters as the enemy … which objectively places you into the imperialist camp”.

Here we get to the crunch. Dissenters can use violence against the peace process as a legitimate right with your blessing. Presumably, the “dissenters” would also have the backing of the Weekly Worker if in their war against imperialism they assassinated the people they held responsible for betrayal? Say Adams and McGuiness, Gerry Kelly and so on. According to your analysis the Continuity Army Council would, objectively, be correct. What would your headline be - ‘Gotcha’? Of course not. Such a scenario would appal you.

At the same time, you believe it unethical for the IRA to use or threaten violence to disrupt the CAC strategy. Even if this strategy is diametrically opposed to their own. Even if in pursuit, as you graciously acknowledge, of “their independent aims” the republican movement conclude that the CAC is objectively in the imperialist camp. Accordingly, communists would be equally outraged if the CAC executed traitors or the IRA executed enemy saboteurs. What happened to self-determination? It appears that this objection to the use of violence is a moral rather than practical question, possibly borne out of confusion over which side you should be on.

That said, the Weekly Worker clearly needs reminding that it is the British, not republicans, that militarised the situation. And is not the British but republicans that are attempting to demilitarise it.

Your stated preference, along with the most conservative forces on both islands, for the least worst option - a return to the status quo and military and political stalemate - is ironic.

Dire warnings to republicans about the dangers of stumbling inadvertently into the “camp of imperialism” blinds you to the fact that, objectively, it is from there that you are offering them advice.

Joe Reilly
Red Action

Valuable resource

The Weekly Worker is easily the best paper on the left today. Where else would we read an in-depth analysis of other left organisations?

Coupled with the open debates between CPGB comrades that take place on its pages - a feature which other tendencies’ papers lack - the Weekly Worker can proudly present itself as a resource for the whole left.

I hope that the CPGB will continue this commitment to openness for many years to come.

Phil Leeson
Derby