Weekly Worker 416 Thursday January 24 2002
Letters
Hypocrisy
Lawrie Coombs gives a typically one-sided and over-optimistic report of the recent Socialist Alliance meeting on Teesside (Weekly Worker January 17). Lawrie, who has rejected the idea of a Tees-wide body in the past, now with the prospect of an election looming suddenly favours this approach, despite previously stating it was unrealistic to expect members (himself) to travel the relatively short distance to neighbouring towns to campaign during the general election.
As the only Socialist Party member present at the meeting, I have to say this was due to the fact that Socialist Party members were not invited and I was only informed about the meeting the day before. Such tactics are more commonly used by the right wing of the movement or the Socialist Workers Party. Indeed we saw a marriage of convenience between the CPGB and the SWP in the attempts to discourage a full debate on the December 1 conference. I was challenged before the meeting commenced and asked to state my position towards the SA and presumably my right to attend the meeting. This was despite the fact that there were only three paid-up members of the SA present.
In a display of hypocrisy Lawrie Coombs in his report on the December 1 conference stated that, “The door remains open to the SP rejoining the SA.” It is obvious that the CPGB’s position on democracy and full and open debate has its limits and boundaries. Lawrie and Geoff Kerr Morgan, general election candidate for Middlesbrough, were presumably in fear that the SP would put forward a motion committing Teesside SA to rejecting the majority position of the national organisation. Given the make-up of the meeting and the debate over the constitution, this was a likely outcome. However, the Socialist Party had no such intentions, given that we would then have to commit ourselves to the priorities of the SA: namely more ineffective election campaigns.
On a more positive note, Lawrie and others would also like to see the SA involved in anti-privatisation campaigns and hopefully this will be part of their manifesto. We look forward to working with the SA in such future battles.
John Malcolm
Teesside
Rail opportunity
The government, in the shape of transport secretary Stephen Byers, put its electoral future on the line in the House of Commons on Monday January 14. This took the form of the announcement of the much hyped 10-year rail transport plan. Byers told the Commons that the government would put £33.5 billion into the industry within 10 years. They are relying on the private sector to put in another £36.5 billion. None of this happens to be ‘new money’, but is money already allocated, differently packaged. There is to be little change in the way the railway is run. No form of nationalisation is offered.
Despite the attempts by the train-operating companies (TOCs) and governments of both persuasions, the aim of privatisation to break the unions has spectacularly failed. The creation of internal markets and skill shortages has led to an unprecedented rise in drivers’ wages. TOCs competing with each other for drivers, poaching off each other, live in fear of Aslef calling industrial action. They are now finding that the RMT is no pushover either. RMT members angered by the differential treatment of drivers have launched ongoing strikes in three TOCs.
The collapse of the rail network has caused a major problem for the competitiveness for British capital. If workers, businessmen and goods cannot move freely at speed around the country British capital cannot hope to compete with its European rivals, let alone the rest of the world. This is the reason the government has made the railways such a priority. But this also gives the working class a major opportunity.
The Socialist Alliance manifesto People before profit points the way forward. We need to campaign within the unions and the public for our policy of nationalisation under the control of those who work on and use it. This is the only way to cut across the chaos and safeguard the interests of railworkers and passengers.
Peter Grant
Chair, Manchester Piccadilly Aslef
Not guilty
Like comrade Tom Delargy (Letters, January 17), I have no desire to engage in a protracted polemic over the contents of my article on John Maclean (Weekly Worker December 20). Already more heat than light has been generated by our exchange.
I am asked how I “know Dave Sherry can be criticised for allowing his article to be cut by Alan McCombes”. Given that Tom himself introduced the possibility of editorial involvement - and I am only guilty of expressing agreement with him - it would be more pertinent to ask the same question of comrade Delargy himself. I know as much about the extent of Alan McCombes’s intervention in the production of the Sherry/Cairns article as comrade Delargy knows about the authorship - not a lot. As I pointed out in my last letter (January 10), I was not engaging with the politics of Sherry or Cairns on an individual level, but with those of an article presented as a joint effort in the pages of Scottish Socialist Voice.
This was co-authored by Dave Sherry of the Socialist Workers Platform and Gerry Cairns, a left nationalist. Of course writing an article with a left nationalist - or having your work presented alongside that of a left nationalist - does not make you one yourself. If that is all Tom is saying then I agree. Nowhere in my article did I brand comrade Sherry a left nationalist. Indeed, I agree with him that placing Dave Sherry and Gerry Cairns into “a single, all-embracing ‘left nationalist’ category” would be wrong.
I will not apologise for a crime I am not guilty of.
James Mallory
London
Stop the world
I can reassure comrade Alan Thornett that there is no “confusion” at the Weekly Worker over the euro/European Union (Letters, January 17). It is rather the case that we in the CPGB have a significant political difference with the International Socialist Group over the question of whether, in a referendum, we should call for a ‘no’ vote (ISG) or an active abstention/boycott (CPGB).
There is an obvious contradiction in comrade Thornett’s argument. Correctly, the comrade writes that the “EU of Maastricht and the single currency which flows from it … [is] aimed at reshaping European capital and thereby increasing the exploitation of the working class.”
The very reason why the CPGB is opposed to a ‘yes’ vote. However, from this perfectly valid observation comrade Thornett deduces that “the idea” of abstaining “from voting against an anti-working class project because others will also vote against it from a completely different political standpoint doesn’t make much sense”.
But surely the obverse is equally true. The campaign to keep the UK state out of the euro is also “an anti-working class project”. It is hardly an accident that the ‘no’ campaign is spearheaded by such lovelies as Iain Duncan Smith and Nick Griffin of the British National Party. In fact, it is quite plausible that an isolated and euro-less Britain - unable to compete with its European rivals - will have to up the tempo of exploitation more than a Britain which is fully integrated into the euro. An attack on welfare is an attack on welfare.
Regrettably, comrade Thornett cannot quite grasp this. He thinks that, come the referendum, communists and socialists should campaign for a ‘no’ and, if all goes well, the UK state will retain the pound sterling. The trick is to pick up the anti-euro ‘no’ votes, give them a vigorous spin and shake (‘theory’) and then - hey presto! - right in front of your eyes they start becoming anti-privatisation, anti-austerity votes.
In reality, what comrade Thornett is presenting us with is a radical separation of means and ends. An objectively chauvinist means (voting ‘no’) can produce progressive ends (advancing ‘socialism’). Just look to Ireland and Denmark to see where that gets you. The obvious and indeed only beneficiaries of a ‘no’ vote in the UK will be the chauvinist right and Little Englanders. Definitely not the ISG or its possible ally on this question, the Socialist Workers Party.
But there is another problem with comrade Thornett’s analysis. He emphasises the fact that “for a long time” he has been a fighter for “international solidarity”. He also adds: “But that is the case with or without the EU or the single currency and is made more difficult with the euro in place”.
‘Stop the world - I want to get off!’ - shouts comrade Thornett. How can the existence of open borders and a common currency make the case for internationalism “more difficult”?
Logically then, for the comrade, a Europe with 15 or more separate currencies (and, for that matter, without a common language) makes the case for internationalism and socialism easier. Maybe a restriction on the right to travel freely across EU borders will also be an advance for the working class?
We can see that comrade Thornett’s internationalism is abstract and Platonic, floating loftily above real movements and any objective developments in society. So it seems that for our comrade from the ISG international solidarity and socialism effortlessly carries on “with or without” borderless travel, a single currency, a European ‘superstate’, a world currency, global capitalism, etc.
Presumably, if the UK state withdrew from the EU, or if it fragmented into its national and regional components, there would be nothing to worry about. Internationalism will triumph regardless.
Frankly, if comrade Thornett’s views on the euro are to be believed, you might as well go round smashing computers on the grounds that under capitalism the introduction of new technology has an alienating effect, increases exploitation and thus makes the class struggle “more difficult”. Communists do not fight to shove the genie back in its bottle.
Unfortunately, like so many on the left, comrade Thornett has only negative ‘answers’ for the working class.
Eddie Ford
Middlesex
Be realistic
Get into the real world. Be realistic. Stop fantasising. There is no Communist Party in existence in Argentina capable of organising and leading the working class (Weekly Worker January 10). Riots, demos and strikes you will get - but not social revolution. At most all there is a bunch of petty bourgeois radical groups that do not and cannot serve the interests of the working class.
Anyway the working class don’t want communism: they just want to have a standard of living like the average west European worker. You don’t see them pouring into the streets over the air strikes in Afghanistan. Why not? Because they either don’t care or else support what’s happening like the average worker in the US.
As I said, live in the real world. The development of communism is a long, hard process. Elements within the middle class intelligentsia must come over to it first. Otherwise you will get nowhere.
Karl Carlile
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