Weekly Worker 418 Thursday February 7 2002
Letters
Euro sidelines
If Eddie Ford’s letter is anything to go by, the Weekly Worker is still having a problem getting its ideas together on the euro and the EU. Whilst fully accepting my point that the single currency (like the EU itself) is an anti-working class project aimed at increasing its exploitation, he goes on to argue that in the event of a referendum on this huge event in world politics, socialists should stand on the sidelines and abstain.
He tries to square this particular circle by arguing that, whilst the euro is an anti-working class project, so is the campaign against it. Well, it depends which campaign he is talking about. If he is talking about the xenophobic campaign of the Tory right, he is correct. If he is talking about an anti-nationalistic working class campaign, organised by socialists and based on the defence of jobs, services and democracy, it does not make such sense.
The problem with the CPGB position (and that of its Alliance for Workers’ Liberty mentors), whatever spin you put on it, is that it helps to ensure that the agenda on the single currency remains in the hands of the Tory right - something which confusion on the British left has already contributed to. We would be all wringing our hands on the sidelines with nothing to say.
This would be a disaster in a referendum. Precisely what is needed is a campaign against the euro, based on the interests of the working class and with the Socialist Alliance at the centre of it. This would be impossible on the basis of abstention. We cannot be saying that the single currency is such a big threat to jobs and welfare that we are going to abstain!
Eddie Ford argues that to vote ‘no’ in a referendum on this would be “objectively chauvinist”, even if it was on a socialist, anti-nationalistic, internationalist platform. This particular (Healy-like) allegation has not resurfaced since I unwisely agreed to speak at an AWL forum on the single currency, thinking it was going to be an honest debate.
What is also worrying about Eddie Ford’s letter is that many of his arguments actually point more towards a ‘yes’ vote on the euro than an abstention. He argues that the result would make no difference either way to the struggle to defend welfare, lauds the Schengen agreement (on borders) by pointing only to its benefits rather than its overarching and reactionary provisions, and argues that the “only” beneficiaries of a ‘no’ vote would be the chauvinist right. Where does all that lead you?
Finally, my point on international solidarity was that you don’t aid the cause of such international solidarity by abstaining on a project which, if successful, will weaken the position of the working class in Europe and strengthen that of the bosses.
Alan Thornett
International Socialist Group
Smearing Maclean
If James Mallory’s intention is to reclaim John Maclean for the communist tradition, it will not be possible by rehashing the reactionary psychological view of Maclean found in Bob Pitt’s pamphlet John Maclean and the CPGB (Weekly Worker December 13).
James Mallory claims that Theodore Rothstein was held in high regard by the Bolsheviks. But Lenin attacked Rothstein in 1915 for his pacifist politics and his support for the Second International. While Maclean faced the harsh conditions of a convict in prison for his brave public declaration of Marxist principles during the war, Rothstein spent two years in the cosy surroundings of the government’s war department working as a translator. Rothstein did not take part in the anti-war movement. Incidentally, nor did Harry Pollitt.
Lieutenant-colonel Cecil Malone was a naval officer during the war and became a leading member of an anti-socialist propaganda society attacking Lenin, Trotsky and John Maclean as mad revolutionaries. When Rothstein bureaucratically excluded Maclean from the unity convention of the British Socialist Party in 1920, he helped Malone be elected to the leadership of the party.
Malone’s presence in the leadership of the CPGB cast doubt on the revolutionary credentials of his comrades. Maclean had strong rational grounds for not having political trust in some of the key leaders of the early CPGB. The historical context of the origin of these differences is left out or ignored by Bob Pitt, who focuses narrowly and selectively on late 1919 to early 1920 in isolation from the development of Maclean’s politics before 1919 and following the formation of the CPGB.
The continuity and development of Maclean’s political ideas is trashed and is replaced by the smearing of Maclean’s politics as the reflection of mental illness. So we get the dogmatic statements that Maclean’s mental state was the main cause of the split with the CPGB. Mallory follows Pitt’s dogmatism in discounting political differences to assert that spy mania was responsible for Maclean’s hostility to the CPGB.
Ironically, Pitt’s self-confessed one-sided pamphlet is obsessed with the reports of spies. He even goes as far as stating that “cabinet intelligence reports do help us form a general estimation of Maclean’s psychological condition”. His confidence in the objectivity of government spies is only matched by his trust in the objectivity of prison doctors, as if their medical files on Maclean are the product of neutral scientific research. But Pitt has a simple-minded test. Maclean was either a political liar when he alleged some leaders of the CPGB were spies or alternatively he was mad. Since Maclean had political integrity then he was suffering from delusions.
Maclean referred to his treatment in Parkhead prison in his famous speech from the dock in May 1918. Those who claim he was mentally unbalanced say it began with the allegations about food poisoning. Maclean declared that bromide had been routinely used to adulterate prisoners food, including his own. He also complained about the harsh treatment of conscientious objectors. His own comrade, Peter Macdougal, had been driven to a nervous breakdown after a spell in a Scottish prison. There was no independent investigation of Maclean’s allegations. But Pitt dismisses them as insane delusions.
Like other members of the CPGB, comrade Mallory seems predisposed to accept the reformist prejudices of Bob Pitt due to his uncritical view of the early Communist Party. The CPGB is described as the highest organisational achievement of the working class in Britain. In fact, the CPGB was mired in syndicalism and opportunist adaptation to Labourism.
Maclean was able to predict that when the mass movement against capitalism reasserted itself, these leaders would divert it into safe channels. Their practical perspective was to capture the Labour Party and the trade unions. It was assumed revolutionary workers and developments would flow through the Labour Party. A reformist view echoed by Bob Pitt today. These politics were articulated by Gallagher and Palme Dutt in 1922. The Labour Party could be won to socialism. In 1924 Dutt even welcomed the Labour government as a lesser evil. It was the CPGB’s job to sustain and uphold the new government. Compare this with Maclean’s political insight that a Labour government would be a sham serving to discredit socialism.
The Bolsheviks had received an outdated and optimistic view of the Labour Party. This overestimation of the role of socialist societies, and the real direct involvement of the millions of trade unionists, inspired the unique tactic of affiliation to a reformist party. Bob Pitt sees Maclean’s opposition to affiliation as an example of his loony ultra-leftism or mental illness. But the affiliation tactic only served to reinforce the idea that the Labour Party was the vehicle for socialism and the Communist Party was just a pressure group. Communists should stand under their own banner.
Dave Sherry says Maclean made a mistake not to join the CPGB. But the CPGB leaders would not have tolerated the independent mind of Maclean. Sylvia Pankhurst was expelled from the party when she dared to print the views of the Workers Opposition in Russia. Maclean would not have lasted as long as Pankhurst. The conception of the party by leaders was bureaucratic centralism, not democratic centralism. The so-called Bolshevisation of the party in 1922 simply reinforced this bureaucratic tendency. Pollitt ridiculed the idea of the membership of the party debating, discussing and formulating policy. Their job was to follow the party line.
This brings us to another point. Bob Pitt tells us Maclean did not understand the united front. But the classical united front entailed the presence of a strong Communist Party with a significant membership. The tactic was to help the party to win over the rest of the class in joint action. The preconditions for the application of this tactic were missing in Britain. Even the Comintern criticised the CPGB in 1923 for the aimless application of the tactic of the united front. Denunciation of false leaders is dismissed by Bob Pitt as ultra-left raving. But denunciation of reformist leaders was an essential part of the united front tactic.
James Mallory agrees with Pitt that mental illness drove Maclean to an incoherent nationalism. According to Pitt, the idea of a separate Scottish organisation never entered Maclean’s mind during 1919 when he fell out with Gallagher and Rothstein over unity negotiations. Comrade Mallory believes Maclean’s differences with the CPGB over the national question occurred after Maclean turned his back on the CPGB.
Maclean did not declare openly for the Scottish workers’ republic in the brief arbitrary period selected dogmatically for this very reason by Bob Pitt. But it had been brewing in his mind for some years, including 1919. There was the consistent stress on national revolts breaking up empires. Maclean had been particularly impressed by the struggle of Irish republicans. Like Lenin he saw the 1916 rebellion and the struggle that followed as a blow against the British empire. Nationalist revolt in Ireland would inspire the break-up of the British empire.
By 1920 he developed these internationalist republican politics to include Scotland, which he considered a nation. Scotland would follow Ireland. Scotsmen throughout the world were expected to respond to the revolutionary call. A Scottish breakaway at this juncture would bring the empire crashing down. In opposition to highland land seizures in 1920, Maclean appealed to the Scottish people not to play the game of English or American imperialism. Scottish land must belong to the Scottish. Scottish independence and the struggle for it meant economic as well as political independence. This could only be assured by cooperation under communism in Scotland. The primitive communism of the Scottish clans would be revived.
Like the early Comintern and Lenin, Maclean overestimated the communist potential of nationalist struggles. Maclean’s daughter believes he was influenced by Connolly in fusing nationalism with socialism - with his later stress on Scotland’s historical tendencies towards cooperative production. His point that the primitive communism of the clans could be redeveloped suggests there could be a rapid transition to communism in Scotland.
Bob Pitt says Maclean should have debated his differences with the future CPGB leaders. But at the meeting at which the Scottish party should have been formed, Gallagher was there to wreck it - and succeeded. He had already circulated letters and rumour that Maclean was mad or suffering from unspecified hallucinations. It was an attempt to destroy his political reputation.
The tragedy of John Maclean is that his revolutionary communist politics isolated him in a British movement which often failed to even reach the political level of the Mensheviks. Everything was left to him, whether this was helping the families of Bolshevik refugees or opposing the imperialist war. When Lenin returned to Russia in 1917 and proclaimed the socialist revolution, some of his comrades regarded his comments as the ravings of a lunatic. Lenin has been driven mad by exile, they whispered behind his back. But the Bolshevik Party had a culture of tolerance of polemical debate and discussion. It had members like Bukharin. And outside the Bolsheviks, there were comrades like Trotsky.
In Britain there were no such comrades or political culture.
Barry Biddulph
Staffordshire
Naming names
I found the Socialist Alliance independents’ conference useful to get a snapshot of the state of the alliance in the various localities (Weekly Worker January 24).
There seems to be a lot of unevenness - particularly in regard to the Socialist Workers Party’s involvement and orientation. This fits my expectations, given that I would contend that the SWP is far from a homogeneous and monolithic organisation and the comrades are, to a large extent, still finding their feet and learning how to work constructively with others on the revolutionary left.
With regard to the naming of names, I understand the security issues around this (hell, it’s even been suggested that ‘Mark Fischer’ might be a pseudonym), but I would generally like comments made by me to be (accurately) attributed to me - that’s the only way a dialogue can really develop. But, having said that, my preference would be to be referred to as Rob M - that way, any comrades on the local left would know who it was had slandered them and they could approach me in the pub, buy me drinks and argue the toss. Not using my full surname makes it a little bit more difficult for undesirable elements to use the phone book to track down my home address.
But don’t quote me on that!
Rob M
email
SP confusion
John Malcolm’s letter was a confused political attack on myself and the Teesside Socialist Alliance, which John played a central part in setting up (‘Hypocrisy’ Weekly Worker January 24).
Firstly I am castigated for switching tactics on geographical organisation, temporarily merging Stockton and Middlesbrough alliances into a single body because of an imminent important ‘Middlesbrough’ election. Er, well, sort of, yes … The desertion of Socialist Party comrades from the project means we have to reassess and temporarily meet on a different basis, and the focus at the moment, alongside other initiatives, is the Middlesbrough mayoral election.
As to Socialist Party comrades complaining at only getting an invite the day before, this is peculiar, especially as nationally and locally they had insisted that they would want nothing further to do with the project if the SWP constitution was passed at conference. It’s a bit like cancelling a driving lesson and then berating your instructor for not turning up. How can you complain about not being involved in something you feel to be an irrelevance and do not claim association with?
As it happens, John was invited . Moaning about Socialist Party members not having sufficient notification is odd, as he knows the chances of his comrades attending such a meeting - even last year - were zero. The door does remain open locally and nationally. Despite some reservations on my part, SP comrades are allowed to attend as observers, although as yet no reciprocal arrangements appear to have materialised.
As for the rejecting of the new constitution by the meeting being likely, this is wishful thinking. Apart from a couple of comrades who were clearly uneasy, a clear majority of those comrades present - mainly independents - were in favour. But, as John said, this wasn’t a priority for him.
The bureaucratic wing of the Socialist Party have scored a tremendous victory, managing to shepherd their forces away from the SA with relatively few defections or any big rumpus internally, despite Scotland, despite Nellist. Certainly there will be joy at this in the SP ranks. However, the unease will express itself in some way. The fabric now binding the Socialist Party together is more fear of the unknown than any faith in the leadership.
Comrades unhappy with the line should consider carefully where the future of the left lies. What aspects of their tradition are healthy and what deserve the ‘Room 101’ treatment.
Lawrie Coombs
Teesside
Give up the ghost
If I were you, I would think carefully about how much time and effort you put into the SA project and if necessary quit while the going is good.
The SP asked nothing unreasonable in calling for proportional representation on the national committee, and they did the right thing in walking out of what has clearly been on the road to becoming another front for the SWP (a possibility which even some CPGB members have expressed concern over themselves). The inclusion and enthusiasm of some dissident left Labourites over the project is an expression of their naivety, and not a representation of any real left break with New Labour, or the forming of an organisation that has any genuine roots in the working class. Surely not even you would claim the SA has any real proletarian base? If you do, then your perception of reality is blurrier than I thought.
Face it, comrades: however much you like to give the latest red scares in the bourgeois press some credibility and dream the SA could be a fighting tool of the proletariat, it is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. I have read your defence of the SWP’s methods and they are pretty weak. Your logic seems to be ‘centralisation - good; decentralisation - bad’. Seems you defend this method, as you wish this SWP front to become some kind of a party - which is precisely what the SWP does not want it to be. They are in the majority, and, as you state, majorities have the final say in a centralist organisation!
Give up the ghost and instead put your efforts into a establishing a genuine communist movement. The group I was a member of last year did the right thing in deciding not to join what will soon become a nonentity.
Liz Quinn
London
ISO solidarity
The letters from comrades King and Hoskisson on the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) were pretty miserable examples of Workers Power’s sectarianism (Weekly Worker January 31).
Comrade Tafadzwa Choto in her recent interview with this paper appealed for international solidarity and financial help in the ISO’s struggle against Mugabe’s sham anti-imperialist regime (January 17). As internationalists, communists are duty-bound to support their appeal. It is unfortunate then that WP take the opportunity to indulge in sectarian point-scoring, the ISO’s heinous crime being not to see the programmatic light (LRCI-style of course).
It was particularly galling to see comrade King berating the ISO for supporting a popular front when WP have clung to the coat tails of Labour for pretty much all their existence. (And even now WP has yet to provide a theorisation for their abandonment of auto-Labourism).
But back to the issue at hand. We can reasonably assume that if the CPGB failed to render solidarity to the Argentine friends of WP because we happened to disagree with the PTS’s method of party-building, then we would no doubt be (rightly) condemned for infantile sectarianism. But then comrades King and Hoskisson believe that there is the LCRI and then the (centrist/reformist) rest - if you don’t agree with the Trotskyist manifesto or WP’s position on the 4th International split in some far-off land then you can count on not getting any help from them.
Thankfully this kind of nonsense is under increasing challenge on the left. Time to grow up, comrades, if you don’t want to be left behind.
Phil Hamilton
Stoke-on-Trent
Right to return?
In his front-page article on the Middle East, Mike Speed writes: “To demand a democratic, secular Palestine - and leave it at that - is completely insufficient. To effectively deny the right of the Israeli nation to exist would be to reverse the poles of oppression”. From this deduction he argues for a ‘two state’ solution (Weekly Worker January 24).
I agree. However, I notice that amongst his list of demands, we have the following: “For the right to return of all displaced Palestinians.” Surely comrade Speed has contradicted himself?
As I understand it - perhaps incorrectly - that would mean the automatic and collective right of over four million Palestinians to return to what is now Israeli territory. That is, to have the right to repossesses or own enormous chunks of property and land which is currently jewish (rightly or wrongly). Surely this would mean the displacement of a large swathe of the jewish people?
It does seems to me that by arguing for the “right to return” in such a manner, Mike Speed is actually calling for the jewish people to be “effectively” denied the right to nationhood.
Brian Dee
Birmingham
Para psychology
I thought both programmes about Bloody Sunday were excellent (reviews Weekly Worker January 24, 31). In a backhanded way so presumably did the Daily Mail - hence the outrage.
My only thought was that neither of them explained the military role that the Parachute Regiment and others had played internationally since the end of the war: in Malaya, Kenya, Borneo, Suez, Cyprus and, particularly, during a ferocious campaign ending in 1967 against national liberation movements in Aden. In one engagement there, which the Parachute Regiment refers to as the ‘Glorious First of June’, 16 members of the NLF and FLOSY (another group) were killed.
Of course, the Parachute Regiment didn’t win the war because their political masters pulled out in November of that year, ending 128 years of colonial rule. And this wasn’t the first time the British army had been wrong-footed by the political establishment. Cyprus (Parachute Regiment, 12 dead) springs to mind as a rearguard action that was blown off course by the wind of change.
General Robert Ford (Sandhurst, 1943) was a career soldier who, presumably, imbibed this corporate culture: firstly that the Parachute Regiment was the ‘main man’ and secondly that betrayal by politicians came with the territory. The same is presumably true of many officers and men in the regiment and would help to explain their psychological make-up.
It is worth remembering that by 1970 elite units of the British army were also fighting a covert war in Dhofar, a province of Oman, putting into practice what they had learnt in Aden and elsewhere to keep it safe for the ancien régime and its oil rigs.
Frank Rogerson
Ipswich
Esperanto torture
I have received a number of reports from Esperanto speakers about arrested and tortured Esperantists in Russia, the latest being an appeal from Vladimir Minin, USA representative of the Russian Esperantist Union, asking people to raise the matter with the Russian ambassador in their country. Here are the facts.
In December 2000 in the police station of the Lyuberecky district of Moscow, four Esperantists were arrested: Yuri Davydov, Irina Derguzova, Yevgeni Privalov and Tatyana Lomakina. Ten other Esperantists were searched. They are under threat of 20 years imprisonment for founding illegal armed units, although they only had legally registered gas, air and hunting guns. The accused have spent 13 months in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison with no seriously proven charge.
In prison SIZO-9 in Kropotnya, Y Davydov and T Lomakina were tortured and tormented. The interrogators broke three ribs of Y Davydov and burned the soles of his feet with fire. They put a helmet on the head of T Lomakina and beat her head with a rubber truncheon. She lost consciousness. Afterwards she confessed to her non-existent crimes in order not to die from the tortures.
All the possessions of the arrested in the town of Kaluga and the village of Moshkovo (Moscow region) have been burned and destroyed: houses, garages, other buildings, cars, 10,000 books, 1,000 video cassettes, a fax machine, computers, printers, scanners, telephones, cameras, video cameras, furniture, etc. Many possessions were stolen.
In Russia all youth organisations (like the organisation of Y Davydov), which do not work under the guidance of Idushchie Vmeste - the youth organisation of president Vladimir Putin - are persecuted.
Given everything above, the following questions need to be answered:
- Which crimes did those arrested commit?
- What proofs of the crimes do the investigators have?
- When and where did the trial take place?
- What fate is in store for the non-governmental youth organisations in Russia?
- Are harassment and torture of the accused not forbidden in Russia?
- Are private property and other property not protected in Russia?
Stan Keable
North London
Safety concern
I am increasingly concerned at the way the Weekly Worker is portraying the issue of comrade Greg Tucker, the victimised RMT local official at the heart of the South West Trains strike.
It has been stated in at least two issues that Greg’s offence of speeding while driving a train was “minor”. Anyone who has worked as a driver will know that speeding is definitely not treated as a minor offence. Any driver caught speeding knows they will face a disciplinary hearing. The punishments range from a recorded reprimand to dismissal, depending on the circumstances and seriousness of the speeding. A driver will then be placed on the ‘specially monitored driver’ programme, where they will receive extra attention from management. This is supposed to identify any underlying problems and agree a strategy to overcome them. It is, however, used in the majority of cases as a means to bully.
In their defence the train-operating companies (TOCs) have to work to a safety plan policed by Railtrack and Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate. This includes the treatment of drivers found to have breached safety critical rules and requires the use of ‘specially monitored driver’ policies. The HMRI have gone further and threatened TOCs with legal action if they ‘turn a blind eye’. They have also made it clear that they would like to prosecute in the courts drivers found to have breached these safety rules. We have to remember that the Morpeth train crash was due to a driver speeding around a sharp curve.
I believe we have to be careful and honest in our reporting of these events. Greg Tucker has clearly been victimised, as the punishment far exceeds that expected for a similar breach of safety rules. Aslef have been arguing for some time that these incidents should be taken out of the discipline procedure and looked at as accidents. No driver deliberately breaks safety rules and the blame culture infesting the rail industry needs challenging. Aslef have announced they intend to ballot its drivers on Arriva Trains Northern as a result of their unfair and harsh discipline of three drivers.
Peter Grant
Chair, Manchester Piccadilly Aslef
