Weekly Worker 419 Thursday February 14 2002
Letters
SA union link
I am trying not to become a regular contributor to the letters column. However, I have to protest about your remarkable attack on Greg Tucker in your front page article (Weekly Worker January 31).
The article also carries some bizarre views about the strike itself. For example, it argues that the RMT should have balloted its members on the wage rise imposed by management. Balloting the members every time management make an offer well short of the demand seems to be a textbook way of not running a strike. Although the CPGB view that this would have resulted in acceptance by the members (and therefore have brought an end to the action) is contrary to all indications at that time. In fact the imposition stiffened the resolve of the strikers at that time.
The CPGB is entitled to advocate disastrous tactics for the strike (if it has to) or to misunderstand the dynamics of it. But to attack Greg Tucker (and strangely Bob Crow) for failing to give the Socialist Alliance a profile in the strike by hiding his association with it, for “being a trade unionist first and a politician second” and for failing to give political leadership in the strike is either to completely misunderstand the links between politics and trade union work or is a wilful distortion.
How can a high-profile trade unionist stand as a Socialist Alliance candidate and be accused of putting trade unionism first and politics second? It stands reality on its head. In fact Greg Tucker better represents the link between politics and trade union struggle than almost anyone on the left at the present time. Greg stood as a candidate for the alliance, took three weeks off to do it, was constantly attacked in the media (mostly the Evening Standard) as a result, and then victimised for it on his first day back to work. To argue that such a comrade is putting trade unionism before politics is mad.
In fact it is a great credit to Greg that after being constantly attacked in the media for his political involvement with the alliance he was still, after months of delay, able to get the support of his members to fight his victimisation. That shows that he has been able to successfully combine public political activity for the SA and maintain a solid base amongst his members.
Nor does it help the CPGB’s case to accuse Bob Crow of not giving the SA a high enough profile. Bob Crow is not a member of the SA. We hope he will join, but at the moment he has only given limited support for the alliance and is not going to promote it at every opportunity.
Of course Greg argues the strikers’ case at every opportunity - that is his job as a socialist as well as a trade unionist. In attacking him for it the CPGB show that they don’t understand the relationship between politics and industrial struggle. But he has also given the alliance a lot of very important publicity and profile which we need to build on, particularly for the SA trade union conference. This has been shown in a practical sense by the fact that a number of the strikers have joined the SA and others are coming to the SA union conference.
Alan Thornett
International Socialist Group
Star thaw?
I was surprised to find, in the Morning Star’s directory of progressive websites, directly underneath the entry for the Star’s own Communist Party of Britain, one for the Communist Party of Great Britain (February 9).
Having been aware of the erstwhile policy of the Star to decline to mention the existence of the CPGB or the Weekly Worker, I found this development extremely encouraging. I hope it indeed signifies a thaw and was not just an error. Although the websites of all organisations originating exclusively from the Trotskyist stable remain noticeably absent from the list, it was nevertheless refreshing to see the Socialist Alliance also listed.
Meanwhile, a debate is in progress in the columns of the Star’s letters page which is addressing the crucial question of whether the Labour Party remains a vehicle for achieving socialism, or whether a new party should be formed. This has been triggered by a feature published on January 8, over the signature of Paul Donovan, which was unequivocal on this question: “At present, the Labour Party is a mere distraction, misleading the energies of many people who think that they are working for the common good, but in reality they are propping up an organisation that ensures only that the rich get richer and the poor poorer.”
Comrade Donovan had gone on to suggest that the time has come for the trade unions to withdraw their support from the Labour Party. As a short-term alternative, he had suggested that union funds might be switched to organisations such as the East London Community Organisation, a “faith, cross-community and trade union” group, which is campaigning inter alia for a £6.30-an-hour minimum wage. Further down the line though, comrade Donovan saw the need to establish a new party “that addresses the issues of social justice” and in which “the environmental agenda would have to play a fundamental role”.
Whilst citing Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party as a previously failed attempt to launch such a party, comrade Donovan commented that “the growing influence of Tommy Sheridan and the Scottish Socialist Party provides cause for hope”. The Socialist Alliance was not mentioned in the feature, but its appearance in the website listing is at least an admission that it is a force to be dealt with.
The CPB and the Morning Star are organisations whose influence within the working class movement remains important. Whilst our CPGB is entirely correct, in my view, to champion the project of transforming the Socialist Alliance into the party for socialism which the working class needs - the partyist movement which is now starting to take shape within the CPB and its periphery must be encouraged and engaged with.
I look forward to future reports on these fascinating developments, in the pages of the Weekly Worker and in the paper of the Socialist Alliance, which I optimistically expect to be launched very soon.
Derek Hunter
Manchester
Where to stand
Dave Parks raises some good points regarding local election work (Weekly Worker February 7). The point, however, about the May local elections is that we need to gain some credible votes to help regain momentum for the Socialist Alliance. Our last political outing in Ipswich was poor. The departure of the Socialist Party has been used by our opponents to damage us. Gaining 10%-plus will suggest we are gaining a hearing in a number of communities.
In Lewisham we have resolved to stand in three seats in the centre of the borough: Ladywell, Rushey Green and Brockley. We have decided to stand two candidates in each ward allowing people to vote for us in large measure, but giving our supporters an opportunity to cast their remaining vote either for a possible left Labour candidate or perhaps a Green candidate.
Lewisham SA have gained the highest percentage vote for the SA in a by-election in New Cross a year ago, gaining 18% for Bob Gardner. This result was built on a considerable amount of canvassing, leafleting, a public meeting, street stalls and fly-posting. The amount of ‘labour hours’ involved in this work ran into many hundreds. Comrades should not underestimate the task in seeking to get working people to vote - let alone vote for us.
Our result in New Cross brought us into contact with a number of new supporters and put us locally on the political map, helping to assist our general election intervention. Standing paper candidates, which even to enter requires considerable coordination and effort just to get the nomination papers in correctly, without an active campaign or election address will lead to a piss poor vote. Far better is to suggest to our supporters in wards where we don’t have a candidate to write in ‘Socialist Alliance’.
Nick Long
Lewisham SA
Canvassing
Waveney District Council is dominated by Labour. At the May elections all 48 seats in 16 wards will be contested, voters generally having three votes. Therefore, we have decided to stand one SA candidate in each of Lowestoft’s most deprived working class wards, with the possibility of standing a candidate also in a Beccles ward.
As far as I can make out, there will be two leftwing Labour candidates standing in different wards. However, in the opinion of the Lowestoft and District SA (LDSA), we can stand in these wards too because we are not in direct competition with them for a seat (the electorate can vote Labour and Socialist Alliance).
However, our SA is against standing ‘paper’ candidates. There are practical and strategic reasons for this. Firstly, each SA candidate will be required to be proposed by nine people in the ward where they stand. Secondly, such a strategy suggests we are only into pursuing a percentage of the vote, rather than contesting seats to win them. Thirdly, canvassing is an essential in the campaign. We cannot say to people on their doorstep: ‘Though we’ve no chance of being elected, vote for us.’
Waveney DC is running seminars on standing candidates and the ‘responsibilities of councillors’. They are running these because they’re scared of a minimal turnout. Hopefully, these will be held across the country. We urge other SAs to go to them. They are an eye-opener, an education. Council officers are in a dilemma: they are pressured to impose the Berlin Wall of Labour’s denial of democracy - their local ‘cabinet’ government reforms - and they are charged with getting the vote out.
The lack of democracy in the council, because of non-elected cabinet rule, is one aspect. The rules and regulations another. Any councillor who brings the authority into disrepute can be expelled from the council, an officer explained. “So if I’m a councillor who supports a council workers’ strike, will I have brought the authority into disrepute?” I asked. Red faces.
“Yes,” came the reply. So, a councillor in Blair’s Britain can keep his (always a ‘he’) membership of the Freemasons a secret from the electorate, but a councillor who supports the workers who voted for her/him gets kicked out!
LDSA has agreed we need to “think global/national and act local”. It is only in the interests of Labour and the Tories to divorce ‘local’ from ‘national.’ It is easy to connect the two. Our local hospital is to charge patients £2 a day for watching TV - creeping privatisation of the NHS! Our local college is to scrap all academic courses - the consequence of unaccountable privatisation! These campaigns are vital to us. They are also a means of getting the Socialist Alliance into the local/press and media (which I am attempting to do each week).
Further to this, building the SA national trade union conference on the political fund is essential - to get people there and to deepen SA union roots locally.
Rupert Mallin
Lowestoft
Hunger strikes
It has been exactly one year since a group of political prisoners launched their hunger strike/death fast in opposition to the introduction of cell-type prisons in place of the dormitory system. So far, as many as 70 people have died - more than half of them as a result of the hunger strike, and the rest as a result of the military operation in the second month of the strike in order to put it to an end and to transfer the prisoners to those controversial F-type prisons by force. Most have now been placed in these prisons.
As a result of these events, the general public was deeply shaken. The problem of prisons has had a long history in Turkey, but this time what the public was questioning was not only the political and legal system, but also the understanding of the ‘revolutionism’ of some political circles and their way of practising politics.
Particularly after the 1971 and 1980 military coups, revolutionaries were arrested in large numbers and prisons became a field of struggle. However, petty bourgeois revolutionary groups reduce this struggle down to a conflict between revolutionary political groups and the armed forces of the state and put it above the class struggle and its problems. When they do not have much influence outside, they turn to prisons; and methods like hunger strikes and death fasts, which may have some effect and meaning in terms of propaganda when used in a certain way, turn into a means of self-inflicted injury.
When these groups lose their faith in the working class, they convince themselves that they are the ‘saviours’, and declare their field of operation - in this case prisons - as the ‘revolution’s stronghold’. This shows how subjective and idealist their understanding of revolution is.
The progress of the hunger strikes should be looked at in two stages. In the first stage, a significant proportion of advanced, revolutionary and democratic public opinion paid attention to the repression and violence taking place in the prisons. It was a stage where solitary cells were acknowledged as a threat to a humane life and to the struggle for democracy in the country. The Human Rights Association, the bar, medical associations, trade unions, various political parties and workers’ organisations took a stance against F-type prisons because they were ‘inhuman’. They urged the government and the justice minister to give a satisfactory response to the demands of the prisoners so that the hunger strikes could end.
As a result of this united public opinion the government had to take a step back, admitting the ‘shortcomings’ of F-type prisons and postponing their launch until public agreement was reached.
Although these individuals and organisations did not approve of death fasts as a method of protest, they still took action based on personal political opinion, for moral and professional reasons. However, the majority of those taking part in the hunger strikes declared as ‘enemies’ all those who did not consider this method correct, or who did not support them unconditionally, or who had a different opinion from theirs. They tried to justify their behaviour with the argument that ‘only those on death fast can make a decision on how the protest was to be ended’. But it was a well known fact that those on death fast were unable to make a healthy decision at the time.
However, it was unrealistic to expect these groups to see and understand this widespread opposition against prison policies. This is because they have had a patronising attitude throughout the political course of their lives, putting themselves at the centre of the world, considering the existence of everything else as something to be used as logistic support. They shelter under the consciousness of the public, and cause destruction and division. Therefore, these groups did not even hesitate before making derogatory accusations against the members of delegations who went in to see the hunger strikers and the prison conditions. As a result of this narrow-mindedness, these groups have in fact helped the government, which they so opposed, to achieve its goal. They isolated themselves, and the government regained public support.
At this stage the opinion of the progressive public on prisons was divided. After a while, the political parties and representatives of mass organisations came to the conclusion that they ‘could not do anything’ with these groups. Consequently, they took a step back and thought it satisfactory just to reach a solution without deaths and as soon as possible. The narrow-mindedness of these groups caused division among their allies and brought isolation. Subsequently, without much public support, they became an easier target for the government.
The public opposition that had been built against the introduction of F-type prisons was dispersed; as many as 70 people died and dozens were injured. It is not known how many of those who are still continuing their death fasts will die or become permanently disabled. Moreover, the transfers to F-types have taken place much faster than the government had expected. Thus, a longstanding problem of the government has been solved - at least on the surface.
These actions had no benefit for the people: on the contrary they have left deep scars on the consciousness of the public. Those groups presenting these actions as an ‘epic of heroism’ and a ‘victory’, on the other hand, are trying to hold together their supporters with the rhetoric of heroism, and with the fetish of ‘martyrdom’. Their political understanding is based on individual terrorism, and they try to impose upon the revolutionary ranks methods like death fasts and suicide bombings as ‘revolutionary methods of action’.
Naturally, revolutionary struggle requires various forms of sacrifices, including serving time in prison and not hesitating to give up one’s life, when necessary. Under present conditions, if a large number of revolutionaries are putting their lives on the line in a prison struggle for one demand or another, and if they take it to the point of ‘Either we will either die or the government will accept our demands’, then it must be considered a ‘suicide action’ rather than a sacrifice - if there is no misconception that the bourgeoisie and the government would take a step back because their conscience will not allow them to see prisoners dying. Likewise, the action of setting fire to oneself as a way of protest cannot be considered equal to a revolutionary risking his/her life during the course of revolutionary struggle.
In the end, this mentality has turned into a slogan and the supporters outside the prisons turned the struggle, and death itself, into an objective, chanting “Long live our death fast struggle!” Death, in a mystical way, has been symbolised as a sacred activity rather than as support for saving those left alive or furthering the struggle. While the death fast is a controversial action in itself, the way it has been exalted and turned into a slogan brings not only the action itself into question, but also the ideological-political line that promotes and worships it.
When we look at the publications of those political groups that are participating in the death fasts, we can see that for these circles the problems of the working class, the demands of the masses or the labour movement no longer exist. Their mystical death-worshipping literature is full of articles on death fasts and F-type prisons. For them, all that exists is their ‘revolutionism’ and ‘heroism’! For this reason, their literature is very self-centred, constantly revolving around praising themselves and what they do, as if there are no other problems in the world. This shows to what extent they are drowned into a subjective idealism and narcissism, another dimension of it being reflected in their ‘voluntarism’.
These political groups, which consider the death fast as their main form of action, which overtly praise a revolutionism that is independent of the requirements of the workers’ movement, have in fact transformed it into a kind of cult and become isolated: Their praise for mass suicides and deaths also point to an ideological and political cul-de-sac. For this reason, what has been taking place reflects, among other things, the sad collapse of an ideological-political line that involves a number of political groups.
TDKP
London
Victimisation
Gerry Downing is to be sacked on February 18 for defending a victimised muslim man. Hash Jiwa was the first black or Asian man to be elected as a TGWU branch officer in Cricklewood bus garage, which has been black and Asian for decades. The workforce of 270-odd is about 40% muslim.
At the garage elections on November 30 Hash Jiwa was elected chair. Three days later he had a minor row with a supervisor and he was later suspended. The charges were spurious: one for “gender discrimination” because he complained to a woman supervisor that she was victimising him and she said he said he no longer respected her as a woman. The other was for “racial remarks” because he complained she was racially discriminating against him. She forced him to finish an hour late although she knew he was fasting for Ramadan. She admits in her report that she said: “I don’t care about you fasting”; and “Don’t impose your religion on me”.
He was given a final warning and transferred to Harlesden garage, clearly to prevent him taking up his position as chair in Cricklewood. Three days later, and 10 days before his appeal, a letter from Harry Foley, “company chairperson TGWU” appeared on the union notice board. In it he claimed that, “Due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the departure of brother Jiwa I have to advise you as members that the other candidate, brother Kieran Murray, will now be taking up the position of branch chair by default. Brother Murray will hold this position for the biannual period 2002-03.” The signal to management could not be clearer. Hash lost his appeal.
A number of us arranged two petitions: one to Metroline and one to the TGWU. The one to Metroline is not in contention. The TGWU petition was to bro O Jackson, TGWU senior regional industrial organiser. It condemned “the victimisation of Hash Jiwa, our elected branch chair, just three days before he was due to take office” and repudiated “the fraudulent letter from Harry Foley claiming victory for his defeated opponent, Kieran Murray, as a result of Hash’s victimisation”. It was signed by 109 TGWU members.
On Friday February 8 Gerry Downing was suspended and charged with:
l misrepresentation of drivers’ names on a petition with detrimental intent to another member of staff.
l participating in the compilation of an unauthorised petition regarding employment matters.
Note that this is wholly an internal union matter. Harry Foley has called in drivers one by one, threatened to sue them for signing the petition and went to management to have Gerry Downing sacked. He forced some 20 to write ‘occurrence reports’ to management saying things like they had nor read the petition before they signed.
The second charge is an open assault on basic civil liberties. Legal advice is that these actions breach article 10 of the Human Rights Act, which guarantees freedom of expression. To be sacked for taking up a petition to your union in support of a victimised member is simply off the wall.
A reign of terror now operates in Cricklewood garage, where none of the nine TGWU members who put their names to Gerry Downing’s and Hash Jiwa’s election address and who were elected to the branch committee turned up for the January committee or branch. Eight are black or Asian. The supporters of the all white branch officers who were elected (or the chair who has simply usurped the office) are all white. The TGWU official position is committed to equality and equal opportunities.
Mayor Ken Livingstone recently said in supporting a GLA initiative against racism: “London’s success and dynamism rests on its diversity and I am pleased to say that the vast majority of Londoners live side by side in harmony and friendship. This ad expresses the desire of right-thinking people everywhere to keep our society tolerant and welcoming. In the current international situation there are particular concerns on the part of British muslims that they may become the victims of a racist backlash. My support for this advertising campaign underlines the fact that London must stay a zero-tolerance zone against racism.”
Please immediately protest these racist victimisations to Metroline with copies to Oli Jackson and Lee Jasper.
Gerry Downing
North London
Workers on trial
On Tuesday January 29, after five years of judicial events the trial of the elected shop stewards of the Forges Clabecq resumed in the court of appeals in Brussels.
The court asked the 13 accused whether they accepted each of the numerous counts against them. The chief judge asked whether Roberto D’Orazio accepted the charge of theft of a mobile phone.
That permitted D’Orazio to ask once again exactly what he was being charged with. D’Orazio is thus charged with acts even though the file does not even state that he was present at the places in question. The file limits itself to a series of general accusations. In reality, the elected shop stewards are accused of incidents that surrounded the long fight of the steel workers of Clabecq against the closing of their factory. In the matter of the mobile phone, as in other matters, Roberto D’Orazio and Marra Silvio (the chairperson of the health and safety committee) sought to expose before the court how the charges were being manipulated.
While the trustees were trying to sell off the factory the elected shop stewards had managed with the voluntary labour of hundreds of workers to keep it running. Instead of the liquidation of the steelworks for the profit of a few creditors, the factory resumed operation and half of the jobs were saved.
The trustees did not want to know. They had not only deserted the factory, but had systematically sabotaged the efforts of the steelworkers. Among these acts of sabotage, the trustees had cut off all the telephone lines in the factory. By doing this they deliberately threatened not only the attempt of workers to save the factory, but also the safety of the workers themselves and also of the region - since the risk of industrial accidents in a steelworks is not minor ( there was a stock of dynamite sed to break up defective steel).
The only telephone line left was the mobile phone in question, which was set so that it could only be used by the watchmen to summon the police to the factory. Many workers did not accept that this phone line should be used in this way - they took the phone, put it in a safe place, and returned it afterwards.
The speeches of the shop stewards at the hearing were really notable for their clarity and combativity. They placed the charges in context and showed their dishonest character. The chief judge decided not to listen. He limited himself to asking Roberto D’Orazio: “Therefore, you reject the charge of theft of a telephone?”
By reducing a social conflict to a group of punishable individual incidents, bourgeois justice can persecute the elected shop stewards and skip over the only real scandal in the Clabecq affair - the pillage of a region and the selling-off of the main Belgian steelworks by finance capital and its agents; the attempt to break the workers’ resistance at all costs; and the shameful treachery of the trade union bureaucracy.
It was not by accident that the hearing sought to charge the elected shop stewards as a group. This is purely and simply a trial of workers’ resistance and class struggle trade unionism. The lawyers for the defence have asked that the charges be dismissed because of their lack of precision.
It is important to get the broadest support for the shop stewards of the Forges of Clabecq by denouncing this trial and getting financial support for them. So far, their trial expenses exceed 50,000 euros (almost $50,000 - account Workers’ Defence: 370-1053288-52).
Red Aid
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