Weekly Worker 423 Thursday March 14 2002
Letters
Former officers
I have been a reader of the Weekly Worker for some considerable time now and have always held the paper in high regard for what I have always believed to be an even-handed and open publication, one that stood in marked contrast to the tired and patronising old rags that clog up the left.
How saddening then to find our statement from the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance officers, a document painstakingly drafted and debated to ensure fairness, non-sectarianism and accuracy, amended with the cynical header, “Statement from the ‘former’ Beds SA officers”. Is this irony, perchance? If so, please, comrades, don’t: it really isn’t becoming and you are no Oscar Wilde.
I will not undertake the tiresome chore of repeating or expanding on the statement given as that would only serve to bore your readers who I’m sure have seen a little too much of the Beds SA saga already. I will merely say this: the officers of the Beds SA were elected on December 12 on an individual basis, by a clear majority of the members attending that meeting; the SWP, despite the well documented fact that they opposed the election of comrades Clarke, Karas and Thompson as officers, chose to abstain from these electoral proceedings and put up no alternative candidates, as is their right not to participate if they so choose.
Since that time no officer has left the BSA, resigned from their post, died, emigrated or been expelled. No meeting has been called by the membership to recall us, as would be their right if we were not serving their interests. We therefore remain as officers, until the next annual general meeting or the occurrence of one of the above incidents. As far as I am aware, SWP comrades and their supporters decided to elect a new officers group, despite the fact that the meeting was clearly closed and the distinct absence of our chair, comrade SL, our vice-chair BE, comrade MF, our minutes secretary, who would have been able to record any votes and document the officers elected, and myself, the secretary - our absence indicative of the fact that the meeting was closed, for reasons already outlined.
If this is democracy in action, then wonderful. I shall call a meeting this afternoon in my lounge and elect Ted Heath, Ronald McDonald, my partner’s two cats, my nose ring and Fidel Castro to the SWP central committee. Indeed why stop there? I could decide to elect our local bowling team to the SA executive, if all it takes is a few people to cobble together any meeting they so wish and stick their hands up.
Of course it isn’t enough and that is why those officers elected at the December meeting remain officers; officers who in marked contrast to the fantasy team elected by a fantasy meeting held a recent public meeting on defending our public services. Did comrade Neil Thompson question our position as officers? No. Did anyone from the floor ask comrade SL not to chair, as she was in fact but a ‘former’ officer? No. Did the SWP choose to attend an official meeting called by the new officers, as opposed to a meeting organised by we lowly ‘former’ officers? No, the usual ritual presence of five was evident - thus no change there. Where indeed were the new officers, who were due to replace us obsolete old hacks? As I have yet to discover who they are, I can only guess. Certainly no one stood up to denounce us as charlatans and declare themselves as the genuine article.
The task of winning democracy in our movement has been arduous and backbreaking thus far, a statement that will be all too resonant to any communist and democrat. I urge your readers to make a struggle just a little easier by reading our statement with an open mind and I urge our CPGB comrades to please allow us to present our statements without any ‘informative’, ‘helpful’ or ‘witty’ quips from your good selves.
Ross Marat
Beds SA secretary
Peter Manson replies:
The Weekly Worker never has been, nor do I intend that it becomes, “even handed”. Our paper is a political weapon not an open notice board. We side with democracy in the movement and fight to centralise all efforts against the common enemy. We oppose localism and anarcho-bureaucracy. Articles and letters submitted will be presented in a way that serves our aims. The word ‘former’ - ie, “former’ Beds officers” - appeared in quotation marks, indicating that this description is a contested one - as the ultra-sensitive Ross Marat makes abundantly clear in his letter.
Jewish rights
Following on from another week of tit-for-tat bloodshed in the Middle East, it is hard to escape the conclusion of comrade Danny Hammill that “barbarism beckons” in the region (Weekly Worker March 7). However, the ongoing rebellion of Israeli reservists also points to the potential for a progressive solution to the national question in the Middle East.
The anti-war movement has been quick to adopt the Palestinian cause as its own after imperialism’s victory in Afghanistan. Debate on the left about this question is thus of especial importance. For John Pearson my conclusions are a “reactionary … perversion of Leninism” (‘Revolutionary semantics’ Weekly Worker March 7). His polemical crosshairs centre on my insistence that the democratic right of Israeli jews (and for that matter all Israelis) to national self-determination be accepted as legitimate.
While I would agree that the “workers have no nation”, wandering around either the streets of Ramallah or Tel Aviv shouting this is likely to have little effect. The Palestinian people have legitimate national aspirations. Israel is preventing the realisation of those aspirations and is brutally repressing the Palestinian people. Conversely, in groups like Hamas, jewish Israelis see a threat to their lives and their own (legitimate in so far as they do not impinge on the democratic rights of the Palestinians) national aspirations. Hamas’s chauvinism is conflated with the Palestinian struggle. Thus a majority of Israelis side with their state and, despite the encouraging signs of the last few weeks, remain wedded to chauvinism.
Revolutionary socialists and communists in the Middle East thus have two tasks in the fight for unity: to combat Israeli chauvinism, but also to combat anti-Israeli chauvinism and anti-semitism. How can this be done on the basis of denying the national rights of Israeli jews? To ask the question is to answer it: it can’t.
What makes the national rights of the Israeli jews less legitimate than those of the Palestinians? Surely, revolutionary socialists and communists do not recognise the right of one nation to pursue its aspirations at the expense of others. We are implacably opposed to all national privilege. This applies to the Israelis - they have no right to pursue their aspirations at the expense of those of the Palestinian people - but it also applies to the Palestinians. They do not have the right to pursue their national aspirations at the expense of Israelis: ie, deny them the right to self-determination in a future “democratic secular Palestine”. If comrade Pearson thinks that they do then he has to explain why the Israelis have fewer rights than the Palestinians and how he proposes to win the Israeli workers away from social chauvinism on this basis.
Comrade Pearson may object that we are not nationalists and we must remove the national question from the agenda. After all, nationalism currently binds the Palestinian people to the venally corrupt Palestinian Authority at best and similarly Israeli workers to their own exploiters. True. But to do that comrade Pearson suggests that, ostrich-like, we bury our heads in the sand. On the other hand, I was suggesting that the way to remove the national question from the agenda is actually to resolve it.
Whether we like it or not - and I do not - the British partition happened and subsequently the state of Israel has emerged as a fully-fledged nation-state. That great injustice was done to the Palestinian people both at the time and subsequently is not contested (though British imperialism manipulated and double-crossed the jews as well: its prohibition of jewish immigration to Palestine at the time of their increasing persecution in Nazi Germany particular was also a great historical injustice). But one injustice cannot undo another and neither can history be undone.
He may also object that the Israelis are oppressors and therefore have abrogated their national rights. But the Israeli people cannot be crudely equated with the actions of their government. In any case, we defend not Israeli national privilege, but national rights - something that is slightly different.
The nub of the problem with comrade Pearson’s approach is that, rather than deal with the question in its concrete manifestation (the first requirement for Marxists when dealing with the national question), he deals with it purely in abstract terms by dismissing it out of hand. Because the “workers have no nation” it is a relatively simple matter to throw the Israelis and Palestinians together into one state. Reality is, however, infinitely more complex.
Mike Speed
email
Numbers game
With some astonishment I read Danny Hammill’s account of the March 2 Stop the War demo. Were we on the same march? He estimates 8,000 marchers, while even the police figure was 10,000 and the bourgeois press said “at least 15,000” (The Independent on Sunday March 3). The police figure for November 18 was 15,000.
Patronisingly he talks of a “healthy turnout” “under the circumstances”, but goes on to say that the march was “rescued” by other (different?) circumstances. Does he mean political events? He doesn’t consider that the march was called in response to those circumstances (Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq). Those who feared an “embarrassing flop” and those who talk about “‘Stop the War’ - which war?” are thankfully almost exclusively confined to your own ranks.
Danny goes on to report that the march was “not the loudest”, “desultory” and “confined to seasoned leftwing activists”, but had an “air of confidence and militancy”! Make your mind up, Danny. The truth of the matter was that the march attracted many hundreds of students and young people from colleges and universities around the country new to politics and represents a developing radicalisation among those layers.
To say that SWP comrades mobilised for the march in order to “save face” is an insult both to them and to Danny’s own intelligence. I expect that SWP members mobilised along the lines that Lindsey German argued within the Coalition: that is, to campaign against the continued war in Afghanistan; against the continuing massacre of the people of Palestine and against the war preparations towards Iraq.
Andrew Burgin
email
No abortion
I have just visited the links page on your website, and I am sorry to see a link to Sinn Féin’s site there. I am from Northern Ireland, and I am a catholic, but I have an absolute loathing for this party.
Certainly, Sinn Féin are anti-imperialistic, but they are no friends of the working class. They are responsible for breeding hatred of protestants and division within the community! Of course, their actions also increase hatred of catholics by protestants. As the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, they are responsible for the deaths of many innocent people, of both denominations.
It is my personal feeling that their ‘war’ against Britain isn’t really legitimate anyway. Other than removing British influence from Ireland, they have no other revolutionary goals. They will free the people of Northern Ireland from one part of the capitalist system (Westminster), only to shackle us to another part of the same system (the Dáil). If communism is to have any real support within Ireland, we should not align ourselves to either side of the community. I urge you to remove the link.
I am also a little baffled about the policy of many socialist/communist parties of supporting abortion. Surely, as communists, we should have ultimate respect for the right to life of members of the community. An embryo is a living thing from the moment the egg is fertilised. Therefore, I support the banning of all forms of contraception that destroy fertilised eggs, or prevent them from developing, and I think that abortions should be completely illegal, except in the rare situations when there is a high risk to the mother’s life. Then she should have the right to choose to have an abortion.
Choice has been made into a god by capitalists. It is their way of destroying unity and community. Would you say that a mother’s choice is more important than a child’s life?
Daniel Walker
email
Other foot
I would hate to take sides in an argument between Trotskyites, but I have to comment on a letter in the last Weekly Worker (March 7).
Paul Hunt, from the Socialist Party, condemns the Socialist Workers Party for a “pathetic, patronising stunt”, getting members of the public to throw wet sponges at one of their members wearing a Tony Blair mask. I agree. Indeed when I first saw this type of stunt, though the target was someone wearing a Margaret Thatcher mask, I thought it was indeed pathetic and patronising. The group organising it, and raising money by charging people to take part, was what is now called the Socialist Party.
I trust Paul Hunt will resign in disgust at his party for, to his use his words against the SWP, “playing their petty bourgeois games”.
Ross Bradshaw
Nottingham
Correction
Please note that I am not, and never have been, a member of the Socialist Workers Party (Weekly Worker February 28).
Jeff Fowler
Teesside SA
