Weekly Worker 424 Thursday March 21 2002
Letters
Soiled symbols
While I disagree with the general thrust of Martin Thomas’s article, the question of whether or not we “fetishise” certain symbols and words is an interesting one (Weekly Worker March 14).
The CPGB is arguably the most open, democratic revolutionary organisation on the left today - paradoxically though, we are still small. While it would be naive to suggest that this was solely (or even mainly) due to our use of ‘soiled’ symbolism, I feel it would also be wrong to dismiss this factor out of hand.
My own personal feeling is that as communists we should soberly accept that for the vast majority of its history, the hammer and sickle symbolised a system of misery and repression. While it is correct to point out that its origins lie in peasant-worker unity, I do feel that we ignore its later history too easily, and ultimately to our own disadvantage. Clearly the continued use of symbols that, despite heroic origins, are directly linked to murderous regimes, can be off-putting to potential supporters - to say the least.
To people of my generation (I can barely remember the Berlin wall coming down, let alone ‘official’ communism being seen as a real alternative) it is not so alarming. However, to people who can remember ‘official’ communism, and perhaps personally suffered under it, it would seem logical to think our continued use of the hammer and sickle symbol presents something of a barrier to our politics.
Accordingly, using the name ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ may indeed be ‘scientifically’ correct, but surely it is not a name that has to be cherished as an eternal truth - after all, a Communist Party (of whatever name) is only ever a means to an end. Our whole project is about rescuing, and reforging, revolutionary socialist politics - but is it also necessary to rescue, and reforge, symbols that have been ‘soiled’ beyond recognition by history?
In my opinion, anything that erects unnecessary barriers between people and our politics should be cast away, as soon as possible. Time for some ‘clean linen’.
Mark Lusted
South London
Building victory
A recent victory by construction workers provides another small pointer towards the potential for militant struggle.
A 21-month dispute led by militant Ucatt members in the Building Worker Group, a rank and file body with supporters in Northampton, Harlow, London and Scotland, have won a landmark victory in the face of hostility from employers and union officials alike. Four carpenters, members of Northampton Ucatt, saw out a dispute which was initially pursued by several dozen other workers, and succeeded in winning the right to holiday pay for ‘self-employed workers’.
The construction industry has suffered the ravages of the ‘free market’ more than most over the last 20 years. Cut-throat employers have taken advantage of anti-union legislation, high unemployment and a lack of leadership by the union tops. With exceptions, such as a few local authorities where direct labour is still used for council contracts, most workers today are generally paid from job to job and in the main are officially classed as self-employed, this being an age-old trick to divide and sort out the ‘troublemakers’.
Consequently the legal rights that most workers have retained, despite the onslaught of recent administrations, tend not to apply. Even higher paid workers are not always guaranteed employment, while those in work have suffered constant attacks on their conditions, including the erosion of proper breaks and holiday entitlement.
In recent times the Blair government has looked to ‘European’ forms of exploitation - just as the TUC leadership favours of employer-union partnership. Reforms have been introduced via new EU legislation, but workers should not be fooled by this agenda. The law still protects the employer and simply seeks to avoid disputes by throwing a few crumbs. As a strategy to defend conditions, relying on EU legislation is a disaster: it disables us and makes working conditions dependent on the ‘rational’ section of the bourgeoisie, not on our own collective strength and organisation.
However, Byrne Bros Ltd refused to buy into even this humble agenda and the Northampton workers pursuing a claim under the European working time directive had to go through loop after loop to win basic legal rights. An employment tribunal judgement last September was not contested by the firm and the workers won a landmark victory. The dispute stands out as a good example of using legal channels to aid struggle, rather than relying on them to deliver.
Ucatt and the other construction unions, the TGWU, GMB and Amicus, have been equally infected by the ‘social partnership’ bug. Various schemes have been devised to incorporate workers’ representatives, providing a nice little earner for several union employees. This has meant that militant action is not looked on kindly, being seen by union bureaucrats as a hindrance to their sorting things out for us. In fact such sweetheart schemes hardly have a shining record - even on basic questions of safety. There are well over 100 deaths on site every year, and most construction workers can tell you any number of horror stories from their daily working life.
Bill Jeannes
Tyneside
Changing Beds
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! What a lot of confused arguments are going on out there - and it would appear from Marcus Ström’s report on the Socialist Alliance executive that the majority of them are in the executive itself.
Had the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance officers (that is, the one and only group which has been democratically elected) been given the opportunity to meet with members of the executive, as originally requested, then the executive would be availed of all the facts and would not be in a position where they have made a judgement based on a few phone calls with a few individuals. It is still not too late to do this and a request for this to be accommodated has already been lodged.
Until this happens, it is necessary for the Beds SA to make its points through the pages of the Weekly Worker and, as tedious as this may seem to its readers, I feel that it is very important that we start to look at the real issues behind the ‘problems’ in the Beds SA. In order to do this, we have to be very clear about what happened in the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance, and comments from comrade Hoskisson, as reported by Marcus Ström in his report - that he “would not countenance meetings being closed down when officers lose a vote” - just show how confused comrades are about the course of events.
Comrade Marat quite correctly points out in his letter (Weekly Worker March 14) the circumstances surrounding the election on December 9 of the current officers of the Beds SA and again agreed at the meeting on January 27. Other reports and statements which have been issued also clearly point out that there was agreement in the meeting on January 27 about the perspectives for the Beds SA (thanks to a very sensible member of the SWP, who quite rightly recognised that the alternative perspective put up by the SWP against the RDG was so similar that it was pointless to proceed with voting, but to agree them both).
The problem came with the moving of the constitution. This was being proposed to incorporate the changes which had come about as a result of the national conference on December 1. The amended constitution had been circulated in advance and all members had received a posting to their address and had been given the necessary time under the outgoing constitution to make amendments. No amendments were forthcoming, which would have been the democratic method to employ if members did not like any part of it. Instead the SWP and its ‘entourage’ voted against the constitution and as a consequence left the Beds SA without a local constitution and therefore with no constitutional authority to continue the meeting. On this basis, and this basis alone (which was explained to the meeting), the meeting was closed in order for the Beds SA officers to approach the national executive to find a resolution to the problem of operating without a constitution.
The issue of the local constitution is fundamental to the problems going on in Beds SA. It is not localism for a group of locally operating officers to be accountable to its local membership and, as I pointed out earlier, the constitution of Beds SA (which had held us in very good stead for the previous year), was being amended to make the local SA accountable to the national constitution agreed on December 1.
Comrades throughout this debate (which in my mind has been going on far too long) have used the word ‘democracy’ to support their arguments. But where is the democracy in a fully accountable and democratic organisation like the Beds SA (and, I would add, representative - if the SWP had ever taken up the numerous positions they had been offered to sit on the officers group) being handed over to a national or local group who make the rules up as they go along according to what suits them at the time?
If we are serious about building a democratic organisation, then comrades throughout the whole SA movement should be asking themselves what is so wrong with a local constitution. I would suggest, not very much in localities where the SWP already rule the roost by numbers, but where there are real activists who are serious about building the SA and do not just see it as a front for all the other activities which are spewed out on a check list from the SWP CC. A democratic local constitution becomes a threat to the SWP.
Comrades, this debate is not just confined to Beds SA. It is fundamental to the development and survival of the Socialist Alliance nationally and, rather than hiding the real issues, we should be debating them and coming to a real democratic position. Let’s hope that the national EC agree to meet us and open up the real debate.
Jane Clarke
Treasurer, Beds SA
Numbers game
Andrew Burgin of the Stop the War Coalition expresses “astonishment” at the Weekly Worker’s reported figure of 8,000 marchers at the March 2 Stop the War demonstration (Letters, March 14). Well, I thought that figure was a bit out as well - if anything, it was on the high side.
Knowing that the turnout on such occasions is always a matter of dispute (with the police and the establishment determined to play down numbers and the organisers and the left just as keen to build them up), I decided to attempt a count of the marchers as they left Hyde Park and proceeded along Park Lane. I estimated numbers in blocks of 10 as they passed and I arrived at a final total of … 3,600. I admit that my method was not 100% scientific, but its margin of error would certainly not have been so large that the true figure was 20,000, as stated in some left publications.
The march took 35 minutes to pass where I was standing. If there really had been 20,000 people, in order to do it in that time they would have had to go by at a rate of around 100 every 10 seconds. I can assure you they were very much more spread out than that - much nearer the 100 per minute that 3,600 produces. There were only three or four small sections that were tightly packed. For the most part people were ambling along three or four abreast.
It is true that some may have joined the march en route, while many others would have gone straight to the rally, but, even taking that into account, Trafalgar Square was hardly overflowing, was it? I think 8,000 must have been the absolute maximum number of demonstrators at the end of the march. I do not know why the police overestimated the numbers on this occasion - the idea that there were almost as many present as on November 18 is laughable, but that is what they said.
Why do we need to arrive at an accurate figure? Because it is essential to assess our strength, along with the mood of the population, in order to decide upon what course of action is possible at a given time. It is in our interest to tell the truth.
Alan Fox
London
ISO crime
It was good to see that the International Socialist Organisation have no longer been advocating a vote for the pro-imperialist Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, having noticed the disillusionment that the working class feel towards them. However, this does not lead them, or in fact yourselves, to question the method that brought about their support for the MDC in the first place.
Their MP was elected to power on an MDC ticket, by participating in what can rightly be classed as a popular front. Although it started as what Tsvangirai claimed was to be a workers’ party, his tactic of welcoming in the capitalists had the results one would expect. Now it is not “under rightwing influence”, as the CPGB allege, but rather is an out-and-out rightwing party.
Trotsky referred to the popular front as “not a tactic, but the greatest crime”. The MDC, as this paper has correctly noted, has a pro-imperialist, neoliberal agenda, destined to drive the workers and peasants of Zimbabwe further into poverty. It has nothing to say about the land question - indeed it would not dare for fear of losing the support of the white farmers who joined the organisation.
Yet up until very recently the ISO not only advocated a vote for this monstrosity but even participated in it. And these facts did not stop the CPGB from supporting the Zimbabwe section of the ISO, which gave tactical support to the MDC, and in effect their own bourgeoisie.
The role British imperialism has played in Zimbabwe is clear to everyone - apart from the ISO and, it seems, the CPGB.
Liz Hoskings
North London
Sponge debate
Following Ross Bradshaw’s reply to my point regarding the Socialist Workers Party and sponge-throwing, I can confirm that I will not be resigning from the Socialist Party/Committee for a Workers’ International, even if we have indulged in it ourselves (Letters, March 14). I would argue against it if my branch did it now.
Behind the semi-humour I think there is a more serious point here. OK, so Militant may have done the same, but what I was getting at was the fact that the SWP’s entire orientation seems to be towards this type of stunt, without any hint of independent working class politics. For example, at a Socialist Alliance meeting in Norwich over the summer, members of the SWP uncritically applauded people dressed as nuns who protested against corporatism, or the dead end acts of anarchists who smash up property. When I put forward a working class, socialist position (as did a comrade from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), we were labelled and hysterically screamed at as sectarians and enemies of the movement. Well, forgive me, but I thought the task of Marxists was to give a lead to existing struggles.
The fact is that the SWP don’t like discussing politics. After a similar encounter in my home town alliance of Lowestoft, where I was bureaucratically cut off from speaking, for the heinous crime of mentioning the dreaded ‘s’ word, I began to think this was something of a regional phenomenon - a ban on communist discussion in the barren wastelands of East Anglia. But how wrong I was, in the West Midlands, after being told that the Israeli working class was a reactionary homogeneous mass, we raised several points, but again we were warned by their local organiser not to contact them again as they were busy ‘building the movement’.
The SWP should realise that dreadful, liberal positions on key questions like Israel/Palestine are bad enough when put forward in a classroom, but in the class struggle mistakes can’t be rubbed out. They can result in the deaths of working class people. So bear in mind, positions that sell papers in WH Smith may be good for your sales figures, but may be disastrous in the heat of the struggle.
Paul Hunt
Coventry
