Weekly Worker 428 Thursday April 18 2002
Letters
SWP joke
Ian Thomas makes a valiant attempt to defend the record of the Socialist Workers Party in the Socialist Alliance (Letters, April 11).
Ian would have us believe that his party is a benign influence in the SA, an organisation careful not to dominate it by packing the executive with a majority of SWP members. Consequently, according to Ian, any attempt by others to “blame” the SWP for any of the decisions of the SA is “an insult to the SA executive members”. Thus, the absence of an SA newspaper is not something to be laid at the door of the SWP. Any suggestion to the contrary must be a “joke”.
Interesting logic, perhaps, but factually incorrect. The decision not to launch a paper was taken at the SA’s December 1 conference, not by the executive. At the conference the numerical size of the SWP ensured that proposals for a paper were resoundingly defeated. Ian should have addressed his comments to this lamentable decision, not act as attorney for his central committee.
Of course, I, perhaps, should not assume that Ian was in agreement with this action of his party. Ian, after all, is not a member of the Socialist Alliance in England, but a partisan of the Welsh Socialist Alliance. It is instructive to contrast the SWP’s attitude to the motion at the WSA’s January conference for such a newspaper in the principality with that of its ‘English section’.
Not possessing a majority at this conference, the SWP chose not to oppose the motion. Instead the majority of SWP members ‘heroically’ abstained (including, I think, Ian), whilst a minority voted in favour. The motion was resoundingly passed, even though some of the SWP contingent looked distinctly cool about this positive development.
As a result Welsh Socialist Voice is now in existence, with issue 2 currently in production. I am at loss to understand why the SWP chooses not to oppose ‘Socialist Alliance movement’ papers in both Wales and Scotland, but does so in England. Does it have something to do with the SWP having an ultimate right of veto in England? Surely not, Ian.
What is good for the fragile WSA should also be good for the mightier SA. Better still, let’s combine the efforts of the WSA, the SA and the SSP to produce one outstanding socialist newspaper. Socialist Voice could then replace Socialist Worker at the local newsagent. Would Ian abstain on this too?
Somehow, I anticipate that his party, in its present mode, would organise a majority to prevent this happening. That wouldn’t be a joke.
Cameron Richards
Gwent WSA
Capitulation
Your advocacy of a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine is a gross capitulation to nationalism.
In the Middle East today we can see, on the one hand, growing support amongst Israeli jews for the expulsion of the Palestinians from Israel (Sharon’s programme), and, on the other, growing support amongst Palestinian Arabs for indiscriminate killing of jewish civilians. On both sides, there is growing support for outrightly fascistic ideas. At a time when those fighting in the area for a democratic, secular solution to the Palestine/Israel problem need all the support they can get, you advocate the institutionalisation of the growing divisions.
Even though your columnist James Mallory calls in this week’s paper for “a democratic, secular Palestine existing side by side with a democratic, secular Israel”, your two-state proposal plays into the hands of those on both sides who wish to drive the other side out of the area, and who by definition would be undemocratic and religiously fundamentalist (Weekly Worker April 4). Partition will deepen the already deep divisions and further reinforce reactionary attitudes.
Mallory, however, blunders into the falsity of his very own programme when he calls for his demands “to be fought for from below by a movement embracing millions”, adding that if such a programme “gained mass support from both peoples, the demand for two separate states might well be made redundant by the movement it brought into existence, bringing nearer the day when the voluntary unity of Palestinian and Israeli within a single state becomes a reality”.
So why not call in the first instance for a democratic, secular state that would guarantee equal citizenship rights to all its inhabitants, one in which the ideas of class unity could replace those of nationalism?
Paul Flewers
London
Smoke and mirrors
I imagine others from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty will be responding more generally to Jack Conrad’s peculiar article (‘Smoke and mirrors polemic’ Weekly Worker March 28); egotistically, I just want to respond to the bit that mentions me.
Jack calls me to task for supporting the Iraqi revolution of 1958, in an effort, as far as I can make out, to suggest there is some inconsistency here with the AWL’s line on Afghanistan. Part of this seems to be in answer to the AWL suggesting that the CPGB sees the Afghan 1978 coup as the only genuine social revolution of the last century apart from 1917. Jack is saying: look, there were lots of revolutions. In part I think he’s implying that if the CP had taken power in 1958-9 in Iraq, we would have supported it, and the CPGB has the same view about Kabul in 1978.
If those two sentences seem a bit tortuous it’s because I’m really not sure what the hell Jack is on about, and it’s a struggle to make head or tail of his argument. Nobody is suggesting that there were no revolutions at all in the 20th century except the Russian one. Jack gives us a list, starting with Mexico. That’s helpful. Thank you. But not much to the point. Iraq in 1958, I think it is fair to say, was one such (essentially bourgeois) revolution - overthrowing the ancien regime, entailing a good deal of popular mobilisation, and with parts of the movement which were very radical.
Iraq, however, is strikingly distinct from Afghanistan in that the CP - with a genuine mass base - did not try to seize power: in fact they fled from the prospect. Thus the parallel is a bit weird. Indeed, for sure one of the reasons they did not is that this was a CP in a country with a large and powerful working class movement, unlike Afghanistan - which the erudite Dan Lamont from Liverpool might ponder on (Letters, March 28). The whole point about Afghanistan 1978 is that the Peoples Democratic Party had no mass base, in the working class or anywhere else.
What we accuse you of is not that you think Afghanistan 1978 was a revolution like, say, Qassim’s in Iraq in 1958, but that you think it was something greatly more - something similar to, say, a seizure of power by the Iraqi Stalinists in 1959. You thus fail to understand either revolutions like the one in Iraq, or Stalinist seizures of power like the one in Afghanistan.
Of course, in the unlikely event that the Iraqi Stalinists had tried to take power in 1958/9, what they would have created is another matter. The significant fact is that they did not try, thus rendering utterly spurious any parallel between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clive Bradley
AWL
Not marginalised
I don’t know where in Barcelona James Mallory was, but on March 16 there was a 5,000-strong anarchist demonstration - the red and black bloc - which included many from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist unions, and anarchists from all over Europe, including from the newly emerging movements in Slovenia and Croatia (Weekly Worker March 21).
It was an extremely inspiring demonstration and an atmosphere of fiesta and revolt was created. Many of the plain-clothes cops from the day before were spotted, attacked and chased off. I don’t call this marginalisation!
Ron Allen
Anarchist Federation member
