Weekly Worker 434 Thursday May 30 2002
Letters
Anti-SP spite
It seems that the empty spite of the CPGB towards the Socialist Party knows no bounds.
Firstly we had an article in the Weekly Worker implying that the Socialist Party in Lewisham somehow acted hypocritically in failing to stand aside for a leftwing education campaign in the English local elections (May 9). Your correspondent failed to take the elementary step of actually doing any research. If he had, he would have found that the Socialist Party only stood two candidates in a three-seat ward and invited the Local Education Action for Parents campaign to stand a third candidate.
Now we have Anne Mc Shane’s take on the Irish elections (May 23). Her article has so many flaws it is difficult to know where a critique should start. She argues that the manifesto which the Socialist Party stood on was “reformist”. This was a manifesto which amongst other things called for “democratic public ownership of the banks, financial institutions and key sectors of the economy”.
She goes on to argue that the Socialist Party damaged its support by failing to stand jointly with the Socialist Workers Party. In case I need to remind your readers, the Socialist Party retained a parliamentary seat and came within a whisker of taking a second. The SWP, meanwhile, managed 3,300 votes between seven candidates. The SWP, leaving aside the fantasies of some Weekly Worker writers, is completely irrelevant to Irish electoral politics.
Although it would be difficult to tell from comrade Mc Shane’s odd account of the election, the SWP is not the second largest leftwing electoral force in the Ireland. The Workers Party received more votes than the SWP. Two independent leftwing candidates each received more votes than the entire SWP slate.
Yet for comrade Mc Shane the pressing issue should be the creation of a joint slate between the Socialist Party and the SWP. If she suggested the creation of a joint slate between the Socialist Party and the Workers Party or the groups supporting either of the two more successful independents, she might deserve more of a hearing.
Of course then she might have to take into account the Socialist Party’s exhaustive attempts to form just such a slate before the last general election, in 1997. Then the Socialist Party managed to assemble a loose left alliance which included the Workers and Unemployed Action Group, the organisation around Seamas Healy. Not only did the irrelevant SWP ignore the formation of that alliance; they actually stood a candidate against it, receiving predictably derisory results. This time Healy as an individual managed to assemble more than twice the vote of all of the SWP candidates combined.
It seems that left results in Ireland are only of interest when they can be made cynical use of to serve the viciously sectarian purposes of the CPGB. Form a joint slate with the Irish SWP? We would be better served by the formation of a joint slate with the Hartlepool monkey.
Might I suggest that Weekly Worker writers take the time to do some basic research before further embarrassing themselves and their tiny organisation?
Brian Cahill
email
SSP outrage
Kevin Williamson’s column in last week’s Scottish Socialist Voice produced almost universal outrage from within the Scottish Socialist Party’s ranks. This week he has addressed this outrage and posed the questions he attempted to raise last week, but has done so in a very thoughtful manner.
Apart from his attempt to paint reluctance to apologise in gender-specific colours, I agree with just about every word in his article. Cack-handed though his initial attempt to start debate in the SSP was (hopefully, our comrades in the SA will join in too), Kevin is to be congratulated for feeling brave enough to put his head above the parapet, rather than worry too much about sniping from the politically correct thought police.
The Socialist Workers Party, both in England and Wales, and the Socialist Worker platform in the SSP, need to appreciate that it is one of the strengths of the SSP that these differences can be aired openly. And the SWP comrades in England and Wales need to understand the necessity of their ‘doing an ISM’ - that is, placing their (relatively) vast resources at the disposal of the entire Socialist Alliance and Welsh SA.
We should all be grateful that there is going to continue to be a united challenge to the BNP in Scotland, because we are mature enough in the SSP to see to it that that is how we proceed. The only way to fill the vacuum at the heart of politics in England and Wales is to see the SA and WSA as more important than ad hoc electoral pacts on a par with cross-class popular fronts, fronts to be switched on and off at the convenience of the SWP central committee.
A weekly SA paper is crucial, as are healthy democratic structures, where comrades like Kevin Williamson can get an opportunity to fuck up and then be given a second chance to explain what they really meant to say. With the fascists ready to exploit our divisions and the right wing in the trade unions doing the same, it has never been more necessary for the genuine left to re-examine its past and learn some lessons.
Whatever criticisms I have of the SSP leadership, it has a great deal to teach the SWP.
Tom Delargy
Paisley
SWP mushrooms
As always, your Weekly Worker website is the best presented and most open and democratic platform on the socialist left.
I totally agree with your Mr Coombs: the Socialist Alliance must work towards having its own youth wing, but do you think you’ll get one? Don’t be silly - whilst the SWP are in the majority, you haven’t a chance. There is this little matter of the Socialist Worker Student Society, you see.
That is why you won’t get your SA newspaper or discussion journal in England either, comrades. They have Socialist Worker - what more could you possibly ask for than this easy-read propaganda sheet to inform and educate your cadre? After all, if you had your own SA-specific journal, you would all know what’s going on (or in some of the defunct branches not going on) in each other’s local SAs, and that wouldn’t do for the SWP executive.
Such news as ‘Local constitution ignored’ and ‘SWP supporters turned up whom nobody in the branch recognised, swamped the meeting, enabling SWP policy to become SA policy’ may be reported and we couldn’t have that now, could we? No, those that haven’t yet found the Weekly Worker online are to be kept in the dark like mushrooms and fed plenty of bullshit!
I overheard comrade Rob Hoveman making a great fuss of the machinations of the right wing against Bob Crow in the RMT some time ago; and now he makes a fuss likewise against the rightwing in the PCS and Amicus. Perhaps Rob should help get his own house in order, then you comrades in the SA may have an influx of new comrades from the Communist Party of Britain and the Labour left - although I don’t think the SWP really wants to be in the minority, do you?
Ronny Reason
Cardiff
Palestine
I have been encouraged to read the Weekly Worker’s views and theses on the Israeli/Palestinian question. I have for some time not been happy with the way many of my comrades seem to ignore the atrocities carried out by the religious fanatics, Hamas, and the like.
Your recent articles have helped me focus and understand this complex issue much better. Thank you.
Mervyn Davies
Colchester SA
Right to speak
I am, for once, in wholehearted agreement with Peter Hitchens (‘Keep quiet or face arrest’ The Spectator May 11).
The conviction of Harry Hammond for displaying a placard criticising homosexuality is a grotesque misuse of the Public Order Act. His placard was offensive to gay people; that is not, however, a legitimate reason to suppress his right to protest and turn him into a criminal. Freedom of speech is so precious that it must be defended, even when we disagree with the sentiments expressed. Other than direct incitements to violence, there is no justification for criminalising words and opinions.
If Mr Hammond appeals, I would gladly testify in favour of his conviction being overturned. My sympathy for his civil rights stems from first-hand experience of the way the Public Order Act is sometimes abused. In 1994, at Wembley Arena, I protested silently and peacefully outside a rally of 6,000 islamic fundamentalists who were advocating the murder of homosexuals.
I was arrested and charged under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for displaying a placard that read ‘Islam Nazis behead and burn queers’ - a reference to the gruesome methods by which more than 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed in Iran since the ayatollahs came to power. The prosecution said that my placard was “threatening, abusive or insulting” to muslims at the rally and was likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress”.
At my trial, the charge was eventually dismissed, but not before the law had been misused - as in the case of Harry Hammond - to curtail free speech and peaceful protest.
Peter Tatchell
London
