Weekly Worker 465 Thursday January 30 2003
Letters
Paedophilia
As a socialist and human being, it was with concern that I read Ian Donovan’s latest piece on paedophilia (Weekly Worker January 23). According to Donovan’s ‘logic’, the middle class Jonathan King is the victim for abusing 14-year-old working class children! This not only shows an abuser’s perspective on paedophilia but, as is so often the case with the middle class left, a knee-jerk solidarity with the middle classes, whatever the issue.
After all, these kids were only working class, right? It sickened me, in a way as an activist for over 10 years I rarely have been sickened, to read Donovan’s glib assertion that Jonathan King’s odious nature resides not in his abuse of children, but in his Tory politics. Do I really need to point out that abuse of children is worse than someone merely holding Tory views?
Donovan damns as “irrational” the new laws that have come in to prosecute those who use paedophile websites. Why on earth should such scum who create the demand for the abuse of children not be prosecuted? If the CPGB’s vision of communism means the ‘right’ for children to be abused under the pretext of a facile ‘libertarianism’ then I can only thank god you will be opposed by the majority of working class people every inch of the way.
If you have any principles, any idea of how offensive it is to workers to read a middle class ‘socialist’ discuss to what extent the abuse of our kids is acceptable, then you should expel Donovan from your organisation and print an apology for publishing such abhorrent views.
Steve Davies
Birmingham
Odd bunch
I disagree with Ian Donovan’s position, and will respond to his specific points in due course. I think he puts forward a liberal, individualist position that takes no account of class politics (or even basic humanism).
Having said that, I am not in favour of him being expelled or banned from publishing his views. He was putting forward a political position, not going out abusing children himself. Freedom of speech has to include freedom to speak abhorrently.
I spent my Saturday sitting through a not always riveting day school between the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which focussed on this issue of democracy and free speech within the movement. I endured it because I believe it is such a fundamental principle that we can’t lightly let it go.
The CPGB are an odd bunch and their paper, the Weekly Worker, is frankly quite bizarre, but I would defend their right to publish whatever views (including anti-working class views) they see fit. The way to convince fellow socialists that their views are repellent, anti-working class, oppressive, is by cogent argument, not by bans and expulsions.
To be absolutely clear, I am talking about political arguments which I find offensive. If the Weekly Worker were providing opportunity for paedophiles to organise to abuse children, or publishing child pornography themselves, then that would be a different matter.
Gerry Byrne
AWL
Worst way
I don’t particularly like the CPGB, which is simply a little brother of the Socialist Workers Party in the Socialist Alliance. However, I completely agree with Ian Donovan’s article and I don’t think it condones child abuse - it’s simply pointing out the reactionary, rightwing, christian response to child abuse, paedophilia and child pornography.
What I find astonishing is that no one wants to know about why so many British men have paid for child porn - probably far more have accessed it than the 7,000-odd being currently investigated. The only reaction to this issue is the imposition of the death penalty against all offenders. What child abusers do is vile, but what the CPGB seems to be saying is deal with the abuser, not just punish and ostracise him for his crimes. It’s not good enough to call someone a pervert, burn down his house and chase him underground - that’s the worst way of protecting our children from molesters. We have to deal with the mentality of paedophiles.
Perhaps that way we can understand why this phenomenon exists. I don’t think it’s simply about the internet. A Guardian article by a convicted paedophile pointed out that the internet is simply a reflection of the psychology of society. Therefore, as a revolutionary, I think the issue of child abuse needs addressing in a serious manner, as we are all concerned with social change and the elimination of all abuse and exploitation.
Steve Hammer
email
STWC muslims
I wish to make a few comments on the discussion in your pages about islam and the left’s responses to the war on Iraq.
The forthcoming war is not against islam. It is about securing oil and controlling the region. It is a classic imperialist war in naked form - for anyone on the left to seek to deny this is absurd. Gore Vidal described it as “a unilateral strike for global supremacy in oil and gas” and condemned Bush as the greatest threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler.
This is undoubtedly correct. Historian Eric Hobsbawm recently warned against the dangers of “Texan fundamentalism”; George Bush and his cohorts - Rice, Pearle, Wolfowitz, Cheney - are all fundamentalists. They are on a crusade, but it is a crusade in the interests of the big US corporations who put them in power in the first place.
The fact that muslims happen to be in the way is just a geographical accident - there is no ‘clash of civilisations’. This is just obscuring the real issues. Yes, America backed the islamists when it suited them, against the USSR in Afghanistan, just as it backed Saddam against Iran. This is great power politics - principles don’t come into it.
With the greatest respect to our Iraqi friends from the Worker-communist Party, no-one on the left in Britain is supporting ‘political islam’ as a doctrine or movement. But because of a combination of factors, including the failure of the left in the Middle East, a widespread disenchantment with western secularism and its vicious by-products (like pornography and drugs) and for historical reasons, islam commands the allegiance of masses of people in the region and in Europe as well. It is impossible simply for the Stop the War Coalition to deny a voice to the muslim population. It would not be very democratic to do so.
Personally, I pay tribute to the work of the SWP comrades in the STWC, as well as the organisation’s chairman, Andrew Murray (who is certainly no Trotskyist!). My only criticism of them is that they are too close to the Labour left, who have no strategy other than replacing Tony Blair. With Gordon Brown? Does anyone think that any Labour leader will ever stand up to America? They are all completely craven.
The STWC is the largest mass popular movement ever seen in this country since the end of World War II. It is vital the left develops a coherent strategy to turn the tide in our favour. We have to do this without sectarianism and without revolutionary phrase-mongering.
David Morgan
email
Objective allies
Martyn Hudson completely misses the point of anti-war mobilisation in his article ‘Against theocratic reaction’ (Weekly Worker January 23).
In the struggle for socialism, of course we have no interest in a general alliance with islamists (except possibly in the case of liberation theologists). But the point of mobilising against the war is not (directly) to overthrow capitalism: it is to bring the largest numbers possible into direct confrontation with the war drive of imperialism. This is the crux of imperialism at this juncture, and it doesn’t matter what the Muslim Association of Britain say, if they mobilise people - their supporters or merely muslim communities - against the war: they are objectively aiding the struggle against imperialism.
Personally I’m completely in favour of islamists, catholic bishops, almost anyone appearing on the platform of anti-war rallies, if they are against the war and able to mobilise their supporters. Bringing masses of people into struggle against imperialism’s war drive is far more radical than any ‘communist purity’ in anti-war organising. Some of the protests against the Afghanistan war in 2001 had religious speakers (buddhists, some christian churches).
In countries such as Iraq and Iran, the task is to overthrow the local bourgeoisie as well as to resist imperialist invasion. We should support comrades like the Worker-communist parties in those countries who are attempting to do this. But their tactics are not appropriate for the imperialist countries.
Ben Courtice
Australia
Stageist
I find it interesting that in his reply to me Ian Donovan defines a popular front as having “a programme to counterpose to the status quo as a whole” - as compared to a united front that exists “only to organise concrete actions” (Weekly Worker January 23). Such an analysis would mean that coalitions such as the Socialist Alliance were popular fronts, which doesn’t really help with coming to a Marxist understanding of this question.
Remarkably Ian then goes on to completely ‘disappear’ the central defining feature of a popular front - its cross-class nature - when he gives as part of his ‘proof’ that the Stop the War Coalition is not a popular front: “nor does it exist to refurbish the reputation of an existing political party, such as Labour or the Liberal Democrats”.
This elementary mistake is even more interesting when we remember that in his ‘Crying wolf’ article Ian referred to “the treacherous strategy of the popular front, which involves workers’ organisations adopting the de facto programme of a wing of the bourgeoisie, thereby liquidating the independent programme of the working class for the sake of an illusory alliance” (Weekly Worker January 9).
The conscious limiting of the programme of the Stop the War Coalition to bourgeois pacifism so as to allow overtures to a bourgeois party such as the Liberal Democrats surely fits exactly with that analysis.
A reasonable question might be - why does Ian feel the need to change his theoretical analysis on the central aspect of the nature of popular fronts in such a crude manner in the space of two weeks? Perhaps it is because using his original definition would lead to the conclusion that the Stop the War Coalition is indeed a popular front and it would be opportunist of the CPGB to continue giving it political support! So Ian alters his theory to fit his opportunistic practice and hopes no-one notices - sorry, Ian: it isn’t that simple.
On the two-states question, it appears I may have misunderstood the CPGB position. Ian argues that you do not say that the two states you advocate must be bourgeois (though I still find it difficult to interpret Peter Manson’s article in any other way, as it clearly poses the question in a stageist way. Perhaps I have unintentionally highlighted a political difference between two of your main contributors on this question?).
For Ian the two-states demand is algebraic, as it leaves open the question of the class nature of those states and is thereby able to intersect the existing consciousness of the masses, while enabling revolutionaries to bring their perspective of a proletarian solution into the equation. This is a much more serious approach than Peter’s simplistic, neo-Stalinist stageism, but I still have problems with it.
I don’t see how Ian can claim: “And the peculiar, dialectical thing about this is that of all the demands that most conceivably might, at some juncture, lead to the Israelis and Palestinians discarding the need to be separate, and coming together in a unitary, most likely proletarian-ruled state, the demand for two states has to be it.”
Aside from being very wary whenever anyone starts using references to dialectics to justify programmatic solutions, I think that Ian’s own argumentation actually points away from use of the two-states demand.
Ian argues that the “key democratic question” in Israel/Palestine is “the existence of two nations competing for the same territory”. I must confess that I had never really thought of the question in quite this way before and it has helped me understand the situation much more clearly. However, I don’t see how Ian integrates this understanding with his support for the two-states demand. Surely such an understanding necessarily precludes the possibility of a bourgeois two-state solution, as bourgeois states require their own discrete territories. Therefore to argue for an “algebraic formula” on the class nature of the state(s) must include possible support for a reactionary bourgeois solution based on some degree of ethnic cleansing.
I do agree with Ian when he writes: “An ‘algebraic’ formula that evades the question of their right to exist as separate nations will be seen as equivocal by both sides, and thereby undercut the potential of democratic demands to bring about class unity.” However, the CPGB go beyond the Leninist defence of the right to separation and instead go further to advocate separation into two states. The use of such a demand at the current time can only be interpreted as including support for two bourgeois states - of course the CPGB’s preferred outcome of the struggle for two states is “a unitary, proletarian-ruled state”, but, as you critique the idea of making this a “precondition”, it must mean you would also support two bourgeois-ruled states.
However, such bourgeois states would, as Ian’s own logic shows, necessarily be reactionary. There is no democratic solution to the national question in Israel/Palestine under bourgeois rule and therefore the demand for two states where the class nature is left unclear (“algebraic”) can have no place in a truly revolutionary programme of democratic demands for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Brian Walters
email
Bedfellows
Since the policy of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ now seems to be practised by the left in Britain when it comes to religious fundamentalism (against America and Israel, for example), and is a complete transgression of socialist morality, readers may be interested in the following news from Britain in Europe and the European Movement:
“David Taylor, the south-west regional director of IDS’s ‘no’ lobby, admits in the latest Green Party magazine that the ‘no’ lobby are now concentrating on recruiting ‘radical leftist groups’, to balance out the overwhelming number of ‘little Englander and rightwing’ groups already involved. Mr Taylor even welcomed the association of the SWP-dominated Socialist Alliance with the ‘no’ lobby.”
After seeing posters saying ‘No to war with Iraq - free Palestine’, unwittingly linking the left with the suicide bombers and those who wish to see Israel destroyed, can we now look forward to seeing the Socialist Alliance on a joint platform with the Tory party of IDS, and the far right, against the euro/European Union? I hope not. If socialists/communists cannot find better bedfellows, they will give the impression that they deserve to be unelectable, and remain on the margin of history.
Chris Maddox
email
Democracy?
Since 1991 subsequent governments in the UK and USA have continued a single foreign policy regardless of particular differences. In 1991 both countries were under rightwing administrations. By 2003 the UK had allegedly moved left, while the USA had swung left and right. Under all the differing administrations the policy towards Iraq never changed: sanctions, no-fly zones, illegal oil shipments and bombing raids continued relentlessly.
How the differing parties can maintain a straight face, presenting the same policies under opposition flags, is a riddle in itself. However, how and why the people of the UK and the USA acquiesce to such PR shenanigans is far less complicated.
Democratic representation is commonly understood to be the electing of representatives who present the views of their constituents. Unsurprisingly the political classes understand democratic representation to be the status that allows them, the ruling class, the mandate and power to protect their own interests. In a complicated system that requires wealth to reach the top, the illusion of a representative government is everything. And in fact this charade is the key to ensuring an acquiescent public. As long as the general public does not engage in political issues, they are allowed to believe that they have a degree of power.
With the sabres rattling and the armies lining up at the Iraqi frontiers, it is interesting to ask how the people of the UK could pull back from a war if they so wished. This is surely at the heart of what is democratic government. One of the foundations of the constitutional monarchy is the fact that at no stage does the prime minister have to ask anyone’s permission to send tens of thousands of young men and women to their deaths.
We are seeing this illusion of representation in the struggle between elected and electorate occurring now. The vast majority of British people do not believe it is in the UK’s interests to hold America’s coat while it gives Iraq a punishment beating. Equally the House of Commons is beginning to echo the voices on the streets of Britain. In fact, secret briefings to the media suggest that the PM’s own cabinet is choosing to side with the people of Britain instead of a handful of hawks in Washington.
Blair is one man in a country of millions. Those millions of people can order their hundreds of representatives to make Blair step down. By simply demanding what is democratically ours, the freedom to decide our own destiny, the British people can potentially save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. We can table a vote of no confidence in George Bush and his hawkish oil barons. At the same time telling Westminster that it is powerless without the British people. The only thing standing in the way of the British is the royal prerogative. The only power it has is our refusal to question a feudal hypocrisy in a 21st century democracy.
Nicolas Lalaguna
London
Class not race
An article in your paper was recently bought to my attention in which Mike Macnair of Oxford Socialist Alliance (OSA) accuses the Independent Working Class Association of “dropping fundamental principles in order to get votes” (Weekly Worker January 23).
Really? Just what might these be then? If by “fundamental principles” he means consistent, progressive, independent working class politics, then the IWCA has plenty of those. If, however, Mike means ineffectual lefty rhetoric, then we’ll leave such principles to him. Those with any grasp of the IWCA’s politics would see these comments as at best ill-informed and at worst an attempt at a smear.
The OSA know what we are about and where we are coming from. Could it be they are a tad envious of the real support and grounding we have in working class communities? Macnair insinuates that immigration is something we are trying to ignore and anyone reading his comment who is not in the know could be forgiven for thinking that our IWCA branch has been leading ‘send ’em back’ marches through Oxford on Saturdays. The fact is that in the communities in which we work immigration/asylum is not a significant issue - simply because they have largely remained unaffected by it. We only very rarely hear about the topic on the doorstep. This is the reason why it hasn’t featured in our campaigns.
Unlike the OSA we regularly consult all sections of our communities and we are in touch with opinion on the ground (as opposed to the back bar of the student union). This does not mean for one minute that the IWCA has no nationally agreed policy on this issue: we oppose government asylum policies because it is nearly always the poorest and most deprived working class communities that are least equipped to deal with accommodating refugees that end up hosting them - a situation that only encourages conflict.
Rather than scapegoating either asylum-seekers or those pitted against them in the competition for local resources, we attack New Labour’s anti-working class policies as the real problem. If asylum/immigration were to become an issue in the areas where we are active we would address it. The fact that we are well and truly rooted within the local working class and also have considerable support from the local refugee centre suggests that it is the IWCA and only the IWCA that will be in a position to deal progressively with any future immigration/asylum problems in Oxford.
Macnair also implies the IWCA is on some kind of rocky road to Blairism. In fact it is the Socialist Alliance that is in danger of going down that road because it is constantly tail-ending New Labour’s ‘official’ anti-racism policies, echoing the middle class mantra that we must be ‘tough on racism’, even when and where the problem does not exist. Such sloganeering only promotes the notion that it is race rather than class that forms the main fault line in society - a notion that the far right would be only too happy to agree with.
Unfortunately, Oxford Socialist Alliance appears to be incapable of debating the issues openly, relying instead on arrogant assumptions and unqualified remarks. Quite frankly, we are disgusted, but not in the least surprised, by this current piece of black propaganda - it is what we have come to expect from the conservative left.
Councillor Stuart Craft
IWCA, Oxford.
Welcome here?
Refugees usually end up in working class areas, where public sector resources are already hard stretched. The government has the money to alleviate this, but don’t because it means less money for the middle classes or more taxes for them.
You know that they will try and use the divide and rule tactic over us - and they have, with great success. When interviewed recently most Leicester residents were hostile to refugees and said they were prepared to vote BNP in protest. Reason: they were already poor and couldn’t share resources with more.
Workers work hard and pay taxes. The state then lumbers them with mortgages and poor housing. Their children get no automatic rights to housing. We have a huge homelessness problem. Workers are poor, if not hungry. Workers don’t enjoy human rights in this country - only wage slavery and consumerism, which is another form of slavery. Being left uneducated about the facts, they naturally turn to scapegoats.
Let’s tell them that the military costs too much. Let’s tell them how lousy their governments and councils are. Let’s educate them about the enormous injustices and exploitation of this system. Let’s tell them that it is not right that modern-day workers have to work just for the roof over their head.
The liberal left who have been bleating on about refugees instead of opposing racism and fascism here have played into the hands of the reactionaries. So revolutionaries like me, who have been preparing for a fight with the ruling class, instead have to contend with the reaction against refugees.
As a communist, I welcome workers here. Not the petty bourgeoisie from wherever who have no class consciousness. These people will not help us in our class struggles against our ruling class, because that’s not why they’ve come. They are dependant on the goodwill of the ruling class so they’ll not resist. Refugees have included loads of anti-communist scum, reactionaries and islamists. As well as political nut cases and those that are here for economic reasons.
My loyalty lies not with refugees, but with the proletarians of these islands, who have yet to defeat their oppressors. If the foreign policy of the British/ US bourgeoisie creates refugees, the workers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. Better the money was spent on development aid, which is better investment in the long term. We should also support fair trade and the end of exporting of arms from the west to the south.
Refugees are political failures or opportunists politically. These people will contribute nothing towards our revolution.
Indira Sethi
email
Tribunal hearing
This is an appeal to the labour movement to raise funds to pay legal fees in my upcoming industrial tribunal and certification office hearing.
I am bringing an industrial tribunal against the Metroline bus company beginning on February 7. I am represented by Louise Christian, the civil rights lawyer, and Michael Ford QC, from the law chambers headed by John Hendy QC. The fact that Michael Ford is also representing me in a certification office hearing on February 14 against the TGWU explains why I could not accept TGWU legal representation at the IT - there was a conflict of interest and I am obliged to pay my own legal fees for both the IT and the certification hearing.
Both hearings arise from the same chain of events, where the TGWU and Metroline acted in concert to have me sacked for defending a victimised muslim man. Hasha Jiwa was the first black or Asian man to be elected as a branch officer in Cricklewood, which has been black and Asian for decades. The workforce of 270-odd is about 40% muslim. Of course no black or Asian driver will again challenge this white Irish union leadership, considering the fate suffered by Hash Jiwa and myself.
Our election address was supported by a multi-ethnic slate for the branch committee. All were declared elected, as the branch secretary simply declared that there was no limit to the number on the committee, thereby avoiding an election between his supporters and our slate. Of course none of those committee members have taken up their positions following the TGWU participation in our victimisation.
At the November 30 2001 garage elections for rep and chair there was much intimidation of opposition supporters from the management in alliance with the existing union leadership. At the close of the ballot the union leadership refused to count the ballot box publicly but insisted they would do so in secret. They then insisted that they would lock it in the union room (unsealed) over the weekend and bring it to the Hillingdon TGWU office on Monday. I called the police to stop them and then they insisted that it would be placed in the garage manager’s office over the weekend and counted on the Monday. I was forced to agree, being faced with seven of their supporters plus three managers. On the Monday I was declared the loser to Tom O’Callaghan, but Hasha Jiwa was declared the winner.
The certification office hearing is challenging the legitimacy of the election. The TGWU case, put by Bill Morris, is that there are no guidelines or rules for these elections, so they do not have to abide by any standards. Three days later Hasha had a minor row with a supervisor and 11 days after that he was suspended. He was found guilty of gross misconduct on spurious charges - one for ‘gender discrimination’ because he complained to a woman supervisor that she was victimising him and he no longer respected her as a woman; the other was ‘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 transferred to Harlesden, clearly to prevent him taking his position as chair in Cricklewood. Three days later, and 10 days before his appeal the following letter appeared in the union notice board:
“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…”
Of course the branch official had no authority to do this but his diktat stands, endorsed apparently by the regional secretary, as Kieran Murray assumed the chair’s position immediately. A number of us arranged two petitions: one to Metroline and one to the TGWU. About 110 signatures were obtained. On Friday February 8 2002 I was suspended. I was charged with “misrepresentation of drivers’ names on a petition with detrimental intent to another member of staff” and “participating in the compilation of an unauthorised petition regarding employment matters”. I was found guilty on February 19 of gross misconduct and summarily dismissed.
Gerry Downing
email
Liverpool
The report you carried on the Liverpool Stop the War demo states that 500 attended (Weekly Worker January 23). The BBC and police estimated the march at 2,500 - a significant difference.
Chris Jones
Liverpool
