Weekly Worker 473 Thursday March 27 2003
Letters
Precedent
Now that the United States of America has decided to change international law and make it perfectly legal for one country to decide to attack another if it feels threatened by it, how can the American administration dare criticise if another country follows their lead?
For example, if Pakistan attacks India, because it feels threatened, that would surely be okay? Or if Russia blasts its way into Georgia, because it feels that they ‘harbour terrorists’, that is acceptable? No? Silly me! Of course not! For it is one rule for the USA, and another for any other country. The Americans and their followers have set a precedent that will no doubt come back to haunt them, and sadly the entire world.
Julie Thomson
Fife
Majority
All this talk of parliament not ‘listening to the majority’ and the UK government ‘not reflecting the democratic choice of the people’ is insulting nonsense.
The fact is the anti-war demos - as big as they were - did not represent the majority of people in the country. Two million on the streets is a lot of people, but there are over 59 million people in these isles. As the left is so fond of saying about pro-establishment events (royal death, hunting march, etc), what was more significant than the two million who attended was the 57 million who did not.
There is a large, vocal group who oppose the war, go on demonstrations, hold Socialist Workers Party placards and wear badges, but a simple glance at their numbers on the streets shows they are not the majority. Bleating about democracy and the people being ignored when the great mass of people clearly aren’t with you is self-defeating and frankly hilarious.
Hutch Hampton
email
Ultra-left
I would like to comment on the front page headline, “Rather defeat for US-UK forces than their victory”, in last week’s Weekly Worker (March 20).
It was a bit ultra-left and could give the impression that communists support Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. It was nearly as bad as the headline “Victory to Iraq” in last week’s Workers Revolutionary Party’s Newsline. It reminds me of some of the ultra-left sects who called for the “sinking of the UK fleet” during the Falklands war.
I guess that the headline may have appealed only to a minority of last Saturday’s anti-war demonstrators. It must have resulted in sales of last week’s Weekly Worker being lower than would have been expected from such a favourable selling opportunity.
In contrast, a recent very good front page headline was “Regime change begins at home” (February 27). I suggest that the editor tries a bit harder to compose such headlines, which allow communists to be able to confidently sell copies of the Weekly Worker to the average man or woman in the street.
John Smithee
Cambridgeshire
Leeds hunger
Thanks for carrying my report from Leeds (Weekly Worker March 20). But two things.
Firstly, no doubt for reasons of space, the editor omitted my final point, that Leeds Socialist Alliance was heavily involved in these activities and our banner even got shown on national news. This was taking place on March 15 and confirmed for me that it was quite right for the SA to postpone its conference until May. Our place was on that demonstration. The Weekly Worker’s line that the SA has been liquidated is gross exaggeration. There are deep weaknesses about the SA and uncertainties about its future, but the business about liquidation is premature and hysterical.
Secondly, anti-war events in Leeds have kept up at a high level. Monday saw the biggest meeting of the Leeds Coalition; Wednesday saw more protests by school students. Thursday saw a group of green direct actioners gridlock Leeds’s traffic system by chaining themselves together at a vital junction. At lunchtime there were walkouts by council and university workers and students and a lively and exciting (many sit-downs on the way) demonstration of around 1,000 people, many of them school students. This was followed by a teatime demonstration of comparable size, which also included sit-down protests.
This Saturday Leeds held another demonstration - even bigger than the Thursday demos - at the same time as sending coaches both to the protest at Menwith Hill and the national demonstration. This demo also showed the hunger of people to hear arguments, as many more stayed for the speeches, instead of drifting away as soon as possible.
Matthew Caygill
Leeds
Underwhelmed
Matthew Caygill’s report is right about much, but he is wrong about “Julie Waterson of the Socialist Workers Party”. She spoke on behalf of the Anti-Nazi League.
Sally Kincaid spoke next but, although she is “of the Socialist Workers Party”, she spoke as the recent victim of a firebomb attack attributed to Nazis. After that Anne-Marie Piso spoke - and was announced as speaking on behalf “of the Socialist Workers Party”.
Not for the first time, and no doubt not for the last, I am underwhelmed by the SWP’s conception of the united front tactic. Dave Nellist, who was the first speaker, also seemed less than impressed, as he was repeatedly interrupted by one of the organisers and didn’t get a clear run at his slot of 10 minutes after presumably travelling to Leeds solely as an invited speaker.
Paul Hubert
Leeds
AWL sectarianism
It is tempting to dismiss Dave Spencer’s letters as the grumblings of a disappointed old man. Why re-open an issue nearly two decades old (literally before some of our members were born)? There’s a war on - haven’t we got more important things to do? But it is precisely because of the war and the huge political ferment that has opened up, that we need to look closely at the issues.
Dave, I am sure, is genuine when he says: “My main point was that Workers Fight [the proto-Alliance for Worker’s Liberty] prior to 1984 had a policy that all left groups should be in one organisation. There are no political differences which justify them being in separate groups. To me that is a non-sectarian or even anti-sectarian policy and I agree with it. In pursuit of this policy Workers Fight attempted to unite with several other left groups, which was a principled approach” (Weekly Worker February 20).
It’s an approach that seems to me to be urgently needed. But Dave is allowing himself to be used as a cover for precisely the opposite political agenda. It is much the same role as he played in 1984. There’s no nice way of saying it - a dupe for those resolutely opposed to unity.
In response to my question about evidence of the AWL’s sectarian degeneration since 1984, Dave says: “Let Gerry count the number of personal attacks in every one of the letters. To me personal abuse is a typically undemocratic and sectarian method and should be unacceptable in the socialist movement” (March 20). Dave, as far as I know, has not been accused by AWL members of ‘logically’ intending the genocide of 30 million mentally ill people. I think I win hands down as the target for virulent personal abuse, and the CPGB for dishing it.
“Another classic sectarian method is to distort what your opponent is saying” (Dave Spencer, March 20). But for real distortion we must turn to Salma Mackenzie: “In short, a large minority was undemocratically bumped out on their arses in 1984 simply because of ideological disagreements with numero uno Sean Matgamna” (Letters, March 20).
They were not expelled for their political views, still less for their disagreement with Sean Matgamna (if we expelled people for that we would simply have no members). Part of the resolution expelling them reads:
“The NC reaffirms its commitment to the democratic rights of political minorities in the WSL. Our objection to the faction is not its political views on various questions, but its disruption of the work of the League. Comrades within the WSL who disagree with the conference or NC majority have the right of access to the internal bulletin; to put their views in branch, area and committee meetings and in the forthcoming pre-conference discussion period; to form factions and tendencies; to propose alternative slates and nominations for the NC, to get representation on the NC in proportion to the strength of support for points of view, etc.
“All these rights have been exercised, and will continue to be available. The only limitation is that such internal debate should be conducted in such a way as not to disrupt the practical work of the organisation. We urge comrades who agree with the faction’s politics yet are responsible about building the League to remain with the organisation on these terms” (March 31 1984).
And on Salma’s four points of AWL sectarianism:
1. “Setting up the so-called ‘Leeds incident’ to inoculate AWL members against the CPGB”. The Leeds incident was ‘set up’ by Ray Gaston, and secondarily Mark Fischer and John Bridge. Dummy that I am, I opposed the Leeds incident being given the prominence it was, both internally in the AWL and to the CPGB national organiser. MF gloated that he wanted to tell the AWL to “fuck right off” and that the joint day school should be totally devoted to ‘Leeds’. So much for the CPGB’s commitment to unity.
2. “Branding marching with muslims on February 15 a ‘popular front’”. This is a quite disgusting distortion. We have marched with muslims on every Stop the War demo. We have, where we’ve been able to organise it, had anti-fundamentalist, ‘No to war, no to Saddam’ contingents. What we will not do is concede to the small but politically organised islamist Muslim Association of Britain that they represent ‘muslims’. And we have said clearly that islamists are our class enemies, and we would not want them co-sponsoring our marches. In this we have been consistent. It is the CPGB who have done an about-turn.
3. “Voting to close the Socialist Alliance”. Martin Thomas voted, along with every other EC member bar Marcus Ström, to postpone the SA conference. Given the circumstances and the likely turnout, he felt he had no alternative. This is hardly closing the SA: rather a recognition of its failure (largely due to the SWP) to make any independent role for itself in the anti-war movement.
4. “Boycotting the March 12 People’s Assembly for Peace”. We didn’t boycott it. I was there. I was a delegate. We attempted to put a resolution, but were (predictably) carved out. As the person in the AWL who first raised the alarm about the People’s Assembly and argued that its lack of democracy was no way to build a working class-based anti-war movement, I should know. What we didn’t do is get carried away with hysteria about the people’s assemblies representing proto-soviets.
Gerry Byrne
AWL
Degeneration
It is fascinating to see so many old comrades taking up arms again over the expulsions/split in Socialist Organiser, which occurred in 1984, so obviously I felt obliged to join in.
I was fortunate to work with Dave Spencer (unfortunately against Jim Denham and Gerry Byrne) in the struggle against the expulsions via the formation of the Democratic Centralist Faction (DCF) and subsequently in the formation of the Socialist Group and later the International Socialist Group. I am not convinced that the old SO was so bad in comparison to its competitors, but I drew the conclusion when the majority sent their envoy to our branch to announce ‘defusion’ - ie, mass expulsions of the majority of our trade unionists - that it was a waste of effort to try and build an organisation which was essentially a faction (albeit a faction without a viable host).
I think in the course of the faction fight the DCF produced some good material on democratic centralism (mostly written by John Lister and Pat Lally). We were at that time much influenced by Marcel Liebman and probably should have been more radical in our critique of Lenin as well as his epigones - that was, however, 19 years ago.
I had joined the proto-AWL, in fact the proto-Socialist Organiser, in 1975, when I had been expelled from the International Socialists as part of the Left Fraction (which I had largely been recruited to by reading Workers Fight material). I had already experienced one ‘defusion’ under the Socialist Organiser regime which had caused me some misgivings, but where I rationalised my continued membership because of political agreement with the old WF policies. A second defusion was one too many for me.
If I was, with hindsight, to locate the point of WF/SO/AWL degeneration, I would not put it in 1984 when I left (it is common for old cynics to date the degeneration of things from the moment they hopped off the train), but in 1972, when WF failed to carry through the logic of its positions on the Fourth International and turned inwards.
Despite that I remain a better Matgamnaite (1971-74 version) than Sean himself.
Mick Woods
Denmark
Aussie warning
A word of warning for the Socialist Alliance from down under. In last Saturday’s state election in New South Wales, the Australian Socialist Alliance received execrable results.
In the legislative council, the state’s upper house, it polled 5,029 votes out of 2,560,482 counted. For those of you without calculators that is 0.0196%. In four of the seven lower house seats it contested, the alliance got less than one percent. In two of the other three it got the ‘donkey vote’ by appearing at the top of the ballot paper. Its average vote where this did not happen was 0.68%. The alliance seems so embarrassed it has ‘disappeared’ the whole election from its website.
If anything, the SA in Australia has had a stronger ‘partyist’ trajectory. The largest component, the Democratic Socialist Party, was prepared to ‘do a Scotland’ and commit its resources and membership to the alliance in toto. This move was sabotaged by the International Socialist Organisation, the sister group of the Socialist Workers Party, and so the alliance is adrift. It has failed to take advantage of the strong anti-war feeling, which mostly went to the greens. They got 207,141 votes - or eight percent - across the state in the upper house elections.
From what I have read, the Socialist Alliance in England risks equal humiliation at the polls in May. Postponing your annual conference at a time of heightened political activity against the war seems crazy to me. Why should the working class entrust its vote to an organisation that doesn’t even take itself seriously?
David Lee
Sydney
St Petersburg members
We are glad to inform you that a revolutionary organisation of communists is established in the city of Lenin’s October revolution.
It has been decided to create an authentically revolutionary, realistically thinking organisation, since the current communist organisations in Russia are insufficiently revolutionary and international. This new organisation will fight for human rights, women, young people and minorities, and will take part in all elections for the propagating of our ideas and will organise actions of solidarity with revolutionaries from the whole world.
Lots of local council deputies, leaders of youth and women’s organisations and fighters for the protection of the environment have already expressed their desire to be members of the Communists of Petersburg. Many current members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) will be admitted. The constituent conference of the Communists of Petersburg will take place on April 12 2003.
We hope to cooperate with your party in the future in the name of the triumph of socialist ideas, freedom and revolution.
Sergei Malinkovich
Chair, Communists of Petersburg
Web fan
The new look of your website is great. I regularly visit the CPGB site and this new one is much easier on the eyes. Thanks!
John Trenton
New Jersey
