Weekly Worker 478 Thursday May 1 2003
Letters
Dead end
Although highlighting some obvious things about the British National Party and its activities, Jeremy Butler seems to have missed the point (‘Lesser evilism and beating the BNP’ Weekly Worker April 24).
The Socialist Alliance has already been mothballed by the Socialist Workers Party, so this may well be its last outing as an ‘electoral front’ anyway - and after the appalling results it will receive, the SWP will gradually further disengage and blame the SA’s failure on the more radical pro-partyist elements as being ‘liquidationists’.
Please open your eyes and see the SWP executive for what they are, and prepare for Blair’s demise by joining others who have long recognised that we need to be fighting from within the labour movement, not from without.
The mass party will only emerge with the participation of the new wave of union militants, the growing band of Labour rebels and the bands of radical youth being drawn into various protests - though we must recognise that thousands of them will not find bureaucratic centralist or communist sects attractive.
New Labour will lose its grip on the domestic front - maybe not this year or next, but it is inevitable. The failures and troubles of Railtrack and British Telecom; the recent report that a Glasgow hospital built under PFI is already making drastic cuts in staff and care because its repayments to the private sector are much more than anticipated, and so forth: these are all birds coming home to roost. On top of this, no matter what the treasury predicts, mass lay-offs are becoming the order of the day; tax receipts will be down and Brown will not borrow, so things will get much tougher for the masses. We as always will bear the brunt.
New Labour has not lost support on the international front, as the SWP predicted. Now, ill-advised by your blinkered executive, Jeremy and his fellow local candidates are standing on an anti-war platform that most local tenants will be turned off by - not because many agree with war, but because things have moved on already, and they will be more interested in local issues and their own prospects. This is life, ‘charity begins at home’, ‘family comes first’.
The BNP has realised that to participate on the playing field of liberal democracy it has to hide its bovver boys and clean up its act. Instead of intimidating the electorate, it has given itself a makeover and is listening to grievances over cracks in the pavement and bad lighting, and consequently it plays on the prejudices and worries of the bigoted and ill-educated, among whom it is successfully sinking roots.
As socialists, revolutionary or reformist, we are all convinced about what needs to be done; we are all convinced by most if not all of our main arguments. However, we have not realised how to package our message and how to present ourselves. Perhaps, when it comes to playing the election stakes, Griffin could teach you more than Rees?
So what are the SA armed with? Usually they are equipped with the latest dictat of opportunism sent from the head office - a portfolio of ‘old Labour’ policies and SWP slogans - pathetic. Consequently, Jeremy and his fellow SA comrades are simply the Neanderthals of socialist development in the UK - another evolutionary dead-end.
Marilyn Flanders
email
Welcome?
I read the articles ‘Lesser evilism and beating the BNP’ and ‘Racism, Nazism and fighting fascism’ with great interest.
I have a relation who is a shop steward and a member of his works council. At the same time he is completely racist and preoccupied with asylum-seekers. The British working class has two strands - one revolutionary, the other reactionary. It seems that this dual personality can coexist in individuals as well. If a shop steward from a socialist family can have illusions in the BNP, how much wider must support be amongst readers of The Sun and the Daily Mail?
My relation says that Hitler was right when he murdered the Jews. He also professes support for the BNP, which he says is the only party that will do something about asylum-seekers. I have yet to point out to him that people with a disability, which also includes me, would end up in a concentration camp or worse, if the BNP ever came to power.
What should I say to persuade him that the ideas of Hitler and the BNP are wrong? Just saying, ‘Asylum-seekers are welcome here’, as the SWP do, will get me absolutely nowhere. Can readers of the Weekly Worker advise me?
John Smithee
East Anglia
Credit SWP
Comrade Sarah Glynn argued in her letter that it was “Bush and Blair” who have built the anti-war movement (Weekly Worker April 24). This seems an odd logic to apply. I suppose it was Franco who built the mass movement against fascism in Spain; the tsar that organised the Russian Revolution; and why not credit the Ku Klux Klan as building the civil rights movement in the United States of America?
Ms Glynn cannot bring herself to give hundreds of thousands of anti-war activists the credit for mobilising millions against this imperialist slaughter. This, however, is no surprise coming from the CPGB, as it appears that its old habit of seeing the SWP as the main enemy has re-emerged.
Comrade Glynn appears to find it annoying that a coalition to stop the war has been built in Cambridge. This is a sad indictment of a narrow sectarian attitude where the success of a movement is gauged by how many weird sects can sit in a room together and row about who will be a steward and who will be publicity officer, etc.
I appreciate you do not agree with the SWP on many matters. For example, you do not mind the nazi British National Party spreading its filth, as you feel a good old-fashioned argument can undermine them. That did not quite work in Germany.
It would do comrade Glynn some good if she was to vent her venom against Bush and Blair, not against the SWP. I do not claim that it was just the SWP who built the coalition, but that the movement is the property of thousands of people from all sorts of backgrounds. I do believe, however, that the SWP has been serious in being part of this wave of anti-imperialism and encouraged people to get involved, regardless of whether they are going to join the SWP or not.
Bobby Blazer
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Asylum for Aziz
Your article, ‘Public relations campaign stumbles’, was a load of crap (Weekly Worker April 3).
The war is over. The coalition has won. The Iraqi people are liberated. Tariq Aziz has surrendered and sought asylum in the UK. Did you hear that? The UK! This piece of shit wants asylum in a country that his nation has just lost a war to. Kind of says a lot about his thoughts about freedom in the UK and its respect for human rights, doesn’t it?
James Brubaker
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Self-indulgence
Re: your article ‘Balance sheet’ (Weekly Worker April 17). To reduce the legacy of the anti-war movement to increased sales for the Weekly Worker, however worthy a publication it might be, is indeed the height of self-indulgence and deluded self-importance!
David Morgan
email
Rail tactics
I agree with much of what Greg Tucker says in his interview (‘On the tracks’, April 23). It is more what is not said that is the problem.
If the train operating companies are being underwritten financially by the government, then it is more important than ever that there is a serious escalation of the RMT guards strike. Only transport chaos and management’s inability to run an adequate service will force their hand.
It was the threat of a five-day strike on Scotrail in 1997 that grabbed media attention and focused all sorts of minds. Aslef trainmen and drivers had worked through the one-day strikes but were prepared to go off sick if the RMT went ahead with their strike.
Unfortunately, Knapp called this off, using scabbing at some depots as an excuse. There is presently no scabbing on Scotrail, but it is doubtful whether two 48-hour strikes will succeed in either dragging Aslef into the dispute, showing the practical solidarity needed to win quickly, or get management to back down as a result of the slightly increased escalation. There is little wisdom in the long-drawn-out war of attrition approach. What group of workers has it actually worked for? Look at the firefighters.
There is also something very wrong with the RMT and Aslef backing each other’s motions at STUC conference over the strike issue and the repeal of all anti-union legislation when they are not even prepared to lift a phone and organise legal solidarity at a general secretary level.
Aslef has its own serious issues, particularly over pensions. Why, if Mickey Rix is so opposed to anti-union laws, could ballots not have been arranged simultaneously and the same strike days named to ensure a quick victory for both drivers and guards over their respective issues? Having one group of workers out on the streets fighting for their jobs and another group driving trains as if the issues do not affect them is sheer madness.
At the hazards conference last year, one female train driver stated at a workshop that every driver in her depot had neck problems. Why? Because there were no guards on the trains and the mirrors on the station platforms were habitually vandalised, meaning train drivers had to physically check back to see if station platforms were clear, perhaps hundreds of times each shift. And yet Aslef drivers work trains on strike days alongside scab managers as if there will be no adverse consequences for them if guards become ticket collectors.
The relationship between Arkright Road and its membership continues to be something akin to the blind leading the blind. How can it be right for Aslef to instruct members to work as normal when the consequence of this will see train drivers working 11-hour shifts on driver-only trains, having sole responsibility for the safety of the passengers.
Workers’ unity and solidarity have to be much more than empty rhetoric at the annual round of union conferences.
Peter Burton
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Workers’ votes
Workers should have the same right to vote on their bosses’ pay as shareholders.
In a week of high-profile company AGMs, including Corus and BAe Systems, and with the HSBC AGM imminent, it is wrong for workers to be locked outside, whilst shareholders alone have a say. Bad bosses must be held to account. No good boss should fear the verdict of their employees.
Shareholders invest their money. Our members invest their lives.
Jack Dromey
General secretary candidate, TGWU
Loony SLP
Goodness, maybe there was something to the ‘loony lefties’ tag after all (‘Scargill moves against Brar’ Weekly Worker March 6).
“Good relations” with the Workers Party of North Korea? It would almost be funny if North Korea were not a regime oppressing workers (and peasants, but they do not count, obviously) more than any other. I assumed Scargill was trying to offer a realistic alternative to the centre-right vacuousness of New Labour - instead he has created a Stalinist monster of a party not worthy of the description ‘socialist’.
Leo Whitham
Warwick
CPGB-AWL
Just a quibble with the ‘Unwarranted’ letter (Weekly Worker April 17). If the CPGB had considered that the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty held racist views towards Arabs, or anyone else for that matter, it would have been very difficult for us to pursue a policy of rapprochement towards them. But in leaning over backwards to avoid anti-semitism they have developed a blind spot towards the national rights of the Palestinians. We have tried to address this issue in our debates with them.
A problem remains that some AWL members - Mark Osborn, for example - do believe that left groups which support victory to the Palestinians are subjectively anti-semitic. Which to my mind is an accusation of racism. It is one thing to say that the necessary consequence of victory to a single Palestinian state would be ethnic cleansing, and therefore calling for it means supporting anti-semitic action in practice. This is neither the subjective intent nor subjective desire of those supporting a single-state solution.
Perhaps, in the interest of left unity, the writers of the letter should be calling on the AWL to moderate their language as well.
Phil Kent
Hackney
Aaronovitch
A lifetime of studying the left has driven David Aaronovitch into the hands of the bourgeoisie. In no way can his apostasy be blamed on the Weekly Worker, as Eddie Holland claims (Letters, April 17). Probably the present marginalisation of the left project does not fit in with his personal ambition.
A more credible reason for his abandonment of socialism is the ingrained sectarianism which affects so much of the lefts’ propaganda. The Weekly Worker is an exception to this tendency. A critical analytical light shining through the fog of opportunism.
Eddie Holland seems to think that the Weekly Worker project is to provide the bourgeoisie with anti-socialist propaganda. This is not the case. The point is to develop the best and most consistent defence of communism, which cannot be done without rigorous self-criticism.
Arthur Lawrence
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Left bashing
I have been reading the Weekly Worker on line for about six months and for the first time feel the need to write to you.
Whilst I agree with much of what is written in your paper and enjoy those contents which I do not, there are some things which I strongly disagree with. In Jack Conrad’s article he attacks the Stop the War Coalition and states that they play a numbers game. As someone who was on all the marches, I cannot see any rhyme or reason for this stupid attack. To get two million people on the streets of London was a fantastic achievement.
I live in the Manchester area and the coalition have been fantastic in having the guts to stand up against this imperialist war. The CPGB does not seem to have been keen to get stuck into the movement in this major city in the UK, so how do you have the nerve to then attack the SWP and others for doing so? I have my disagreements with the SWP but feel they have done a very creditable service to the movement by being fully committed to the cause.
Lastly you attack the rest of the left and state that these other organisations have leaderships who pretend to know all. But every week we have Mr Jack Conrad writing the key article and I have seen in your archive section how he responds when he is challenged. He appears to see himself as the font of all knowledge. Is it not time the CPGB practised what it preaches? Stop bashing the left, when you do exactly the same as them, and try and build the anti-war movement and perhaps more people would join your organisation.
Jim Boogles
email
Stop the tour
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has accepted the right of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU) to politically vet its players and has previously defended its decision to invite the Zimbabwean team, which arrives in Britain this week, claiming that sport should be kept separate from politics.
But the ZCU is not an independent sporting body. It is an arm of the Mugabe regime. Most officials are supporters of the ruling party, Zanu-PF. Those who have shown insufficient loyalty have been purged. President Mugabe is patron. The ZCU’s official letterhead bears the words, “Patron: his excellency the president of the republic of Zimbabwe, Cd RG Mugabe”. ‘Cd’ stands for ‘comrade’. The use of this Zanu-PF party-speak is evidence the ZCU has a very close and deferential association with the Mugabe regime and is obviously proud to be associated with the president comrade. His authority was required before the tour could go ahead.
All Zimbabwe’s players are politically approved. Only those uncritical of Mugabe were eligible for selection. After Henry Olonga and Andy Flower wore black armbands during February’s World Cup to mourn the death of democracy, they were forced out of the Zimbabwe team. Olonga was terrorised with death threats and fled to South Africa in fear of his life. Flower was told his cricket career was finished and has been forced to seek exile in the UK.
Zimbabwe’s cricketers are sporting ambassadors for the Mugabe regime. Mugabe wants this tour to go ahead. It is part of his strategy to normalise relations with the rest of the world. There can be no normal sporting relations with an abnormal regime that uses torture, rape and murder as weapons of repression. It is wrong for England to play cricket with a team that flouts the sporting principles of open selection and fair play by requiring its players to pass a political loyalty test.
Peter Tatchell
Stop the Tour campaign
Correction
In ‘Aussie six’ (April 23) you mention that opposition to the Socialist Alliance in Australia comes from the International Socialist Group. That is not right. The opposition comes from the International Socialist Organisation, a loyal follower of the Socialist Workers Party in the United Kingdom.
David Silcock
Australia
