Weekly Worker 514 Thursday February 5 2004

Letters

Critical

Comrade Manny Neira’s reporting of the January 25 Respect convention makes interesting reading in terms of a chronicle of the events that took place. I do have reservations about some aspects of its implicit thrust, however.

He writes with regard to the organisation of the convention that Respect “promises to exceed” the grotesquely anti-democratic internal life of the Socialist Labour Party under Arthur Scargill. While of course it cannot be ruled out that Respect will indeed result in that, I have to say that I saw precious little evidence of this at the convention itself. Opportunism from the Socialist Workers Party was of course there in plentiful supply, but actually there was very little in terms of procedure that was formally undemocratic.

It may be frustrating to be outvoted by the SWP’s whipped vote, and even more galling in that the issues on which the smaller left tendencies were outvoted were qualitatively worse politically than the things we were similarly outvoted on in the Socialist Alliance, but there was no need for the organisers to engage in vote-rigging - for the simple reason that they had an overwhelming majority anyway. Nor were there any of the exclusions of oppositionists from the conference itself that marked the SLP’s 1996 founding gathering from day one. On the contrary, people overtly hostile to the entire project, most notably Sean Matgamna, were allowed to register and got their chance to have their say, even though his intervention met with great hostility and heckling from SWPers on the floor.

The non-inclusion of our comrades on the recommended slate certainly signifies an anti-inclusive spirit, but again I think it is a misconception to expect those who seek to lead this project in exactly the opposite direction to the one we would wish for to bend over backwards to include those they politically oppose. Their original proposal, demanding that all slates gain the explicit consent of everyone appearing on them, was certainly anti-democratic, but appears to have thankfully proven a dead letter in practice. This exclusive sectarianism can only be overcome politically, by changing the views of those on the left who practise it, in particular in terms of the SWP membership. But not by seeming to complain that being outvoted is undemocratic. It ain’t.

Some of the swipes at George Galloway also fail to hit the mark: “If the media ever get a hint that this ‘far left’ coalition may be successful … clips of his speech to Saddam Hussein will rival snooker for television time.” Maybe so, but sometimes being demonised in this way can also lead to such an individual being seen as perversely principled, which, I guess, is why Galloway shares with Scargill the absence of much in the way of a middle ground - people tend to either love him or hate him, with little in between.

Ian Donovan
London

Disgusted

As a former member of the SWP, I was absolutely disgusted when listening to their agenda at the Respect conference over the internet.

As someone who became politically active at the last general election when the Socialist Alliance seemed to offer the creation of a broad socialist alternative to New Labour, to hear SWP members now arguing against motions calling for republicanism, open borders and a worker’s wage for elected representatives was appalling, as was the complete intolerance towards any dissent, such as the storm of booing when someone dared to criticise the ‘beloved leader’, Galloway - not to mention of course SWP members voting down, parrot fashion, any amendment that wasn’t endorsed by the ruling elite.

This didn’t surprise me, however, as I recall being told by a prominent member of my local SWP, when I was a member, that I had to go to the first conference of the SA following the 2001 election to boost the numbers of SWP comrades there, in order to outvote the sectarians! Obviously I didn’t do this, as I believe in socialism and democracy.

Your coverage over recent weeks about the Respect coalition and the twists and turns of the SWP has been excellent, and I hope you can continue to help open the eyes of more and more ordinary SWP members to the actual realities of the SWP’s sectarianism and opportunism.

James York
email

Forlorn

Marcus Ström, in his article on Respect, says that the Socialist Alliance is now a corpse. The following and final paragraph suggests that CPGB members will now put more time into Respect and trying to win arguments there (‘John Rees airbrushes out history’, January 29).

Isn’t this a rather forlorn perspective? If the more left elements could not win a majority in the SWP-dominated Socialist Alliance, they have even less chance of winning anything in Respect, where the balance of forces is far more unfavourable and include people who are not even potentially winnable - indeed, people who are actively hostile to socialism.

The SWP’s Respect project has no future, certainly none as any kind of socialist party - not even potentially. As the CPGB has pointed out, the SLP had more potential. And look what happened there!

Philip Ferguson
New Zealand

Pissing

Reports of the new Respect Unity Coalition have not made comfortable reading. The cringing hypocrisy of the SWP is astounding, but not surprising. The constant desire to appeal to the middle classes, and the watering down of socialist policies is exactly what the same left forces criticised New Labour for.

I remember the Independent Working Class Association always came in for heavy criticism for deliberately disregarding orthodox socialism, despite the fact it still manages to concentrate on, and win credible support from, the working class. If they can do it, why can’t the left set out to explicitly win over the working class, rather than the liberal middle class? I suspect it’s because the politically correct vanguard of the left, with Gorgeous George at the helm, is overtly middle class in its outlook, values and interests.

I fear, once again, the left is pissing into a hurricane.

Ricky Smith
London

Middle class

Jon Owen asks: “I am a member of the middle class ... does my social status prevent me from joining the Communist Party?” (Letters, January 29).

Of course not! Who do you imagine runs the British ‘left’? As for the working class, have you ever wondered why so many of us see the ‘left’ as a complete irrelevance and avoid it like the plague?

Ronnie Monroe
email

Leaking

Mick O’Conaill clarifies that he has had no association with the CPGB apart from his “frequent” reading of our press (Letters, January 29). Therefore his professed adherence to the IWCA is not symptomatic of the Communist Party leaking support - the original foolish claim of Richard Harris (Letters, January 15).

However, Mick does more than clear this mistake up. He writes that he is not involved with us, because “your organisation has little to offer militant, working class activists”, given that members of said category are apparently defined by not being interested in “paper sales and lengthy ideological debates, but effective activity amongst the class”.

The comrade and his co-thinkers have a lot of explaining to do if this is their real position. Is it seriously being suggested that the problem with the 20th century - a period of horror and defeat for the proletariat internationally - was that the revolutionary left did not organised enough “activity” amongst the class? Would we have had more of a result here in Britain if we had stood on just a few more picket lines, knocked on a couple of thousand extra doors, perhaps launched more rent strikes, sit-ins against closures or petitions for speed humps?

Mark Fischer
London

Penny dropping

At the last Exeter Socialist Alliance meeting the main discussion was on local elections. We had already narrowly agreed to back Respect - although essentially 50% of the active membership are hostile and have stated they will not be involved in it.

The SWP opposed standing SA candidates in the local elections, but they didn’t rule out the possibility of standing Respect candidates. The impression I got was that their view was along the lines of ‘If you insist on standing candidates [and the SWP seem to be against it], then they should be Respect candidates.’

As far as I can tell, we are to organise a meeting to launch Respect and thereafter the SA has no point in existing on a local level. SA members are then to apply on an individual basis to become members of Respect in order to do the donkeywork for it. Whether or not the SA continues to function, the class-struggle socialists in Exeter will continue to meet and organise despite these mad antics from the SWP.

At the Exeter meeting the penny dropped for one of the few independents who had voted in favour of Respect at the previous meeting - to paraphrase him, he hadn’t realised he had voted to close down the SA.

Dave Parks
Exeter

Split shock

Marcus Ström describes me as a supporter of Resistance (‘John Rees airbrushes out history’, January 29). I was a supporter at the time of our conversation reported in that article outside Friends’ House on January 25. I had ceased to be one by the time the paper went to press, and had very deliberately informed Peter Manson of this fact in a telephone call on the morning of Tuesday January 27, very shortly after I had spoken to Alan Thornett, indicating the incompatibility of my refusal to join, let alone build, Respect, with the central project of Resistance supporters in the current period: namely, to build Respect.

Either Comrades Manson and Ström are not in regular communication with each other (is this the beginning of a split?) or, far more probably, the Weekly Worker team did not want the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Toby Abse
email

Mischievous

In a mischievous little letter, Will Cross attempts to give the impression that the Manchester Democracy Platform in general and myself in particular are unremittingly hostile to the CPGB and see the CPGB as the enemy (Letters, January 29).

Now if Will was a Weekly Worker reader he would have known that most of the criticisms of the CPGB made by myself and John Pearson have already been published by the Weekly Worker and were submitted and received in a spirit of ongoing, comradely debate on the future of the SA and the democracy platform.

As the chair of the meeting I invited the only CPGB member or supporter present to put the CPGB point of view on Respect. This comrade declined the invitation. He preferred to put his own personal position. Therefore I am not responsible for the lack of balance in the debate as far as the CPGB is concerned. As for praise for organisations, let me put some praise the CPGB’s way. The recent criticisms of Respect in the Weekly Worker and ‘Party notes’ in particular have been excellent.

For those comrades who are active in the Socialist Alliance it is important that differences are not exaggerated.

Barry Biddulph
Chair, Stockport SA

Mistrust

A few comments on Marcus Ström’s letter (January 29) in reply to my article ‘A modest proposal’ (Weekly Worker January 15):

1. His objections that my proposals were “anarchist” and would “prevent the leadership from acting” were indeed said in a pub, but also repeated in group-wide emails.

2. I’ve never called him a Stalinist. He refers to an SMS message he received from a mutual friend reading: “Manny says you’re too young to be a Stalinist”. I was loyally defending him against the charge. The grounds of my defence, I’ll admit, were perhaps unsophisticated, but it was my birthday, and we’d all been at the vodka.

3. “What a bastard I must be.” Marcus, you mustn’t be so hard on yourself.

4. I am not asking the aggregate to approve the PCC minutes “as a true record” - how indeed could we? I am asking them to approve the actions documented.

5. My proposal specifically excludes the minuting of information harmful to the party or identifiable individuals, so objections on security grounds are unnecessary.

6. As Marcus says, comrades may already raise any issue they wish at aggregate. My proposed addition to the aggregate agenda is merely a reminder that they have the right to do so. If they can be trusted not to waste the time of the aggregate with trivialities now, why should we fear that they will in the future? The idea that we should not rattle the members’ cage with a reminder of the right (indeed, responsibility) to raise criticisms in case we wake them into doing so is, at best, very dodgy.

7. Marcus complains that I am provoking “organised mistrust”. Interestingly, in One step forward, two steps back Lenin specifically defends the notion of “organised mistrust”, provided it is applied by the whole of the organisation to any part of it, as in my proposal.

Manny Neira
email

Racism?

Don Preston writes, in reference to Kilroy-Silk, that “We should always think at least twice before crying ‘racism’ and we need to put clear red water between our anti-racism and theirs” (Letters, January 29).

This is quite true, because in the article Kilroy was only exercising his freedom of speech, which should always be allowed in a democracy. His article was not racist at all: he was talking quite rightly about the Arab regimes and not the Arab people. Following the Secret policeman documentary on BBC1 about a number of racist police officers Kilroy did a programme on racism in a Britain. He showed no signs of racism or prejudice in his show.

So calling Kilroy a racist is a mistake from start to finish. People need to know what the word means and not just call everyone a racist because they hold different views to themselves.

Ashleah Skinner
email

Death penalty

John Mann writes: “Why is so much of the left opposed to the death penalty? I am a communist and believe in the sanctity of human life. Therefore those who, beyond doubt, commit premeditated murder should have the privilege of their own lives taken away” (Letters, January 15).

In a time of socialist revolution I would advocate the use of the death penalty because enemies of the revolution would not be deterred by threat of imprisonment, as they would not expect us to remain in power for that long. But barring its transitional use during that ‘excess of history’, people are not animals (though they may sometimes act that way), and thus the barbaric death penalty has no place within a codified set of civilian laws.

Michael Little
Seattle

String ’em up

John Mann is exactly correct. Come the revolution, when the working class has the power, then juries of workers will hang Ian Huntley, etc.

In the here and now, they say, communists, anarchists, Trotskyites, etc have to make an unholy alliance with wishy-washy liberals because if the capitalist state has that power who will they hang? Murdering perverts or trade unionists? Actually, in the here and now, we are quite safe in advocating hanging. We ain’t dangerous enough to the state. Unionists are the nearest thing to a danger. They will hang first.

Dafydd ap Thomas
Caerdydd

Headscarf ban

Without intending any offence to individuals, I must say quite frankly that I am disgusted with you. So too am I with the rest of the leftist groups who joined forces with political islamists on the recent demonstration against the proposed ban on headscarves in French schools.

However problematic some of the implications of the ban may be, there is no excuse for the disgraceful activity of so-called ‘progressives’ on this issue. You formed a block with a gang of misogynists who believe in sexual segregation and cover ‘their’ women from head to toe in the oppressive dress known as the hijab. Manny Neira in his report admitted that the male stewards would not even let your male comrades speak with the women who they regard as their property. Women who were bullied by their partners to attend the demonstration and secretly sympathised with the opposing view (I have no doubt such women exist) can expect no salvation from you and your ilk.

The fact that it has been left to Chirac to defend French muslim girls from religious and sexual oppression shows the redundancy of the male-dominated left when it comes to women’s issues, issues that you brush aside and deem as secondary to class oppression. The insights of Engels, however flawed and incomplete they were, in The origin of the family, appear to have been totally lost on you.

Little wonder then that some of your leading members dismiss with contempt all forms of feminism as being ‘bourgeois’, a cheap shot aimed at people whose views they neither have studied nor express any wish to. Ignorance may be bliss for men who wish to preserve patriarchy in some form or other, be it capitalist or ‘socialist’, but for muslim women who have suffered years of male oppression it is bliss no longer.

Liz Hoskings
email

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