Letters
Can’t count
Marcus Ström quotes Socialist Alliance chair Nick Wrack as
claiming that “George Galloway was 26,000 [votes] shy of becoming
an MEP” (‘Assessing the new and burying the past’,
July 1). This figure is repeatedly cited by Respect supporters,
but it is difficult to see how they arrive at it.
In the European parliamentary elections nine seats were contested
in London under the regional list system of proportional representation,
using the d’Hondt formula. The ninth and last of the seats
went to the Labour Party. To have won that seat Respect would have
had to poll 155,529 votes. It got 91,175, which is 64,354 short.
This looks to me like another example of Respect’s reluctance
to confront political reality and tendency to exaggerate the level
of support it enjoys. Or perhaps they just can’t count.
Martin Sullivan
email
Smear
Marcus Ström builds a wholesale attack upon me upon a falsehood.
He states that, entirely undemocratically, I have somehow imposed
myself upon the Respect membership of Bethnal Green and Bow parliamentary
constituency as their candidate. I have not decided where or even
if I will seek a candidacy at the next general election. I have
said that I will not stand in Scotland - which is the only decision
I have made.
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Ström’s high authority, on which he bases his latest
smear on me, turns out to be the ‘Diary’ column in the
Evening Standard. It is surprising how often I have to tell you
not to believe everything you read about me in the papers.
Yours fraternally (just).
George Galloway MP
House of Commons
Courteous stoning
I was gratified to learn from Yvonne Ridley that the fundamentalist
murderers - more usually known as the Taliban - treated her with
“courtesy and respect” (‘Give me four times more’,
July 1).
I’m sure those men and women stoned to death by the Taliban
for the supposed crime of adultery or for wanting a same-sex relationship
would be most interested to learn of this apparent ‘human face’
of the Taliban, as I’m sure would be the millions of Afghani
women and girls deprived of any form of education during the Taliban’s
brutal reign of terror!
This if anything illustrates the sheer political bankruptcy of the
failing Respect project and illustrates why socialists should have
nothing to do with it!
Bad enough that its self-styled leader, George Galloway, lined up
with religious bigots over the issue of a woman’s right to
choose; bad enough that Respect fielded candidates at the last European
elections who publicly supported the segregation of people along
gender lines; bad enough that Respect was willing to form an alliance
with a religious grouping in Birmingham which publicly opposed rights
for gay people! But I doubt even these shocking examples compare
to Yvonne Ridley’s virtual apology for the reactionary fundamentalist
thugs that were the Taliban regime!
There is thankfully, however, a genuine a radical alternative to
all the pro-big-business, pro-free-market parties - and one which
does not pander to the worst kind of religious bigotry, as Respect
has repeatedly done: it is the Green Party, a principled party of
the left which former Socialist Alliance members and candidates
like myself can feel very at home in. Also unlike Respect, we have
a track record of actually getting our candidates elected.
Leigh Richards
email
Saddened
I am saddened by the constant bickering and in-fighting on the left.
You spend 23 or 24 paragraphs attacking Respect instead of the real
enemy, Tony Blair (‘Assessing the new and burying the past’,
July 1).
I am one of the 3,209 members of Respect and the only leftwing party
I have ever been a member of before is the Labour Party. What is
the point of the endless infighting?
One more question: how many members of the CPGB are there?
Shaun Tinsley
email
Livingstone
I used to admire Ken Livingstone and have been to meetings just
to hear him talk.
But the old adage, ‘Power corrupts’, seems to apply to
this scabby traitor. Like so many of the Labour Party, he has turned
his back on the people that gave him power. Shame on him.
Rob Stride
email
Warped perspective
In an emotive and disingenuous letter John Pearson rationalises
his own departure from our organisation by conjuring up a bogeyman
story (Weekly Worker July 1).
It is “clear” to comrade Pearson that the Red Platform
“opposition” has been suppressed by John Bridge and the
party leadership, as demonstrated by comrade Bridge’s criticisms
of the platform in his motion to the last aggregate. Tricky, that
majority vote in favour of his motion, though - must be we are all
“under the heel of a fundamentally Stalinist clique”.
In fact, the demise of the Red Platform column is due to the weakness
of the Red Platform itself. It was narrowly defined by opposition
to the majority tactical position on voting for Respect (not opposition
to some CPGB leaders, including the seemingly, at least to J Pearson,
awesome John Bridge). By election time the comrades ran out of things
to say. What Red Platform did say up to then was not very coherent
and its criticism (of Respect, Galloway and the SWP) was weaker
than that of the ‘pro-Respect’ majority. It did not help
either that the individual who was the driving force behind Red
Platform just upped and left.
In view of this, a decision was taken to discontinue the arrangement
where a space for Red Platform was set aside every week. However,
comrade Pearson knows that all of our members are encouraged to
write for the paper. Comrade Pearson also neglects to mention that,
while the Red Platform column has gone, its website - linked to
our own - is still online (although not updated by the comrades
for some time).
Comrade Pearson hopes to get round these uncomfortable facts with:
“The readers of the Weekly Worker are no longer permitted to
read the views of the Red Platform, except where those views meet
with editorial approval” (my emphasis). Well, editors have
to edit, but look at our unrivalled record for printing articles
and letters that are critical of our majority, leadership or individual
political positions. So to suggest that debate has been closed down
is just mischievous twaddle.
And then we have comrade Pearson’s remark that “the only
organised opposition that the leadership of the CPGB is prepared
to tolerate is a licensed one.” Fatuous nonsense. Red Platform
had their own column right up to the election!
Comrade Pearson has a deeply cynical, almost anarchist, attitude
to leadership - understandable perhaps, given the predominantly
bureaucratic centralist regimes of most of the left, but in relation
to the CPGB it is entirely misplaced. For comrade Pearson it seems
that it is leadership itself that is bad and this colours his whole
perspective.
But there is another problem. Comrade Pearson, like some in the
Red Platform, does not understand the process of “positive
engagement”. He thinks this automatically rules out “critical
engagement”. It is this mechanical, ‘one or the other’
approach that is faulty - we have done both at the same time. In
fact our engagement in any organisation is always critical.
Comrade Pearson is in awe of the Socialist Workers Party. He seems
to think the choice is staying at a safe and unsullied distance
or cosying up and being tainted. In this warped perspective he casts
the Red Platform as a principled minority, whose critique endangers
an attempt by the dastardly John Bridge to ingratiate the CPGB with
the SWP. Unfortunately, this does not fit with reality - the major
thrust of critical engagement came from the majority, not the Red
Platform - just read the Weekly Worker. We are not in awe of the
SWP, but we do like to fight up close.
Alan Stevens
South London
Violent
With regard to that section of your draft programme dealing with
the character of the revolution, I have the following comments.
You are again creating illusions as to the possibility of achieving
socialism (step by step) through workers’ control over production
without a violent proletarian revolution overthrowing the capitalist
state. We have had all these revisionist recipes before, 80, 90
years ago. These concepts have always failed and proved unworkable.
When will you ever learn that without a violent revolution, smashing
the capitalist state, you will never, ever reach socialism?
Gerd von Schnehen
Germany
All at once?
I disagree with the comments in your draft programme about socialism
having to triumph more or less simultaneously in most of the advanced
countries or risk being destroyed.
To think of the logistics of such a feat is mind-boggling, to say
the least. What I would say is that it is necessary to concentrate
resources in one country. The number of people that have to be mobilised
towards the cause would be less and therefore the logistics of such
a task would be cut. The workers in other advanced countries, seeing
such a change, would soon follow suit. Just like the demolishing
of the Berlin wall did to destroy the former USSR.
Where better than to start in old imperialist, Americanised United
Kingdom? However, mobilising such a number of workers would be very
difficult, as the working class have been polarised: they do not
form a single, cohesive, idealistic movement. What is needed is
propaganda in schools, youth clubs, universities, to help to un-brainwash
the working classes from a capitalist and apathetic standpoint.
Students disillusioned with the fact that they have to get into
tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt should be more than easily
won to accept communism as a viable rebellion against the capitalist
system. This brings a lot of academic punch. Once the workers have
been united and cleansed from believing that they have to be happy
with their situation and the poverty that comes with it, then the
movement can start to think about bringing down the puppet government
that the media and big business have put in charge to look after
their interests.
I have read on a capitalist website that the distribution of wealth
in a capitalist society is fair, as individuals have to work for
their spoils. It also suggests that the capitalist society is the
only type of society that is fair because of individual freedoms.
However, it also allows companies and ruling class politicians to
make a lot of money at the workers’ expense.
Russ Early
email
Print weapon
The article about the SWP’s plan to sell off its printshop
was most interesting (Weekly Worker July 1).
The printing machine was the best thing that pre-capitalist society
ever invented. The same applies to printing equipment in the 21st
century. For example, last year I saved up £200 to purchase
a mono laser printer. It has been the best £200 I have ever
spent. The laser printer has enabled me to print between 20 and
500 double-sided A5 leaflets for 1.2p per leaflet.
When James P Cannon set up the Communist League of America in the
early 1930s, his first act was to raise the money to buy a second-hand
printing machine. His books explain how important a printshop is
to the revolutionary party. When I was a member of Militant, financial
appeals were always linked to the purchase of new printing machinery.
I can remember how the Militant in the early 1980s raised £100,000
to purchase a web off-set printing machine, which could print a
daily paper.
The CPGB/Weekly Worker would be well advised to link the Summer
Offensive to the purchase of new printing equipment and its associated
computers.
John Smithee
Cambridgeshire
Bullying
I see that one Claude Moreira has been writing to you in defence
of the suspended Aslef general secretary, Shaun Brady, and calling
for the restoration of “decency and democracy” to the
union (Letters, July 1). Presumably Moreira takes issue with eminent
QC and former president of the Bar Council, Matthias Kelly, who
found that Brady presided over a culture of bullying and intimidation
at Aslef.
Would this be the same Claude Moreira who wrote to Tribune in the
following bullying and intimidatory manner?
“Regarding Declan McVeigh’s piece about the FBU, I think
it is in the interest of Tribune to be very nice to Mr Shaun Brady,
Aslef general secretary. The days of Mix Rix freebies are over and
I understand that at the next AAD [annual assembly of delegates]
Aslef delegates will ask the general secretary to levy a proper
commercial rent for the office space used by Tribune at 9 Arkwright
Road.”
I think we should be told.
Catherine Lafferty
email
Korean sources
If I were to make the assertion in a letter that I know that the
Bush administration feeds its political opponents to lions, tigers
and bears, in secret locations, I would have the political integrity
to cite my sources, for otherwise all George and his supporters
would do is say, ‘Not true’, to which I would reply, ‘It
is true’, and on and on and on.
Cite your sources when you write about North Korea, along with dates
of publication, so we can have an intelligent exchange of views
(Letters, June 17). In the meantime, may I suggest you read two
publications written by Leon Trotsky: Their morals and ours and
The revolution betrayed.
Michael Little
Seattle
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