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Weekly Worker 554 Thursday November 25 2004

The genuine article

Why did the SWP vote down a motion on secularism at last month’s Respect conference? Peter Manson debunks some false definitions and explains why a secular approach is essential in our engagement with religious believers

The October 30-31 Respect conference saw the Socialist Workers Party’s opportunism plumb new lows, as it mobilised its members to vote down yet more socialist and democratic principles.

While perhaps we should no longer be surprised at anything the SWP says or does, for this writer at least the degree of hostility and venom directed against those who called for Respect to declare itself a secular organisation and promote secular values was genuinely shocking. For communists and revolutionary socialists secularism is a principle so elementary that it should scarcely need spelling out.
Marxists stand for the unity of workers and the oppressed of all backgrounds in the fight for extreme democracy. While we most certainly are not indifferent in our attitude to religious obscurantism, we accept that many, many sections of workers and the oppressed are believers to one extent or another.

We also accept that, in the final analysis, their religious prejudices will not prevent the overwhelming majority actively joining the class struggle and fighting for democracy. Therefore we oppose all attempts to divide us on grounds of religion. For that reason we champion the equality of believers and non-believers - as far as the state is concerned.

That is why we welcomed Dave Landau’s proposals on secularism that were presented to the Respect conference. His motion opposed state persecution of and discrimination against religions and their followers, while simultaneously standing against coercive acts and suppression by religious authorities themselves. Declaring that Respect “strives for a society in which people of all faiths and none are equal”, it demanded the complete separation of church and state. Finally, the motion stated that Respect, as a “secular organisation”, is “open to those of all faiths and none, does not favour and is not beholden to any religion or religious institution”.

SWP mobilisation

A pretty clear and, you would have thought, uncontroversial restatement of democratic principle in relation to religious believers. But not for the SWP. The leadership of this organisation went to extraordinary lengths to prevent comrade Landau’s motion even reaching conference floor. First of all, SWP members voted it down in Islington branch and then, when it became clear that, thanks to CPGB support, it had received the necessary 20 signatures enabling it to be heard at conference, they then refused to allow comrade Landau, a non-aligned supporter of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, to be a delegate, thus, according to the rules just concocted by the executive, preventing him from moving the motion.

Comrade Landau was far from being the only victim of the SWP’s exclusivist bureaucracy. Its main target was the CPGB, of course. Since the SWP and those in its orbit formed the majority in every single branch where CPGB members are active, not one CPGB comrade was elected as conference delegate - SWP comrades were under instructions to use any means to keep us out. But that did not stop Socialist Worker editor Chris Bambery mocking the CPGB and those like comrade Landau “who can’t get delegated, and can’t get motions through their branches”. He told conference there was “something undemocratic” about such minorities being able to table motions to conference through the 20 signatories rule.

However, despite the SWP’s best efforts, comrade Landau’s motion appeared on the conference agenda and, in his absence from the floor of conference, was moved by one of the 20 signatories who had managed to get elected as a delegate, Tom Rubens from Hackney, another non-aligned comrade. Unfortunately, as is frequently the case, a substitute is not quite able to get over the essence of a motion in the same way as the person who has drafted it in the first place - all the better for the SWP, which, understandably, has no confidence whatsoever in its own ability to win the argument on such questions.
The response of Chris Bambery, in opposing the motion, was disingenuous in the extreme. He said he would be “concerned at Respect calling itself secular”. After all, secularism was used in France to justify the islamophobic ban on the hijab in state schools. The implication was that secularism is now a dirty word. What is more, in all comrade Bambery’s long years of experience of the labour movement in the west of Scotland, where of course religious sectarianism is rife, he had never known “a resolution being put saying we are secular”. Presumably he would have voted against a motion in his Glasgow trade union branch which proposed treating catholics and protestants as equals.

Perhaps comrade Bambery is right in stating that labour movement organisations in the west of Scotland are not in the habit of setting out their views on secularism. But if this is so, it only demonstrates political cowardice, not political sophistication, in face of the divide and rule tactics of the British state and loyalist sectarians.

Bambery asked: “Do we have a problem here with people with extreme religious views?” No, came his own response to this rhetorical question. The real fundamentalists are Bush and Blair, who are deliberately stoking up islamophobia. Those calling for secularism should “think very carefully” about whose game they are playing. This was a disgraceful slur on those who, unlike himself, still uphold a principled position on questions the SWP has now mobilised to defeat. It seemed to imply that secularism was the equivalent of islamophobia: that muslims were somehow automatically opposed to secularism - an idea which is itself a form of islamophobia.

This was clearly going too far for Bambery’s SWP comrade, Alex Callinicos, who appears to have attempted something of a corrective in Socialist Worker. He writes: “One of the most exciting things to have happened in Britain in recent years has been the emergence - first in the Stop the War Coalition and then in Respect - of an alliance against neoliberalism, racism and war that unites secular socialists and muslim activists” (my emphasis Socialist Worker November 20).

He continues: “But it’s true that this is fairly exceptional and widely criticised, especially elsewhere in Europe. In France much of the left have defended a secular definition of the state that refuses to acknowledge that millions of the victims of French imperialism now live in France, and are deeply and legitimately attached to their muslim faith.”

Unlike Bambery then, comrade Callinicos is acknowledging that there is a different “definition” of secularism other than that widely subscribed to in France, including on the left, where republican anti-clericalism has degenerated among wide sections of the left into some crude ‘war on religion’ atheism, which dovetails neatly and conveniently with the bourgeoisie’s islamophobia.

But comrade Callinicos does not have a correct understanding of secularism any more than comrade Bambery. Callinicos also crudely counterposes “secular socialists” to “muslim activists” - as though ‘secular’ means simply ‘non-religious’. In fact the principle of secularism - the genuine version, that is - ought to command the support of muslims, christians, etc, as well as atheists, in that it proclaims the equality of believers and non-believers before the state. Nor does comrade Callinicos explain how it is that the “secular socialists” of the SWP came to vote against secularism at the Respect conference.
The first sign of the SWP’s new-found opposition to this principle came earlier in the conference, over the question of Palestine. Comrade Bambery may claim to have never come across a resolution on secularism in the west of Scotland labour movement, but he obviously forgets the SWP’s own position and countless resolutions on Palestine. Remember, Chris, the position of the SWP is for the complete abolition of the Jewish state of Israel and its replacement by an Arab-Jewish “democratic, secular Palestine”.

This was what was proposed at the conference by Roland Rance of Waltham Forest. For those not quite grasping what was going on, it may well have come as something of a surprise when Moira Nolan of the SWP proposed an amendment deleting the whole paragraph which contained the phrase, “unitary, democratic and secular state”, from Waltham Forest’s motion.

Unlike the SWP, revolutionary democrats do not write off the Israeli Jewish nation - and particularly its working class - as irredeemably reactionary. In fact Israeli workers are central to the winning of Palestinian rights, including national rights. They must be won to break with their Zionist misleaders and find common cause with the oppressed of Palestine. But in order for that to happen Palestinians must stand against their own chauvinists - whether of the islamist or nationalist variety - and uphold the national rights of Israeli Jews. The best way to achieve this concretely in current circumstances is through the call for a democratic, secular Palestine to exist alongside a democratic, secular Israel.
Previously, however, the SWP has dismissed any suggestion of two states with contempt, claiming that Israel is not and never can be a nation and that its existence will always be illegitimate. Now, suddenly, the line has softened. “Personally I agree with a unitary state,” said comrade Nolan. “But it’s about entering into dialogue with people” who “might not join Respect if they disagree” with a one-state solution. “We should be one step ahead of them, not 15.”

On the face of it, comrade Nolan’s opportunistic arguments seemed to be pretty much in line with what the SWP has been saying on issues like abortion and open borders: ‘ordinary people’ are not yet ready to adopt our position, so we must water down our policies to win their votes and attract them to Respect.
But there was something that did not quite add up about all this. Surely the clearest issue where ‘ordinary people’ are a considerable number of steps behind socialist internationalists is over the resistance to the occupation of Iraq. While probably a majority of the UK population is for a withdrawal from Iraq in the short term, that is quite a different matter from calling for ‘victory to the resistance’. Yet the SWP does not have any problem with calling on people to side with all the various groups taking up arms against US-UK forces (since, in the words of the successful, SWP-sponsored, motion, “the Iraqi resistance deserves the support of the international anti-war movement”).

If ‘ordinary people’ are so advanced in their thinking that they would actually take sides against ‘our’ boys and girls, then why can they not be persuaded to support a unitary Palestine? In fact it is not the “unitary” part of comrade Rance’s motion that the SWP now opposes: it is the “secular” part. And it is not ‘ordinary people’ the SWP is concerned with: it is muslim clerics.

Muslims and the left

For the SWP the problem with secularism (along with the right of a woman to choose an abortion) is that it is no longer convenient. It no longer fits with the SWP’s reasoning in relation to its target audience. Having (correctly) identified muslims as a particularly oppressed section of the population, it seems to have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to water down or abandon a raft of principles in order to accommodate what is believes to be the views of the ‘muslim community’.

Let us first of all make it clear that islamophobia is not something either we or the SWP has dreamed up. It is real. Following the Al Qa’eda outrage of September 11 2001, and despite the protests to the contrary by bourgeois politicians of virtually every hue, muslims have become the butt of increased repression and a divisive, ideological assault aimed at undermining the rights of all.

It is muslims who are the most frequent victims of Blunkett’s ‘anti-terror’ legislation (yet more anti-democratic measures were announced last week and confirmed in the queen’s speech). In Britain muslims are disproportionately targeted for police raids, stop and search, indefinite detention without trial, as well as cultural criticisms for allegedly failing to accept the need for integration into western society. This has been paralleled elsewhere.

On November 21 German chancellor Gerhard Schröder demanded that the country’s three million muslims, mostly of Turkish descent, should come out of their ghettoes (as though the current marginalisation of muslims in Germany has nothing to do with the way the state has treated its Gastarbeiter as second-class citizens): “A democracy can neither tolerate lawless areas nor parallel societies,” said Schröder. Migrants should “clearly and unmistakably support our rule of law and our democratic rules”.

Similar scapegoating attacks have occurred in Britain, the Netherlands and other European countries. In France the offensive has taken a form which is of particular interest for this discussion, since the ban on the muslim headscarf in state schools has been enacted in the name of republican secularity - as we shall see, a travesty of the meaning of the word.

The French ban on “conspicuous religious symbols” was the subject of a seminar entitled, ‘The hijab: a woman’s right to choose’, at the European Social Forum on October 16 and Salma Yaqoob of Respect and the STWC was one of the speakers. “You have to set the ban in the context of the ‘war on terror’,” she remarked. This “new phase of imperialism” requires a “new form of racism - islamophobia”. And echoes of islamophobia are “even heard on the left” - a phenomenon, she concluded, which is at its most extreme in France. It is undoubtedly true that certain muslims are being demonised and there are other parallels with racism connected to islamophobia’s divisive, scapegoating role.

While communists and revolutionary socialists must do all in our power to defend muslims and draw towards us those who have been radicalised by the new situation, what we must not do is concede one inch when it comes to our democratic, secular and working class principles. There is no such thing as a single, undifferentiated ‘muslim community’ and our job is not to strike up deals with the mosque and the leaders of mainstream pressure groups, but to appeal to their followers on the basis of our own working class politics. We must be open in our aim of splitting working class muslims from their reactionary leaders.

France

There is no doubt that, while the French ban is promoted in the name of upholding secularism, it does nothing of the sort. Firstly, although it claims to be even-handed in its attitude to different religions, clearly the ban on the hijab provides the cutting edge.

It has been claimed that, since all religious and political symbols are banned, there is no intention of singling out muslims. But the French legislation specifies that symbols must not be “conspicuous” - therefore crucifixes are deemed acceptable provided they are not “of an excessive size”. But what is meant by “excessive”? As another speaker at the ESF hijab seminar, Christine Delphy from Féministes Pour l’Egalité (Feminists for Equality), noted ironically, if you staggered into school carrying a cross on your back, that would definitely not be permitted.

Secondly, the ban contradicts the spirit of the celebrated 1905 law, which not only enacted the separation of church and state, but reiterated the right of religious freedom, including the right of religious expression.

The law, voted in on December 9 1905, was proposed by the socialist deputy, Aristide Briand, a supporter of Jean Jaurès. This legislation was the culmination of a century of sometimes violent struggles between the catholic church hierarchy and republican anti-clericalists, following the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, which re-established the church.

Those demanding renewed separation of church and state were roughly divided into two broad camps: firstly, those who claimed to stand in the Jacobin-communist tradition and dreamed of eradicating religion or driving it underground; and secondly, those - particularly the Marxists - who took a much more enlightened approach, demanding the neutrality of the state in relation to all religious beliefs of lack of them, while at the same time seeking a legal guarantee of freedom of religion.

Thus in article 1 we read: “The republic will ensure freedom of conscience. It will guarantee the free exercise of religious practice”; while in article 2: “The republic does not promote, finance or subsidise any religion …”

It is astonishing, then, that supporters of the ban can say, “The wearing of the veil is prohibited by the 1905 law, full stop!” (Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifaoui, one of many people from a muslim background who were mobilised to support the 2003 law). “It isn’t the republic that must adapt to religion,” said Sifaoui. “Religion must adapt to the republic” (Parti Libéral Méditerranéen website, May 3 2003).

If the wearing of the veil was already prohibited, one might be justified in asking why the new legislation was necessary at all. In fact, while the Briand law did not specifically enshrine the right to wear or display religious regalia, it most certainly did not ban it. The spirit of the 1905 legislation was quite the reverse. More to the point, it is clear that the crude elitism of the Jacobin-communists is alive and well on the French left. They have been reinforced by those like Sifaoui who have had first-hand experience of the oppressive practice of political islam, which is, of course, directed against those who refuse to bow before religious dictat.

Unfortunately, the reaction of these latter-day Jacobin-communists is to pose state oppression as a solution to religious oppression. That was more than evident in the fury of many of the French comrades at the ESF workshop. A good number of pro-ban leftists, including Bernard Cassen of Attac France, got very upset and engaged in heckling the platform speakers. They took particular exception to comments to the effect that the ban is driven by islamophobia and racism. This was taken as an accusation against those on the left like themselves.

They also complained afterwards, on ESF email lists, of the “impossibility of holding a genuine but respectful debate” - the platform was made up exclusively of those arguing against the hijab ban. However, this was hardly unique to this particular workshop - organised by the STWC and National Assembly Against Racism, amongst others. It also has to be said that 40 minutes were given over to contributions from the floor after the platform speeches - totally inadequate, true, but generous by comparison to what occurred in many other sessions.

These complaints were picked up by a section of the bourgeois press in France and used to back up claims that the London ESF as a whole was ‘anti-French’. The Nouvel Observateur and the Journal de Dimanche were amongst those who used the left’s complaints to smear the ESF. The general line was: how dare those Europeans criticise something they know nothing about?

Perhaps it is not surprising that there is such an overlap between the left and the right - remember, the headscarf ban, enacted in the name of ‘defending secularism’, was pushed through by a government of the right.

Rightwing backers of this ‘secularism of fools’ are many indeed. Some of them claim that the attempt by female school students to “force religion into schools” (through their choice of headgear) is part of a plot to achieve “destabilisation under the guise of individualism” (Voltaire Network website). The same article whinges that “freedom of expression and the recognition of differences are privileged compared to other values, such as the authority of the master, the mission to educate and the emancipation [!] of the person”. It insists that, “to a certain extent, secularism and human rights are contradictory”.

That is indeed true of the ‘secularism’ being enforced in state schools in France, but it is most certainly not the case with the genuine article - the democratic version upheld by Marxists.

Muslims and secularism

Is it true, as the SWP seems to believe, that secularism and religious practice are polar opposites? That to demand secularity is to marginalise believers or even to join in the islamophobia of Bush and Blair? Absolutely not. Genuine secularism enshrines the equality of citizens irrespective of their faith or lack of faith. It rejects the notion that a particular religion, religious institution or philosophy should be treated in a privileged way compared to others.

Thus secularism does indeed mean that neither religion in general nor a particular religion must be promoted by the state. To this end there must be a complete separation of church and state, of church and school.

But it also means that religious freedom, including the freedom of religious expression, must be guaranteed (the right to dress according to one’s religion is clearly a part of that). Without freedom of religious expression it is self-evident that equality is not possible - and neither is secularism.

The idea that socialists should refrain from proposing such a secularism within Respect or the anti-war movement is a baffling one. On the contrary, we should do so with the confident expectation that muslims - or followers of any religion, for that matter - can easily be won to accept it. This was clear from the contributions of two of the muslim speakers at the ESF workshop.

Salma Yaqoob was introduced by the French chair as belonging to Respect, the “pro-hijab party” - a remark she immediately repudiated. While she insists on the right to wear the hijab for herself, “I am equally opposed to the imposition of the veil”, as in Iran and Saudi Arabia. There it is the “right not to be covered” that is banned. In both cases “a woman herself is not free to choose”.

Salma went on to dismiss the notion that muslim women like herself “need to be rescued from our own oppression - that we are ‘too backward’ to recognise it for ourselves”. In fact muslim women are “caught between two extremes”: men who wish to impose a certain lifestyle upon them and those, as in France, who wish to ban their chosen attire.

In similar vein Ragad Altikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain referred to the “misguided, but well intentioned people” who believe women who wear the veil are oppressed. In fact “we wear the headscarf through choice, but we can’t be forced to do so”, as in Iran. “A secular state should give the individual freedom of religious choice without interfering in that choice,” she concluded.

Principles

We communists fight for the democratic rights of all and, in particular, the rights of the oppressed, including those who are oppressed because of their religion. We welcome and encourage any resistance and fightback against such oppression. But that does not mean that we will suspend our criticisms of religious backwardness or cease condemning the reactionary leaders of religious institutions and movements. Only if we stick firmly to our socialist principles will religious people take us seriously and will we be able to win them to the cause of the working class.

Alex Callinicos, concluding his Socialist Worker column, notes: “There’s nothing specially American about the fact that many would react to their deeply demoralising economic experience with an intensified religiosity. This suggests that the real answer to the right is for working class people, whatever their faith or lack of it, to rebuild class organisation. And that’s not just a solution for Americans” (Socialist Worker November 20).

Quite right, comrade Callinicos. What a pity then that the SWP is against building Respect as a working class socialist organisation.

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