Weekly Worker 579 Thursday June 2 2005

Letters

Labour and CPGB
Unlike Peter Manson, I see no evidence that Pete Radcliff, whatever the position of others in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, “favours the continuation of the imperialist occupation of Iraq for the time being” (Letters, May 19). Comrade Radcliff explains that the occupation cannot lead to a progressive outcome (“a real democracy in Iraq would be a threat to American economic and political interests”) and calls for working class organisations in Iraq to “force an end to the US-UK occupation though mass protests and with international support”. That sounds like unambiguous opposition to the occupation to me.

At a Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform meeting in January, comrade Radcliff even led AWL comrades in voting for an amended motion on Iraq that I moved demanding “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British and all other imperialist troops from Iraq” (Weekly Worker February 3). What enabled the comrades to support this motion - rather than Tony Greenstein’s original - was that it contained a critique of the reactionary role of islamist and Ba’athist forces and asserted the importance of supporting working class forces in Iraq. Not so very different from the CPGB’s position.

If the CPGB’s refusal to support Pete Radcliff continues a feud with the AWL that both sides have played their part in stoking, the process by which the CPGB selected Labour left candidates for support was simply inept. How on earth do you end up urging support for Harry Cohen - a mere 27 rebellions in the last parliament and no votes against foundation hospitals or university fees - while opposing Labour’s most prolific rebel, Jeremy Corbyn - who notched up 148 votes against the government? By applying an inflexible formula, rather than engaging in real politics - that’s how.

Opposition to the occupation of Iraq is a crucial dividing line in British politics. But surely you should have focussed on the candidates’ records, not the outcome of a terse phone conversation. If anything, you failed to scrutinise any Labour candidate’s commitment to genuine working class politics, taking it as a given that membership of the Labour Party qualifies you as a tribune of working class politics. So are Tony Blair or Gordon Brown working class politicians in any objective sense? And what would you expect on the occupation from the likes of Helen Clark, who reacts to electoral defeat by applying to join the Conservative Party?

On what did you base your assessment of Jeremy Corbyn? This man is a prominent leader of the anti-war movement and has been at the forefront of opposition to just about every imperialist venture by Britain and the US over the last 30 years. He failed to get back to you and in an article last year suggested the UN could organise elections in Iraq. Is that all you know about Jeremy Corbyn’s politics? The CPGB correctly calls for socialists and revolutionaries to engage with the left in the Labour Party. Reading the press of the Labour left and keeping track of the politics of its leading figures would seem a first step in such a project. You should not have to wait until a week or two before an election, anxiously awaiting answers to a questionnaire, to have a good idea of who is worthy of support.

And I thought Mark Fischer had conceded that many anti-war Labour candidates have “soft, pro-imperialist illusions in a ‘positive’ alternative of a ‘policing role’ for United Nations forces or even a coalition of reactionary Arab states”. But that, nevertheless, “under the concrete circumstances that apply in Britain today these candidates should be supported” (Weekly Worker April 7). However, that is precisely the basis on which you opposed Diane Abbott - 68 rebellions, including Iraq, foundation hospitals, university top-up fees and the anti-terror legislation.

Bob Marshall-Andrews (102 rebellions) even confirmed his support for unconditional and immediate withdrawal, but then added, “only when certain circumstances pertain”. I don’t know why he would not elaborate (and I appreciate that did not make your job any easier), but is there not a good chance that those “circumstances” might include not leaving a puppet government in place? Again, a familiarity with Labour politics might illuminate.

In the April 7 issue of Weekly Worker Graham Bash of Labour Left Briefing writes that there were 34 Labour candidates who both opposed the occupation and had opposed tuition fees and foundation hospitals. He adds: “I understand and agree with those who argue that we should not be actively supporting New Labour candidates who supported the war, tuition fees and foundation hospitals.” For a member of the Labour Party that is an extraordinarily strong expression of support for what he takes to be your tactical approach. Does ‘engaging’ with the Labour left not extend to discussing the politics of those 34 Labour candidates with your own columnist?

At the beginning of last year the CPGB published some ‘Theses on the Labour Party’ (Weekly Worker January 29 2004). In these theses you condemn “a wilful refusal to differentiate between the Labour left and right”. Yet that is precisely the trap into which you fell by arguing that it made no objective difference to the struggles of the working class and socialists whether the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott were returned as MPs.

George Galloway and a handful of others apart, the electoral results on May 5 for socialists outside of the Labour Party were abysmal. But the general election has damaged New Labour and (temporarily at least) opened up a number of opportunities. Some of those opportunities exist within the structures of the Labour Party. Socialists both in and out of the Labour Party should work together within the trade unions and working class campaigns to turn back the neoliberal offensive. And also to develop the kind of socialist politics that can directly challenge capitalism.

Of course the CPGB and other socialists will have many differences with the weak positions often taken by even the most leftwing and rebellious of Labour MPs. Dave Landau’s letter highlighted how mealy-mouthed were some of the sentiments in Jeremy Corbyn’s election leaflet (May 5). But wasn’t that the reasoning behind last year’s CPGB theses: “through our political programme … we seek to simultaneously challenge and offer an alternative”?

It is time for the CPGB to go back to first principles.
Nick Rogers
email

Programme
John Watson is obviously an upholder of leftist taboos (Letters, May 26). Like some Old testament prophet he sternly admonishes the CPGB for wanting to be in a “so-called ‘Communist Party’ along with anti-communists.”

How does he come to make this terrible charge? The Weekly Worker prints “miserable left reformist claptrap” written by Graham Bash. Therefore comrade Watson supposes that the only “logical conclusion” is that our “real political home” is in the “very same centrist and reformist swamp”.
I can well understand why comrade Bash might feel no need to answer such thundering nonsense. But, for my part, I would like to make a couple of short points.

The suggestion that comrade Bash is an “anti-communist” lacks any basis in fact. Nor can he be seriously categorised as a “left reformist”. As to whether or not he writes “claptrap”, again I think not.
We certainly have our differences. Eg, in the May general election the CPGB said vote only for working class candidates who call for an immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Comrade Bash advocated a vote not only for every vaguely defined Labour anti-war candidate, but, it seems, for Labour’s pro-war candidates too. I think he was wrong and we were right. Class and opposition to the occupation drew the right line of demarcation.

That said, I certainly want to be in the same party as the Graham Bashes of this world. In a Communist Party, founded on a revolutionary programme, which practises democratic, not bureaucratic, centralism. Under present circumstances that would certainly mean doing organised communist work in the Labour Party.

However, I also want to be in the same Communist Party as comrade Watson. Not because I envisage some kid of political non-aggression pact. On the contrary, democratic centralism provides the best conditions to struggle against opportunism - both of the left and right variety.
John Bridge
London

Labour and class
There can be no doubt that the recent election results have caused some interest. The victory of George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow against Blairite Oona King was an impressive result, although the result in Blaenau Gwent was actually far more impressive, with the overturning of a huge Labour majority at the expense of Dave Prentis’s apparatchik, Maggie Jones. Ms Jones initiated the expulsion from the Labour Party of the RMT. Her reward: the safest Labour seat in Britain, over the heads of the local membership who revolted en masse, as did the local people. But this was not a victory for the left, so much as the defeat of the Blairites.

Since my short letter appeared in your pages, there have been various responses, which have taken different positions, such as Ben Drake, Phil Kent and John Watson. Let me be absolutely clear: if the possibility of the conditions for the creation of a mass workers’ party to the left of Labour were to materialise, then it is my view that all socialists should participate. But these election results do not even remotely presage such a development.

Respect is at best an amalgam of particular sections of the community particularly animated by the war against Iraq in alliance with George Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party. This is no bad thing, but the anti-war movement was more than Respect. It was led by Galloway, CND and nuclear disarmers and millions of ordinary folk, and other left-of-centre Labour MPs like Jeremy Corbyn, the focus of our recent dialogue. In fact, Jeremy was as significant a leader of the movement as gorgeous George! Jeremy spoke several times at the large rallies in the USA.

In many ways George is as Labourite as ‘old Labour’. He is still in parliament and his victory was stunning, but his views on issues like abortion - well documented by other correspondents like Louise Whittle on your pages - show that he is anything but the ‘great leader’ Respect portray him as. Enver Hoxha he is not!

There are still outstanding issues about his position in relation to the previous Ba’athist regime in Iraq, the one that committed genocide against the Kurds and put down internal dissent with mustard gas, etc. Just because he boldly helped to lead the anti-war movement doesn’t remove those issues overnight. With Jeremy there has never been any doubt over things like that. Nobody can question that he is a principled and committed socialist and just because he didn’t get round to responding to your questions does not make him any less a socialist than George Galloway or than he was before the election.

The left cannot replace Labour, because it is incapable of understanding that the Labour Party and the class have grown up together. The specificities of the conditions of the workers’ movement in this country preclude such a development outside of huge organic developments. There needs to be a movement into action by the class on the industrial front, as there was in the 1960s and 70s for this to happen. There was also a moment when a left group was in a position of incredible authority and was a household name.

Who has heard of the CPGB? Who has really even heard of the SWP? Does their name appear on TV game shows? One group in the 1970s and 80s was so famous that that did happen and it is in fact this that makes what happened to them even more of a crime! In my view there has only been one group that was capable at a certain historical moment of forging that forward movement and they lost it: the Militant Tendency, which was - for all its programmatic inadequacies - in a position to change and influence events, as it had almost 10,000 members (a number we can all today only fantasise about!).
They led real, actual struggles in Liverpool and against the poll tax, but even then these were at a time of defensive actions. In the class and the party Militant had thousands of cadres and Peter Taaffe’s crime is therefore worse than those like Gerry Healy because he threw it all away!

One last point : the conditions that are needed for the creation of a new mass party are ones where the trade unions (still the bedrock defence force of the working class) are in a position of advance and mass mobilisation. There needs to be a wave of strike actions, and so on, in order for those conditions to materialise. We are a long way from that, as we are still fighting defensive struggles to stop the erosion of workers’ rights. But this is why there needs to be a two-pronged approach, in my view - of communists and socialists working together within and without the Labour Party. While socialists continue to leave the Labour Party in pursuit of building something that material conditions predicate against, there will be little hope of anything changing.

The left on its own is hopelessly inept at understanding the axiomatic place of the Labour Party in the psyche of the British working class and labour movement. They have shown themselves over and again to be incapable of grasping that planting-your-flag, auto-proclamatory gestures are pointless and a waste of energy. Respect did well in a number of places, but that was largely based on an appeal to a specific audience on a non-socialist, non-radical ticket.
Mike Calvert
Tottenham

Genuine George
I can’t believe how little you know about George Galloway. I have only met him a few times but have joined him in alliances over Iraq, from the Emergency Committee on Iraq to the Mariam appeal, and he was a friend of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea when they were really down. He has also been a friend and campaigner for Cuba and for the Palestinians. I have, thanks to Stop the War and Respect, been able to follow his activities more closely in recent years.

The man has a vast amount of political experience fighting imperialism and campaigning. He was a good constituent MP. He is very well read politically with a very sharp brain. His motivation has been to serve the oppressed, and this he has done now and in the past with vigour and commitment.

I remember in July 2000, standing briefly outside a hotel in Kensington, where the Iraqi National Congress were holding their AGM. George gave them a mouthful, hour after hour, accusing them of taking money from the CIA whilst Iraqis were dying in their tens of thousands at the hand of US imperialist sanctions and war.

Yes, there are other leftwing Labour MPs who have also been good campaigners and anti-imperialist. But George Galloway has the courage to be adventurous and try new tactics and new ventures. The Labour Party hoped that by expelling him he would be finished politically. But instead he helped set up Respect and got elected as an MP, independently of the Labour Party with a new party. George Galloway has worked with people in the front line of imperialist attacks. He has learned well from them.
He can take on the imperialists in whatever guise they come - whether it is the Labour Party, the British establishment, the USA or the rightwing media in this country. He has won the support of people around the muslim world and in this country and now the USA. These can number tens upon tens of millions.

He has admiration from anti-imperialists across the globe in vast numbers. He is a global superstar, not because he got lucky in a movie, but through his own political work and campaigning and relentless drive to obtain justice, particularly for the Iraqis.

Unlike the CPGB, George Galloway is accountable to millions of the oppressed and also his own constituents, not only to members of Respect. To be accountable to the masses is true democracy. He knows that he is a major voice against US imperialism and he represents socialists, revolutionaries and anti-imperialists from across the world as that voice. This places a great burden and duty upon him not to let down those people who are bearing the injustices of an unjust world, dominated by a corrupt superpower.

None of you are in that position. I wouldn’t even have the patience or will to do what he has done. George is a genuine socialist on the front line, unlike yourselves. After decades, the CPGB has failed to produce anyone of the calibre and integrity of George Galloway. When you do (not likely - ever), you can criticise, judge and condemn. In the meantime refrain, just to show that you have matured into adults. I am sure that George will never betray the working class or the oppressed - that would be your reasons to slander and condemn him. Until then, shut up, because with this constant undermining of Respect and Galloway, you are helping the friends and allies of imperialism.
Lila Patel
email

Now
Daniel Randall is absolutely right: ‘now’, is a “three-lettered word” (Letters, May 26). Sadly, that is where his wisdom ends.

Presumably, in order to somehow justify voting for the New Labour warmonger Oona King and those who say the election of George Galloway was a “shame, not a victory”, he resorts to facile semantics. He asks, how can the “use of one three-lettered word be described as Marxist?”

Elementary, comrade Randall. In the context of Iraq, the adverb ‘now’ should be placed after three other easily understood words: ‘British troops out’. Put together they form a slogan which is admirably concise and serves to distinguish us. From whom? From those, who either overtly or covertly defend their ‘own’ imperialist power.

According to overt and covert pro-imperialists alike, British troops have some kind of progressive role to play in Iraq. Therefore they should only be withdrawn when they have fulfilled their supposed tasks: ie, when conditions are peaceful and safe. Actually, a recipe for permanent occupation.

Communist are against fudge and pulling the wool over people’s eyes. The main enemy of the working class in Britain is not Saddam Hussein or Muqtada al Sadr. It is the ruling class in Britain. That is why we use the slogan: British troops out now! Three letters, one vital Marxist principle.
Enso White
emial

Advice, please
I live in a town with a Tory MP, a Tory town council, a Tory district council and a Tory county council. Unemployment used to be above the national average, but is now very low. At the same time, there are large numbers of mainly older males in their 40s, 50s and early 60s who are on incapacity benefit.
My town seems to have a lot of people from abroad. They are mostly young males from Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Portugal, who work on the land or in food processing sheds and factories. Opposite where I live is a house occupied by up to 15 young Polish workers, who pay £50 a week each for their bunk-bed accommodation. Across town there are many houses let out like this to young workers from abroad.

The UK Independence Party have two councillors. They were elected as Liberal Democrats in 2003, but joined Ukip after disagreeing with the Lib Dems’ policies regarding Europe. The local Labour Party is in a state of collapse. They were only able to find six candidates for the 11 local seats in the May 2005 county council elections. Even then, those six candidates were parachuted in from Peterborough and Cambridge. What worries me is what will happen when the economy goes into recession? The antagonism between local people and the workers from abroad will get a lot worse.

If a workers’ party does not fill the political vacuum caused by the collapse of the local Labour Party I think that Ukip and the far right will. Given its pro-muslim stance, I cannot see Respect being the appropriate vehicle for filling that vacuum. Have any readers of the Weekly Worker any advice as to what I should do in this one-party Tory state that is my home town?
John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

SLP in Scotland
Could Kenny McGuigan, who is obviously a Socialist Labour Party member, going by his support for Arthur Scargill, explain to me and the rest of the left in Scotland why his party - and I use the term loosely - continue to stand in elections here (Letters, May 26)? They do nothing at all during the times between elections then pop up from under their stones to split votes, parachuting candidates in, sometimes from other countries, because their membership is so low.

Before you are tempted, don’t even bother mentioning the result in the speaker’s seat - we all know it won’t happen again.
Dougie Kinnear
email

School election
Thank you for the campaign material that you sent for our school mock election. It was most appreciated and useful. We thought that you would be interested to hear that the Communist Party came second out of the nine parties participating, receiving 183 votes, behind the Conservative Party (391 votes). This total provided us with a comfortable second place, receiving more votes combined than Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the latter coming third.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank you one again for your support and wish you the best of luck in the future.
Joseph Pochciol
Oundle

Communist sport
Before addressing my main point, I think I should point out in reply to Dave Isaacson that the only way to get fair competition in European professional football, in a class society, would be through an all-European political settlement that gave the clubs to their registered fans and set a legal framework that ensured a flat playing field (Weekly Worker May 26).

I do not agree that sporting competition is likely to die out under communism. Firstly, an obvious feature of sport is how much cooperation is required to make it happen - it is a social activity that encourages social cohesion and friendship, off the field if not on it. Also it keeps people fit and healthy. This will be important in a world where work will probably not be arduous. I know a treadmill will do as well, but it lacks the excitement of competition, which people enjoy so long as they are not humiliated.

I accept that human nature is adaptable, but when Dave says under communism “our leisure activities will include forms of physical play … which will be based on enjoyment of ourselves, each other and the environment”, this puts me in mind of sex. Perhaps we will spend so much time copulating that we have no time for anything else. However, in class society sex and the choosing of life partners is definitely a highly competitive activity, and maybe free love and choosing our ‘child rearing and primary social carer’ by lot would be a great improvement - but it would definitely mean the end of romantic love.

For Dave mountains will not be climbed ‘because they are there’, nor will anyone swim the English Channel in January out of a bloody-minded determination to beat nature and prove they can overcome the cold, pain, fear, monotony and loneliness of the long-distance swimmer, because we will have no need to compete with nature. Similarly, what will people do who are suffering from life-threatening illnesses? Will they fight them? Presumably not, if the competitive spirit is only a characteristic of class society.

Lastly, do not better ideas replace less good ideas in competitive processes like science and government? Is all progress going to stop under communism? I expect people will be different, but it is utopian to make decisions now as to the true nature of human beings under communism. There will be many questions that only they can solve.
Phil Kent
Hackney

Competition
I wonder if Dave Isaacson thinks chess, pigeon racing and archery will disappear under communism? Communism can do away with the alienation, commercialism and psychotic egoism associated with competition under capitalism, but does it abolish competition as such?

Things often carry on far beyond their specific origins and assume new meaning. That has been true with many games inherited from classical and feudal society. Surely it will be true in the future too.
Suzano Tavistock
Liverpool

Gays must wait
Brett Lock seems to believe that Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation can be pressured into taking a left position on the gay rights issue (Letters, May 26).

There’s this wacky liberal theory that oppressed nations react to oppression by living exemplary lives, championing the rights of minorities within their societies. Communists, on the other hand, understand that the opposite is often true, and that the call for the right of a nation to self-determination is not a moral principle, but rather a political tactic. It is advanced in order to bring the class question to the forefront, for nationalism obscures the class question, tending to unite workers with their exploiters. The cultural level of a people can be no higher than the economic level that they have managed to achieve.

Outrage believes that it can pressure the PLO to change its policies on gays, but the truth is that the PLO reflects the views of the social elements who control the wealth, and they aren’t about to alienate them. The PLO does not exist in a vacuum, for it serves a class, and that class isn’t the working class. The only solution to the Israeli/Palestinian question would be a socialist federation of the Middle East and, should the PLO ever manage to establish a Palestinian state, it will be a state of, by and for the Palestinian capitalists, and the Palestinian working class will soon learn that its fundamental enemy is the capitalist system.

Brett, Weekly Worker readers know that I’m not squeamish on the gay rights issue, and I also take a very hard line against the age-of-consent laws, calling for their total abolition. However, I think Outrage’s timing is a tad out of place.
Michael Little
Seattle

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