Weekly Worker 596 Thursday October 13 2005

Letters

Pro-life

Instead of calling for a renewed campaign for greater access to abortion (which most people can see is a tragedy), why not create a positive campaign for increased childcare, maternity leave, and work-time flexibility, along with creating support networks for pregnant women who are vulnerable?

Your preoccupation with abortion is a diversion from these socialist issues. It has been left to religious groups to provide support to pregnant women who are pressured to abort from every other source - the pro-choice left, it seems, has left women to the mercy of the abortionists and abusive partners who emotionally blackmail them into having this procedure.

Your defence of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (a vile organisation that profits from the exploitation of vulnerable women) is really quite shocking. Spiked are a rightwing libertarian grouping motivated by a selfish individualism rather than a concern for others. George Monbiot exposed them some time ago (among other things, they deny climate change). Yet you do not blanch at having such bedfellows, while people like myself who call for ways to reduce the number of abortions have been labelled reactionaries.

In Bournemouth a pro-life group provided an excellent care service for young mothers, expectant and post-natal, including full accommodation. Some of these girls had been thrown out of their homes by their fathers for refusing to abort. I am grateful such groups exist and I am deeply saddened that much of the left refuse to defend them, nay even denounce them for opposing abortion on principle. Yet you defend rags like Spiked and profit-making organisations like the BPAS (the service in Bournemouth, for your information, was provided to girls free of charge).

Or maybe you are just so deeply intent on your sectarian aims to belittle Respect (a leftwing organisation) that you have lost all principle and don’t care any longer who you join up with. Your current obsession is merely an excuse to smear and wreck Respect. I’m sure Tony Blair and the rest of the New Labour crew will be very thankful for your help.

Liz Hoskings
email

Liberating

Ian Woodland thinks I am being cynical by arguing for a break with Labour (Letters, October 6).

Quite the opposite, Ian. What is really cynical is to go on persuading people to vote for and join a party that is clearly contrary to their interests. I admit that in England, which lacks democracy, it is difficult for a new socialist party to take off, as it has in Scotland and most of Europe. However, that could change in future if PR is introduced.

In the meantime he and other socialists left in the Labour Party would best serve socialist interests by breaking with Labour. I did it after 40 years and I can tell you it is liberating!

Hugh Kerr
email

Hysterical

Phil Kent has revealed the hysterical sectarianism that underlies the CPGB’s ‘intervention’ in the forthcoming Respect conference with the bizarre, indeed insane, accusation that anyone who doesn’t vote for the CPGB’s motions is somehow guilty of “scabbing” (Letters, October 6).

There is a peculiar logic to bringing accusations of “scabbing” into disputes between socialists over who votes for what motion at a conference. Scabbing is something objective - it involves crossing an actual class line. For instance, crossing a picket line. Or doing something else that involves crossing a class line, such as Arthur Scargill’s attempt to invoke anti-democratic Blairite election laws against the Socialist Alliance a few years ago. Or actions like those of the Weekly Worker, in publishing a wretched excuse for an article a few years ago in response to the 2003 Daily Telegraph witch-hunt against George Galloway, that basically said that Galloway was probably guilty and that ‘the left should lead the condemnation’.

No doubt there are other instances that could be cited in recent years where some on the left have sided in a tangible, concrete way against the workers movement and/or the oppressed in the name of fighting ‘reactionary anti-imperialism’ - something that pro-war liberals more straightforwardly call ‘islamofascism’. The CPGB’s refusal to side unconditionally but critically with those fighting US/British imperialism in Iraq could tentatively be included in this category - though I tend to think it is slightly over-egging it to call it outright scabbing. Certainly, as I demonstrated before, Trotsky thought there were questions of deep class principle involved in such anti-colonial struggles - which is why he talked about “branding” those who refused to take a similar stance over Ireland “with infamy, if not with a bullet”.

Those are concrete manifestations of scabbing - siding with the class enemy. But in equating it with refusing to vote for particular motions at a leftwing conference, the CPGB is dipping into the same lunatic, poisoned well as the likes of the Spartacist League. Since it is perfectly legitimate to use physical force against scabs, I wonder if we will see the CPGB setting up Spart-like ‘picket lines’ at the Respect conference, or seeking to strong-arm Respect members who might be tempted not to vote for the CPGB’s motions, in order to dissuade them from “scabbing”? Because that is the logic. According to workers’ democracy, scabs forfeit their rights, and if political opposition is to be equated with “scabbing”, then what price the rights of those who disagree? And what price the CPGB’s pretence to stand for ‘democracy’ in Respect?

No, Phil, in voting against the CPGB’s motions, one would not be voting against ‘socialism’ or any other piece of motherhood and apple pie. Respect already is a broadly socialist, working class formation - the aim of a society based on common ownership and democratic control is part of its constitution. Actually I would like to see more leftwing currents involved in Respect - and I would like to see it adopt a more openly socialist, Marxist, position.

If the CPGB would break with those aspects of its critique of Respect that are simply reactionary and reflect anti-muslim bigotry - the ones I have pointed to - and involve itself in genuinely building Respect, then it would be possible to consider voting for its motions. But the fact that the CPGB motions to the Respect conference do not contain the core CPGB positions on Respect merely show that the CPGB is actually hiding its politics in terms of its real intervention. The CPGB’s core positions are not irrelevant to its intervention at all - they are the underlying motive for it. The lack of these positions in motion form is an act of monumental hypocrisy: therefore a vote for the CPGB’s motions would be a vote for sectarian hypocrisy. Who wants to vote for that?

Finally, Phil effectively concedes that I am right about the historical question re Ireland. The CPGB certainly did use the slogan, ‘For the IRA, against the British army’. Why then can’t it use a similar approach to Iraq: ‘For the Iraqi resistance, against the coalition armies’? Support for the Iraqi resistance (not support for any sectarian atrocities, but support for actual resistance to occupation) is Respect policy. It is a progressive policy. All he can use is the bloody shirt of the provocateur, Zarqawi, in a futile attempt to excuse the CPGB’s refusal to take this correct position over Iraq. But it doesn’t wash.

Support Respect policy and Respect’s personnel against attack from ‘left’ islamophobes!

Ian Donovan
South London

Middle course

On Iraq, the CPGB appears to be attempting to pick a middle course between the extremes articulated by Ian Donovan on the one hand and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty on the other. Ian ‘critically’ supports any terrorist atrocity that is or that he can delude himself might be directed against the imperialist occupation. He regards any condemnation of such terrorism or the programme behind it as “islamophobia”, no matter what the religion of the victims, or presumably the perpetrators. Elements in the Socialist Workers Party may feel the same way, but are more coy about expressing it.

The AWL thinks that because life is worse for ordinary people, and especially workers and women, under islamic theocracies like Iran than it is under advanced capitalism, imperialism must have some progressive role and should stay in Iraq and sort out the mess.

The CPGB finds this conclusion - a value judgment about the worth of capitalism - unpalatable. Therefore it feels obliged to deny the premise, an objective fact that happens to be true, as was made clear by comrade Houzan Mahmoud’s speech to Communist University. The CPGB would do better to challenge the validity of the AWL’s argument. The simple fact that US imperialism’s intervention in Iraq has caused chaos and misery which will get worse when it pulls out and the power vacuum is filled by political islam does not mean we have to say capitalism is better than political islam. Both are bad, and which causes you the most problems at any moment depends on who and where you are.

Obviously for most British workers, except those who were victims of the July bombings in London, capitalism is the worst problem and, as we live under capitalism, capitalism is our main enemy. If the collapse of capitalism leads not to socialism but to the dominance of political islam across the world, this may change. But to give support to either because of its opposition to the other is surely idiotic.

Zoe Elwin
Herts

No borders

Hundreds of people marched through Bolton on Saturday October 1. We were demonstrating for the right of the Sukula family to stay in this country, and against all deportations.

The Sukula family face the threat of deportation to Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which has been torn apart by years of civil war. If they are sent back, they face the prospect of torture and death. In the meantime they are suffering under a pilot application of section 9 of Labour’s Asylum and Immigration Act. Under section 9 failed asylum applicants can have their benefits stopped and any children under 18 taken into local authority care, even before they have made an appeal. This part of the act is being piloted in Greater Manchester, Leeds and north London.

The march was impressive and there seems to be a lot of local trade union involvement in the campaign. Bolton Metro Unison has voted to support any of its members who refuse to implement section 9. This is an excellent move that should be replicated by other unions whose members may be asked to implement it.

An impressive theme to the march was opposition to all immigration controls. Of course, if you are marching against all deportations then this is the logical conclusion. On the march members of the SWP joined in and led chants such as “No borders, no nations - stop all deportations”.

Let’s hope they carry this spirit with them to this year’s Respect conference - unlike last year, when they called on delegates to vote against opposition to immigration controls becoming Respect policy.

Dave Isaacson
Hebden Bridge

Left credentials

Last week, Aberystwyth was the chosen location for George Galloway’s continuing “mother of all one-man shows”. Around 350 people attended.

Unsurprisingly much, but not all, of Galloway’s talk centred on Iraq and American and British imperialism’s ransacking of the Gulf. In his usual style, he did a sophisticated job of exposing Bush and Blair’s hypocrisy on the question of democratic rights and reinforced the arguments surrounding the need for the immediate withdrawal of troops.

In the question and answer session a few interesting points were raised. One speaker from the audience suggested that Respect wasn’t orientated to class politics, but to ethnicity. This was refuted by Galloway who, he said, had made it “quite clear” during his initial introduction that evening that Respect was “firmly … orientated to the working class”. Indeed, the politics with which he and Respect had won a parliamentary seat at this year’s general election were “exactly the same as that of the CPGB’s politics in the mid-1930s”.

Interestingly too Galloway, on more than one occasion, vigorously claimed his leftwing credentials. “I am a socialist,” he confidently asserted. Personally, I have no doubt about his left Labourite credentials, but perhaps a more pertinent question from the audience would have addressed his opinion on whether he was a Marxist. Indeed, while acknowledging the need for workers to have not only a voice inside parliament, but also “a movement outside of that institution”, he made no mention of the need to challenge the state itself.

Throughout the two-hour event, George Galloway also spoke of the need for a new party. “The Labour Party is dead,” he said. “This country does not have a Labour Party any more, through which workers can voice their demands.” Of course, workers do need a new party but, given the numerous positive references to ‘old’ Labour, “which was born to represent workers”, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what type of party the comrade envisages.

Indeed, given his scathing remarks about New Labour, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that he should have voted with Blair and co to support the government’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. In reply to my question as to whether the bill will in any way help prevent further attacks on muslims, he himself stated it was unlikely to do anything whatsoever to protect the muslim community.

Furthermore, he didn’t mince his words about the need to maintain the fight for openness and against censorship. This flies in the face of Galloway’s decision to vote for the bill, when many people, including muslims, have stated it will tend to discourage debate.

Bob Davies
Swansea

Juries

I liked Bob Davies’s article, ‘Minority languages and communists’ (October 8). It provides a useful starting point for further discussion and elaboration.

However, I do want to take particular issue with the author on one issue - juries. Correctly he defends the right of Welsh-speaking defendants to use the Welsh language in courts. This is an elementary principle. Everyone should be allowed to use their mother tongue under such harrowing and stressful circumstances. Translation facilities should be arranged as a matter of course for all - whether they happen to speak Welsh, English, Urdu, Turkish or whatever.

But comrade Davies extends that to include the demand for all-Welsh speaking juries. This is a dangerous and unnecessary pandering to chauvinism and nationalism.

After all, would we support an English-speaking bigot having the right to object to jurors because they speak Welsh, Urdu or Turkish? Should they have the right to insist upon English-only juries?

Juries are in formal terms chosen at random. People are thereby tried by their peers and in a city like London there are many, many different people whose mother tongue is not English.

If their English is not good enough to fully understand everything that is being said, then the courts should provide interpreters. I would make the same argument for the deaf - they should have signers.

The largest possible range of people should be enabled to serve on juries. In other words we should defend the principle of the jury system against attacks … whether those attacks come from judges, the Blairites or nationalists.

Enso White
London

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