20.07.1995

Left relives World War II

THE LABOUR left is split over what to do in Bosnia.

The Benn/Skinner axis starts out by calling, ‘Imperialist forces out,’ and, ‘Let them fight it out themselves’. But scratch the surface and you find anti-German jingoism. Dennis Skinner argues that “the German high command” is scheming to establish “the new German Empire” and the Croats and Muslims are only their cat’s paws, while Serbia is Britain’s natural ally against German expansion. They are nothing but little England chauvinists fighting World War II again.

For Michael Foot and his supporters, even for the ‘radical hard left’ film director Ken Loach, Bosnia is like the Spanish Civil War, or - to quote Callum MacDonald, Labour MP for the Western Isles - more like “Spain, Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia rolled into one”. There is still time to stop ‘fascism’, however. ‘How?’ you ask; ‘International Brigades,’ they reply. ‘Workers?’, you say. ‘No, the United Nations’, is their answer. But the nations that control the UN are the biggest capitalist powers on earth. Why should they save us from fascism? Never mind - it is just Michael Foot’s old popular frontism without the workers or even the Soviet Union.

Foot believes Bosnia’s victory would be a victory for multinationalism - a way back to the old ethnically pluralist country of Yugoslavia. This ignores the fact that Tito’s fragile bureaucratic unity in Yugoslavia disintegrated into the barbaric rivalry and butchery we see today as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Yugoslavia never fully integrated the various peoples of the region into a common working class culture; it only contained the differences which exploded into reactionary civil war as soon as that unity was tested.

Now, separation is the only basis for bringing the peoples of the region back togther into a voluntary union. Any attempt at forced or arbitary ‘unity’ would be counterproductive, and hence reactionary.

Unfortunately for those who can only relate to quick fix politics there is no progressive side in this war to support.

Communists must fight for the democratic rights of all peoples if we are to win them over to socialism and genuine internationalism. Tragically, hatred and distrust is now so entrenched in the Balkans that only through separation can a basis be laid for the development of trust.

Phil Kent