Letters

Bitter taste

It will seem churlish for me to point out that, whilst Peter Manson only mentions the “20-strong Rail, Maritime and Transport union brass band” (for a union, post-Bob Crow, that called off their three-day tube strike) on the October 18 TUC demo in London, the actual picture in his article is of my 17-strong PCS samba band (‘Boost to confidence’, October 23)!

The BBC website proclaimed the Public and Commercial Services union contingent led by my band to be the liveliest one there. As one protestor amongst us was quoted as saying, “It’s like Rio here!” The band was met by PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka at the start - subsequently re-elected unopposed. Even Labour MP John McDonnell (a good friend of PCS) chose to march with us - rather than the main Labour-affiliated unions.

Having a lively, louder samba band instead of a traditional brass band is not the only thing that makes PCS different from most unions. Three others are that we strike when we say we will, we genuinely believe in united action and we are not affiliated to the Labour Party - which rather explains these other two differences.

I agree with the main sentiments of Rob Rooney in his letter (October 30); in particular, his disagreeing that the backsliding union leaders are only reflecting their members. There are plenty of Unite, GMB and Unison activists (and members who’ve not taken action in years) utterly disgusted at their October 14 strike action being called off. As secretary of the largest PCS branch in the ministry of justice (MOJ), I was downbeat about the support for our action on October 15 when we heard Unison, the GMB and Unite had called off theirs for the day before. It was so obvious they were acting in tandem with Labour local authorities to save Miliband being called upon to condemn the action, so getting ready for these same unions, as usual, to urge their members to vote Labour in May 2015.

Some workplace reps were telling me their members were muttering they were going to strike-break and were fed up of PCS being left high and dry, as we were after the November 30 2011 pensions strike. We knew the healthworkers would get good and favourable coverage (especially given the midwives taking their first action for 132 years - even if only four hours) on the Monday, and now no-one being out on Tuesday would see PCS get next to no coverage on the Wednesday.

I gritted my teeth, issued my usual local strike newsletter and hoped the action would not be a flop. And on the day my members showed as much support for October 15, in worse circumstances, as they had done on July 10, when the NUT were also out. How does the CPGB explain that support if the members are so against action - the excuse used by Unison, Unite and GMB to call it off?

Unlike long-serving activists, most members are not debating what strategy of action will win. They do not even think it is likely they will win with a ‘day here, day there’, but they want to show their anger over pay and think there should be a fight. Most of all, they think there should be a united fight.

On July 10 over one million were out. Yet for October the big unions forced the action to be over three days (then pulled one of them) and, for reasons unknown, the NUT stayed out of it. Why do all these unions agree united action at TUC congresses (the call usually led by PCS, it should be said) and then pull it, even though their members want united action?

One reason and one reason only - getting Labour re-elected. Rob Rooney is involved in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. What a difference if McCluskey put his money where his big mouth is and acted on what he spouts. Labour will not come up with a radical agenda benefiting the working class, as Len demands, so Unite should look for someone else to fund. Whilst McCluskey talks left about supporting Unite members not having to pay the political levy to Labour, his NEC agreed to make up the difference from Unite funds, so the Labour Party does not lose any monies in reality. How utterly cynical.

Whilst loudmouth Len talks about urging Unite activists to join the Labour Party to ‘pull it left’, Unite presumably is part of the Labour conference arrangements committee softening or barring any motions actually committing Labour to anything remotely left or radical.

What a difference to the fortunes of Tusc it would be for Unite and others to put millions of pounds into them (though I accept Tusc should be individual membership-based and have democratically accountable structures and rules). Had this been done years ago, would Ukip be growing instead of Tusc?

So glad I and others successfully argued at PCS’s 2014 conference that we will not merge with Unite - thereby defeating the SPEW/SSP dominated NEC’s motion.

The major Labour-affiliated unions are losing members, but are so big they are utterly complacent. Instead of getting out there and seriously organising the unorganised, they just call off action, watch the subs roll in and hand loads over to the Labour Party for nothing in return - except some full-time officials getting to become Labour MPs and certain bankrollers getting knighthoods or being made a lord later.

The scant support Unison is giving the Doncaster care workers is a disgrace for such a huge and wealthy union. Does Unison not want any victories or are their sympathies more with privatising local (Labour) authorities, which do not want workers to get wage increases that will embarrass Labour if they win in 2015?

PCS has decided to become an organising union, not a servicing union. Servicing unions will not bring forward the next layer of young activists, given the alarming demographic of union activists getting older and fewer. Constantly calling off action, constantly breaking formerly agreed unity does not attract new activists. Putting all your eggs in the Labour Party basket only attracts careerists and opportunists, not class fighters.

I had been looking forward to the TUC’s October 18 demo since it was first announced, yet the action pulled on October 14 left a bitter taste. PCS, the fighting union, was pushed near the back, whilst the big unions arranged for themselves to be at the front. Unison, Unite and the GMB pulled action over pay, yet had the brass neck to dominate a march titled ‘Britain needs a pay rise’.

The Weekly Worker expressed surprise at the turnout, yet how many more would have been there but for the action on October 14 being called off? How could local authority workers march for a pay rise when they’d been stood down and taken out of the fight - for what exactly? That march was supposed to be the culmination of action over pay on October 13-15. Once again, major unions were not seriously mobilising for a high turnout. After all, a massive turnout would have given attendees the confidence to call for more united action, to call for Labour to back workers more. Let’s have a token march to look like the TUC is doing something, but let’s not make a rod for our own backs by challenging the lack of support for trade unionists by ‘their’ party. Meanwhile, as your article informed us, one million trade unionists were out in Italy days later.

Charles Gradnitzer’s article (‘Stage-managed spectacle’, October 30) on the woeful Labour Party conference, the lack of militancy from the unions and their failure to make any demands on ‘their’ Labour Party, states the actions of those unions in stitching up the conference agenda “demonstrates the futility of any strategy that calls on the unions to break from the Labour Party … to forge a second Labour Party.” Charles states those unions “act as enforcers for the party bureaucracy to prevent even moderately leftwing policy from being discussed”.

Well, Charles, doesn’t it depend on whether any alternative workers’ party is only aiming to be a second Labour Party or whether it will start with truly democratic and accountable structures and rules to ensure the members and activists control it rather than being a conveyor belt for well-paid careerists?

The last Labour government sacked 100,000 civil servants, massively expanded the private finance initiative, introduced the market into the NHS and was all for privatisation of our public services. After a landslide victory, they presided over and facilitated the wealth gap between the rich and poor widening massively, brought in regional pay in the MOJ and waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Better than the Tories? They certainly are at duping workers into thinking they are better off under Labour, aided and abetted by their unions.

I’ll not be voting Labour in 2015. I’ll be looking for any left alternative standing or will vote Green.

Dave Vincent
Manchester

Backward affair

The new leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Nicola Sturgeon, has made a very clever proposal that any UK referendum to leave the European Union should have the support of all four nations, and not just a simple aggregate arithmetical majority.

I think this should be supported, especially given the circumstances that all three Westminster unionist leaders (plus Gordon Brown) ‘won’ the Scottish referendum by promising Scotland would increasingly play a full role in the United Kingdom ‘family of nations’. It would clearly be wrong to take any of the nations of Britain out of the EU without their formally expressed consent.

Those who support the evolution of a full federal British republic would also presumably support this principle of consent for such a momentous decision to leave our common European home. However, it is a little odd to hear the leader of the SNP, who advocates separation of Scotland from the UK ‘family of nations’, be so passionate about Scotland remaining in the European ‘family of nation-states’.

It is equally odd to hear people like Nigel Farage be so passionate about Scotland not separating from the UK, but for Britain itself to leave Europe. Ex-banker Farage let his cat out of the bag in his call for a full English parliament. He is not in favour of a UK ‘family of nations’ or a modern multinational and multicultural Britain, but of a UK dominated by a Greater England, and especially London, the home counties and the south-east, one of the main regional bases of British finance capital and home to a large number of the capitalist class.

The UK Independence Party and the Tory right, increasingly headed up by Boris Johnson, are not interested in independence, democracy or any ‘family of nations’, but are motivated in keeping British finance capital ‘free’ and ‘independent’ from EU regulation and potential ultimate subservience to the European Central Bank and Berlin.

Separation from Europe under the terms and conditions set by people like Farage and Johnson would be a deeply reactionary and backward affair for the people and nations of Britain.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Unmasked

If I can précis John Rogan (Letters, October 30): US bombs will hold back the IS in Kobanê; this will save the Kurd forces from defeat; and on these grounds we should be social-imperialists and support the US.

This sort of reductio ad absurdum argument has been moving leftwards through the socialist movement. Left social democrats argued that Saddam was so evil that intervention was justified. More recently, the threat of humanitarian crisis justified intervention in Libya. Now the siege of Kobanê means that we should support further imperialist intervention. It should be noted, by the way, that at each new conflict the necessity to construct a legal fiction to justify armed intervention, by, for example, some sort of UN resolution, gets less and less. The imperialist powers intervene today because it is in their interest to do so and no further justification is needed.

The fact is that wars are never fought without a casus belli - for example, saving ‘gallant little Belgium’ in the 1914 conflict. The overwhelming responsibility of socialists is to go beyond the Lone Ranger stories that imperialism concocts to unmask their responsibilities - in this case the reality that imperialist domination is the cause of the rivers of blood that flow through the Middle East and that it will never deliver democracy and freedom to any of the oppressed nationalities and ethnic groups.

Above all, our responsibility is to unmask ‘our’ imperialism and explain that the democratic governments that unleash war across the globe are willing to unleash the same terror on the heads of European workers if this is what their class interest requires. That is the fundamental problem with the Danish socialists’ vote.

By the way, the Socialist Democracy analysis can be found at http://bit.ly/socdemsyria. As a sympathising group attached to the Fourth International in Ireland, we sent the analysis to International Viewpoint, but it appears to have been lost in the post.

John McAnulty
email

Humanitarian?

There is much discussion within the leftover whether there should be some kind of support for imperialist intervention to defend the Kurds in Kobanê against Islamic State. Those who think there should are often well-meaning, but they are missing the point. Imperialism has been forced to intervene in this dispute to protect its own standing in the region, not out of humanitarian concern for anybody.

Imperialism does try to present itself as being on the side of the angels, but the heavy weapons are not going to the Syrian Kurds: they are going to the Free Syrian Army and the Iraqi Kurds, both being reliable US lackeys. Imperialism is concerned with placating Turkish nationalism, not bringing freedom to the Kurds living in Syria or Turkey.

Of course, the inhabitants of Kobanê are in no position to criticise American bombing of IS - their lives are in immediate danger. But that is no reason for the left to alibi imperialism’s actions. Imperialism has shown itself to be incapable of providing any humane solutions in the Middle East and this present military escapade will prove the point once again.

Phil Kent
Haringey

Self-liquidate

Moshé Machover’s reply (Letters, October 30) to my critique of the identity politics he is promoting is unserious. He simply pleads that the people involved in promoting such groups as International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods are well meaning and do not have sinister or nefarious motives for their activities. I don’t doubt that and I never said they did.

That does not change the fact that they are strategically wrong and that they accept a key facet of the Zionist world view: that those who project a Jewish identity are in some ways uniquely ‘morally’ qualified to pronounce on matters to do with the Israel/Palestine question. Such a concession must necessarily include elements of chauvinism, as I demonstrated, and in the real world strengthens the hold of this Zionist meme. The canard that criticism of this concept is the result of ‘prejudice’ against people of Jewish origin is mimicry of Zionist practices - nothing more. He produces no evidence that this argument reflects any such prejudice.

In this regard, I was pleased to note that Shlomo Sand, one of the most courageous of Israel’s defenders of Palestinian rights, made exactly my point in his new book. He wrote: “... if those who call themselves anti-Zionist Jews without having lived in Israel and without knowing its language or having experienced its culture claim a particular right, different from that of non-Jews, to make accusations against Israel, how can one criticise overt pro-Zionists for granting themselves the privilege of actively intervening in decisions regarding the future and fate of Israel?” (How I stopped being a Jew, Verso 2014, p95).

In fact, the outright renunciation of Jewish identity politics by Sands and others of the same inclination marks them out as the true pioneers of a real break with Zionism and liberation of the Palestinians, through the self-liquidation of the secular Jewish identity, which has no real national content, though it claims such at Palestinian expense.

It is this progressive phenomenon, still in its infancy, that we should be engaging with. We should not be pandering to identity politics, even if many of its purveyors mean well. Meaning well means little where questions of class political strategy are concerned. Communists are the most consistent universalists, in the spirit of Marx’s demand, “Workers of the world, unite”, and we must seek to bolster genuine universalist trends, not ones based on particularism and exclusivity.

A full review of Sands’ important and thought-provoking book will be published shortly by Communist Explorations.

Ian Donovan
Communist Explorations