Letters

RIC left cover

The purpose of last weekend’s Radical Independence Campaign conference was …? Certainly, it provided a platform for various nationalists, ex-leftists, middle class ‘anti-establishment’ self-promoters to present their confused projects to a large audience. At least two and half thousand attended the event.

The struggle for working class unity to transcend capitalism did not feature in the discussions. (Or, if it did, it was only so it could be rejected in favour of national unity in the struggle for a ‘fairer’, less ‘unequal’ Scotland.) How can it be otherwise, when the project of promoting an independent capitalist Scotland, which is ‘business-friendly’ and competing on the world market, necessarily means splitting the working class in Britain along national lines? Scots workers are to be lined up to support their own bosses and their struggle for business on the world market.

The main effect of RIC’s referendum campaign has been to win workers to the Scottish National Party and help create a mass nationalist movement in the heartlands of the working class. The SNP now has 90,000 members. On the same day, in Glasgow, next door to the RIC event, Nicola Sturgeon, the new leader of the SNP, was addressing a mass nationalist rally of 10,000 flag-waving supporters. Despite the hype, there has been no growth in the socialist left or any rise in class-consciousness. Rather the opposite. The Marxist groups (Socialist Workers Party, Committee for a Workers’ International, International Socialist Group) who campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum are in decline. It would seem that the ISG - the SWP split which launched the RIC - has all but ceased to exist.

No structured debates or votes, of course. There never are at RIC events. That would tend to break the spell of unity and undermine the controlled show the organisers strive to preserve. The actual outcome, for all the promotion and waffle, is less than zero. No perspective for working class advance. No political programme, other than ‘Vote SNP and drive Labour out of Scotland’. As to the general election in the UK in 2015, who cares who wins, as long as Scotland has a strong voice to use in Scotland’s interests?

The ‘People’s Vow’ announced at the end of the event is largely vacuous and was not debated, but rather announced from on high. Who wrote it, we are not told. Not much else was on offer other than opening a few radical coffee shops. Certainly, no pro-working class political project was on offer and no perspective on how we can fight for the political independence of the working class from the forces of capital.

RIC’s actual purpose is to win workers away from their traditional loyalty to the British labour movement towards the independence project of the Scottish establishment, led by the SNP, and, in passing, possibly get some well-paid positions for RIC movers and shakers. In the coming period, RIC will lead no political fight against the SNP government and its attack on working class living standards. Rather they will attempt to provide ‘Nicola’ with a left cover for her attacks on the working class. And these attacks will be massive. The SNP government’s draft budget for next year has £500 million of cuts in government expenditure. This is on top of the massive cuts already implemented over the last seven years of SNP government.

Workers in Scotland, as in the rest of Britain, are facing increasing poverty and growing social inequality. It is not just that the SNP government has no answer to this; it is rather that they are actively pursuing austerity and attacking working class living standards and they are doing this in the interests of capital and the Scottish establishment. Yet much of the left in Scotland is calling for a vote for the SNP - a party that has always been hostile to the organised working class movement.

What is needed is a class-struggle socialist organisation that firmly opposes nationalism of all varieties and unites with our comrades to the south to provide a working class political alternative to the decay and disintegration of capitalism.

Sandy McBurney
Glasgow

Callous

Immigration is top of everyone’s political agenda at present, as the by-election in Rochester and Strood last week showed. It has become apparent that, unlike the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, none of the mainstream or other smaller parties welcome immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, and that should be newsworthy enough in itself.

I want to outline the dismay Rugby Tusc felt at the recent announcement by the UK government that it would not help fund ‘save and rescue’ of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, thereby condemning thousands to death by drowning - just to ‘protect’ our borders. We have challenged our local Tory MP, Mark Pawsey, on this, and we are not happy with his response.

This is not just a sense of outrage at the callous nature of such a government decision; it is also a sense of complete disgust at the prevailing establishment political attitude towards immigration, which has led to such a decision from the UK government, as Ukip pushes attitudes to the right and far right.

We await a reply to our second letter to Mark Pawsey MP outlining our concerns with his initial response

Pete McLaren
Rugby Tusc

Class act

Ukip’s Nigel Farage is the only party leader who talks positively about the working class. All other party leaders either say that the working class no longer exists or that it consists solely of benefit claimants.

It is therefore a pity that Labour leader Ed Miliband never speaks of the working class. No wonder Ed’s poll ratings are abysmally low. If Ed wants to win back the millions of working class people who have been taken in by Ukip’s anti-establishment rhetoric, he should come up with some answers to the problems faced by working class people.

For example, Ed should commit Labour to raising the minimum wage to £10 an hour without exemptions; the abolition of employment agencies; the banning of zero-hours contracts; a guaranteed 35-hour week; trade union control over hiring and firing; an end to benefit sanctions; a council house-building programme: and a guaranteed job for all young people.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Left Unity

Last week saw the post-conference meeting of the Lewisham and Greenwich branch of Left Unity, attended by around 10 comrades.

It is fair to say that, while everyone who was at the November 15-16 LU conference was pleased by the positive decisions taken, a good deal of discontent was expressed over both the continuing ‘safe spaces’ saga and the workings of the disputes committee.

Tony Aldis, the branch treasurer, who was chairing our November 22 meeting, is the author of the emergency motion from Lewisham and Greenwich, which condemns the unconstitutional suspension of several individual LU members authorised by the DC and calls for those suspensions to be immediately revoked. One of those affected is, of course, Laurie McCauley. Comrade McCauley, a supporter of LU’s Communist Platform, was suspended by Manchester branch for daring to write an article critical of some comrades in that branch, which was published in the Weekly Worker. Because comrade McCauley will not agree that any disputes committee investigation into the Manchester decision must be “confidential” - ie, it must be held in secret - the DC has refused to hear the case. So Laurie remains indefinitely suspended for more than six months for writing an article that others disagreed with!

At conference the majority accepted the ruling of the standing orders committee that the Lewisham and Greenwich motion was not a genuine emergency, and so it did not make it onto the agenda. Now our meeting last week has agreed that the sentiments contained in that motion should be put to the December 13 meeting of LU’s national council, of which two Lewisham comrades, Gioia Coppola and Toby Abse, are members.

Comrade Coppola in particular was also outraged at the behaviour of the ‘safe spaces’ protagonists, not least principal speaker Felicity Dowling. These comrades are so attached to the intersectionalist notion that detailed measures must be taken to provide a ‘safe space’ within LU for women, blacks, gays, etc (as if otherwise they would be constantly under threat), that they would rather have no code of conduct at all if the majority does not go along with their shibboleth.

Conference once again rejected the latest version of comrade Dowling’s proposals (only 51 votes in favour), preferring the straightforward code of conduct moved by the CP (65 votes). But because 36 comrades declined to support either, there was no overall majority for the latter, which was denied ratification by 79 votes to 68. Now comrade Dowling will try yet again to draw up a version of ‘safe spaces’ she can persuade next year’s conference to support and it was this that incensed comrade Coppola.

The usual turnout for Lewisham and Greenwich’s fortnightly meetings is around 10 or 12. Five or six of us attend regularly, while around a dozen others do so more infrequently. Amongst the latter are two comrades from Socialist Action, who are so involved in various single-issue campaigns that they often send their apologies. In fact they insist that we should reduce the frequency of our meetings to once a month, because there is so much to do.

In my opinion, this represents a peculiar view of the role of a party, which seems for them to be regarded as a formation that mobilises its comrades in support of existing campaigns rather than attempts to win leadership of the whole class. So debates about the kind of party we need, about the type of policy it should be armed with, are viewed as secondary questions - even though, almost without exception, our meetings are interesting and useful, combining hotly contested debates with reports from local and national campaigns.

Peter Manson
Greenwich

Oppressors

I am writing to you in response to a segment on this week’s political report. In it Jack Conrad discusses the Communist Platform’s position in relation to Left Unity’s safe(r) spaces policy. I will admit that I am not an expert on the specifics of this case, but I am not commenting on those specifics. I am instead defending safe(r) spaces in general.

Comrade Conrad’s main point was that as communists we need to confront chauvinist attitudes in the working class, not exclude workers who hold negative views. I agree that it is important to attack those views. This doesn’t mean that we have to allow racists, sexists and such into our areas. By doing this we are excluding many other workers.

If we allow sexist remarks to go unchallenged, we exclude women workers. We may not hear them leave, but, since the environment is hostile, they will leave and not return. Similarly with other oppressed groups: by allowing oppressive language within our groups we tell oppressed people they are not wanted. Would you stay where you weren’t wanted?

Jack Conrad’s example of a Bolshevik woman dumping tea after putting up with sexist abuse is a good story, but it speaks to a negative tendency on the left - the idea that oppressed people should be required to deal with their oppressors. Women are under no obligation to explain to sexist men why they are wrong: it is the job of men to stop being sexist.

We can include oppressors or oppressed, not both.

Ian Hartman
email

No 'safe spaces'

Can I take the opportunity of the fast approaching season of goodwill to advertise my mining history trilogy, Stardust and coaldust? It is an autobiographic look at the politics and industrial struggles of the last 55 years, as seen through the eyes of a revolutionary socialist coalminer. It features broadly all the major struggles and quite a few minor struggles of the miners, as well as a close-up focus of working relationships underground and in the pit communities.

It is set against the wider world backdrop of what could be seen as the world revolution in all its varied manifestations, from atomic bombs to the Angry Brigade, and how these struggles intersected ours. Sex, drugs, riot, strikes, revolution and not a few laughs and insights into larger-than-life characters along the way. Not the stuff for ‘safe spaces’ bookshelves, I expect.

It consists of Geordies wa mental, The wheel’s still in spin and Ghost dancers. The cover price for all three is £35.85, but they can be bought by you lucky comrades for £10 for the set, plus £6.50 postage - £16.50 signed (if you wish) sealed and delivered. Just send me your address and cheque to David Douglass, 193 Osborne Avenue, South Shields, Tyne and Wear, NE33 3BY.

David Douglass
South Shields