Letters

SWP obsessives

This is a reply to some of the points made in the letter and article by Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP) entitled ‘RWT refusal’ (Weekly Worker 107) and ‘Can the SWP be reformed?’ (Weekly Worker 108).

There is much political froth in these, but nothing of any real political substance to convince us that we are wrong and the RDG is right on the question of the open letter to the Socialist Workers Party or its obsessive orientation to the SWP.

Indeed the letter and article speak volumes about the political methods of the RDG, which is in fact a mirror image of how their bigger political alter-ego, the SWP, conducts debates with left opponents and ‘brands’ them politically in the process.

I note comrade Craig ‘offers’ apologies for the unprincipled behaviour relative to the drafting of the open letter and then immediately withdraws this with the words: “If the RWT can explain concretely what ‘methods’ they are complaining about we would consider an apology. But at present we do not understand it.” I refer you back to my letter ‘SWP communists?’ in the Weekly Worker 106 and defy anyone not to understand the methods we are complaining of here.

In the same letter I write very clearly the Republican Worker Tendency’s political reasons for refusing to sign or agree with the idea of this particular open letter. Of course this puts us on an absolute political collision course with what we consider to be the RDG’s erroneous factional and entryist orientation to the SWP.

Then comrade Craig with no evidence whatsoever to back it up hints very strongly that we may be sectarian. What a method of branding those who have the audacity to disagree with you!

The same political method is carried disgracefully into the article by Dave Craig, ‘Can the SWP be reformed?’ In it the RWT is accused of “waving the white flag” to the SWP with what comrade Craig calls “a refusal to join the fight” (against the SWP, we presume).

I was expelled from the SWP in 1982 for fighting the diktats of the Central Committee in refusing to close down the Rank and File Building Worker group and paper - of which I was and still am secretary. This group has been in existence for 20 years, during which time we have continually fought the building employers on the sites and the picket lines, successfully defied state harassment and a high court injunction and been smeared by the left, right and centre. We took and still take the lead in the struggle against the horrendous corruption which has engulfed the Ucatt builders’ union in recent years. I am one of the most severely blacklisted workers in the UK. We have been involved in many other political and industrial struggles.

All other RWT comrades are involved in rank and file organisations in their respective industries and unions and have put themselves on the line many times. If we come up against the SWP in the course of these struggles and we have to fight them, as sometimes happens, we do this tooth and nail!

We have carried and waved a few banners and flags in our many years of struggle, but never the one referred to by comrade Craig. In fact it is painfully obvious that Dave Craig and the RDG are flying a political flag of convenience (with the CPGB?) at present. They also appear to be intent on waving goodbye to any genuine moves towards communist regroupment and unity by the manner in which they are conducting this debate.

It is time to start to truly explore and debate what all involved have in common ideologically and politically. This can regroup and unite us, not our very different political concepts of and attitudes to the SWP or indeed what the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks did in Russia - we are political light years away from their level of struggle. It is much more a matter of how we all perceive and relate programmatically to the many varied, but linked, working class and democratic struggles taking place in the UK and Ireland and internationally that will determine whether or not communist regroupment and eventual unity will be achieved out of the debating process currently taking place and hopefully ever democratically developing.

Brian Higgins
Republican Worker Tendency

Goodbye note

Otto Strasser was a fascist; Adolf Hitler was a fascist. There is no ‘lesser of two evils’ there. Joe Stalin was a communist; Leon Trotsky was a communist; and so was Lenin: there is no lesser evil there either. Yes, I am insulting everyone who struggles for communism, including myself. I insulted myself.

Human beings only become human beings when freed from all political philosophy, ideology, morality, spiritualism and religion. Freedom is the absence of uniformity, not the death of economic systems. Free your mind from other men’s ideas. Dream a little; breathe a little!

Gary Salisbury
Hertfordshire