Letters

Two cheeks

I was very disappointed with Dave Lynch’s article, ‘Which side are you on?’ (July 21), which is a pretty scurrilous piece of journalism.

I am assuming the Robert Griffiths letter is genuine, as you appear to be quoting it from the 21st Century Manifesto website. The position of the Communist Party of Britain on the question of its members not registering as either supporters or members is crystal-clear, and it appears Robert is simply putting that on a wider record and for clear political and principled reasons. Nothing to do with “scabbing” - a disgusting allegation.

When the 2015 Labour leadership election opened, there was some ambiguity on the Labour Party website as to what a ‘registered supporter’ was really signing up to. The terms and conditions implied that if one was not a member of an organisation ‘opposed’ to the Labour Party, and agreed with the Labour Party’s aims and values, they were eligible to sign up.

As the CPB is not ‘opposed’ to the Labour Party, as per its political programme and strategy, Britain’s road to socialism, that could have led members to think they could and ought to sign up. However, on June 16 2015, the CPB wrote to all members advising that in fact the Labour Party has a different and tighter interpretation of what constitutes ‘opposition’ to the Labour Party, and made it absolutely clear that its members must not sign up to the Labour Party or, if they did, they should leave the CPB.

At that time and indeed since, there were wide allegations that ‘far left’ groups, ‘Trotskyists’ and members of other political parties were joining as Labour supporters, and this was being used to discredit and undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s subsequent election as Labour leader.

In my opinion, it is completely wrong and totally unprincipled for members of other political parties to attempt to join Labour for the purpose of voting for the leader. The CPB, entirely commendably, made that position clear to all its members - and now in communication to the Labour Party via its general secretary.

The CPB does argue that political levy-payers in affiliated trades unions, including members of the Communist and other parties, should be able to fully participate in the political activities of their unions, but that this is a position to be won openly and collectively, and not entryism or subterfuge. Writing to the Labour Party general secretary and publishing it on 21CM, is simply making that principled, open and democratic position clear to anyone and everyone.

The total numbers of infiltrators in the Labour Party are frankly going to be relatively miniscule compared with the hundreds of thousands who have joined Labour either as full members or supporters. Paul Mason on BBC Radio Four’s World at one (July 21) joked that if there are more than a thousand active Trotskyists, plus 500 anarcho-syndicalists in the entire country, we would be very lucky indeed. Add in the Maoists, we might get to 1,542.

Such numbers are going to have zero impact on anything. The point is to remove any possible excuse for the mass media or their political followers to distract or deny the true membership and supporter base of the Labour Party, their fundamental democratic right to determine their leadership and policies.

Lynch ludicrously attacks the ‘right’ of the Labour Party to determine its own membership! We may or may not have views on the role and purpose of the Labour Party and who it accepts into membership or affiliation, but fundamentally this has to be decided by the Labour Party itself, not any outside, factional, hostile, poisonous sectlets.

I personally thought it was strange and undermining to allow potentially transient ‘supporters’ the same weight in electing the leader as fully paid-up and often longstanding members. I agreed with the aim of making the Labour leadership more attuned, sensitive and outward-looking to both traditional and potentially newer constituencies of voters, but thought this element should be capped at perhaps 10% or 20% of the total result, to protect the sovereignty of the membership base.

I very much agree with trade union political levy-payers becoming individual members of the Labour Party, but what about the voice of the affiliated trade unions and socialist organisations as collective bodies? How far should non-Labour Party members be able to influence Labour leadership and policies? How far should the Labour Party seek to be a ‘parliament’ of the whole organised labour movement?

Lynch attacks the Morning Star in not vigorously opposing Neil Kinnock’s assault on Militant in the late 1980s. I well remember, as a member of the CPGB at the time, hearing on the radio Kinnock’s extraordinarily, electrifying excoriation of the Militant Tendency in Liverpool.

The “grotesque spectacle, of a Labour council, a Labour council, scuttling around the city in taxis handing out redundancy notices”, resonated with huge sections of the genuine left, who were disgusted at the total depths and depravity Trotskyism in practice had sunk to and, frankly, welcomed and supported their political destruction in the Labour and working class movement. We knew Kinnock would use this to marginalise the left in general, but that did not mean the attack on Militant was not correct in and of itself.

Communists, from Lenin in his Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder, have well understood that ultra-leftism is the counterpart of rightwing opportunism and capitalism in the labour movement; two cheeks of the same backside.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Not Grover

Sometimes a letter may persuade even if it isn’t evidenced. If it’s on an important topic it needs to be challenged, even corrected, and this is the case with Andrew Northall last week when he claimed that Jeremy Corbyn needs nominations to be on the leadership ballot. The high court judgment on the matter is due on July 28,and it turns on the interpretation of the party rules.

The relevant rule identifies two cases, labelled (i) and (ii) - the first when there’s a vacancy, the second when there isn’t. The rule, in full: “i. In the case of a vacancy for leader or deputy leader, each nomination must be supported by 12.5% of the Commons members of the [Parliamentary Labour Party]. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void. ii. Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20% of the combined Commons members of the PLP and the members of the EPLP [Euro parliament]. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.”

So if there’s a vacancy everyone has to be nominated, obviously; so the rule says that “each nomination must” be supported by 12.5%; whereas if there’s no vacancy the rule says that “nominations must be sought by potential challengers” (my emphasis); so no “each nomination must”. The wording had to differ because if there’s an incumbent they’re not subject to nomination: the nomination procedure is only for aspiring challengers. Correspondingly the incumbent is not eligible to take part in that procedure - they’re excluded from it by the rules.

In his letter Andrew mistakenly slides the two cases together: “[t]he very rule Mike quotes states that ‘any nomination’ must be supported by 20%, which surely means any candidate. If it was intended to mean potential challengers only, it would surely have said that, and that the incumbent could go through automatically”. Perhaps it’s going too far to call this an amalgam.

But then a few months ago Andrew asserted that “the publicly stated bases of the four key Moscow trials between 1936 and 1938 were in fact broadly correct ... [the] arguments set out by the prosecution and supported by the trial judges that former leading members of the party [had perpetrated heinous crime after dastardly crime] seem to be supported by the facts now available to us” (Letters, March 3). And Andrew’s middle name probably isn’t even Grover.

Jara Handala
email

Abused

Taking my cue from those Labour MPs who recently have suffered the deeply disturbing upset of being ‘shouted at’ during meetings, or even the sheer and abject horror of having had a brick thrown through the window of their (empty and locked) local offices, I wish to make a complaint. Again, precisely as with those abused and vulnerable souls, it’s a complaint that I intend to make available to our corporately controlled mass media outlets, as well as report for urgent investigation by the police.

For whatever mixture of reasons, I am someone who has absolutely no wish to comply with the ideology, let alone enable the practices, of capitalism. Nevertheless, over the course of my lifetime I have suffered repeated and indeed relentless harassment by our various governments precisely to do so - from both the overtly Tory as well as those in a purportedly ‘socialist’ form.

On many occasions, this harassment and persecution perpetrated upon my person by that string of governments (in close collaboration with most of their nominally ‘outsourced’ agencies such as the media, incidentally), together have extended to a level of ruthlessness I can only describe as ‘vicious-minded bullying’. By which I mean, despite publicly and sometimes extremely loudly expressing these principled and categorical objections of mine, those self-same establishment outfits have continued to bomb and butcher and maim, continued uninterrupted and unabated to invade and destroy their way around the world in pursuit of their blood-soaked and barbaric imperialist agenda.

In precisely this same vein, also I wish to lodge an official complaint that an entirely fraudulent presentation of those activities and practices on the part of the capitalist system (as being in the name of ‘democracy’ and consequently on behalf of ‘freedom-loving’ people, etc) has always caused and continues to cause extreme damage to my well-being; to create an exceptionally high degree of emotional anguish and psychic distress.

This is not to mention the utterly sickening fact that, by behaving in that manner and despite equivalent disgust, outrage and associated protestations from a huge number of my fellow citizens, those elites of ours have placed every single one of us at extreme and constant risk of being the target of retaliation from a variety of terrorists (the object of what, in their own terms, is ‘retribution and revenge’).

Of course, by ‘terrorists’ I mean those of a grossly deluded Islamic fundamentalist origin cum neo-medieval nature, but equally so those far less obvious forces within our own state who wish to suppress any disobedience, rebelliousness or other such ‘insurrectionist’ potential from freethinking and largely undefeated citizens, such as myself.

This entire life experience of mine has been nearly as bad as having been ‘shouted at’ by someone, or having been informed that a brick was thrown through the window of completely empty premises!

Bruno Kretzschmar
email

Vacant wit

If Corbyn loses are you going to run the following ad?

“Situations vacant: messiah for the left. The successful candidate must be able to elicit fawning, bordering on delusional, from those that should know better. They must be able to talk a good fight about ending Tory austerity, renationalisation and increasing NHS spending. Experience is not essential; in fact it is a crucial requirement that the candidate has done nothing concrete. Shameless hypocrisy is a requirement as the candidate must call for unity, but never have shown any in their past. References from Dennis Skinner and the SWP are a must. But he or she must be able to lead the Labour Party to electoral oblivion.”

Steven Johnston
email

Close it down

The whole Westminster system is a complete farce and a national disgrace. Nothing more epitomises this waste of time than prime minister’s questions. We may have seen Corbyn asking serious questions, sometimes from the public. And the prime minister gives a non-answer, with statistics about how they did better than the previous lot.

All this comes amid baying, cat-calling, shouting and barracking. The prime minister always ends up with the last laugh, along the lines that my party is better than yours. Bullying and undermining is part and parcel of the Westminster system, involving the whips, bribery and blackmail, all orchestrated by the BBC and the national newspapers. The kind of nonsense that goes on here would not be tolerated in the typical school playground.

In my never-to-be-forgotten 2015 general election candidacy in Bermondsey, I called for the crumbling Palace of Westminster to be closed down before it sank into the Thames. I alleged the Westminster system was doing such a bad job we needed a complete radical break. England desperately needs its own brand new, 21st-century people’s parliament. Given the deep division between London and the rest of the country, it should be set up in the Midlands.

England is still deluded by Westminster. Many Brexiters voted to leave the EU, wanting to restore Westminster parliamentary ‘sovereignty’. False expectations were stoked up by the same politicians, who enjoy a Westminster job for life in their mainly safe seats. The antics of Westminster MPs are now seen in the daily diet of Corbo-horror stories.

The long running saga of ‘Westminster versus the people’ is now in overdrive with a fantastical series of Corbo-outrages. It is better than The Archers. I am getting addicted to the drama of the Westminster establishment, aided and abetted by the national media, doing everything possible to undermine, denigrate and bully the people’s champion. I can’t wait for the next episode to find out what terrible thing Corbo has done.

The whole Westminster establishment, Tory and Labour, wants rid of him. They fear he is letting the ‘mob’ have a say in their exclusive members’ club. A broad united front is working together to undermine Corbo at every turn. It was shocking to hear that he had been throwing stones at the offices of Westminster champion, the honourable Angela Eagle MP, in the middle of the night.

It was reported that Corbo had ‘allowed’ a culture of bullying. Tearful women MPs were seen on telly and 44 Labour women MPs signed a petition against Corbo because “rape threats, death threats, smashed cars and bricks through windows are disgusting and totally unacceptable”. This was part of the big build-up for a feminist challenge to male-dominated Corbynism.

Ms Eagle led from the front. Yet this challenge collapsed when she stood down for Owen Smith, a real man with a family. The Westminster brand of feminism crashed onto the rocks of New Labour political expediency. This was exposed as another Westminster game, a weapon which Labour politicians were exploiting, not least in supplying Cameron and May with ammunition to taunt Corbyn.

Next came ‘Corbogate’, when Corbo sent a gang of desperados to break into the Westminster office of another Westminster MP, Seema Malhorata. My own theory is that Corbo wanted to bug her office, like tricky Nixon had done in the 1970s. He should have realised that MI5 had already bugged all the offices, and simply asked Theresa May at PMQs for a transcript of what the plotters have been up to. It would have saved time.

Instead of being pinned down in a hail of Westminster bullets, Corbo should go on the offensive. These MPs hate democracy and fear nothing more than being held accountable by their party members or their electorates. The people have to take matters into their own hands. We need a revolution in democracy. The people are crying out for it.

This is the message from the Scottish referendum in 2014 and the EU referendum in 2016. Corbo must address the democratic deficit and offer real solutions. On June 23, Scotland voted to remain in the EU and England voted to exit. The Scottish people must therefore have the opportunity for a referendum on leaving the UK to remain in the EU. Every democrat in England must support it.

Neither the crown nor Westminster will allow it. The Tories will oppose it. If Corbyn is truly the champion of popular democracy, and not just another Westminster rebel who eventually falls into line, he should immediately make this pledge.

He should declare in his campaign for Labour leader that the next Labour government will call an early referendum to ask the Scottish people if they want to leave the UK and remain in the EU. The same is true for Northern Ireland.

The position of England is different. England voted to leave the EU. England has to change its mind. Supporting the right of the Scottish people to self-determination will help to finally put the myths of Little England with its illusions in Westminster ‘sovereignty’ to the sword.

Steve Freeman
Left Unity and Rise

Fake solidarity

Activists from Teesside People’s Assembly ?and LGBT+ Against Islamophobia? took part in a successful anti-fascist action in Stockton-on-Tees on Saturday July 23.

A group of known far-right activists - including members of the racist organisations, Pegida UK, North East Infidels and the English Defence League - sought to exploit the recent tragedy in Orlando by setting up a Facebook page called ‘LGBT Stockton-on-Tees’ and announcing a march supposedly in solidarity with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender victims of that attack. Their purpose - not stated in their propaganda for this event, but evident in their political affiliations and recent comments on social media - was to portray Muslims as somehow responsible for the Orlando murders.

After being tipped off about the fascists’ plans a few days before the event, we contacted labour-movement activists, equality campaigners and organisations that work to support the LGBT community; we explained the march organisers’ real agenda to some of the people they had tricked into expressing support on Facebook; and we issued statements to the local media, which were reported by the Teesside Gazette? and The Northern Echo?.

On the day, we went along to Stockton town centre, distributed leaflets that promoted a positive message of unity and equality, and spoke to many local residents about the reasons for our counter-protest, which later involved occupying the space outside Marks and Spencer that the fascists had planned to use for their rally, and declining invitations to vacate the area. Around 40 comrades were involved in supporting our action over the course of the three hours we were there.

Fewer than 10 people actually took part in the fascists’ march with, at most, 15 people attending their rally when it eventually started. The fascists’ spokesperson, Bill Weir, blamed us for the poor turnout, claiming that the “media narrative” we promoted was “intimidation” and had put people off taking part. We are proud to have played a role in making the local community aware of these fascists’ history and their real political objectives in appropriating LGBT rights.

We remember how not so long ago the same fascists hated Jews and pretended to support Muslims, bringing Palestinian flags to their rallies, because they thought it would find them allies for their anti-Semitism. We remember how they also hated LGBT people and held them responsible for child abuse and claimed they should therefore be denied employment, imprisoned or even executed. More recently, the fascists switched to demonising Muslims and claimed that they supported child-grooming and terrorism. Then they brought Israeli flags to their rallies because they thought it would get Jewish people to side with their attacks on Muslims. They failed.

Well, now the fascists want us to believe they are advocates for LGBT rights and seek to ‘protect’ them from terrorism, which they blame on Muslims. Yes, that’s the same LGBT community they wanted to wipe out just a few years ago.

Anyone spot a pattern here? Hate and division. That’s all the fascists are interested in. Their bids for new allies are cynical and intended to incite hatred and divide people.

There’s no place for hate in Stockton or anywhere elsewhere around Teesside. If the far-right come back again, whatever disguise they wear next time, we will be here to oppose them and to counter their lies.

There are photos from the July 23 action on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TeessidePA. The leaflet we distributed can be downloaded at http://goo.gl/bkq1So.

Steve Cooke
Teesside People’s Assembly

Sick child

Esen Uslu tells us that “Erdogan distanced himself from the Gülen movement and started to demonise them. He sought support from the military top brass by letting them loose on the Kurds, and reversing the previous policy of seeking a solution to the ‘Kurdish problem’ through negotiations” (‘Erdogan’s counter-coup coup’, July 21).

Was it not the Suruç bombing on July 20, which killed 33 young Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) socialists destined for Kobanê, the immediate cause? Islamic State sent a message to Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he needed to halt assistance to the Syrian Kurds from the PKK and he responded. Was the attack on Gülen and the sudden reversal of the policy of seeking rapprochement with Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK really part of a struggle within the state? Operation Martyr Yalçin, which began on July 24 2015, was surely due to Erdogan’s increasing concern about the success of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria with the backing of the US. The targets were overwhelmingly PKK strongholds and very few IS positions were hit.

Erdogan has finally lost patience with the US, who are using the YPG as ground troops to attack IS. He fears that they want bases in Rojava, Kurdish Syria, to use against Russia and they will guarantee a Kurdish state to get them. Erdogan fears this will encourage the PKK in Turkey to join with them in creating a greater Kurdistan. Because of the situation in Iraq, that Kurdish region is also independent. But all Kurdish leaderships, Öcalan’s PKK, the Democratic Union Party (PYD/YPG) in Rojava and Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraqi Kurdistan are, to a greater or lesser extent, clients of the USA - Barzani is by far the most reliable and the other two maintain only a relative independence.

It is likely that the Turkish coup attempt was assisted and encouraged, if not actually directed, by US imperialism in response to Erdogan’s moves to seek rapprochement with Russia (he has apologised at last for shooting down the Russian jet) and with Syria’s Assad. He also sought to mend relations with Israel - all in the past few weeks.

At the time of writing the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is still without grid power since the coup attempt on July 15. CCN reported “several US defence officials” saying that the military were doing “prudent planning” in case it needs to move its anti-IS operations from the base. The base commander, general Bekir Ercan Van, several pilots who were actively involved in the coup and a police officer were arrested. This gives credence to claims that the US were actively involved in the coup. Erdogan had to circle Atatürk airport for two hours before landing and the parliament was bombed - as was Erdogan’s holiday resort hotel in Marmaris, which he had just evacuated.

Lending urgency to the CIA/coup plotters was the knowledge that the long-proclaimed imminent fall of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is at hand. The Castello highway, the last supply route from Turkey into the city for the rebels, has been cut since July 7 in Bashar al-Assad’s northern Aleppo offensive, which began in June 2016, involving some 40,000 troops. Significantly, it was cut in cooperation between Russian bombing, government troops from the south and by Kurdish YPG forces from the north.

Erdogan’s proposed alliance with Assad is undoubtedly aimed at a joint assault on the YPG in Rojava as soon as the other non-IS rebels are defeated, which may come very quickly now. So a large part of the motivation for the coup was to prevent the Turkish/Russian/Assad front developing - or to ensure that it happened if it was a false flag. Just as important were domestic counterrevolutionary considerations, equally held by both the army and Erdogan, to prevent the marrying of the struggles of the western Turkish working class and oppressed with the Kurdish struggle in the south-east for self-determination, as signified in the emergence of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the elections in 2015. Israel apparently has bought into the plan, as its concern in the region is always to ensure that no regional power gains hegemony and so become able to threaten Israel itself. Currently its target is Iran, allowing Turkey to became a stronger power in order to counter that seems to be their game for now. Israel is not simply the US dog’s tail.

Erdogan has charged the Muslim cleric and Islamist leader, Fethullah Gülen, with prime responsibility for the coup and is demanding his extradition from the US to face trial. Secretary of state John Kerry has not outrightly refused, saying it can be discussed if evidence is produced. The US is now desperate to limit the damage from the debacle of the failed coup and Gülen’s head on a plate may be a price they are prepared to pay. Gülen was an ally of Erdogan until 2013. He runs an international Islamist movement with upwards of 12 million supporters in many countries. His is apparently a more moderate form of Islam than Erdogan’s, whom he accused of running a corrupt system, forcing the break. He describes himself and his movement as ‎non-denominational Muslim. But it is also clearly more pro-US imperialist. His charter schools in the US get generous funding from the government. And he has connections with Obama and the Clinton Foundation, to which Gülen followers have reportedly donated between $500,000 and $1 million.

Erdogan had good reason to fear a successful coup. Almost all leading government figures were executed in the coups of 1960 and 1980. Prime minister Adnan Menderes, minister of foreign affairs Fatin Rüstü Zorlu and minister of finance Hasan Polatkan were executed on Imrali island in September 1961 and, in 1980, 50 people were executed, 500,000 were arrested and hundreds died in prison. In the ‘constitutional coups’ of 1971 and 1987, political parties were disbanded and elected governments overthrown by the decree of the army, backed up by the knowledge of the certain fate defiance would produce. Çevik Bir, one of the generals who planned the 1997 coup, which only required that infamous Turkish ‘military memorandum’, made the following chilling threat:

“In Turkey we have a marriage of Islam and democracy … The child of this marriage is secularism. Now this child gets sick from time to time. The Turkish armed forces is the doctor which saves the child. Depending on how sick the kid is, we administer the necessary medicine to make sure the child recuperates.”

The child of Islam and democracy had become very ill again and was in desperate need of the strong blood-purge medicine to be administered by the army by July 15, the coupists reasoned.

Erdogan has been moving against the supporters of Gülen in the army in recent years, as Gülen consolidated his relationship with US imperialism via the CIA and other agencies. The Ergenekon conspiracy in 2008 resulted in very long and complicated trials with indifferent results for him. In the ‘Sledgehammer’ plot in 2010, charges of attempting to overthrow the civilian government were made against four admirals, a general and two colonels and were far more successful in getting convictions.

The YPG in Syrian Kurdistan have become the foot soldiers for the US against IS in the region and, after the rapprochement with Russia and Syria by the Turkish government and the failed coup of July 15-16, may pay a heavy price. A joint assault on them by both Assad and Turkey is now in the offing, which Russia will be obliged to support, or at least ignore, to prevent the setting up of permanent bases against themselves in Rojava.

So the tables have now been turned and Erdogan has to seek a new ally in Assad and the acquiescence of Israel and Putin against the Kurds, calculating that it is no longer possible to ally with IS. Remember, this is the land of ancient Byzantine intrigues, and modern Turkish politics fully lives up to that heritage.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight