Letters

Deserves better

I feel I must reply to Bob Pitt’s accusation of dogmatism (Letters Weekly Worker 113). Let me assure Bob that I have read his pamphlet with a mixture of sadness and anger.

In all humility I concede to an error. Maclean did not sign Erskine’s petition to Woodrow Wilson. Neither is Bob telling the whole truth. My point remains firm: almost two years before the formation of the CPGB Maclean was thanking Lenin and Trotsky for “services rendered” to the cause of home rule and “this year I mean to do more than ever for the ending of capitalism in Scotland - as elsewhere in the world - and the establishment of the socialist republic in which alone we can have home rule” (The Call January 1919). In true internationalist spirit Maclean still took this message to England, Wales and Ireland.

It is certainly true that Maclean was looking for the best Marxian organisation to air his views. Hence his membership of the British Socialist Party and then the Socialist Labour Party who, as Bob says, were anti-nationalist. Let’s dig deeper. In April 1920 Maclean convened a meeting of the Scots National League in Arbroath to commemorate the Declaration of 1320, symbolising a closer alliance with the nationalist Ruaraidh Erskine. In August 1920 Maclean’s Tramp Trust put out a leaflet, “All hail the Scottish Communist Republic!” Did this not coincide with the foundation of the Great British CP? Maclean wrote articles for Erskine’s paper (and vice versa) on Celtic communism. Therefore Maclean practised what he preached before and after the CPGB’s formation - and he preached the sermon of an independent Scottish Socialist Republic. Neither the BSP nor the SLP could deliver on this.

Pitt likewise distorts Maclean’s state of mind. He asks, in relation to Maclean’s charges against Rothstein and Malone, what interpretation I would accept: “Either they were politically-motivated slanders or Maclean was indeed suffering from delusions.” I will answer Pitt and say neither, for this reason. The Maclean-Gallacher fall out saw both sides sling muck at each other. Neither was innocent. At its root the fall out was political but became vociferously personal. Sadly, the Gallacher camp kept it going after Red John’s death in 1923.

Pitt offers no new evidence. As I said in my last letter, all that is being offered are the re-hashed words of Gallacher, Bell, CPGB newspapers and two British state doctors; all of whom were political enemies of Maclean. Hence my anger that these personal attacks are being paraded before us again in 1995.

We in the John Maclean Society are still keeping Maclean’s name alive. Surely Maclean deserves a political polemic, not a character assassination. Pitt’s pamphlet could and should have been the former. Pitt could have argued why Maclean was wrong not to join the CPGB in 1920 and so generated a debate that touched on the future of socialism in these islands. Instead Pitt argues that John Maclean deserves better than mythology and proceeds to consign him to the great psychiatric ward in the sky. That is a strange definition of ‘deserving better’, is it not?

Gerry Cairns
John Maclean Society

Better still

The remarks which follow are not meant to disparage a fine piece of work (Draft Programme Weekly Worker 112). They are just an attempt to make it better still.

Censorship is unconditionally condemned in both minimum and maximum demands. Trouble is, if we take this stand, we may find ourselves wasting time in broad front work with the most unsavoury and unrevolutionary people. Pornography is simple enough to distinguish. Pornography is about the using of powerless humans as things for the pleasure of powerful humans. How could we not want to ban that?

Religion - why not begin by simply asserting that all religions are cults? Then go on to uphold freedom of religious worship but to ban all religious usurpation of political power over worshippers.

I’d like to see the wonder-teacher who could organise an Urdu-language school that is also secular and equal for girls.

England, Scotland, Wales - the draft is still not clear. If there really is a British nation then we’d no more allow a Scottish secession than we would a Cornish or Cumbrian secession.

Homosexual rights a key demand? Hardly. Revolutionary individuals who happen to be gay should always be welcome. But gays who become 24-hour communists just to get a vehicle for their specialised agenda are a nuisance.

All these non-revolutionary features of the draft - on censorship, immigrant language schools and homosexuality - can be summed up as petty-bourgeois liberal humanitarian-ism. Please, leave that stuff to the Liberal Democrats.

Things missing:

The Communist Labor Party of the United States of North America had a lot of useful stuff about robots in their programme, and we might benefit from more about these in our programme too.

It won’t do to classify robots as just more labour-saving machinery. Now we’re seeing factories with no proletarians.

The CLPUSNA working class of the future will not be the unemployed. Communists should concentrate on recruiting skilled robot and computer workers. The railway and mine and metal workers were the vanguard of the old working class. The robot technicians will be the vanguard of the new working class.

John Blakiston
Montreal, Canada

Consistent CAG

Mark Fischer (Letters Weekly Worker 115) castigates the Communist Action Group for seeing Cuba work as an expression of ‘proletarian internationalism’. He half-quotes Lenin as asserting that internationalism consists in “working wholeheartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country...”

Lenin however went on to say: “... and supporting this struggle, this and only this line in every country without exception”.

As far as I am aware, the CAG regards Cuba as a revolutionary socialist country. So when the CAG regards Cuba work as an expression of its own “proletarian internationalism” it is being quite consistent.

Fischer takes exception to the CAG’s claim that, compared to others, it “makes a difference”, but does not the CPGB with its present programme also claim to make a difference?

If rapprochement is to make progress, let’s have criticism where criticism is due, not simply for the sake of it.

John Sandy
West London

Communist league

Two quick points. Firstly, with regard to Bob Smith’s comments on the idea of a communist league, as proposed by the Republican Worker Tendency. If such a league came into existence, then Open Polemic should not merely welcome it but actively encourage the CPGB to participate in it as part of the process of communist rapprochement.

Secondly, with regard to the RWT’s comments on programmes and democratic centralism. Democratic centralism can be understood as a tool for developing a programme, or participating in the development of such a programme within a left united front.

In this regard - developing a programme within a left united front - the RWT should look closely at the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) initiative, originally proposed by Red Action in their discussion document, It’s make your mind up time.

Raymond Hickman
Bristol