30.03.2023

Speech is political

Gaby Rubin reports on a storm in a very small teacup that was actually about what has always been a central principle for communists

The March 26 online aggregate of CPGB comrades was entirely dominated by the need to combat the left’s tendency to tail the liberal bourgeoisie and the controversy that arose in the Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers and Supporters Discord Server. It has around 200, members not only from Britain and Ireland but around the world. Problems began when two administrators (both CPGB members) excluded a participant over supposedly untoward remarks.

Though something of a storm in a very small teacup, the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee expressed its strong disapproval of that decision, because there was an issue of principle at stake: the principle of free speech. The PCC drew up a motion, which was presented to the aggregate and introduced by Mike Macnair.

The comrade stated that it was vital to understand the nature and importance of unrestricted freedom of speech. He outlined three reasons why the CPGB has a long record on this principle.

Firstly, sharp polemics are normal and are actually needed in order to strike down untruths. If there is not open polemic, errors cannot be overcome. In this regard he recommended the book Intellectual imposters (1998) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

Secondly, the need to overcome limits set by middle class “virtue hoarders”. Their demand for ‘civility’ means that incorrect ideas go unchallenged from below, or when challenged, critics are deemed rude, offensive, hurtful, etc. We must all be able to say in no uncertain terms that some ideas are complete rubbish.

Thirdly, by demanding ‘civility’, justified anger is completely ruled out - in some cases being classified a crime in and of itself. The labour bureaucracy typically uses polite bullying until a target snaps and then can be censured. In that way, concrete political questions can be covered up. The example of Jeremy Corbyn was cited. In the effort not to offend, Corbyn ended up going along with the witch-hunt in the Labour Party. Of course, it ended in thousands being directly or indirectly purged by the right over so-called anti-Semitism - eventually Corbyn himself.

In fact the whole ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ business is a big lie. Comrade Macnair explained that the reality was all too clear: the left is anti-Semitic because it is anti-Zionist, and therefore racist because it is anti-Semitic! What this does is to whitewash Israel’s colonisation of Palestine, because it is in imperialism’s interests to defend its key ally in the Middle East, Israel.

As an organisation, comrade Macnair continued, we have defended open political debate since our inception. He went on to describe the mistake over Discord in excluding someone on totally spurious grounds. When the PCC politely asked for it to be reversed, the administrators declined. The PCC therefore issued a public statement. The organisation has been campaigning for 40 years in favour of free speech and though the Discord group is called Unofficial it is clearly associated with the Weekly Worker and therefore the CPGB.

The PCC was determined to defend what is an outstanding record on free speech and certainly wanted to avoid charges of hypocrisy that would inevitably come from various enemies and opponents. Making matters worse, before the aggregate was due to meet one of the administrators attempted to close down the entire discussion group. As it turned out that failed, but there was a clear attempt to preempt the aggregate and flout our democracy.

Debate

First to respond was Vernon Price. He asked comrades to vote against the PCC motion. He argued that it repeats falsehoods and has been written to distance the PCC from accusations of inconsistency. He suggested that the PCC’s motion did not deal with the underlying problems: the server, while being administered as a private social space, was set up with the permission of the PCC, which did not ask about the rules for Discord, including the insistence that it is a “safe space”. Comrade Price said the PCC should have provided guidance to the administrators on this question amongst others. The PCC’s intervention was only triggered by an email from someone who is often hostile to the organisation, so the fault lies with the PCC for not giving help sooner.

In addition, went on comrade Price, we as an organisation need to maximise our output on social media. The owner of the server is not in Britain and has as one of its diktats “Keep it friendly.” The server would always be open to complaint and possible shutdown if it did not comply. With respect to the issue of trolls, he continued, they are people with no ideology to defend, and should be kept out. People who post in bad faith - eg, Zionists, who claim they are not racist - also need to be called out.

The next to speak was Ollie Hughes. He was one of the two administrators responsible for the exclusion. He also asked the aggregate to vote against the motion. Comrade Hughes stated that he was not in disagreement with the arguments outlined in Jack Conrad’s Weekly Worker article, ‘We cause offence’ (March 23). However, he felt that the CPGB leadership had not dealt with the concrete issue, which revolved around the technical limitations of social media. Such servers are not meant to foster formal political debate - indeed, they are not meant to provide a formal political platform. The Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers and Supporters Discord Server might be regarded more as a non-political social space for communists. We did not know what we were getting into when we began using the server, and there was always going to be a problem.

Comrade Ryan Frost then also spoke against the motion. He reiterated that Discord was a social space with its own terms of service, which the administrators had to adhere to.

Next was Jack Conrad. He argued that whatever rules Discord has are more or less irrelevant as far as we are concerned. Instead of ‘Keep it comradely’, etc, etc, we need definite political boundaries. We are not against exclusions. Organisations have the right to voluntarily associate or voluntarily disassociate. But we reject the whole ‘safe space’ ideology.

What was unfortunate in this case, he said, was that the administrators doggedly refused to go along with the PCC call for a reinstatement. That could have been done even with a public statement of disagreement. But it should have been done. Worse was the attempt, before the aggregate met, to ‘nuke’ the entire group - in the full knowledge that the aggregate was going to discuss the whole issue. Such behaviour is not acceptable.

PCC members are active in many organisations and fields. The CPGB works on the basis that all comrades are bound by the same discipline, share the same basic principles ... and apply those principles. If there are problems, comrades can and should ask their cell and/or the PCC for advice. However, even though the CPGB is at the moment a very small organisation, the PCC does not seek to micro-manage comrades’ work, concluded comrade Conrad. Initiative is encouraged.

At this point comrade Macnair came back in to say that the ideological problem here was that the Discord administrators were trailing the liberal bourgeois pro-trans arguments - a definite mistake. Comrade Hughes, in turn, claimed that he believed at the time that the Discord group was non-functional and so attempted to close it down on that basis.

After a short break it was agreed to carry on with the Discord discussion and to postpone the other parts of the agenda. Comrade Conrad stated that the most important thing was to ensure that the matter under discussion right now was fully debated - and hopefully resolved. He went on to say that the idea that a Weekly Worker Discord group could be a non-political space, that it was purely social, was obvious nonsense. Certainly the exclusion of a member of the group on the basis of ‘rudeness’, of being ‘an arse’, of ‘insensitivity’, was a political act. There are clearly political differences involved and the charges of ‘rudeness’, etc, were used as an excuse to avoid sharp debate. In addition, Comrade Hughes had taken the decision to close down the group unilaterally, with no discussion - an action which undoubtedly reflected badly on the reputation of the CPGB.

Amendment

At this point an amendment to point 3 in the PCC motion was suggested by Carla Roberts, - a participant, but not a voting CPGB member. This congratulated comrade Hughes on the amount of work he had done in setting up and running the server, but then said that he had made a mistake that he must now recognise. The comrade pointed out that we need to learn from this how we intervene in all spheres.

Comrade Anne McShane said that we must mould platforms to us rather than moulding ourselves. We should have rules of engagement as if we were in a meeting. The person who was expelled was never given a warning and was removed instantly by individual fiat. In addition the group was hardly moribund - there were people writing on it ... and there still are.

Comrade Farzad Kamangar noted that the PCC had asked comrade Hughes to withdraw the exclusion until it could be discussed, but he refused. This left the organisation open to the criticism of hypocrisy, which could be transferred to any issue in the future.

The question of ‘safe spaces’was then brought up again by comrade Price. He stated that the administrators were acting within the rules and they could not simply abuse their position. Comrade Conrad came next and stated that we must take a stand for free speech. Comrade Price had approvingly (?) cited the dilemma of Ken Gill, leader of the Tass union in the 1970s and a leading member of the ‘official’ CPGB. His party opposed the Labour government’s social contract (a wage-cutting agreement with the TUC). But his union wanted to go along with the TUC. In return for limiting wage demands at a time of high inflation, the trade union bureaucracy was given industrial courts, additional ways to recruit members and access to No 10 Downing Street. Gill went with the social contract, using the phrase, “The rules of my union say ...”

For comrade Conrad this perfectly summed up the issue. Communists always put principle first. He contrasted trade unionist politics with the revolutionary Marxist politics of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and the six Bolshevik duma deputies who opposed the inter-imperialist World War I. Principle was vital for them - in the case currently under discussion, the principle of free speech.

Comrade Stan Keable cited the use of tactics and discipline when looking at mandates in unions and other organisations, while comrade McShane came back in to stress that political struggles are not about the individual, but the principle you are fighting to implement. She agreed that perhaps we need to study how social media operate, so that we can intervene more effectively - maybe we should bring our own forms of social media in-house. She pointed out that Discord exercises control without any democratic processes.

Comrade Macnair then asked the meeting if any member wished to put forward an amendment. As the meeting was sovereign, members could accept any amendment put forward. Comrade Keable moved the first sentence of the amendment from comrade Roberts, which read: “The server has played a useful role in bringing non-party members closer to the organisation and the Weekly Worker, and the CPGB member who has taken the initiative to set it up and run it should be congratulated for doing a generally useful job, which makes it all the more disappointing that he chose to act in this way.”

Comrade Hughes said that unless the PCC withdrew its motion, or the aggregate voted against it, he would resign. This produced the charge of blackmail from comrade Conrad, who insisted that such a threat showed a refusal to accept criticism and was totally unacceptable.

As no other comments were forthcoming, a vote was taken on the amendment. It was passed, with only three members voting against. Then the motion taken as a whole, including the amendment, was passed by a clear majority.

Comrade Hughes then said that he was not resigning - it was “the organisation that had left him”. Therefore he would not be working within the CPGB henceforth. In response, comrade Conrad urged him to rethink his position - a request that everyone else at the aggregate agreed with, it seemed. The other two members who voted against the motion stated clearly that they would not be resigning.

Safe spaces and censure

CPGB aggregate resolution agreed on March 26

1. This aggregate reaffirms the long-standing position of the CPGB against no-platforming political speech. We are opposed even to no-platforming fascists (as opposed to organised, forcible self-defence against fascist forcible attacks). The evidence of the effect of the no-platform tactic since the 1970s is that it has been totally ineffective in preventing the rise to influence of the politics of the far right. Leftist no-platforming has also legitimised censorship by the capitalist state and its political agents, as in the campaign since 2015 to no-platform anti-Zionists on the ground of their alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ and thus ‘racism’.

2. We have also for a long time opposed forms of speech controls in the left in the name of ‘safe spaces’, ‘safeguarding’ and ‘civility’. Such rules hand power to officials to suppress arguments they dislike or to require them to be ‘toned down’, and hence drive towards the control of the labour bureaucracy over debate. Even where this is not the immediate effect, they produce splintering - as has been seen repeatedly in ‘movements of the oppressed’. Both effects were visible in Left Unity’s proposed “safe spaces policy” in 2013-14, which we opposed.

3. The Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers and Supporters Discord Server no doubt has a ‘social space’ aspect to it. But it is also and unavoidably a political space - one whose participants discuss politics. And, by virtue of its name, it is one which will be publicly associated with the Weekly Worker and hence with the CPGB. The server has played a useful role in bringing non-party members closer to the organisation and the Weekly Worker, and the CPGB member who has taken the initiative to set it up and run it should be congratulated for doing a generally useful job, which makes it all the more disappointing that he chose to act in this way.

4. It was therefore necessary for the CPGB to publicly express our disapproval of the decision of the administrators of the Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers and Supporters Discord Server to exclude a recognised participant on the grounds of violating this rule: “Keep it comradely! Do not discuss in bad faith, do not discriminate people on any basis, do not dox people, do not engage in verbal abuse, et cetera.” This in the context of a debate on the (everywhere controversial) ‘trans rights’ issue.

5. This rule is exactly the sort of approach we opposed in Left Unity and elsewhere. Every organisation has the right to decide its own borders, but this should be done on the basis of definite political principles, not ‘safe spaces’ speech policy.

6. The specific basis of the exclusion on Discord was (we were informed by one of administrators) the “last straw”, after a history of allegedly offensive interventions; that the participant in question responded to another participant, who had said that they found the discussion “difficult” because of the recent murder of Brianna Ghey, with “Do you get that angry when women are murdered every day for being women? But sure. Let’s close it down. You’ve made it pretty clear what type of culture of discussion you want.”

7. This is no doubt an insensitive and confrontational form of expression. But, since violence against trans people is a routine, and on a global scale, an everyday occurrence, the implication is that there will never be a time at which it is legitimate for someone who disagrees with specific trans rights arguments to disagree forcibly, since there will always be a recent event which makes disagreement distressing.

8. The Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers and Supporters Discord Server is, as its name implies, not an official organisation of the CPGB. Its name nonetheless suggests an association with us. And, since we have had a long-term commitment against speech controls of this type, we cannot avoid the fact that the decision of the group’s administrators is inconsistent with our political principles.

9. The refusal of two administrators, who are CPGB members, to agree to reverse the exclusion is more than to be regretted. If that individual had been reinstated, the CPGB administrators could still have expressed their reservations, even their objections. But things would have quickly moved on.

10. What is completely unacceptable, however, is the (failed) attempt to close down the Unofficial Weekly Worker Readers’ group. This was just one week before our CPGB members’ aggregate was due to discuss and possibly make a decision on this issue. There was no consultation, neither with the PCC, nor even the comrade’s own cell.

11. The comrade involved has undoubtedly brought the CPGB into disrepute. He has violated our principles and acted in an undisciplined way. They have also tried to preempt our democracy.

12. However, taking into account the comrade’s relative political inexperience, we very much hope that he will recognise his errors and that, taken as a given, this aggregate merely votes to censure him over his unfortunate actions.