Letters

Tony Cliff’s lie

In his article, ‘No popular front with greens’ (September 18), Jack Conrad lambastes Tony Cliff for having the rule, “Do not read the ‘sectarian literature’ of rival organisations”. Conrad scrupulously supports his argument with page references to Cliff’s autobiography, A world to win.

There’s just one problem: Cliff was not telling the truth. He did in fact read the far-left press - I have seen him doing so. As Conrad rightly points out, until 1968 Healy’s Socialist Labour League was bigger than the International Socialists and for a time was our main rival in the Labour Party’s Young Socialists. And in 1968 Cliff was enthusiastic to organise a fusion of IS and the International Marxist Group - presumably he had read up what their ideas were.

When I read the manuscript of Cliff’s autobiography, I told him he should cut that sentence above, because it was untrue, He didn’t take my advice. He was anxious that his followers should not get immersed in disputes between small groups. As he often did, he overstated his position for emphasis.

Of course, Cliff can be criticised for untruthfulness, but we all have our faults, After all, Lenin used to tell sexist mother-in-law jokes. Presumably we don’t imitate him in that.

Ian Birchall
North London

Gaza Italia

It surprised not a few international spectators that it was Italy, of all countries, that staged one of the first political mass strikes demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza and denouncing its government’s complicity. Italy, where political cynicism is high and voter turnout in general elections spectacularly low? Italy, where, since the collapse of the post-war political system in the 1990s, not a single party even claims to represent the working class - and where the majority of blue-collar voters now opt for the far right?

What is often ignored is that the Italians’ political (or anti-political) attitudes are not rooted in indifference. In a mental and attitudinal sense, if not materially, the ‘global south’ begins here. Italians across the spectrum feel justified resentment towards the EU and the US - a sense of being left out, if not just screwed over, amplified especially after the Eurozone crises and comparable to national sentiment in Greece. With declining real wages and considerably higher unemployment, compared to Germany, France, Netherlands, or the UK, Italians feel peripheral in the global economic order, despite living in an industrialised G7 country. Consequently, many intuitively identify with the struggles of countries in the global south. Opposition to western imperialism’s latest wars, whether in Ukraine or Palestine, is almost as likely to be voiced by the average rightwinger as leftwinger - regardless of the policies of parliamentary leaders.

But let’s not overstate the case. This Monday’s mass action (that rare occurrence - a political general strike) was no spontaneous outbreak of general resentment. It followed two years of genocide, tracked in real time on television and the internet. Moreover, it was called and chiefly organised by the most advanced section of the Italian proletariat: the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), an ideologically communist ‘grassroots union’ founded in 2010 from a merger of both communist and syndicalist predecessors.

Now, the USB is not unimportant - it had 250,000 members at its foundation and has grown since - and has some leverage in public transport, among agricultural workers in the south, in public healthcare, and in logistics and transportation labour. The workers who refused arms deliveries to both Israel and Ukraine in the past years were USB-organised port and airport labourers, and it was USB-organised port workers in Genoa who first launched the idea of a general strike for Gaza. The USB, however, remains far smaller than the mainstream unions - the CGIL, CISL and UIL. The CGIL, closely linked to the Democratic Party (PD), occasionally postures left to pacify its rank and file. It was approached by the USB to co-organise Monday’s strike, but declined - instead calling for a two-hour walkout (four hours for metalworkers) the Friday before.

But article 40 of the Italian constitution guarantees all workers the right to strike, regardless of union membership. On Monday, workers of all unions (and none) joined the mass walkout - so many that even the USB was overwhelmed. Estimates for Bologna alone, where I live, vary wildly from 10,000 participants (according to the police) to 100,000 (according to the Marxist-Leninist militant network, Rete dei Comunisti). Demonstrations blocked public transport, regional trains and even part of the motorway. Bologna’s Democratic Party mayor, who had only recently publicly denounced local pro-Palestine protestors as “anti-Semites” for passing near a synagogue (not even directly, but supposedly close enough to drive fear into the Jewish community) found himself compelled to hoist a Palestine flag from the town hall to express his new-found solidarity with the victims of genocide.

Similar scenes were seen in at least 65 other cities across Italy, involving hundreds of thousands. The motto was ‘Let’s block everything’, and this was achieved to a possibly unprecedented degree. The Italian bourgeois press largely depicted the strike as if its sole demand was recognition of the state of Palestine - that belated empty gesture by those with hands soaked in the blood of the genocide, such as Keir Starmer, and echoed in a motion tabled by Democratic Party delegates in Bologna’s local administration the morning after the strike. In reality, the strike demanded much more: a free Palestine, military protection for the global aid flotilla, an end to arms shipments and to military cooperation with Israel, and a halt to Italy’s complicity in foreign conflicts through trade or military agreements in general.

Local labour struggles, like those of Genoa port workers, were linked to opposition to European and western militarisation. The strike demonstrated the capacity of grassroots unions to organise mass action outside mainstream channels and the intrinsic internationalism of working class interests: “Drop the weapons, raise the wages” was emblazoned on every USB steward’s hi-visibility jacket, including mine, linking the impoverishment of those who still have work to the wars at our doors.

Contropiano, the paper of the aforementioned Rete dei Comunisti network, suspects that “something of enormous political significance happened, which probably marks the beginning of the end of social passivity”. Understandably, the main concern now is how to maintain momentum beyond momentary demonstrations or a single 24-hour strike. Demonstrations, after all, are fleeting: the biggest mass protest in British history in 2003 did not stop the Iraq war - because our side had no power. Likewise, even if the Democratic Party liberals now make pro-Palestine noises, while having no governmental responsibility, Giorgia Meloni’s government shows no intention of veering off the White House script.

The missing ingredient is a genuine Communist Party. Italy, like the UK, has no such thing, despite various outfits claiming the name. In both countries, there are groups that recognise this absence as a key problem, though their strategies for addressing it differ. In the UK, the CPGB views unifying the existing Marxist left, currently scattered among the proverbial 57 varieties, as the first step. In Italy, Rete dei Comunisti pursues cadre activity on three interconnected fronts: the social front (class struggle in workplaces and communities); the political front (unifying fragmented struggles into a coherent project of revolutionary transformation); and the ideological front (analysis, theoretical education and propaganda). Over time, it is expected that objective circumstances and subjective efforts will bring these fronts together, paving the way for a new synthesis - a genuine Communist Party emerging organically as a logical step and a necessity. The September 22 political general strike is seen as an early vindication of this approach: “It is increasingly impossible to separate the economic and labour aspects, as trade unions typically do, from the political, social and human dimensions,” Contropiano notes.

The left press worldwide has been justifiably enthusiastic about the strike, and no doubt British organisations will try to copy and paste the success, just as they have called for action to ‘bring Taksim Square’ or the Arab Spring to Britain. True, international coordination of struggles like the Italian strike would be a huge step forward. What value is there, after all, in certain British socialist organisations’ much-flaunted trade union links, if they are not already pushing these unions towards internationalist political action in this instance? Whether straightforward imitation attempts will bear fruit is another matter, of course, as circumstances in the UK are vastly different.

I would, in any case, urge readers of the Weekly Worker - especially the younger among them, whose practical experience may be limited, and who might benefit from teaching themselves discipline and tactical thinking - to get directly involved in organising Palestine solidarity action.

I will leave them with the most emotive moment of Monday’s strike from my personal point of view. Acting as a steward in the cordon walking ahead of the Bologna demonstration, we marched to the outskirts to occupy the ring road and part of the A14 motorway late in the day. Turning around, I saw thousands upon thousands pouring onto the motorway behind us, like a biblical exodus, as the sun set and ‘Io ero Sandokan’ - a 1974 song about the Italian partisan struggle - played on our van’s sound system.

It was cinematic - a moment I will never forget.

Maciej Zurowski
Bologna

YP ad hoc

The recent, second, meeting of Redcar and Cleveland Your Party, with approximately 20 attending, reflected the civil war presently raging inside the party. Both wings of the secret leadership factions were clearly not held in the same esteem as previously.

The overall situation was therefore ambiguous, it not being clear what our transitional organisation - a local socialist network of YP supporters - should be focused on. Plans for social media output were discussed and a new steering group was agreed, with the addition of two comrades onto a pre-existing ad-hoc body. A further team of three comrades were tasked with arranging a benefit gig with Joe Solo, a well-known singer-songwriter and committed socialist activist, who had agreed to perform locally.

A further agreement was made around supporting the ‘Newcastle Unites’ anti-fascist demonstration organised for Saturday September 27 to oppose a mobilisation by conveniently born-again Christian Tommy Robinson and born-again far-right Ukip leader Nick Tenconi (who doubles up as the UK mouthpiece of the rightwing Turning Point thinktank - in the news recently following the assassination of their fascism-lite ‘influencer’, Charlie Kirk).

The meeting formally supported the dozen organisations behind the protest - as opposed to the Stand Up to Racism static protest in the city centre. Of interest was the fact that the Teesside SUtR branch seems to be refusing to take guidance from the hapless mothership!

Paul Cooper
Redcar and Cleveland

YP steps

Thank you, Carla Roberts, for your informative article, ‘Straight from Momentum playbook’ (September 18).

You say, that the political statement is to be drafted by the “Independent Alliance MPs and the team around the MPs”. My impression is that the bulk of Your Party subscribers is composed of those from the left of old Labour, either recently or formerly disillusioned by Blair and Starmer - essentially socialists, which the Independent Alliance are not. These MPs have noticeably had little to say in political debates over recent months.

Then we have the first-time voters - this time added to by dropping the voting age to 16. They are there to be won. Both Jeremy and Zarah know how to enthuse them. We need to mount a drive in voter registration - an ideal task for new recruits. Previously, many young people would join the movement and gain experience through constituency and workplace activity. Too often, the pattern these days has been for university graduates to be recruited into supporting office roles - research, dealing with correspondence, speech writing - who may then be sponsored as a ‘safe pair of hands’ to be dropped into vacant constituencies, but with no local roots or experience of a world outside party politics.

Such insider Labour candidates will not win over the cohort of voters who had previously lacked a political home, and have largely stopped voting - this as a result of careerist MPs and party apparatchiks increasingly distanced from traditional trade unionist and community activists.

A cosmopolitan liberal elite, often absorbed by identity politics, have become the party insiders - the very people who lost the Red Wall. We don’t want to fall into that trap again. They will not win support at the doorstep, they will not enthuse hustings meetings, they will certainly not find the support of the more dedicated Marxists among us. Being directed by low profile Independent Alliance MPs will not put fire in the bellies of those who are the natural bread and butter of our potential activists and voters,

I have no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana could sit down with a scrap of paper and draw up a political statement in an hour or two. It is not rocket science. Just their names were sufficient to draw in 800,000 subscribers. They must swallow their pride and get stuck in. We all know most of what will be in there: restore benefit cuts, impose a wealth tax, close tax havens and tax loopholes, raise corporation tax, nationalise rail, mail and utilities, organise the mass building of council housing, expand green energy - especially cutting electricity bills - take action to reduce domestic violence and rape, abolish the House of Lords, reform the electoral system, prosecute those responsible for corruption and pollution. Most of that was in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos, which had more mass appeal than the 2024 manifesto.

We can refine these points and prioritise them in our consultative meetings. We do not need the MPs to control this for us. We will have more conferences before the 2029 general election to twiddle with organisational issues. What we need now is a framework to get us ready for the elections in May, and an agreed leader to draw us all together. No more delays and infighting!

Alan Faith
Cumbria

YP network

Sheffield supporters of Your Party have agreed the following emergency resolution:

1. We urge the national leadership of Your Party to:

(a) Have Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn publicly meet to discuss their perspectives for the new party in front of an audience of representatives of YP proto-branches who are free to ask questions.

(b) Publish all agreed structures, processes and decision-making protocols.

2. We also urge all those who are active around Your Party to:

(a) Build a national network of Your Party groups, to fight for a new mass socialist party, fighting first for:

(i) The creation of a membership structure;

(ii) The creation of official branches.

(b) To do this irrespective of the outcome of the current breakdown in relations at the top of Your Party.

Tina Becker
Sheffield

YP SWP

On September 11 Lambeth had its first Your Party meeting, where 150 people attended. The organisers - mostly from the local Corbyn supporters and trade unions - included some SWP members. A speaker talked about organising a left alternative locally and an open discussion followed. Then the meeting split into smaller groups to discuss different topics, including the democratic structure of the new party. There was a very positive atmosphere and much networking going on. The meeting agreed to set up a committee and have open monthly meetings, the next one scheduled for October 9.

Meanwhile, during the weeks before the event, the initial organising committee was amazed to hear that the SWP had organised their own meeting for the following day and had secured Zarah Sultana and Andrew Feinstein to speak - without telling anyone! It was in a venue capable of holding several hundred people and was a well-attended rally with standing room, only. An overflow hall was also used, where some actual discussion took place.

However, any good will was swiftly eroded, when the SWP announced from the stage that a Lambeth Your Party meeting would be held on September 25 (a proposal voted down by a meeting of 150 people the night before in favour of October 9). Since then the SWP has been using the announcement-only WhatsApp group and email list garnered by the Sultana rally to promote its meetings - and removing anyone who raises the already existing, widely supported initiatives in the borough.

The SWP’s insulting behaviour showed contempt for the local organisers and revealed its own sectarian nature, in that it is clearly determined to control proceedings. However, I think the main local organisation will stand firm and proceed to formulate democratic structures going forward.

Linda Beiden
Lambeth

Carbon economism

Once again, the climate lobby and their middle class commentators and Guardian readers want the working class to pay the price for their ‘net zero’ fantasies. They churn out endless warnings about tipping points and doomsday models, while ignoring the simple fact that we still need oil and gas - not just for energy, but as feedstock for plastics, chemicals, medicines and materials that modern life depends on. You can’t build hospitals, homes or even wind turbines without it.

When Kemi Badenoch (I am not a fan) talks about expanding oil and gas in the North Sea, that’s not just “drill, baby, drill” posturing: it’s jobs, it’s money in the pocket, it’s food on the table for ordinary families. More production means more employment, and prosperity for ordinary families. Once working people achieve a decent standard of living, they have the security to actually care about the environment more. Poverty doesn’t make people green: it makes them desperate.

But the reality at the moment is a lot worse for the last industrial workers of the UK. Up to 1,000 North Sea jobs are being wiped out every single month, sacrificed at the altar of net zero. Some estimates place that loss even higher, citing windfall taxes and stalled projects - Offshore Energies UK has warned of 35,000 jobs at risk and £12 billion in lost tax receipts, but we are not ignorant to the job losses of the past when it suited the oil companies. Harbour Energy alone cut 250 jobs, citing punitive taxation, while others in Aberdeen follow suit. The major chemical company, Ineos, has just pulled out of the North Sea, up to £3 billion being redirected towards the USA, Grangemouth and Lynsey oil refinery.

So the alternative to domestic production is not some clean, green utopia. It’s simply more imports of oil, gas and coal - only this time we let other countries pump, mine and refine it, while we pat ourselves on the back for being ‘pollution-free’. In reality, we’re just offshoring both the jobs and the emissions, outsourcing production abroad and congratulating ourselves on being guileless and green. They tell us to ‘follow the science’, while offering only a deception: Britain pretends to be clean, while others do the dirty work in our name. That isn’t environmentalism - it’s hypocrisy, and it places Britain’s working class on the chopping block.

I need to be clear: the so-called ‘climate emergency’ has become less about science now and more about control. It’s a political tool, designed to terrify young people into obedience with constant apocalyptic messaging, feeding them extreme anxiety, and killing debate. Step outside the narrative and you’re branded a heretic. Dale Vince, the green industrialist and self-declared saviour of the world, went even further, openly saying that “climate denial” should be made a criminal offence. Prison for disagreement? That’s not science - that’s authoritarianism (all hail our saviour).

The arrogance of pretending Britain can stop global warming, while producing less than 1% of global emissions, is absurd. Over in China and India, they are building fossil fuel plants every single week. Do the climate crusaders seriously believe shutting down British industry will change the climate? All it does is throw our workers on the scrapheap, while exporting jobs abroad - just as they did with the heroic miners, who fought tooth and nail against the UK establishment, only to see their industry destroyed and communities plunged into despair and other parts into a police state.

What we’re witnessing is class warfare in disguise. Middle class elites - and, yes, they are elites who can afford green virtue-signalling. They don’t worry about mass redundancies or where the next wage is coming from. For the rest of us, ‘net zero’ means job zero. And now, on top of that, we’re told to cheer, as our industries collapse and we become dependent on imported fossil fuels - a strategy that serves the global market, but not the British worker. You stand against the proletariat and with its class enemies. No wonder the working class are confused as to who stands with us these days.

The workers - the people who actually do stuff - say ‘Drill, build and raise living standards’. Prosperous workers can defend both their livelihoods and their environment. But there’s no green future without jobs first. We refuse to be the eggs smashed for someone else’s net-zero omelette.

Kyle Griffiths
Offshore shop steward

Energy fascism

In reply to Eibhlin McColgan (Letters, September 18), Tommy Robinson has done the left a favour in my view. He obviously sees himself as the leader of British fascism, although more ll Duce than Führer. If there is no fascist movement, obviously there would be no need for an opposition. Robinson is seeking to become the pole of attraction for fascism in Britain, and so the left should get down to building the opposite pole of attraction.

What is needed is a mass anti-fascist movement open to any person, group or party opposed to fascism. Initially, an anti-fascist movement is a defensive operation, unlike the struggle for power by the organised working class. Ultra-left sectarians confuse defensive struggles with the struggle for power of the working class, and therefore seek to exclude non-socialists from the anti-fascist movement. But the distinction between defensive and offensive struggle is the most important that a revolutionary can make. If you are a revolutionary and you want to exclude democrats and liberals from the anti-fascist movement, it means you don’t understand the difference. By the way, the leaders of Christianity in Britain have already condemned the Tommy Robinson movement for carrying the cross and misrepresenting what Christianity teaches. In other words, the churches oppose him.

We need to build a mass anti-fascist movement which exposes the stupidity and racist nature of the far right. In Britain, for instance, Tommy Robinson and people who think like him want us to take up a hostile, disrespectful attitude to Islam. Please will someone tell Tommy and the far right that North Sea oil is almost over, the wells are almost depleted. On the other hand, the Islamic nations control about 60% of the global oil supply. In other words, it is the Islamic nations which are keeping Britain afloat, not the other way round.

What do you think would happen if Britain started disrespecting the Islamic people and their religion, rather than showing tolerance? Tommy, wake up: your fascist movement can potentially do a lot of harm to Britain. The last thing we want is for the Islamic nations to put up our oil prices - or, worse, cut off our supplies.

The new British fascism is based on energy ignorance and does not understand that today it is mostly the Islamic nations which are keeping Britain afloat through oil supplies. So my message to Tommy and the far right is, ‘Do Britain a favour and pipe down’. The fascist leadership of the old British National Party once turned up at an oil depletion conference. They must have learned the reality about oil supplies, because not long afterwards the BNP went into decline.

British fascism is seeking to build itself up on two foundations: Islamophobia and anti-immigration. This is happening on the continent as well, but not only are the new British fascists dangerously ignorant about Britain’s energy situation: they, like the media, feed people an incorrect view about immigration into Britain. We are daily presented with a picture of an endless flood of people coming into Britain. But the truth about immigration is the opposite of what we are being told. Why is the Tory media lying to the British public about immigration?

In the year ending in December 2024, an estimated 517,000 people emigrated from the UK, according to provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics. Net migration into the UK in 2024 was around 431,000. Most of the people leaving are skilled workers, and we need to ask what is going to happen if we don’t replace them. The lies about immigration are being orchestrated by the Tory press to discredit Labour, so that they lose the next election. It’s all about getting Labour out. The result is that British fascists and Reform UK also benefit from the Tory press lies and distortion about immigration.

The task of the left is to get together and build a mass anti-fascist movement to oppose the fascists and expose the lies.

Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism

Local role

I found Mike Macnair’s article, where he concludes it with a discussion on the role of the media, very interesting (‘Endless embarrassments’, September 18). I particularly like his emphasis on the role of advertising in keeping the national and local press in business.

For the last 32 years I have had over a thousand letters published in the local press. During that time I was following the advice of former Communist Party MP, Phil Piratin, who, when he was circulation manager of the Daily Worker in the 1950s, told CPGB members to write regularly to their local newspapers.

Those thousand letters of mine have covered local, national and international politics. However, a change in editorial policy by the editor of the Fenland Citizen this spring means that I can only comment on local issues. There is no evidence that this change came from above. The problem was that correspondents were commentating almost every week on the failings of the Starmer-led Labour government: now letters are just complaints about potholes and our Tory MP, Steve Barclay.

The internet has hit local papers badly, with the loss of advertising revenue. For example, there are now large parts of Yorkshire where there are no local newspapers. But those that continue to exist are ‘fighting back’: they are again doing reports of county, district, town and parish council meetings.

Whilst young people are no longer brought up to read hard copies of newspapers, they are subscribing to online editions like ducks taking to water. Mike Macnair is therefore correct in explaining the important role of an independent national and local press in holding capitalist (and socialist) governments to account.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Boat murder

On September 2, the day after US drones had attacked a boat off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump announced in a post: “Be warned - if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you”. As seems to be normal for Trump, no evidence of drugs was produced nor was there proof that the boat was heading for the US - hundreds of kilometres away.

There is a good article on this event on The Intercept website (September 15) by Nick Turse: ‘Pentagon barred senior house staffers from briefing on Venezuela boat strike’, with a subheading, “A former Pentagon official says, ‘US forces went out and committed murder’ in the drone strike off the coast of Venezuela”.

The article contains quotes from several apparently knowledgeable people, alleging that this strike was murder under both US and international law. If they were drug smugglers, they could have been arrested. This was apparently exacerbated, when it was seen that some onboard had survived, by drones returning to finish them off - 11 people in all.

This reminds me of a book I read fairly recently, No god but gain: the untold story of Cuban slavery, the Monroe Doctrine and the making of the United States by Stephen Chambers (London 2017). In 1808 the USA made slave trading illegal. The poor souls in the south had to rely on their slaves to produce children for them. But Cuba was different. Because it was ‘owned’ by Spain, trading was OK: slaves could be worked to death and be replaced, relatively cheaply, by new ones from Africa.

Plantations, and therefore slaves, along with the trading, was financed by bankers and other financiers in the northern states of the USA - who would have thought it? Large amounts of money were made, in particular from sugar. There was a problem though: slave trading was illegal for the USA in theory, and it was also made illegal by the UK.

At that time neither the Spanish nor the American navy were anything like as powerful as that of Britain and one fear that the Americans had was that the British might grab Cuba from a weakening Spain. This didn’t happen, but in 1823 the Monroe Doctrine was established by the US.

In effect this was saying, ‘It’s all ours!’ The US wasn’t strong enough then to enforce this and, as Chambers points out, they did things like making public their naval campaign to defeat slave trading and piracy in the area - just joking, of course.

The US has moved to a position where it can enforce the doctrine and has shown it many times: in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, Nicaragua … and currently with its policies against Cuba and Venezuela.

Trump has now ramped up the doctrine, ‘It’s all ours! And we can do what we like’. A lot of Americans appeal to the courts - and good luck to them. But it now seems that open, public murder is fine - what are you going to do about it? And Trump goes on from provocation to provocation, carefree and caring less.

Most US capital is shoulder to shoulder and most European leaders are, like Starmer, on their knees in worship. It’s going to take a mass communist party to take on him and his criminal mob.

Jim Nelson
email