Letters

Orgreave enquiry

The Orgreave enquiry is, for better or worse, going ahead. It’s not what many of us in the National Union of Mineworkers thought it would be and its terms of reference are strictly limited.

We had thought it ought to extend back to Ridley and the plan to engage us, drawing up strategies and traps back then. We had thought it must include the pit closure programme and the anti-union knock-on. We had hoped it would show how unnecessary Margaret Thatcher’s endeavour was in the first place, which always had at base deindustrialise-deproletarianise aims.

We thought the events of June 18 1984 - the Battle of Orgreave during the miners’ Great Strike - had given the police licence to act with impunity, as proved by police riots in countless villages after and then at Hillsborough. We thought it would be judge-led, and would summon cabinet members, police inspectors, special branch members, cabinet papers, all documents from the period, etc. Instead it is chaired by Rev Pete Wilcox, who I’m sure is a decent chap, but hardly ‘Judge Dread’.

None of us will be summoned, so, if you think you’ve something to tell them, you have to write it online. That’s a wow for all the old lads in the bombed-out pit villages. Arthur wanted to act as a prosecutor, but that’s not being allowed, and the NUM isn’t even preparing a case, with our own witnesses, etc, and hasn’t written to all our past members who are still with us. So expect little. But it’s important that everyone registers to give evidence. Check online and submit your name, etc.

My own view on what happened at Orgreave and the flawed strategy which took us there can be found in my book, Ghost dancers - which is still available either on eBay, where second-hand copies are next to nowt, or else at a fiver plus post from me. We fought like lions that day, and succeeded in closing the plant, and that caused many knock-on effects - not least two national dock strikes, which took us to the cusp of victory. Nobody died, but it certainly wasn’t for the cops’ want of trying - they laid about us with murderous abandon with clubs and dogs.

David Douglass
South Shields

Double game

Lewis Nielsen, the Socialist Workers Party chief and ‘anti-fascist officer’ with Stand Up to Racism, who has a host of other SWP front group titles, is currently busily building for the next big event on the SWP calendar. That being the May 16 anti-fascist counterdemonstration, which will oppose Spanish resident and Irish passport holder Tommy ‘Ten Names’ Robinson’s self-proclaimed ‘British Patriotic Festival’ in central London on that date.

Nielsen is using ever more bellicose language and invoking the slogan of ‘No pasarán!’ and allusions to Cable Street 1936 and Lewisham 1977 to show his militancy. This is jarring, as simultaneously he is promoting the Together Alliance, which is a liberal, tepid popular-front organisation, deliberately and purposefully shorn of any militancy. Indeed, its main slogans are variations of ‘Love, peace and be nice to each other’!

So what is happening here? As usual the SWP is playing its double game, trying to appear militant by wearing its SWP hat, while simultaneously appealing to liberals and the likes of Zack Polanski when sporting its popular-front hat. Of course, the SWP has done this before - most notoriously in the Respect coalition, when they argued for ‘No immigration controls’ in Socialist Worker, while supporting immigration controls when they were in alliance with a certain Mr George Galloway.

SUtR certainly (and presumably Nielsen himself) liaises with the Metropolitan Police heavily over their counterdemonstration, as that is a legal requirement, and will have liaison officers working with them on the day. I am sure it will come as a surprise to these officers that Lewisham 1977 is being invoked by SUTR in speeches promoting the day. The fact is that there will be almost certainly no breaking through police lines and physically confronting fascists on the day.

Cable Street and Lewisham occurred in very specific circumstances, when the left was able to unite with the local minorities, especially youth, who were under direct attack by the fascists. This clearly will not happen in the centre of London in 2026 and Nielsen knows this. I mean, what ‘locals’ is he intending to mobilise on the day in Westminster? Bemused Japanese and Korean tourists? The Metropolitan Police, of course, are well used to tightly policing events in that area and haven’t really lost control of a demonstration in central London since the poll tax riots of 1990.

Of course, Nielsen wants to have his political cake and eat it. It will just lead to disappointments and yet more false dawns ... until the next SWP-sponsored demo is promoted.

Paul O’Keeffe
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Brothel politics

I would like to comment on the article by Judy Cox in last week’s Socialist Worker headlined ‘Sex work - can it ever be liberating?’ The subheading says: “Socialists support decriminalisation of sex work - and fight for a society where women aren’t treated as objects and human relationships are free from the market.”

I have a friend whose work name is Suzy, who has been escorting for nearly 20 years and has had no trouble with the laws surrounding sex work during that time. Most of her clients are married men in their 50s, whose wives are going through the menopause. Suzy also sees a lot of older men, the oldest being 84. She charges £160 for an hour and up to £800 for overnight - she sees one client a day for five or six days a week. Suzy has an accountant and pays tax like everyone else.

Sex work is just like being a car mechanic - some clients are better than others. Mechanics enjoy working on cars and look forward to meeting their clients - some even become friends. But I’m a bit sceptical about the call for the decriminalisation of sex work - it’s a bit like calling for the decriminalisation of all drugs. Far better to call for the legalisation of sex work, just like Marxists call for the legalisation of all drugs.

The Office for National Statistics says that each year 65,000 rapes are reported to the police. This equates to 100 rapes each year per parliamentary constituency or two rapes a week per constituency. In my opinion brothels should be made legal, as in Australia for the last 40 years, and should be licensed by local authorities. In Australia only women can own and run brothels.

The number of rapes would decrease substantially, as sex workers in brothels would teach men how to treat women, including the importance of women’s sexual fulfilment. At the same time, men who visit sex workers in brothels would get used to using condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

I disagree with Socialist Worker, when it implies that sex work will disappear under socialism. There will still be married men whose wives are going through the menopause. There will still be shy and disabled men. A large proportion of women will continue to only want sex as part of a long-term relationship. Another group of women don’t want or like sex. This will continue under socialism. Escorts and brothels solve this problem.

At the same time, many men are frightened of women. This fear has been made worse by the Me Too movement, in which men are frightened of asking a woman out, as they may be accused of stalking or harassment. In our atomised society, dating has become incredibly difficult. The old ways of meeting a partner don’t work any more. Online dating is a dead end, especially now that Match has changed its format to be like Tinder.

The article in Socialist Worker supports the call of the English Collective of Prostitutes for the decriminalisation of prostitution. The ECP should go one step further and call for its legalisation. It’s time to legalise brothels.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

YP delusions

The central dynamic in the struggle for a mass party of the working class is between Labourism and republicanism. In the Your Party central executive committee elections this took the form of the opposition of The Many (TM) platform and Republic YP (RYP). TM won 14 seats, while RYP ended with only one of its supporters on the CEC. This is not a reason for despair, because it was a real step forward.

The CEC meeting - held on Sunday April 12 - is another turning point in the short history of Your Party. Before commenting on this meeting, we must turn the clock back to the period after the CEC election results and before that Sunday meeting.

RYP is a platform set up to campaign for a YP party programme as basically a struggle between Labourite and republican programmes. It was rumoured that there was a communist platform, but if so, it was a dog that didn’t bark. We highlighted the fact that YP does not have an official programme. It is therefore a party in name only. We have only a proto-party with proto-branches, until the programme is agreed.

Many comrades don’t care about a programme because they don’t understand its centrality for any effective working class party. They want to stand in elections for minimum reforms and protest on the streets, which they could do equally well by standing for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Your Party has to offer something different to all the previous left party failures.

We declared our intention to remain in YP until it adopts a (Labourite or republican) programme at the first conference able to decide this. This means RYP is on board for the next year or so, seeking to transform YP into a real party with an agreed programme. This gives us objective criteria to assess the leave/remain dilemma, so we are not blown off-course by the vagaries of inner-party conflict.

Because YP is still a pre-party, pre-programme formation, then dual membership makes complete sense. It is important to draw all working class activists, in whatever organisation they have temporarily anchored themselves, into one political space, where we can openly discuss politics and act together to defend the working class. Once we have a programme, then we can decide what is the best organisational structure and whether dual membership should end. It is in this spirit of left unity that Republic YP has supporters who are also members of the Workers Party and the Socialist Party.

So it is interesting to look back on the CPGB’s “Assessments and perspectives”, which were “unanimously agreed at the March 22 AGM”. These perspectives recognised the various failures and disappointments of YP. Yet they consider that “Your Party remains a site of struggle”. Yes, a site of struggle between Labourism and republicanism. They add: “Despite that sorry record, Jeremy Corbyn’s The Many faction and its plans for Your Party promise little more than a repeat of what is a hopelessly failed model.” The “model” in question is the ‘orange constitution’ with a social monarchy and union.

However, clouding the issue between Labourism (TM) and republicanism (RYP) was Grassroots Left (GL), the largest opposition platform, which won seven CEC seats. GL was never a programmatic break with Labour, but rather the left wing of Corbynism. It was an electoral alliance, whose platform was mainly about the constitution of Your Party, with the fig leaf of abolishing the monarchy as if by magic.

As soon as the CEC elections were over, GL began to fall apart. The CPGB perspective explains that GL should not “be considered anything more than a temporary arrangement”. It was a flag of convenience, occupying the centre ground between Labourism and republicanism - a sort of halfway house, where communist groups parked their cars before driving off again.

It wasn’t a communist programme. It was a pact between Zarah Sultana, the Democratic Socialists of Your Party and a range of communist groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, the CPGB, Counterfire, Socialist Alternative, etc. If it did not win the CEC elections, then disintegration was predictable. What else did it have to hold it together?

Grassroots Left was an unholy alliance between anti-monarchists and anti-republicans, whose purpose was to defeat Corbynism electorally rather than by ideology and programme. It was therefore a barrier to the kind of mass republican politics and programme the working class movement needs.

This is why Republic YP did not support it. It was a distraction from the fundamental question of programme - a deviation into the politics of economism and the worship of spontaneous ‘action’. We will add GL to the list of what the CPGB perspectives called “a hopelessly failed model”.

With all this behind us, we await news from the CEC on the April 12 meeting. What is going to happen next and how will RYP respond to it? Watch this space.

Steve Freeman
RYP

Darker corners

There was a time when detective TV dramas relied on the ‘whodunnit’ premise - inviting audiences to play along, as suspects were examined and alibis unravelled. Then came Columbo - iconic trench coat and cigar in hand - revolutionising the whole structure. The brilliance of the ‘howcatchem’ was that the audience already knew the culprit from the outset. The intrigue lay not in discovering guilt, but in watching it slowly, inevitably, become undeniable. It was less about revelation and more about exposure - a drawn-out process of watching someone talk themselves into a corner they’d been standing in all along.

Which brings us, with only the slightest narrative leap, to Westminster. Because in much the same way, the idea that Keir Starmer could have ‘misled’ parliament over the appointment of Peter Mandelson feels like accusing Columbo of spoiling the ending. The facts weren’t hidden in some complex mystery: they were sitting in plain view. It didn’t require the ‘grown-up in the room’ - ‘Mr Forensic’ Starmer himself - to reveal the incriminating evidence. It was already in the public domain, the audience having casually absorbed it, while making tea. Mandelson’s past, his controversies, and the reasons behind the failed vetting weren’t secrets waiting to be uncovered: they were already part of the plot.

And to suggest MPs were somehow duped is to pretend they’re just extras in the show rather than seasoned participants in a series of sleaze and sordid behaviour. It’s less ‘whodunnit’ and more ‘how do we all keep a straight face?’ In that context, outrage feels performative - overacting if anything. After all, when the evidence is already laid out, the real question isn’t who knew what: it’s how anyone manages to feign ignorance convincingly enough to sustain the spectacle.

Buoyed by potentially disastrous local elections next month, the first political casualty of the latest deluge from the Epstein files may be someone unlikely to be actually named in them: Sir Keir Starmer. That hardly renders him innocent; appointing Peter Mandelson invites the sort of ‘guilt by association’ politics that TV thrives on. And, as Columbo (shuffling back into the room) might add, ‘And one more thing’: the files aren’t going anywhere. They’ll keep doing what the scruffy detective did best: casting a lingering, uncomfortable light on power’s darker corners. The audience, one suspects, won’t be shocked by what it sees.

Carl Collins
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