Letters

SWP booted

The excellent article by Carl Collins, ‘Anyone but England’ (July 16), just about summed up my feelings on the Socialist Worker editorial of July 8 on England in the World Cup.

Wishing England’s defeat in world and European football tournaments seems to be a peculiar and perennial obsession of the Socialist Workers Party. Variations of the editorial damning the England team - and by extension those who have the temerity to wish them well - have appeared in every Socialist Worker during every tournament since at least the 1980s.

In this the SWP have common cause with the racist right (though for different reasons). The fascists want England to fail because the team are heavily multi-racial in their composition. The SWP in contrast seek, ridiculously, to apply Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism to a professional sporting team. To workers, if they notice at all, this just makes those advocating such a stance appear odd and rather weird.

To the heavily culturally middle class SWP, football has always been treated with suspicion and incredulity and it is seen as an inferior cultural pursuit, compared to, say, the theatre. I was briefly a member of the party in the 1980s and recall being literally sneered at by my then district organiser (who I later found out hailed from an aristocratic background), when I announced that I attended West Ham United games and wanted to see the England team do well in competitions. “God! You don’t like football, do you?!” was her incredulous response when I told her.

Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, does it matter if workers in England back the England team? No, it doesn’t. Being agnostic or even ignoring the tournament altogether is a perfectly valid position, but actively hoping they lose due to some misplaced ‘anti-racism’ or ‘anti-fascism’ just marks you out as distinct and separate from the class. Maybe that’s the point?

Paul O’Keeffe
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Neo Spart nats

I’m writing this in reply to Patrick Sliney’s letter published in the Weekly Worker on May 28, under the title, ‘Spart change’.

As a result of the International Communist League’s reorientation, we renounced our long-held position on Ireland in favour of a united Irish workers’ republic. But Patrick Sliney’s letter upheld our old approach which was outlined in ‘Theses on Ireland’ (Spartacist No 24, Autumn 1977). This document was thoroughly debunked by comrade Perrault in the article, ‘Theses on Ireland: a centrist capitulation to British imperialism’, which we also published in Workers Hammer (No 256, September 5 2025). But, for all his angry words, Sliney doesn’t address our fundamental arguments. ‘Theses on Ireland’ is a centrist document that claims to offer a proletarian perspective for Ireland. But at bottom it amounts to a Labourite programme on the national question in Ireland that maintains the integrity of the United Kingdom.

For Sliney, any move towards Irish unity must be rejected in the name of working class unity. Forging unity among the working class, Protestant and Catholic, is crucial to the struggle for an Irish workers’ republic. Our difference with Sliney is over how to achieve it. For him, the Catholic Irish must renounce their desire for a united Ireland. As he sees it, their burning desire to drive the British imperialists out of the north is a barrier to working class struggle against capitalist exploitation. This flies in the face of history. It means that communists must set themselves against the centuries-old sentiment for Irish freedom that has animated countless revolts, including insurrections, against British domination. That sentiment lives on, from the 1921 partition which dissected the country, through 30 years of the ‘Troubles’ to the support for a border poll today. The deep desire to end the British occupation of the Six Counties is a powerful force for revolutionary struggle to this day.

Far from demanding that the oppressed Irish set aside the historic cause that has animated their struggle against British subjugation for centuries, the task for communists is to wrest it from the nationalist leadership, which has capitulated to the imperialists at every point, and to integrate it into the class struggle against imperialist domination of all Ireland - which today includes the US, the EU and the British rulers, and against their Irish capitalist lackeys.

The key to class unity is to win Protestant workers away from ‘Orangeism’, the reactionary ideology that chains them to the United Kingdom and their capitalist exploiters. Our position is not based on ‘love thy brethren’ moralism, but on the class interests of Protestant workers. ‘Theses on Ireland’ make no argument to win Protestant workers to an anti-imperialist perspective. On the contrary, it buys into the pro-imperialist ‘two nations’ theory; paints the ideology of Orangeism as progressive, and neglects to call for the abolition of the monarchy!

In a flagrant denial of the reactionary character of Orange ideology, the theses state: “The communalism/nationalism of the Protestants has a defensive character and is not the chauvinism of a great power.” What an utter whitewash! James Connolly would turn in his grave. He insisted that the Orange Order was founded so that “the Irish people might be kept asunder and robbed whilst so sundered and divided”, and that “the Orange aristocracy went down to the lowest depths and out of the lowest pits of hell brought up the abominations of sectarian feuds to stir the passions of the ignorant mob” (‘Labour and the proposed partition of Ireland’, 1914).

The theses buy into the theory that unionism is a national movement. This is flatly wrong. The ideology and purpose of unionism is the very opposite of a national movement. It was invented in the 19th century to prevent Irish independence from the empire. Today, it is weaponised to justify British rule in the Six Counties, as well as to prevent Scottish independence. Unionism is a political outlook, not nationhood. Scottish unionists are part of the Scottish nation. Ulster unionists are part of the Irish nation. Protestants in the north, like those in the south, are a religious minority within the Irish nation.

The idea that both Catholics and Protestants are one Irish nation is not a “neo-Spartacist” invention. It was understood by revolutionaries from Wolfe Tone, who named his movement the United Irishmen, to Connolly. Writing about the conquest of Ireland, he noted that the Catholic natives were “subjected and despoiled by open force”, whereas the Protestant settlers were “despoiled by fraud”. Nevertheless, regarding the Protestants, he wrote that “the rank and file of the armies of the conquerors” and their descendants “are now an integral part of the Irish nation” (The reconquest of Ireland, 1915).

Sliney’s anti-nationalism goes so far as to oppose a referendum on Irish unity. This is quite a statement in a context where sentiment for unity is high in both the north and the south. Sinn Féin dangles the carrot of a border poll before the Irish people as a consolation prize for having conceded control of the Six Counties to British imperialism in the Good Friday Agreement, in a repeat of Michael Collins’s betrayal in accepting the treaty and partition. The border is despised by the majority of Irish people, especially among the working class - indeed by pretty much everyone except hardcore ‘free staters’ and the far right. And, as our demand for a border poll points out, Sinn Féin is doing absolutely nothing to fight for a referendum, because to do so would mean challenging the imperialist overlords in London and Washington who dominate the whole of Ireland.

As our call for a referendum states, “A militant fight for a border poll will also hold Sinn Féin’s feet to the fire. They cannot campaign for a united Ireland because they must be seen as respectable and fit for government. To this end the party has made its peace with the British establishment, including by bending the knee to King Charles III, Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment. Sinn Féin has also cosied up to the US and EU by dropping its pledges to withdraw from EU military arrangements and Nato’s Partnership for Peace. Placing our hopes for a united Ireland in these people is a recipe for defeat” (‘Enough waiting: fight for a border poll!’, June 10 2025).

Sliney opposes any move towards a united Ireland, at least until after the revolution. He says he’s for winning Protestant workers “to a communist formation in which they can smash partition and unite Ireland under working class leadership”. But even under working class rule, the theses support a separate state for Protestants, to safeguard their supposed national rights. As Sliney writes: “We would hope that [uniting Ireland] could be done within a socialist federation of these islands. This leaves it open where the Protestants fall - we don’t seek to force them into a united Ireland: we are not nationalist irredentists.” A socialist federation sounds good, unless, of course, it’s being used to give ‘socialist’ coloration to what is in fact a unionist veto on Irish unity.

Sliney vehemently denies any similarity between the theses and the Militant/Committee for a Workers’ International tradition, but offers no argument other than that “to tar the old SL with the Militant position is beneath contempt”. Indeed, for Sliney’s (and my own) generation, who believed that the theses offered a proletarian perspective of opposition to British imperialism, the comparison is a bitter pill. But we must face reality. There’s a reason why the theses were studied by CWI comrades. Both organisations claimed to offer a “socialist” programme to unite the working class, Catholic and Protestant, on the basis of economic interests, while dismissing the national struggle. This is classic Labourism.

Sliney’s letter confirms his view that, by itself, the economic struggle of the working class can overcome the sectarian divide. He cites the example of the 2024 strike of 150,000 workers, which “brought the north to a halt”, and concludes: “Tie that into the massive disgruntlement in the south and you have the basis for class unity and potentially setting a flame which could ignite a spark for our class in Britain.” The one-day strike in the north was an impressive display of Catholic and Protestant working class unity. But economic struggle on its own, while ignoring the national oppression of the Catholics, cannot unite the working class.

The classic example is the 1919 Belfast strike, led by the Catholic socialist Charles McKay and composed mainly of Protestant workers. The Independent Labour Party had support among both Catholic workers and class-conscious Protestants, but it failed to support Irish independence. This was a fatal weakness. Winning Protestant workers to Irish freedom would have undercut unionism’s hold on them and helped break Catholics away from nationalism. But, while many of its Catholic members and some Protestants supported Irish independence, the ILP refused to adopt a position in favour of home rule at this crucial historic moment, for fear of alienating Protestants. This failure was a concession to Orange reaction, which was used to crush this powerful show of proletarian power. The strike ended in bitter defeat and was followed by violent pogroms against Catholic workers and Protestant socialists. The Theses on Ireland indeed stand in the Labourite tradition of the ILP in the past, and the CWI today. CWI members occupy leading positions in the trade union bureaucracy in the north. Far from overcoming sectarian division, the CWI’s refusal to oppose British rule alienates Catholic workers and cannot break Protestant workers’ allegiance to Britain.

Labourism means unity with British imperialism; it divides the working class and weakens its struggle. The unification of Ireland will require a massive upsurge of the working class, north and south, united in an anti-sectarian struggle against all imperialist powers - British, US and European - and their lackeys, the Irish ruling class. Today, faced with the growth of the far right, it is all the more urgent to rebuild the national and class struggles; to offer Protestant workers an escape from deindustrialisation and ruin under British rule; to undercut illusions in Sinn Féin; and to break the grip of the Irish Labourite union bureaucrats.

These misleaders are obstacles to the revolutionary struggle for a united Irish workers’ republic.

Eibhlin McColgan
Spartacist League Britain

Unite election

I am staggered that a paper of an organisation calling itself the Communist Party of Great Britain has nothing to say about the general secretary election in Britain’s second largest union, Unite.

On the one hand we have the ultra-British social chauvinist, the pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist Sharon Graham, who has not only done nothing to build support at a time of genocide for the Palestinians, but has wilfully obstructed the solidarity of others. Graham has pushed for an increased war budget and military spending, knowing full well this will mean cuts in welfare spending. She has attacked climate activists and those trying to stop further extraction of oil and fossil fuels.

On the other hand, there is her opponent, Simon Dubbins, who has a consistent record of support for the Palestinians and opposes increased military expenditure. Whilst Simon is no revolutionary, he is miles ahead politically of Sharon Graham, who has given next to no support to the Birmingham bin workers and who has authorised secret meetings with Reform.

What is wrong with you that questions of Trotsky and Kautsky are more important than present-day political battles?

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Follow SF lead

Sinn Féin is in the driving seat of a united Ireland. It stands as a dagger at the heart of the British colonial state - together with the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, pushing it towards dissolution.

The whole world would benefit from the demise of the British state, as its military, political, diplomatic and economic machinery, with its evil, worldwide reach, would cease to exist as the current, many-centuries-old war wagon for the benefit of the world bourgeoisie. It needs gelding and Sinn Féin is the veterinary surgeon!

England would emerge from its Arthurian slumber and Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland will be forever neighbours. Socialism is the next step for all four after the British state strangler is no more!

They’ve ruined the world with their class-division, apartheid nonsense. They are the high practitioners of human race division in whatever evil, multiple form it takes. So for the sake of humanity the British state must be put to the sword - not through mild-mannered independence elections, but through violent overthrow. But the political ground must be prepared and backed first, which is being done by the nationalist parties.

Let the workhorses do all the heavy work. We are waiting in the wings.

Elijah Traven
Hull

1905 dreaming

The archaic, so-called democratic system in Britain is tottering. Whilst a Bolshevik-style communist revolution is not imminent, a partial revolution similar to the 1905 revolution in Russia is possible.

Here is what it might achieve:

(1) Irish unity, where the British state suppresses the fascist Orangemen, takes the weapons from the fascist Protestant militias and ensures a ‘yes’ vote in the Six Counties.

(2) Disestablishment of the Church of England. Henceforth all religious organisations in Britain to have equal status.

(3) Defund and disband the London Metropolitan Police. Like the former Royal Ulster Constabulary, London’s police force continues its racism and misogyny. It’s rotten to the core and must be abolished.

(4) Henceforth the British army must swear loyalty to parliament, not the crown.

(5) Scotland to be ‘allowed’ a second independence referendum.

(6) The House of Lords to be purged of bishops and hereditary peers and moved to Manchester.

Then, the above achieved, we push for complete revolution and the complete appropriation of the land and assets of the rich in Britain, domestic and foreign.

K Sean
Kent Bolshevik

Still going strong

Now the dust has settled, the litter and glasses and beer bottles have been cleared, and the sound of 30-plus brass bands and two or three pipe bands have gone from the ears.

The cacophony of sound came amid the collage of colour from countless ancient and renewed miners lodge banners. The sight of 200,000 happy, singing, dancing working class folk - in the main the generations of post-mining, from the villages and communities of a century or more. Of the surviving actual pitmen, 55,000 of us, many from every mining region in Britain turned up, in celebration, in memory to renew old friendships and tell the craic. Many a tonne of coal was hewed that weekend in the bars across Durham. Shots were fired, chocks were crept forward, fractured roofs repaired. Aye and many a scab got knacked or bobbie floored, as tales of struggles got relived and revived.

This year more than any other has seen a cynical sniping in the press and online about ‘this isn’t a miners’ gala’ and ‘there are no miners’, etc. Well I saw all the old lads - the Scott’s boys, the Yorkshire pickets, our Leicester heroes, Nottingham fighters - and, of course, the air rang with pitmatic with ancient Geordie and Wearside twangs. So, aye, there were miners - loads of us, and our families, and the next generations of miners’ kids and grandkids.

There are as a matter of fact 65,000 working miners in Britain (not mining coal any more, but still mining). Working our traditional cutting machines, roof bolting, setting steel arches. Many had years in coal or started there, and they could easily move back, should the need ever arise.

Of course, it’s not the same - we’re not young men any more, the National Union of Mineworkers is disarmed, our once bold threatening columns, marching to those martial tunes, are now only for display and entertainment.

But we still inspire, we still argue about what it was all about - history as class war, not nostalgia. 1926 is not a page in an old book: it was our fathers, grandfathers and their families fighting, tanks on the street, mounted police, starvation.1983-93 was a decade of battle to survive, as a vital sector of the class - miners as a way of life. We still discuss, argue about ‘what if?’ and ‘what about now?’

The gala is no longer an exercise in union/community democracy. We no longer choose the speakers, regardless of what our leaders think. The selection of speakers is somewhat a mystery these days. The days when no potential union or Labour Party leader ever missed a Durham Miners Platform are, it seems, gone. Labour leaders have largely boycotted the stage since the public humiliation of Neil Kinnock after the strike, when the crowd of tens of thousands literally walked away and left him alone. Burnham was invited, but incredibly he didn’t want to come. Corbyn was there, but in a non-speaking capacity. The union leaders, such as they were, were a collection of nonentities, a lacklustre mob. Sorry, but who? No Sharon Graham despite being up for election. No Eddie Dempsey, although he spoke last year. The platform speakers were in sharp contrast to the confidence and enthusiasm of the crowd.

The cynics have everywhere been attacking the presence of non-mining issues at the gala. In particular Palestine and the number of flags, etc Such people have not been paying attention: galas have always - but always - platformed international politics. Ireland has been a cause since the inception, and Spain, Vietnam, Cuba and now Palestine.

Yes, there is an assumption of some from woke unions to try and impose the trans, LGTQ, etc agenda on the gala and this is resisted. Likewise the mysterious presence of XR and net-zero stalwarts is always going to get the backs up of coalminers and their families, as well as other mineral miners.

But this is still a Miners Gala - plus others. It will last like this so long as we do … so hopefully will still be here for a year of two yet.

David John Douglass
NUM Follonsby Miners Lodge Association

My permission

People have been rightfully perplexed by my previous letter (July 9). However, there are two full paragraphs that clearly state what the point was, and I think it proves my point entirely that allowing Jack Conrad to use the ‘N-word’ is unprofessional and, since ‘the Caucasian clowns of the Marxist left’ can’t be trusted to take things seriously enough, any use of it immediately liquidates any serious point being made.

People misinterpreted my letter to mean that I am ‘giving Jack Conrad permission’ to use the word. No, I’m very clearly saying that using it is unprofessional, and opens the door to others using it spuriously/exorbitantly. At which point, we begin to sound like characters from The Boondocks TV series. I made a point of using the word in that letter around 30 times and the point of referencing The Boondocks was to use a pop culture moment as a framing device.

I was and remain unaware of any situation with the Socialist Education and Debate Association, Your Party or other UK groups (RS21?) - my letter was in response to Conrad’s use of the word in certain episodes of Communist University and I believe once or twice during the Online Communist Forum. It’s a sarcastic letter, because I find it overall very silly that this is a conversation to begin with. I also sent in anonymously because, though I stand by my point, I don’t typically write in the way I did in that letter and didn’t want it to be associated with my wider body of writing.

A Black Communist
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Domesticated left

Last week, Danger Dan of the pro-US, pro-Israel, ‘anti-fascist’ German hip-hop group, Antilopen Gang, was ‘uninvited’ from a planned performance on German TV, after the editors discovered that his song, ‘Keine Angst’ - performed together with the like-minded pianist, Igor Levit - contained a “call to violence”.

Thus, two of Germany’s most ideologically conformist ‘leftwing’ artists got their chance to present themselves as ‘cancelled’ and somehow dangerous - not through any politically radical messaging, but through some performatively radical antifa banalities about ‘hitting Nazis’. As many domesticated leftwingers have discovered, once you no longer have any political content that distinguishes you from the establishment - indeed, if you cheerlead its global power games and mass-murder operations, as the Antilopen Gang and their ilk consistently do - you can always fall back on denouncing Nazis, when you want to strike a militant pose.

Over 10 years ago, I wrote a short commentary on the Antilopen Gang for the German music magazine, Melodie und Rhythmus. I argued that the group exemplified a “neoliberal subculture”, with its pseudo-rebellious image masking a fundamentally conformist political stance. Back then, the band was not used to being criticised. So upset were they by the article that they published a photo of it, covered in faeces, on their social media, dedicated a diss track, ‘Neoliberale Subkultur’, to it, and tore the article to pieces in their next music video.

It is good news that the winds seem to be shifting a little, because this time there has been quite a bit of criticism across the German leftwing press, including a useful article by Leon Holly, surprisingly published in the left-liberal Die Tageszeitung, whose title translates roughly as: ‘Now they’re even cancelling the establishment’s loyal servants’:

One song recommends setting up antifa groups and preparing for ‘street politics’ against Nazis, including physical confrontations, doxxing them, calling their bosses in an attempt to get them sacked, and reporting them to their schools and universities. Quite apart from the question of whether the blatant class collaboration involved in some of these tactics can really be called ‘street politics’, does anyone seriously believe that, given the current strength of the AfD, Fratelli d’Italia, Reform UK, Trump’s MAGA movement and so on, the far right can be stopped by ‘hitting Nazis’ or ratting them out to (hopefully) liberal-minded employers?

This is not the 1990s, when the far right was largely a subculture that one could hope to contain through street fighting. Today, far-right parties and movements have millions of supporters, control governments and enjoy the backing of considerable sections of the state and the capitalist class. The idea that they can be defeated by punching a few ‘Nazis’ and getting others fired is a complete fantasy.

Perhaps, at some point, it will occur to some of these people that countering the growth of the far right requires more than ‘anti-fascism’. For the time being, they remain content to rail against the symptoms, while defending the causes.

Maciej Zurowski
Italy

Follow Mandelson

On July 14 I spoke about ‘The Few’ at the joint meeting of the Democratic Bloc, Republic Your Party and Spotlight. So I was pleasantly surprised to read that by coincidence Carla Roberts wrote about ‘The Few’ in her article last week (‘Final death throes’ July 16).

I made the case that Your Party should be identified as a “populist Labour Party”, because it emerged as a proto-party from the mass support galvanised by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour. It adopted the populist slogan, “For the many, not the few”, and took the name ‘Your Party’ as a convenient way to avoid a clear political identity.

Various Trotskyist groups saw YP as their best opportunity to build a mass communist party. They formed the Grassroots Left (GL) as an opportunist electoral front. When GL was defeated in the central executive committee (CEC) elections, The Many majority purged all the Trotskyist groups they could identify. Disillusionment set in.

Some of the Trotskyists who avoided expulsion set up the Socialist Federation and the Democratic Socialists, as they headed for the exit door. The implication of this was likely to be a realignment within the remainder of Your Party between ‘The Many’ and ‘The Few’. This is what Carla might have been hinting at.

She adopted a narrower idea of The Few - simply as dissidents from The Many faction on the CEC. She says, “Let’s call them ‘The Few’, who have had enough of having to front what has turned into a very failed project.” She mentions Sam Gorst and Louise Regan and says ‘The Few’ were “previously loyal Corbyn supporters”.

Carla notes that “five of The Few were present [at the CEC meeting] and voted in favour of some of the no confidence votes”, but warns: “Their commitment to democracy and transparency is patchy, at best”. Hence she concludes: “… it remains to be seen if The Few really keep their bottle until the next meeting on July 19. There will be a lot of pressure on them at that meeting not to support any votes of no confidence (if they are even tabled)”.

However, the main thrust of her article is about the YP “final death throes”. She says, “Your Party is as dead as a dodo”, and therefore “Rebellion on the YP leadership cannot save the Corbyn party”. It is “a tightly controlled vanity project - a nice retirement number that allows Labourite Corbyn to travel the planet, giving worthy speeches”.

Carla, as she waves goodbye to Your Party, is wrong to have such a very narrow definition of ‘The Few’, as confined to five rebels on the CEC. There are many more among the rank and file. I would include Dem Bloc, Republic YP and Spotlight, and others yet to be determined, who are not dancing to the Trotskyist tune.

The fundamental question is whether The Many and The Few have the same programme for the future direction of YP. If so, they are simply arguing over the decision-making process, the role of bureaucracy and speed at which the party is built. Or is the conflict deeper than that? Is it really about the programmatic foundations of the party?

The case made by Republic YP is that The Few cannot become anything other than the tail of Corbyn’s populist Labour unless and until it takes seriously Tony Benn’s programme for a Commonwealth. The few cannot become ‘the many’ unless they build on strong programmatic foundations and adopt the attitude of Labour’s disgraced Peter Mandelson, when he said, “I am a fighter, not a quitter”.

Steve Freeman
Republic Your Party

Ageism as well

People on the left generally seem to accept that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and anti-Semitism are all to be avoided. Ageism, however, is a different matter. In the course of a letter, saying that people should be very careful of what words they use in case they cause offence, the writer then complains about their “demented grandparents with too much screen time” (July 16).

Some of the poorest people I know are pensioners - and some of the most active socialists too. Yet the stereotype of the pensioner is a moronic Reform voter with a comfortable lifestyle that they deliberately deny to younger people. Ageism is used particularly with regard to the housing crisis: nothing to do with the selling off of council houses, or the introduction of ‘buy to let’, or low wages and the increasing cost of living; it’s all about older people occupying the houses that young people should have; we can only hope that they hurry up and die!

The pensioners of today include those who took part in the class struggles of previous decades, who fought for workers’ rights then and in many cases still do. Some, of course, have become demented, but that is a tragedy for them and their families, and not something to be sneered at.

Margaret Stone
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