Letters

Too much to ask?

In a recent interview (Weekly Worker December 12 1996) Jim Slaven, a member of the James Connolly Society and an East of Scotland organiser for the Scottish Socialist Alliance, dismissed both the republican socialist movement and the Continuity Army Council. This is the considered response of the Irish Republican Socialist Party to his comments.

Jim is clearly a supporter, if not a member, of Sinn Fein. He admits that the James Connolly Society is in solidarity with Sinn Fein and that they fund-raise for republican prisoners. They fund-raise for Provisional republican prisoners, it should be pointed out. The political prisoners of the Irish republican socialist movement receive no money from that source.

In commenting on the “so-called peace process”, Jim says one effect has been that “Republicans try and argue our cause as much as we can”, as a result of being more confident in their arguments.

If that indeed was the case, then it would be a good thing. But it is not, as Jim confirms when dealing with the thorny question of sympathy for those who argue for a return to armed struggle.

Rather than answer the question and its implications, he talks about a British policy of splitting republicans and then says:

“I think it is unfortunate that you have the Irish Republican Socialist Party and the Continuity Army Council in there, because one of the aims the British wanted to get out of this whole drawn out peace process was to push the republican movement to the point of splitting.”

Jim may or may not be aware that the Provisional movement called a unilateral ceasefire without reference to their own volunteers, their supporters, nor the broad republican population who had endured so much in the past 28 years. Their leadership had sought an all-class alliance with the SDLP, the Free State establishment and the United States.

They are prepared to talk to anyone to their right, but hold those to their left in bitterest contempt. They refuse to engage in the political arguments about the politics of the peace process. From the day and hour of the Provo ceasefire the republican socialist movement has been critical of the Provo strategy. Our public statements have been measured, politically critical and certainly not bombastic calls for a return to war.

Even when we were under armed attack, not for the first time, from those who wished to liquidate our movement, we maintained a steady stream of political criticisms of the ‘peace process’. But, in common with the leaders of bourgeois Ireland, the Provos called for our liquidation.

Jim obviously wishes that the armed attacks against us had succeeded. Does he not recognise the dangers in dismissing other republican viewpoints? Does he wish to see all other socialist tendencies in Scotland liquidated into the Scottish Socialist Alliance? Would that be a healthy development for democratic socialist debate in Scotland? We think not.

We have no problem with comrades overseas making valid criticisms of our movement, its politics and its actions. But when any republican section in Ireland comes under armed attacks from whatever source, then we expect those who pledge their solidarity to the ‘Irish struggle’ to at least raise their voice in defence of the right of Irish republicans to politically exist.

Is that too much to ask of the James Connolly Society?

G Ruddy
on behalf of the Ard Comhairle IRSP

Lame polemic

In this brief reply to the Spartacist League/Britain’s letter in last week’s Weekly Worker (January 9 - ‘Clear proof’, Andrew Gastos on behalf of the SL/B), we can only respond to one of its accusations against the Party, that of our position on a ballot in the miners’ strike of 1984/85. The points we make about the organisation’s dishonest approach to polemic hold true for the other issues they attempt to hit us on, however.

The letter is a lame attempt to bolster a polemical theme it has developed in its coverage of the Socialist Labour Party - that groups such as the Communist Party, which are now “in the gravitational pull of the SLP”, actually “stood to the right of the Scargill leadership on key issues of ... the historic miners’ strike” (Workers Hammer April/May 1996). Most dramatically, it claims that communists “denounced Scargill’s refusal to call for a ballot ... the favoured ploy of Neil Kinnock, the Fleet Street hounds and the UDM scabs to knife the militant miners ...” (ibid - our emphasis).

Characteristically, no quotes were initially offered to actually illustrate this ‘denunciation’. However, later in the year, the charge was repeated with an unreferenced ‘quote’ from us - “the CPGB ... denounced the ‘lack of a ballot’ in the miners strike”, it told its readers (Worker Hammer November/December 1996). Very informative, comrades.

Comrade Don Preston nailed this Spart coyness (to use a very Spart-like expression) in Weekly Worker (November 14), prompting Gastos’ weak reply in the last issue. Gastos is at last forced to quote - but even then very selectively. He cites The Leninist newspaper of January 1985, which briefly commented in a 10,000-word supplement on the strike that the leadership’s refusal to organise a ballot showed that they “trusted bureaucratic manoeuvre more than their arguments for solidarity” and that “this had its costs”.

“Your words, not ours,” Gastos triumphantly announces. He goes on to bluster that “the demand that the NUM organise a strike ballot, well after the strike began, was also the battle cry of ... the scabs” (Weekly Worker letters January 9).

All in all, this is a bit of a damp squib. Indeed, the weakness of the Spartacist polemic is emphasised when our original quote is drawn out. We pointed out that

“the tactics of achieving a national strike against pit closures through rolling, area-by-area strikes and rule 41 not only failed to win over the majority of Notts miners, but intensified sectionalism. The unwillingness to use a national ballot over national strike action after such attempts had been ingloriously rejected in 1979, January and October 1982, and 1983 was understandable. But clearly the lack of a ballot to call the overtime ban, the lack over strike action (even when the vote required for national action was reduced from 55% to a simple majority, even when opinion poll after opinion poll showed that well over 60% of miners favoured the strike), the area-by-area approach showed that the leadership of the NUM trusted bureaucratic manoeuvre more than their arguments for solidarity, and this had its costs” (The Leninist January 1985)

This is a measured criticism of the decision to forgo a ballot, not a teeth-baring ‘denunciation’, as Workers Hammer characterises it in typically dishonest manner. Furthermore, it quite clearly is a post factum comment, not a current demand, as the SL suggests. A demand is a concise summation of the main content of your politics designed to be mobilised and organised around. We challenge the SL/Britain to cite one single leaflet, article or statement by our comrades at any stage during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984/85, where we place the demand on the NUM leadership to organise a ballot. They cannot, because such an example does not exist.

Gastos however has a point to prove, facts notwithstanding. As this ‘demand’ appeared in The Leninist of January 1985, it was “well after the strike began” and this further damns it.

This type of polemic really is outrageous and should have no place in exchanges between serious working class organisations. The very next paragraph after the one Gastos cites begins: “Of course, to have caved in to demands for a ballot from the NCB, the Right Hon. Peter Walker and rightwing elements in the NUM could have proved fatal”. Indeed, presuming that Gastos did a little more research for his letter than plagiarising old Workers Hammer articles against us - like reading what we actually wrote, for example - he would have come across this passage in a supplement in The Leninist of May 1985 dealing with the defeat of the strike:

“... the fact that the NUM did not call a ballot, that it was not going to call a ballot, that not calling a ballot became almost an article of faith in the NUM itself [meant] the idea of calling for one and campaigning for one as a strategic demand is as stupid as it is treacherous.”

Readers may ask themselves why the Spartacist League actually bother to write such feeble and manifestly untrue polemics. The answer lies in the nature of the organisation.

A characteristic of smaller, less successful sects like the SL is the need to cohere its own membership as a group, not particularly to affect the outside world. Clearly, this ballot nonsense is intended to convince its own people, not ours.

The Spartacist League in Britain produces a hopelessly amateur, irregular press. Its attempts to intersect other revolutionary organisations with anything like effective polemic have been virtually non-existent. Its own international leadership characterises the British group as “precarious”, “chronically internally divided” and thus “[adding] up to much less than the sum of its parts” - quite a feat for a communist collective of any sort (International Bulletin June 1996, p71).

Going into print in our weekly newspaper, which is widely read in the movement and characterised by openness, poses the uncomfortable task to the SL/B of actually having to substantiate its lying accusations through proof rather than repetition. Frankly, if pursued, it could be the death of it.

Mark Fischer and Tom Ball
London

Do it now

I enjoy the Weekly Worker and hope its influence grows in 1997.

Now with the new Socialist Labour Party moving ahead, showing the way forward for the British left today, will the others start to realign for future gains? The CPGB is asking other comrades to join and reforge a larger CP, so what are the other ‘left parties’ waiting for? The CPB and the NCP should cooperate with open talks.

What really is stopping the range of communists now at least agreeing on 51% and leaving the rest until later? At present the SWP, WRP, Socialist/Militant Labour are only ‘going their own way’, so won’t play a major role in a left realignment as a real alternative to New Labour for the working class to support.

We will have a general election this year. The SLP has its seats to fight and win, so the left should fill in the vacuum and spread socialist politics wider and further than ever before. Do we really want to wait and see if a New Labour government can do any better than a Tory one when we know what to expect - just cuts and more of the same?

The left in Britain must work together, starting with the general election.

Let’s just do it before it’s too late.

Andrew McGarity
Reading