Letters
SSA conflict over boycott campaign
This letter was published in The Herald on Thursday July 24, prompting the reply from Paisley SSA and SML member Tom Delargy, printed below
While welcoming The Herald’s report on the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination’s active boycott of Labour’s referendum, I feel I must correct some impressions that may have been given.
Although the Communist Party of Great Britain is the main sponsor of the campaign, it is open to all those who wish to fight for real democracy for Scotland. It has already attracted the support of other members of the Scottish Socialist Alliance and of republicans and democrats from the wider public. Indeed, a number of Scottish National Party members have shown a great deal of interest in our campaign as they anticipate a sell-out by their party in the very near future. The CGSD is designed to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
Since the general election, the debate around the government’s proposals has thus far been confined to ‘the chattering classes’. Working class people have been excluded, as the main political parties carve it up between them. The government has cynically manoeuvred to allow as little discussion as possible as it presents its ‘take it or leave it’ option.
The CGSD aims to expose the government’s proposals as a sham as we take the arguments on to the streets and into the housing schemes. We are the only organisation prepared to do this. Questions of democracy are working class issues.
Mary Ward
Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination
Ultra-leftism
I am suspicious of Mary’s claim that “a number of Scottish National Party members have shown a great deal of interest in our campaign as they anticipate a sell-out by their party in the very near future”. If these people exist at all, their interest would dry up entirely were they to discover that Mary’s ideas on ‘genuine self-determination’ and ‘real democracy for Scotland’ were at odds with those of every nationalist. Can she name a single SNP member who would get involved in a campaign which would boycott the referendum even if it included the option of independence?
She is being equally economical with the truth in claiming support from the Scottish Socialist Alliance. While it is true that there are non-CPGB members within the SSA who support her campaign, our annual conference voted last month by approximately 20 to one to reject an ‘active’ boycott of the referendum.
Members of the Alliance are surprised and frustrated that those who lost votes and lost them overwhelmingly intend to pay no attention to majority decisions. Although Mary is an intelligent, principled and dedicated socialist, the SSA rejected her proposals because they are ultra-left nonsense.
All SSA members support a £6 per hour minimum wage legislation. But if workers downed tools in order to enforce a lesser minimum because Blair turns a blind eye to employers ignoring his legislation (as we all know he will), I would not expect to find Mary crossing picket lines because she wants £6 per hour, nothing less. Mary’s campaign for an ‘active’ boycott will be seen as a scabbing operation.
Mary attempts to justify her boycott campaign on the basis that Blair’s parliament will be a feeble talking shop. Certainly it won’t have the constitutional power to legislate the introduction of socialism. But if, as Mary’s party argues, there is no parliamentary road to socialism, what difference does it make that the white paper rules this out?
The SSA will use elections to the Scottish parliament to make the case for putting people before profit, and for democratic planning to abolish unemployment, homelessness and poverty.
Workers will give us a mandate to implement these policies, however loudly Blair protests that his parliament lacks the sovereignty to deliver.
If the people turn out en masse to deliver a ‘yes, yes’ vote on September 11, comrade Blair will proclaim himself a super stud, giving Scotland the ultimate orgasm. In attempting to make it impossible for Blair to make this boast, Mary Ward has to understand that there are at least hundreds of thousands who intend to join the chorus, but with no enthusiasm for Blair’s unsovereign parish council. We will be faking it, Mary. Socialists, nationalists and various leftwing social democrats are honest enough to admit we will be going ‘yes, yes’ pragmatically, purely to get what we want, and not what the prime minister intends to deliver.
The combination of a parliament elected in part by proportional representation and a more leftwing political landscape can rapidly expose the absence of support in Scotland for this government’s rightwing policies.
Mary, the CPGB and their fellow travellers need to think about what they are doing. They need to ask themselves whether they really want to be seen throwing a lifeline to far-sighted Blairites (Brian Wilson, Jim Stevens, Jack Straw, and Blair himself) who would prefer a low turnout as an excuse to renege on their election promises. I ask you, Mary, for your own sake, go home and think again.
Tom Delargy
Paisley
Unity
In a covering letter to Mary comrade Delargy added these comments on the formation and future of the SSA
Despite many differences with the CPGB, I believe it is in the interests of your party as well as the future prospects of the SSA and our entire class north and south of the border that you don’t set a bad example by defying the overwhelming will of the Alliance on the boycott issue.
You must appreciate that the positive alternative to Scargill’s super-centralist Stalinist sect is not an anarchic shambles. You have to accept that we need some form of democratic centralist regime within the Alliance - although a somewhat flexible one, one which strives to avoid prematurely taking sides on impossibly contentious issues, those which would force groups to disaffiliate and workers to resign.
If you do not agree on this point, the SML will abandon the Alliance, and neither the Socialist Party, nor the Socialist Workers Party, nor the SLP would waste time playing around with anything like it south of the border.
Is the issue of the rigged referendum sufficiently important to scupper the dual membership alliance experiment we are conducting? If we fail in Scotland, the prospects of even beginning in England and Wales has to be zero. Scargill will be handed a massive propaganda victory.
In order to prevent this, I hope you will compromise, looking instead to influence the direction of the SSA intervention in the campaign for a ‘yes, yes’ vote. Dual membership allows those who disagree with each other on small and even big issues (disagree sufficiently to necessitate the formation of permanent factions or separate parties) to work together constructively. It allows us to do this while agreeing to differ on those issues which do not assume immediate decisive importance, ones which make it impossible to coexist in a single organisation.
What the SSA needs is the democracy of the socialist and the picket, rather than the ‘democracy’ of the liberal and the scab. Whoever endorses the latter for purely short-term interests will have to accept responsibility for the consequences. This will be the dissolving of the SSA into its constituent parts.
Tom Delargy
Paisley
Eta stupidity
Jim Padmore’s letter on Eta’s killing of Miguel Angle Blanco (Weekly Worker August 7) is correct in describing that action as the equivalent of shooting itself in the head, but he is quite wrong when he goes on to say that Eta and HB (its political wing) are “completely isolated”. I cannot reconcile that claim with the massive demonstration in support of the prisoners, which I observed in San Sebastian on July 27 (I describe this in more detail in the next issue of New Interventions).
His remarks on the ‘spontaneous’ nature of the demonstrations also need to be qualified. There was a great deal of spontaneous feeling, but the mass demonstration in Bilbao was led by Franco’s heir, Prime Minister Aznar. Jim Padmore describes a press and government campaign “to control and slow down the movement”, but in reality TV coverage of the demonstrations was unrelenting. If he saw attempts to slow it down he was watching a channel I was unable to tune into.
The most worrying thing about Jim Padmore’s letter is the lack of any class position, as shown in his reference to “general society’s” reaction to the acquittal of Mikel Ortegi for shooting two policemen. He seems quite unconcerned that the people who masterminded GAL, the state-organised murder squad which killed 23 people suspected of supporting ETA, are unlikely to be brought to trial.
It is terribly urgent to get the Basque prisoners moved to prisons in the Basque country (as a preliminary to negotiating a settlement which will set them free). However, the Spanish government has no interest in doing so. They are quite happy with the current situation. Eta’s leadership should be criticised for gross stupidity in playing into the government’s hands.
Finally, Jim Padmore paints a fearsome picture of HB’s bars. He should go into them and talk to the people there. I find them more relaxing and less aggressive than the pubs I frequent in England.
John Sullivan
Bristol
Mutilation
I feel that Eddie Ford was being a little over-optimistic when he wrote that “Prince Charles would make a great landscape gardener and Diana would make an excellent sports attendant at your local leisure centre” (Weekly Worker July 31).
Both of those are skilled occupations, far beyond their abilities. I have racked my brains trying to think what could be the “real vocation in life” of a couple of people whose only talents seem to lie in wearing expensive clothes and reading badly written speeches. Unfortunately, Diana is now far too old to be a supermodel and, to be frank, Charles never did have the legs for it. The only option left for them is, therefore, a job in the Labour cabinet.
Regarding a more important issue, I would urge the editorial team of the Weekly Worker to take a principled stand on the rights of women by refusing to allow the use of the term ‘female circumcision’ in published articles.
This is in effect a euphemism, much favoured by the mainstream media, which is used to sanitise, medicalise and generally protect us from the horrific reality of what is more correctly called genital mutilation. It is an inhuman act perpetrated against non-consenting young girls, which leads to a lifetime of physical pain and psychological trauma. It needs to be confronted, not glossed over by using more comfortable words to describe it.
Julie Mills
London