25.09.1997

Cardiff calls for open debate

This letter has been sent to the editor of Socialist News, the Socialist Labour Party’s paper, by one of the most active SLP branches

I have been instructed to write to you by the Cardiff branch of the Socialist Labour Party.

By a unanimous vote we have decided not to sell the current issue (No8) of Socialist News and to return unsold copies to you under a separate cover. We have retained a small number of copies for our own use, all of which will be paid for in the usual fashion. Please note that our refusal to sell our party paper applies to the current issue only.

An explanation is needed at this point to enable you to understand our action. Although the comrades in Cardiff branch come from very different political traditions, all of us are anti-Stalinist and partisans of the truth. For this reason the article on China was repulsive to us, not only in its lies, but also its totally uncritical view of the Stalinist states in general.

As you are clearly unaware of what occurred at Tiananmen Square, let me correct some of the lies in the article. The students were not isolated and in fact were being supplied with food from the surrounding areas. The crackdown happened when it did as the struggle was spreading throughout China and drawing in an increasing number of workers. The regime had already tried using local troops to smash the protest, but they had refused orders, and it was therefore necessary to use ‘uncontaminated’ troops from further afield. When troops did enter the square they were not attacked by the students, who were unarmed, but fired indiscriminately at the protesters. Contrary to the article, this is all on film - later events were not filmed, as the movements of the journalists were restricted. I would also note that news agencies suppressed reports, as their governments supported the regime against the protest movement of student and workers.

With support for the students growing beyond Beijing - solidarity strike action beginning to take place in Shanghai for example - it is no coincidence that the first group to be attacked in the square was the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation, an independent trade union. The Stalinist regime could under no circumstances allow workers to protest, as this put at risk investments in the Special Economic Zones, where the bureaucrats exploit workers in conjunction with British, American, Japanese, etc multinational corporations. This “clever” tactic, as the article refers to it, has for example led to workers being locked in factories and hence allowed to burn to death when their factories catch fire due to inadequate safety provision. Likewise, it has nothing to do with socialism to condemn workers to the conditions which prevailed in the country before the first imperialist war.

Your correspondent further asserts that the events of 1989 were the work of the CIA, but provides no evidence for this. The stupidity of the argument is fully revealed when he states that it was due to the CIA that the USSR and the eastern European states disintegrated. The truth is that mass revolts of workers and peasants cannot be instigated by the boss classes’ spies. It was hunger for freedom which provoked the revolts of 1956, 1968, and 1981 and the revolutions of 1989/91. It was not the CIA that was suppressed by the Russian army in 1956: it was the Hungarian proletariat who were murdered in droves.

To close, you must be aware that our party has no policy on China or the Stalinist states. However, the article was presented in such a manner as to be read as party policy. Without democratic debate in the paper, and no letters page, the disgusting lies peddled in the article will continue to be printed without any right of reply. In the interests of democracy I therefore request that my letter is published in the next issue of Socialist News and look forward to hearing from you on this matter.

Yours for truth

Mike Pearn
September 15 1997
Ex-paper organiser
Cardiff SLP branch
Cardiff South and Penarth CSLP