Letters
Errant nonsense
In his letter (Weekly Worker, April 2), J Reilly uses two quotes from the Red Action initiated open invitation to all working class militants, as follows:
“According to Open Polemic, ‘addressing the contemporary problems of the working class’ or even attempting ‘to provide progressive working class thinking with a strategical and theoretical cutting edge’ is certainly counter-productive if not counter-revolutionary. Have you ever heard such errant nonsense?”
It is really Reilly who is indulging in errant nonsense because Open Polemic is addressing the problems and attempting to provide a cutting edge.
Reilly even claims that Open Polemic argues that “until they (the working class) come to their senses they should be ignored”.
As members of the working class we are far from ignoring it. In fact, our response to the open invitation stated that:
“While we agree with Red Action’s statement that the battle for hearts and minds must begin with the battle of ideas, we fervently disagree with it and other anarcho-communist trends that the battle of ideas begins with the undifferentiated class, ie, the mass of the class. On the contrary, life dictates that it begins with the most advanced sections, those already engaged in some form of revolutionary activity. Until we, the revolutionary section of the class, are united in the nucleus of a party, we can offer little but pious rhetoric to the class as a whole”.
Open Polemic
West London
Bureaucratic flock
Last week I read comrade Richard Brenner’s fourth contribution in the Weekly Worker. However, it shocked me how Workers Power could completely ignore many crucial arguments which were pointed out many months ago by different comrades in this paper. If he would like to deserve some respect he should answer the following questions:
1. When will WP, Trotskyist International or any other League for a Revolutionary Communist International publication carry a critique from one of the many comrades who wrote for the Weekly Worker, or inform/debate with their readers about the prolific discussions which have evolved in this paper? In fact, the small letters section in their press is in danger of becoming extinct.
2. Comrade Brenner said that WP’s U-turns on Scotland and Eastern Europe showed a healthy internal life. However, WP never acknowledge the fact that other currents (like the LCMRCI, the LTT, the CPGB, etc.) previously hammered WP’s opposition against Scottish self-determination and its insistence (until August 1997) that all the countries east of Germany were workers’ states. Why do they not recognise the influence of their own dissidents and other currents in their political shifts?
3. The fact that an organisation has so many different lines is not synonymous with internal democracy. It could show a high degree of confusion and that it is a bureaucratic flock around a despotic ruling and eclectic clique. When will WP explain how they mouth the most untenable contradictions? How they voted Labour for 23 years of existence and promoted a ‘revolutionary tendency in it while they do not do the slightest work in Labour’s ranks?
4. In relation to the LRCI’s new line on the character of the “workers’ states”. What happened in August 1997 which caused the LRCI to decide that henceforth the most prosperous eight Eastern European states had crossed the Rubicon and become bourgeois states? How can LRCI say now that it is possible to have a bourgeois state that can expropriate the bourgeoisie and that a workers’ state can perfect the bourgeois state?
5. WP justified its clandestine methods as being imposed by the needs of Bolshevik homogenisation. However, its line is entirely erratic. They decided to have closed discussions because they are incapable of debating them in front of the class and even their readers? If Brenner is so proud of the LRCI’s lively internal life, why does he totally ignore its dissidents? In the 1940s the Fourth International invited the Schactmanite and Poum splinters to discussions with their own papers and internal conferences. However, the LRCI threatens its dissidents. In fact, one of the reasons why Brenner is so keen in writing in the Weekly Worker is because this paper has served as a tribune for the LRCI’s dissidents. However, the LRCI has decided to consider all of them as non-persons. They never reply directly to them.
J Sheridan
Birmingham
Sensible challenge
I was chastened to read, in the Weekly Worker (March 26) that not only am I “fond of portraying” myself as “the very model of the sensible Marxist”, but I even personify an especially iniquitous trend in the labour movement - “sensible Bob Pitt types”. I mean, we can’t have the far left going around being sensible, can we? It is reassuring to know that the Weekly Worker will be maintaining its resolute stand against this particular ideological deviation.
Bob Pitt
North West London
Anti-racist crusade
Racism is everywhere. You cannot move for racists. No section of society is immune from this terrible social evil. Something must be done.
Yes, welcome to New Britain - which does not allow for ‘old’ racism. Anti-racism is the official ideology of the bourgeois state. For liberal - or even not so liberal - anti-racists this presents no problem or dilemma. Surely, at the end of the day, only racists could object to the state passing what it terms ‘anti-racist’ legislation?
But in the real world of class society and class struggle, ‘official’ anti-racism divides the working class. For all its fine talk, ‘official’ anti-racism actually ends up dividing the working class along ‘racial’ lines - not uniting them. To get your grant from the council, you have to fulfil its quotas - lo and behold one ‘race’ competes with another for scarce resources. Instead of uniting and fighting, there is division in the fight for favours.
The latest target for the state’s anti-racist crusade is football. Or rather, football spectators and fans. The nice, civilised and impeccably anti-racist Blairite team are going to sort out those ‘orrible, racist yobs who attend football matches. Hence the The Independent’s approving headline, “Blair moves to kick racism into touch” (March 31).
Tony Banks presented last Monday the first report by the government’s Football Task Force. This was set up in July 1997 under the chair of David Mellor. Banks revealed that the current legislation in the Football Offences Act would be amended to enable criminal charges to be brought against individual spectators who chant racial abuse. We could soon have scenes on television of police anti-racist snatch squads diving into football crowds.
The Football Task Force has also proposed that anti-racist pledges should be put in the contracts of players and managers - even referees should be given new anti-racist guidance. Blair has welcomed the task force’s report, saying: “I am proud of the multi-cultural society we live in, proud to lead a government that believes nobody should be shut out of society’s mainstream”.
Jack Straw is also doing his anti-racist bit. He has told black MPs that complaints about the treatment of black prisoners can be raised directly with him. Straw’s directive follows the outcry over the comments by Richard Tilt, head of the prison service. Tilt gave a TV interview last month in which he made the much criticised and derided claim that black people were more likely to suffocate being restrained than whites because they were “physiologically different”.
From reading some left papers you would get the distinct impression that this is all part of a diabolical racist masterplan by Blair and the bourgeoisie. This is pure self-deception. When our bold prime minister talks about “stamping out racial abuse” at football matches, he really means extending social control by the state.
Though it likes to think so, the left does not have a monopoly on anti-racism. This must be the case - just look at the ex-Tory MP, David Mellor. As chair of the Football Task Force he has already come up with 40 different sets of ideas for tackling racism. Like Blair, he fulminates that there “must be zero tolerance to racism. Our main concern is to propose practical measures to stamp out racism wherever it occurs”.
Is he kidding? I do not think so.
George Midway
Hull
Irresponsible actions
After an Oldham school was daubed extensively with swastika stickers - a situation aggravated by comments in the local press that the majority of attacks in the area were on whites by coloureds - the Anti-Nazi League made a hasty response.
It set up a stall in Oldham town centre last Saturday to carry out petitioning and paper sales. One of the volunteers told me that the atmosphere was not encouraging and that “people on the street openly used racist language”. This, however, did not prepare these comrades for an open physical attack upon them. In a hit-and-run operation ten fascists overturned the stall, severely kicking and punching the volunteers. Workers at a nearby Boots store gave assistance, despite objections from their management at becoming involved in ‘gang warfare’.
There are serious questions raised by this event. It is well known that the British National Party has a base in the nearby town of Rochdale. The supposed ‘mobilisation’ of the SWP only extended to those areas where the Anti-Nazi League has influence. No other left or local community groups were approached. The actions of those who parachuted into this area may leave locals in a worse position.
The failure to defend this event will only give strength to the fascists and their periphery support. The ANL has endangered its supporters in what can only be considered an irresponsible manner.
It is not the job of the left in general to defend other organisations’ paper sales - that is up to them. But no one can be oblivious to the fact that the fascists are trying to spread their ideas, organisation and terrorism in Manchester. This threat needs to be met in a united, planned and military style manner.
Raymond Gregory
Manchester