Letters

On the sharp end

As a friend of the CPGB - a fellow traveller, if you will - I am now going to offer some friendly advice which I trust will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered.

I consider Mark Fischer’s last two ‘Party notes’ columns on the Ian Donovan incident extremely important. I agree that the enquiry into this affair has to be wide-ranging. It has to provide us with an opportunity to focus our minds on how the Socialist Alliances can provide us with a forum in which we can strangle the sterile sectarianism of the past. I wholeheartedly associate myself with everything Mark has written about the extenuating circumstances (Spartacist incitement) which provoked comrade Donovan into his idiotic temper tantrum. I hope due weight will be given to this and that no one will be able to exploit this incident to argue that he is excluded from the SAs on a permanent basis.

There are, however, those who have been on the sharp end of CPGB polemics who can be expected to sneer at Mark’s comments. As far as some of those involved in the SAs are concerned, there is precious little to choose between the literary and verbal provocations of the Sparts and the CPGB. I once described Mark Fischer in Weekly Worker in less than parliamentary language. I am however fortunate enough to be one of the CPGB’s critics who has had an opportunity to talk to party members. I have found them all fraternal, respectful of those with different opinions and characterised by far less sectarianism than organisations with less of a reputation for sectarianism. Socialists who disagree with the CPGB can work constructively with them. In this respect they have nothing in common with the Spartacists. That said, I hope every left group can take advantage of the opportunity presented by the Ian Donovan incident to re-examine how we polemicise with one another.

When Mary Ward and Nick Clarke resigned from the CPGB last year, they denounced its culture of deliberately insulting people. Although I did agree, in part, with what they said, I accept that Nick’s subsequent portrait of a cuddly, touchy-feely Lenin is as much a distortion of reality as the caricatures bequeathed us by Stalin. Internal polemics within the Bolshevik faction, let alone the broader RSDLP, were regularly no more polite than Jack Conrad at his most venomous. Given however our entirely different political context, I would recommend that Jack, and others, adopt a more consistently sensitive approach. If we want the SSP and the SAs to be as all-embracing as we claim, we need to prove this. Socialists to our right clearly need reassurance that we are not just saying this for form’s sake. There will be more than enough die-hard sectarians (and MI5 agents provocateurs) looking for an opportunity to prise apart the fragments that have come together (first in Scotland and now, belatedly, throughout the UK), without our playing into their hands.

Although Jack Conrad has expressed irritation (justifiable irritation) that big boys and girls are behaving like prima donnas, the fact of the matter, whether we like it or not, is that there is an enormous well of accumulated bitterness, distrust, even personal loathing, amongst activists already in the SAs, and even more amongst those who remain, as yet, on the periphery. Fragile Egos R Us.

If we want the SAs to be as all-embracing as we say, then we need (for the time being) to preface our criticisms of individuals, and organisations, with the occasional reminder of what exactly unites us, why we feel the need to coexist in a single organisation. The tone with which we criticise one another within the SSP, and within the SAs, has to be able, to some extent, to differentiate friends from foes. We neglect this at our peril. We must not take it for granted that everyone understands this. If we do get complacent about this, we can anticipate that those who mistake us for unreconstructed enemies (a fifth column in effect) will decide to get their retaliation in first.

Hopefully before too long we can dispense with this charade of diplomatically massaging each other’s egos. But if this is what it is going to take to get the SA project off the ground throughout the UK, then I for one vote in favour.

Andrew Jamieson
Glasgow

Inadequate old slogans

The recent debacle of the Labour government concerning genetically modified food, in which it once again put the interests of the transnational companies above those of consumers and producers, shows that the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party. The Labour Party is already becoming as universally hated as the Tory Party in its last years of government.

What should the attitude be of revolutionary organisations towards the Labour government in this rapidly changing situation? Firstly, the old slogans of putting Labour to the test are totally inadequate. How many tests does it take before Labour are finally shown to be bourgeois? Secondly, we should have no confidence in this reactionary government and instead develop propaganda calling for its downfall. The main slogan of this propaganda should be: ‘For a united revolutionary left and workers’ government to replace the Labour government’.

Phil Sharpe
Nottingham

Intimidation

The Irish Republican Socialist Party would like to highlight the recent intimidation of party members in the Galliagh area of Derry this week. IRSP members were distributing the recently produced Starry Plough newspaper, which is the national organ of the Republican Socialist Movement, when they were attacked and a small quantity of papers were stolen and burned.

IRSP Ard Comhairle spokesperson Fra Halligan said:

“It appears to us that there are people that for whatever reason do not want or are afraid of the nationalist working class communities being made aware of an alternative to the so-called peace process.”

In conclusion the IRSP representative stated:

“Although this is an isolated incident, we would take this opportunity to call on those responsible to desist immediately. This form of ‘political intimidation and censorship’ failed in the past and will certainly not succeed in the future.”

IRSP
Belfast

Only for the historians?

Because of the response from Detlev Blanke (Weekly Worker February 11) I read again ‘Hurricane of persecutions’ (Weekly Worker January 21) in English. I suppose it was intended as a propaganda article [for Esperanto] for the English readers. I do not know the Weekly Worker and its tendency. It is the fashion today to see only bad in the Soviet Union.

You are right that Esperanto in the Soviet Union was only able to do anything under the roof of the peace movement (or how the Soviet comrades thought the peace movement ought to look). I, too, never saw the use of the tedious resolutions of MEM (World Esperantist Peace Movement). But one must accept that this was the only possibility of Esperanto life.

Besides, the Soviet Esperantists had a very strong relationship to ‘peace’ because of their experiences in World War II. For them it was not a problem to declaim romantic poems about the necessity of peace on earth, and at the same time make propaganda for the army. It was absolutely impossible to discuss the right to refuse military service (an important base of the peace movement in the western countries) - not because bureaucrats forbade it, but because it was incomprehensible for them.

I saw the utility of Esperanto in the fact that we were able to discuss these different experiences and enlarge our understanding.

Under the roof of the peace movement one could arrange journeys and meetings. No-one read the official documents and resolutions. In the Soviet Union it was the peace movement, in Hungary the trade unions, in the GDR the so-called Culture League, which made official Esperanto activity possible.

Among the functionaries (the so-called secretaries) there were two kinds. The first adored capitalism and the western countries. The privileges of position allowed them to travel, to earn western money, to own western goods (video apparatus, computers) which for others were more difficult to acquire. They did not hesitate to ask for support from other Esperantists - for the Esperanto movement, naturally. Often they were able to use their contacts in western Europe to move there. They were the most shameful bureaucrats. They inhibited every autonomous movement in their country’s organisation. Officially they were communists, but that was only on the surface.

The second kind were both communist and Esperantist. Usually they led local or specialist groups on a voluntary basis. They were not paid functionaries of the official organisation.

Hosting westerners was never without a problem. Most often the socialist states preferred methods which hindered direct personal contact. So you sit together in a big hall and vote for peace. Afterwards everyone had to go in different directions; private or individual discussions were not encouraged.

Between people who do not speak the same language that method works easily. In the company of interpreters one cannot discuss freely. But Esperantists were not controllable. They were easily able to agree a separate rendezvous. They sat together in bedrooms, even if the organisers gave separate bedrooms to the various nationalities - or honoured the western visitors with rooms in the most luxurious hotel in the town, where a simple native did not dare go.

But Esperantists jumped over the barriers. They dared, without an official guide, to travel across town, they risked using buses and trams - ordinary westerners did not do that.

Therefore the visit of western Esperantists was always a risky matter for the local organisers. They had to placate the police (who received all the names and a detailed report) and selected harmless themes. Culture was relatively unproblematic, or a theme in congruence with current official politics. They drafted impressive resolutions which said nothing, at least nothing new, but made it possible to mention Esperanto in a positive way in the local press and calm the party functionaries.

From today’s perspective it is easy to knock the communists in the socialist countries and put them all in one pot. But the situation was complicated and varied.

I myself, as a participant in the world festival in Moscow, was able during a buffet, to speak with the then deputy chief of the Komsomol [Young Communist League]. He confessed that the situation for young Esperantists was unsatisfactory and the Komsomol was thinking of taking over the youth organisation. Unfortunately this did not take place because of the known developments.

The official organisation in the Soviet Union, reponsible for Esperanto on a national level, was tedious, unhelpful, stonelike - just as one imagines a Soviet functionary. But there was a compromise. The Soviet Union could no longer forbid Esperanto because the fraternal countries all had an Esperanto movement. So they used the organisation responsible for international relations. Better than nothing, and an expression of the division of power.

Nevertheless, it is the snow of yesterday, which is of interest only for historians.

Capitalism more successfully destroyed the structures of Esperanto in all of the eastern countries. Money is lacking, as well as other resources, such as free halls for meetings, or modest journals.

Esperanto also failed to communicate to the Esperantists in the socialist countries that they would lose by the introduction of capitalism. They wanted to travel and have a car and a life like westerners. They did not accept that the reality is relatively close to the political teaching which they did not wish to hear.

Roland Schnell
Berlin