13.05.1999

Internationalists rally

Serbia out of Kosova! Nato out of the Balkans!

‘Stop Nato’s bombing. Independence for Kosova. Open the borders to the refugees.’ These were the slogans around which a meeting was convened on Tuesday May 11 by a wide range of left organisations, including the CPGB.

Chairing the packed meeting of around 100, comrade Alan Thornett (Socialist Outlook) explained that its purpose was to redress the imbalance created by the one-sided Campaign for Peace in the Balkans. By its almost total lack of attention to the issue of Kosovar independence, its failure to address the outrage of ethnic cleansing and theplight of the Kosovar refugees, the Campaign for Peace in the Balkans had effectively sided with the Serbs in calling for an immediate end to Nato bombing, but nothing else.

In fact the question of Kosovar independence dominated the entire meeting. It is heartening to report that all the platform speakers spoke in favour of it, and backed the armed struggle of the KLA in furthering that objective. The body of the meeting, with the predictable exception of the International Communist League - ie Spartacist League - and with some reservations on the part of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, was unequivocal in its support for the same goals.

Comrade Greg Tucker of RMT reminded us of the long history of imperialist treachery towards all oppressed peoples, in the Balkans and elsewhere. He pointed out that, as we ourselves have long argued, the imperialists never had any intention of allowing real Kosovar self-determination - neither at Rambouillet, nor at the recent G8 meeting in Bonn. The imperialists’ stated aim remains to disarm the KLA and impose some form of protectorate status on Kosova. Comrade Tucker called for the arming of the KLA and for the creation of a mass movement in support of Kosovar independence, a movement in which there could be no room for Yugoslav defencists or national-chauvinists.

Indiana Harper of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Association denounced what she called the imperialists’ “treachery” towards Bosnia, and the “appeasement” of Milosevic by the western powers, which, she said, sent him the message that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia had worked. Harper called for the arming of the KLA by Nato, but openly opposed two of the slogans she was supposed to be supporting: ‘Stop the bombing’ and ‘Open the borders’. Clearly CPGB comrades who had opposed the representation of the BHA as official speakers had been vindicated.

A comrade from the United Kurdish Committee lent his support to the right of Kosova to self-determination and to the arming of the KLA. Nobody surely needed reminding that the western powers’ campaigns against ‘little Hitlers’ had been highly selective: the plight of the Kurdish people was supreme proof of Nato’s hypocrisy and its turning a blind eye to Turkish repression because of Turkey’s membership of the alliance.

The most poignant contribution from the platform came from Marta Gozededa, an ethnic Albanian activist, whose vivid account of the situation in Kosova left nobody unmoved. Speaking from a frankly bourgeois-nationalist perspective (“We want our land ... the only imperialism I see in Kosova is Serbian imperialism ...”), Gozededa said that people must put aside ideologies and give wholehearted support to the struggle of the Kosovars and the KLA, whose involvement with Nato was simply a result of the fact that they had nowhere else to turn for help. The Kosovars had spent 10 years looking for a peaceful, negotiated settlement, but to no avail.

In the meantime Serb repression had intensified, and the ethnic cleansing in Kosova, though unexpected in its ferocity, was clearly foreseeable in the light of the west’s “protracted courtship” of Milosevic. Gozededa realised that her stance, particularly the willing embrace of Nato assistance, would not be politically acceptable to many present, but she urged the audience to try and understand what the Kosovars were going through.

A sharp debate from the floor ensued, at first characterised by wholehearted support for the line taken by the platform. Workers International, for example, in giving its unconditional support to the Kosovars and the armed struggle of the KLA, said that it was time to “take sides” definitively on the side of Kosova. A united front by the left was essential. Others took the same line.

When Jo Woodward of the Spartacist League rose to speak, however, the situation became tense and unruly. After only a few words, in which she condemned the meeting for inviting a “pro-Nato” speaker, comrade Woodward was shouted down. “You’re in the wrong meeting,” said one comrade. “How dare you speak like that in the presence of a Kosovar?” said another. For a minute or so the chair lost control, but eventually ordered Woodward to sit down.

Frankly, this was entirely counterproductive. The way to defeat wrong ideas, such as the Spartacists’ refusal to recognise Kosovar rights, is through open debate, not through gagging. The fact that most Kosovars look to Nato is regrettable, but entirely understandable, given the lack of mass support from anti-imperialists.

For the CPGB, comrade Stan Kelsey emphasised the legitimacy of the Kosovars’ democratic aspirations to self-determination and the fact that, in their hour of need, they had the right to seek arms and assistance from whatever quarter they could find them. United intervention by the left in the peace movement was essential, otherwise the pacifism of the Campaign for Peace in the Balkans would persist - a nonsensical position, because calls for ‘peace’ by themselves amounted to nothing more than calling for an imperialist war to be replaced by an imperialist peace.

A comrade from SPEW spoke eloquently about his organisation’s support for Kosovar self-determination, but balked at the idea of supporting the KLA, since it was fighting alongside imperialism. Milosevic and Nato were both mass-murderers and by implication the KLA too had to be denounced in similar vein. In other words, SPEW evidently wills the end, but not the means. As comrade Marcus Larsen of the CPGB pointed out in reply, such a position is incoherent, mere “empty words”, whereby the call for Kosovar self-determination is reduced to an abstraction. Revolutionaries needed above all to look at the situation in a truthful way - contrary to the position taken by the likes of Candy Udwin of the SWP, we must see that we are living in the dark days of a period of reaction. It was the total absence of any alternative that drove the Kosovars and the KLA to nurture false hopes in imperialism.

Comrade Larsen, echoing comrade Kelsey, emphasised the Leninist dictum that the only true kind of internationalism means fighting for the revolutionary overthrow of “the main enemy” at home. Hence his urgent call to all organisations on the left, in the wake of the collapse of the Socialist Alliance’s bid to fight the European Union elections, to support the ‘Weekly Worker’ list on June 10. This would not only be the most concrete demonstration of left unity. It would be a practical way of opposing both bomber Blair’s air war and the Yugoslav defencism of Scargill’s SLP.

Michael Malkin