Letters

Dialogue

As an older comrade than many, who used to be in the original CPGB from the 1940s up to the 1970s, when the Party changed for the worse, leading to decline by the 1980s, I would like to put forward some communist views of mine, which you can debate or even agree on.

Firstly, your CPGB group spends too much time and energy dealing with fellow small sects/groups. If you are wanting to ‘rebuild’ the CPGB, then you must aim for recruiting new younger members from the student/unemployed class layer of society. Also the trade union movement hold important activists, whether shop stewards at branch level or a few national leaders, who can extend your leadership of the Party, and regain the lost credibility of the CPGB.

The CPGB still has to make contact with the fellow communist parties in Britain for ‘communist unity’. The only way to unity in the future is to keep the avenues for communist dialogue open, even if nothing or very little is gained at the present.

John Logan
London

Right conclusion

In the latest (August 19) issue of your organ Jack Conrad writes:

“The shallowness of comrade Thornett’s internationalism can be neatly illustrated if we apply his method to Britain itself. It is a well established capitalist club designed to organise the restructuring and concentration of capital to the advantage of the bosses. Should we call for the dissolution of Britain, as do Welsh and Scottish nationalists, or even a working class withdrawal from it?”

And fails to draw the right conclusions. The answer to the above is of course, yes: if we are going to be logically consistent, then socialists should oppose all capitalist clubs - even Welsh or Scottish ones.

Workers have no country. Workers of the world, unite!

Bill Martin
SPGB

Unfair

I was interested to read the section of Mary Godwin’s article last week dealing with the debate with the IBT on the war in the Balkans. Firstly, I am not a member of the IBT and have no intention of becoming a member of their group in the future. I also have problems with their line on the war. However, I felt the article concerning the debate was unfair.

Mary does not mention the important debate that took place on the character of the KLA. The position of the CPGB comrades in the debate was that the KLA was a ‘progressive’ and ‘democratic’ force. What is ‘progressive’ about being the ‘eyes and ears’ of Nato? What is ‘democratic’ about the KLA? Its internal regime is based on manipulation and fear, with the ‘disappearance’ of Hoxhaite elements within the party (see Nick Braums, ‘Kosova and the KLA’ What Next? No13). One of its main military commanders is the man who helped orchestrate the cleansing of Serbs within Croatia.

It is therefore no surprise that hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Romany gypsies are fleeing Kosova and pensioners and children have been killed by ‘progressive’ and ‘democratic’ KLA supporters.

During the conflict the KLA was ostensibly fighting for self-determination but was in fact fighting for a Nato protectorate. Socialists should fight for a multi-ethnic socialist federation without Milosevic, Nato or the KLA. Only on the basis of breaking Serb nationalist illusions within the working class can Kosova be granted the self-determination it desires.

Ian Hamilton
Cambridgeshire

Chemical diet

As legendary American writer and merry prankster Ken Kesy honked out ‘Home on the range’ on a harmonica at a late 60s anti-Vietnam war mass meeting, between chords, he told the leftwing crowd, “You’re playing their game … just turn your back and say fuck it.” Drug culture was making its first inroads into politics.

The problems faced by the left in this country at present are more deeply rooted than by a bourgeoisification of working class consciousness, a lack of solidarity or a passive trade union bureaucracy.

E.g. 1991 could have been a potentially revolutionary year in Britain: after the poll tax riots in London in 1990, small pockets of rioting occurred in the west end of Newcastle, the Meadowell estate in North Shields, Bristol and even the heartlands of historic Oxford saw social disorder.

In the preceding years of the late 80s, pitched battles were fought on industrial estates in various towns, including Blackburn, with the local constabulary.

These were spontaneous events; there were no trade unions or party leaders to direct this discontent, no propaganda. This was Lenin’s spontaneous working class action in progress.

“Rave was very anti-establishment. It was like the working classes coming through saying, ‘This is our thing. You’re not taking it off us.’ We felt very militant about it” (DJ Storm Altered states Serpent’s Tail, 1997).

But now the party is over. Its innocence is gone. The time has come in the cold light of these come-down years to face up to our responsibility to fight for a future worth living. A communist future.

J Tait
Lancashire

Support Iranian students

Reports from Iran suggest that the Islamic authorities are planning another bloodbath in the country’s prisons. Recent comments by ayatollah Yazdi and other senior judiciary officials, and leader columnists in the newspapers linked to the security forces, leave little doubt that the regime is planning a large-scale execution of political prisoners, especially those arrested following recent students protests.

It is not the first time that religious despots in Iran have used mass execution of political prisoners to confront popular opposition. Indeed the atmosphere today is reminiscent of the weeks preceding the massacres of 1981-83 and again of 1988 after Khomeini submitted to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war. The students’ protests of July, supported by other social groups, have challenged the legitimacy and authority of the regime at a level comparable with the defeat in the war with Iraq. It is not difficult to see the regime’s urgent need to launch a bloodbath in order to assert its authority and to confront the spreading protest movement. However, given the current internal and international climate, serious efforts at stopping such a massacre are likely to be effective. Under these circumstances we can be optimistic that an urgent, united reaction will deter the Islamic regime from such a crime.

It is with this conviction that we express our solidarity with the democratic, anti-dictatorial movement of the Iranian people, evident in last July’s student protest movement.

International campaign in defence of Iranian students
London