Letters

Scotland and Livingstone

On November 10 in Glasgow, the AWL held a public meeting on left unity. There was unanimous agreement that all revolutionaries eligible to join the SSP ought to do so. We found ourselves equally united in having political horizons that stretch south of the Scotland/England border.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of SSP members, including CWI comrades, I believe that Scottish workers take a keen interest in politics at an all-Britain level. Therefore, I see no need to apologise for having rapidly steered the debate from left unity on a Scottish basis to the London mayoral election. The bridge which took us from the one to the other was provided by a sharp clash of opinions on the revolutionary attitude to Labour’s trade union links. Sandy McBurney argued in favour of the majority SSP line: immediate and unconditional disaffiliation. Only myself and AWL comrades openly dissented.

In circumstances where Blair has cynically and undemocratically disenfranchised tens of thousands of trade union members in his bid to foist a puppet on the London Labour Party, does it really make sense to ask workers to walk away? Ought they to do this just as it is becoming clear precisely how shallow are Blair’s roots inside one of the most important sections of the Labour Party? Surely not. A significant leftwing breakaway (and one not confined to London) is in the offing as a consequence of a fight against the deeply unpopular gerrymandering of the Blairite leadership. There is a realistic prospect of such a breakaway attracting towards it large numbers not in today’s Labour Party, workers with politics far to the left of those rank and file Labourites itching for a fight with Blair over this issue. Only sectarian dogmatists who have never read Leftwing communism, or who have forgotten the method it set out, could judge such circumstances as providing an opportune moment at which to advocate instant disaffiliation.

Tom Delargy
Paisley

Ken and Tony

I am confused. I thought “historically, the relationship between left and right in the Labour Party has been essentially symbiotic” (‘Party Notes’, November 11). I thought this was an explanation to describe Labourism - mutability, lack of principle. Before, during and after the last general election the Weekly Worker pointed out the likelihood of the rebirth of the left within the Labour Party. This was not presented as a reason for ‘action stations’: rather it fleshed out the amorphous body that is Labourism - the struggle against which is crucial for communists today. It seems though that this perspective has been ditched by the CPGB - the big hollow phrases are being wheeled out. If you disagree with ‘any hit against Blair is a good hit’ you are useless to the class.

Blairism and Livingstonism are part of the same category: Labourism. Blairism has not detached itself. Symbiosis does not allow it: they need one another. ‘Ken Livingstone for mayor’ is not a window of opportunity for communists or the working class; instead it is an attempt to ‘gum up’. Reformism is setting into the cracks made by the crisis of the labour movement. Putting every effort into making an alternative is tough. But that does not make it wrong. Rapprochement was the word used some time ago. I see no reason to change it to collusion. Or has the CPGB gone one election too far?

Phil Rudge
Hackney

Scargillism

Just to correct a few inaccuracies in Dave Osler’s ‘Scargill and Scargillism’. The 1992 ‘public opinion’ campaign against the last and terminal swathe of pit closures was necessary and Scargill had not gone soft. Indeed we had to sit on him to stop him calling for industrial action and an unlimited all-out strike from day one. Not because the activists and militants and Scargill did not want strike action, but because the membership was dead set against any such call. We needed time to try and build a head of steam among the miners, never mind the other sections we wanted to join us.

The dockers did not come out over a separate issue. It was essentially a solidarity strike, the preservation of which had implications for the Dock Labour Scheme itself, but started when Hatfield Main picketed the railway line from the ports to the steelworks and cut off coke and iron ore. This was illegal solidarity action by the NUM.                  In order to spread and preserve this strike it was tactically necessary to point to a specifically docks issue, and challenge the jibe that the dockers were just being used by ‘Scargill’ to support the miners. Of course, we activists thought everyone in the world should just down tools with the miners, but other workers needed to be shown some self-interest in supporting the miners. That is why some dockers tried to show the issues as separate. It was a tactic.

Having said that, I thought much of the article was well observed and accurate.

Dave Douglass
Doncaster

Old Bull

The Harvey piece (Weekly Worker November 11) declares it “perfectly correct to demand that the state acts” in defending Scargillism’s call to renationalise the railways, but completely misses the point of attacking SLP reformism.

The political priority against Scargillism is to expose its conscious counterrevolutionary intentions, now more bluntly being asserted but still not clear to everyone.

The EPSR stayed the course to expose Scargill’s feeble ‘centrism’ (such as it first appeared to be) - ‘supporting’ it in order to bring its essential reformist limitations more rapidly out into the open; in order the sooner to dispose of Scargillism as a confusing factor for would-be revolutionary-minded workers. The Weekly Worker ludicrously fell at the first hurdle for such Leninist tactics, its supporters getting expelled everywhere for trying to build a rival SLP to Scargill’s.

Royston Bull
Stockport

Right slogans

I would like to comment on Tom Delargy’s two letters in the Weekly Worker (November 4 and 11).

In particular, Tom claims that I “locate the root cause of the tragic history of the Russian Revolution in the mistakes of (or even betrayals by) Lenin and the Bolsheviks”. This is very similar to the attack Jack Conrad made on our organisation. We wrote an extended reply at the time of Jack’s initial attacks, which was not published in the Weekly Worker, but which I quoted from at the last day school of the Republican Communist Network held on October 20. So I am a little surprised at Tom. I think it may be worth quoting from this:

“Trying to find retrospectively which individual, organisation or Marxist theoretician was correct is to adopt an idealist, not a materialist method.”

I hope Tom is now satisfied that we have never “refused to explain the defeat of the Russian Revolution from a perspective of internationalism”, rather than of international communism. However, perhaps he can now understand that there is no contradiction between the internationalist position he acknowledges the CT has now taken over Kosova and Ireland, and our opposition to the use of ‘international socialism’ as a platform for the RCN. The debate which is going on is not between internationalism and nationalism. The two sides of the debate differ over how internationalism is best expressed in the RCN’s slogans. One side proposes, ‘Workers’ power, international socialism, world communism’, while the other proposes, ‘Workers’ republic, international revolution, world communism’.

To the CT, ‘International socialism’ has a number of disadvantages, one being that it suggests a fixed stage, without any movement. The problem was acknowledged when Dave Craig (RDG) suggested ‘International socialist revolution’ as the intermediate slogan. This at least has the advantage of suggesting a process rather than stage, emphasising the transitional nature of socialism.

The CT fears that the slogan ‘International socialism’ is designed to erect a barrier, which consigns ‘World communism’ to the Greek Kalends: ie, never. It is a sign of the political maturity of the RCN that it is giving full time to debate this issue.

Allan Armstrong
Edinburgh

Irish-Irish

Jack Conrad (Weekly Worker November 11) writes:

“There is a one-county, four-half-counties area around Belfast containing a clear British-Irish majority. This forms a geographically coherent whole broadly comprising of County Antrim, north Tyrone, south Derry, north Armagh and north Down - as I have pointed out, some council districts have massive British-Irish majorities.”

Jack goes on to demand: “As an ethno-religious nationality with a common territory the British-Irish should be given the right of self-determination in a united Ireland.” Using Jack’s own method,

“There is a one county, four half-counties area containing an Irish-Irish majority. This forms a geographically coherent whole broadly comprising of county Fermanagh, south Tyrone, north Derry, South Armagh and south Down.”

As an ethno-religious nationality with a common territory the Irish-Irish should be given the right of self-determination. So, Jack, instead of putting demands on a future united Ireland, why are you not putting demands now on the present United Kingdom?

Ivor Kenna
Central London