Letters

Gobsmacked

When I read the report of the Greenwich and Lewisham SA meeting on February 10 in the Weekly Worker (February 17) I was gobsmacked. It was only then that I discovered that my name had been put to a motion attacking the Weekly Worker and demanding that the CPGB be sanctioned.

Until then the only knowledge I had of the motion was from a phone call from Toby Abse. During a long conversation I expressed my disagreement with the article and was then read part of the motion. I said that I was unable to attend the meeting but if I did I might support the motion. It would depend on what was in the motion and what was said in discussion. As a rule I feel such problems are better solved by democratic debate rather than by bans and proscriptions.

I was not asked to endorse the motion. Had I been, I would have declined on the grounds that I had not had sight of the motion and was unable to attend the meeting.

For the record, I had been given the impression that the GLSA would support me in the May elections. So when I went to the meeting where Ian Page was proposed as the candidate I was rather surprised. Had I known, I would not have gone for the Green Party nomination, and might have argued that the Greens should not stand in Greenwich and Lewisham.

Since then I have kept out of GLSA affairs. I have made a donation towards the deposit as a gesture of goodwill and an expression of my hope that Ian's call for socialists to do more work with the Greens can be put into practice after the elections.

Can I now appeal to anyone thinking of putting my name to a motion or anything else to do so only after fully consulting me. That, I feel, is the decent and democratic thing to do.

Gobsmacked
Gobsmacked

No platform

Nick Long, the chair of Lewisham and Greenwich SA, should say what he actually means in his latest innuendo-filled missive about the CPGB's position on how to fight fascism (Weekly Worker February 17). He darkly states that he expects that "our" membership will hold "strong views" on "this matter", "in the light of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and other black youth in our constituency and the active BNP harassment of Lewisham teacher Alison Moore".

Enlighten me, comrade Long. What do the CPGB's views on how or how not to fight racism and fascism have to do with the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the harassment of Alison Moore? Is comrade Long saying that the CPGB was in some way responsible for these things? Or is he saying that in some way the CPGB condones them? If so, comrade Long is even more irrational than Royston Bull. But of course he is not sincere in these beliefs.

In reality he is an unsuccessful opportunist politician, who desires nothing more than a reborn old-type Labour Party, in which activists of the 'far left' are welcome as individuals, providing that any aspiration they might have to fight for revolutionary politics is left at the door.

No platform
No platform

Usual suspects

Was John Bridge ('Have to think' Weekly Worker February 17) quite sure of what sort of meeting he was at, when he attended Camden and Barnet Socialist Alliance on February 15?

It is true to say that the meeting was attended by representatives from the AWL, CPGB and SWP, but there were also rather more interesting and diverse folk there than the 'usual suspects', so to speak. There were people from local tenants' associations, and students (myself included), many of whom have no party political affiliations whatsoever. On a factual point, one of those was Lizzie Prior, the students' union president who spoke from the platform. She is not (and to the best of my knowledge never has been) a member of the SWP.

Perhaps John's miscalculation of the make-up of his audience could explain why he thought some of the interventions from the floor concentrated on "minutiae". I imagine they were intended for those in the audience who are either new to organisational politics and/or have no interest in it as yet, but who want to work within the LSA on an individual basis. It might also explain his own intervention which in part consisted of a broadside against the Socialist Party of England and Wales's conduct with regard to the LSA. Nothing wrong with this in itself, except for the fact that not one SP comrade was there to receive John's well-delivered ticking off (bizarrely, he seems to have been aware of this).

I do not know how CPGB comrades have intervened in other LSA meetings, but could I suggest that the organisational bickerings be left aside in public meetings? By all means air debates as to tactics and approaches, but to take this negative sort of approach to debate will almost certainly not prove useful. After all, I'm sure we all want the LSA to become a genuine grass-roots mobilising force in politics, and not some ramshackle, shambolic gaggle of old hacks. The media will inevitably seek to portray the LSA in this way; at the very least we should not be making it easier for them.

Usual suspects
Usual suspects

LSA rally

I have just returned from the LSA rally at the Camden Centre. I am happy to congratulate the CPGB on having the only speaker (Anne Murphy) who tried to give a picture of where they thought the LSA should go politically. The Trotskyist Unity Group does not agree with the CPGB on how a genuine workers' party can be formed, but we recognise that the CPGB has at least the beginnings of a strategy for this, which is more than can be said for the other speakers who addressed the LSA rally (especially the speakers from the SWP).

Predictably, the political level of the contributions at the 800-strong rally was very low, and the speaker list was pre-selected with no time given for contributions from the floor. But even so there is no denying that the LSA has potential if it can learn to debate out the differences between the groups.

LSA rally
LSA rally

Dual power

In the Weekly Worker (February 10) I made the Marxist case for a bourgeois republic. In his letter (February 17) Barry Biddulph says: "I asked Dave Craig a question I have been asking him for some years: how can dual power, which by definition and historical fact is two fundamentally conflicting forces and states, be the expression of the single power of a bourgeois republic or constitutional regime?"

I answered this question specifically in my February 10 article. So let me reinterpret the question he seems to be asking. How can the dual power that existed in the February republic of 1917 be the expression of the power that exists in a normal constitutional republic like America or France? The answer is that it cannot be. The bourgeois republic of February-October 1917 was a different kind of bourgeois republic.

More importantly the essence of my argument is that it was a special type of bourgeois republic, not a 'normal' one. According to Barry, every type of bourgeois republic must be like America or France or it is utopian and cannot exist. This is the real dogma that Barry is sticking to through thick and thin, despite the evidence of the bourgeois republic of February-October 1917.

The real question for Barry is whether the February uprising overthrew the Russian bourgeoisie. I say no - the bourgeoisie was not overthrown until October 1917. The logic of Barry's position is to say yes. It is a novel interpretation of the February republic. This is a new departure for Marxism. In fact it is a departure from Marxism.

Dual power
Dual power

Section 28

In her article 'Abolish the second chamber' (Weekly Worker February17), Mary Godwin began by arguing against complacently assuming that homophobia was a thing of the past. She then went on in the rest of her article to demonstrate that she herself is extremely complacent.

The statistics deployed to back up Mary's complacency need to be scrutinised with the greatest care. Looking at them another way, one Gallup poll cited 'proves' that 47% of the British people think that gay relationships are inferior to 'normal' relationships. And a Daily Mail poll 'proves' that 37% of people think that a gay lifestyle should not be tolerated! Part of this 37% will constitute those who put their money where their mouth is. In other words, they are gaybashers. And a large part of the rest are, in effect, apologists for those who do the gaybashing.

Here, in this issue, we have an excellent illustration of the contemporary relevance of Lenin's exposure of 'democracy' under capitalism. Mary and I are not fighting the supporters of section 28 on a level playing field. We have here what Lenin called 'democracy for the moneybags'. When Scotland's richest man bankrolls the Keep the Clause campaign to disseminate misinformation and the Labour-supporting Daily Record transforms itself into the public voice of the campaign, it is hardly surprising that socialists find it hard to chip away at the hysterical prejudice.

Mary should not take such a parochial attitude. London might be some melting-pot where anti-racism and anti-homophobia are now so ingrained that even the Tory candidate for mayor has to support the repeal of section 28. But, thanks to the power of capital to mangle democracy, in many parts of Britain a referendum on the repeal of section 28 would almost certainly be lost.

Section 28
Section 28

RCN aggression

Tom Delargy makes the accusation that "the RCN might have been cobbled together around an unprincipled non-aggression pact" (Weekly Worker February 10). The Republican Communist Network has drawn together republican communists who hold different views of the way forward. However, our joint work in Scotland has led to a high degree of agreement on democracy, Ireland and Kosova, which must demonstrate some real basis for unity! Far from wanting to suppress these differences, we have organised debates where these issues can be openly aired. Our meetings have been conducted in a fraternal manner, which Tom himself concedes.

Now Tom seems to want a bit more "aggression". Well for the benefit of Weekly Worker readers, who have only seen Tom's aggressive written style (and that apparently is only after the editor's cutting of his worst excesses!), can I say that Tom's recent contributions to RCN meetings in Scotland have been non-aggressive, fraternal and contributed to the debates. But even such a notorious 'non-aggressor' as myself would like to see Tom pushing his politics a little harder in the SSP itself.

RCN aggression
RCN aggression