Letters

SWP censors

I see that the bureaucratic campaign by the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Workers Party leaderships have once again managed to shut down the ISO-SWP-IST opposition mailing list by complaining directly to e-groups.

This disgraceful action - which is the internet equivalent of crossing a picket line - deserves the condemnation of all working class activists everywhere. Furthermore, by gagging their own dissidents, this must place a question mark over the SWP's current willingness to cohabit with other organisations in the socialist alliance movement in the UK. Can the CPGB, Alliance for Workers' Liberty and Workers Power, who have made consistent criticisms of the SWP, expect to be on the receiving end of similar actions in the SAs in the future? Let us hope not.

SWP censors

LSA success?

I do not understand why John Pearson and others keep talking about "the huge success" of the LSA (Weekly Worker May 25). Surely the LSA gained no members in the assembly. I can see the huge success of Ken Livingstone and the moderate success of the Greens, but "the huge success" of the LSA: how come? John himself last week mentioned that the BNP got more votes than the LSA; what sort of success did the BNP have?

It seems to me that we are in danger of self-congratulation to the point of losing our sense of reality. What are the lessons of the LSA campaign? What went well and what went badly? These are the sort of questions that need answering, not an amateur effort at spin-doctoring.

A further discussion needs to be had on Ken Livingstone, his campaign and likely future events in the light of his victory. Most of the discussion I have heard about him on the left seems to be in the nature of sour grapes. Words like 'reformist', 'opportunist', 'populist' and 'sympathy vote' have been used to explain his victory. When it has been pointed out that Ken Livingstone and the GLC led the left in the 1980s, SPers have snorted and pointed to Militant and Liverpool council. Yet your regional round-up showed that the influence of the SP in Merseyside is now virtually nil whilst Ken becomes mayor of London. Some explanation is required and I do not think references to opportunism are sufficient. Likewise with the Greens. Why would people vote for them and not for the left? Ken's endorsement of them is not an adequate answer because they did well in the Euro-elections as well; and anyway why did he endorse them and not the LSA?

We need answers to these and no doubt other questions. The 'we did great - business as usual' approach is no use any more. Some bold thinking and creative strategy, going beyond just the LSA, are required if a successful challenge to New Labour is to be mounted.

LSA success?
LSA success?

Anti-capitalism

The debate over both the 'anti-capitalist' movement and drugs is important because I believe that it casts light on two areas of fundamental weakness for the left.

I think that it is wrong to say, as Mark Griffiths does, that equating the anti-capitalist agenda with a "reactionary agenda" is "false and insulting" (Letters Weekly Worker May 25). The term 'reactionary' is a scientific one: I do not believe it was intended for use as a multi-purpose swear word. To determine whether its use is justified, the programme (or lack of one) of the 'anti-capitalist' movement has to be examined.

The fact is that most elements on this march would probably not regard capitalism as being historically progressive even in comparison to feudalism, whereas Marxism sees capitalism as at its birth having progressive content in opposition to feudal society. For many it seems that if humanity could step back a few hundred years, when you and I would presumably be peasants struggling to eke out a living, then the problems of humanity would be solved. This for me is what marks out elements of the 'anti-capitalist' movement agenda as reactionary: the desire to turn the clock back and regress, not progress. I do not deny that in some circumstances we can have alliances with these people. We must only do so, however, not by bending to the reactionary elements, but by recognising differences and seeking to win healthy elements away from the backward-looking politics towards a programme for the progression of humanity: a communist programme.

The fact that some left groups are trailing in the wake of this movement is not something that should be applauded. It shows a subtle abandonment of the working class as an agent for social change, caused mainly by the current low level of class struggle. These ideas need to fought against consistently by communists. The primacy of the working class as the only class that can bring about the overthrow of capitalism and the progress of humanity must be insisted upon. I wish those comrades who think that somehow smashing up McDonald's will progress the anti-capitalist cause luck, as I think that in the long run they will need it. I doubt any of the workers in that McDonald's will be won to the anti-capitalist cause through such actions.

I personally do not see any contradiction between condemning the 'anything goes' attitude of the anarchists and the CPGB's position on drugs. The key word in the sentence quoted by comrade Griffiths is "control". I believe that people should exercise conscious control over their lives.

If somebody makes a conscious decision that they wish to use drugs then, though not necessarily approving, one should recognise their right to make that choice for themselves. Yes, communists must fight for collective interests, but an individual has rights within the collective, in return for which the individual must recognise their responsibility to the collective whole (there is an interrelationship).

To object to drugs on the grounds that they "subvert the struggle" could lead you into a position of supporting a ban on alcohol on the same grounds. The left alienates itself from people by adopting such moralistic attitudes. It becomes as inept as the lame attempts of the capitalists to restrict drug use. This is mainly because it fails to grasp that for some people taking drugs is a pleasurable experience (I can envisage the howls of denunciation I will receive for saying so) and in some forms is a cultural experience - just as much as alcohol is for some people: particularly those drugs that for some go hand in hand with a night out.

All this should not lead to a positive endorsement: rather a condemnation of a society which breeds the conditions where debilitating self-abuse, using this or that drug, is commonplace. The claim that drugs in themselves somehow represent some sort of sinister plot to extend capitalism's rule is surely contradicted by the huge sums of money chucked at what is considered as a crime/problem. Which I am sure many readers will agree is a waste, as capitalism is fundamentally part of the problem.

Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism

RCN slogans

At an Edinburgh Marxist Forum day school on Cuba (May 27), a potential recruit to the Republican Communist Network stressed his commitment to socialism and communism. Unfortunately, he offered us a rather unusual definition of the former. Not the usual ones: soviets plus electrification, a classless society or the dictatorship of the proletariat. We were told that socialism equals "Glasgow tramcars plus cabbages"! The comrade apparently did not see any need to explain this formulation.

If we do not want the words 'RCN' and 'death by surrealist entryists' to be brought together in future histories of the revolutionary left, we might want to tighten up the rules for who gets to join our organisation. The slogans 'republicanism', 'revolutionary democracy and culture', 'workers' power', 'world communism' and some variation on 'international socialism' do serve a purpose. They are meant to draw a line of demarcation inside the SSP (and the socialist alliances) between communists on the one hand and social democrats and nationalists on the other. They can prove equally useful in differentiating communists from centrists: ie, those who like to pass themselves off as revolutionaries, but who are adamant about blurring the distinction between reform and revolution. However, unless we can put some flesh on these bare bones, the slogans as such get us nowhere.

Already there are bids by the Revolutionary Democratic Group to deny the legitimacy of applications to join by those whose definition of republicanism and revolutionary democracy differ from theirs. In turn, members of the Communist Tendency are casting doubt on the right of Alliance for Workers' Liberty members to join, because their definitions of republicanism and communism do not match the CT's. I would like to make it clear to both sets of comrades that I will resist any attempt to change the rules in such a way as to invalidate the membership of Barry Biddulph on the one hand and applications to join by AWL members on the other.

However, unless we want to degenerate into a sect, one specialising in abstract propagandist posturing, one whose defining characteristic is glorying in a live-and-let-live attitude to the politics of our membership, we need to pin down what we mean by these slogans. And differences that came to light during the Edinburgh Marxist Forum debate on Cuba demonstrate that by these slogans we mean some vastly contrasting things.

RCN slogans
RCN slogans

Double jeopardy

Jim Gilbert's article on double jeopardy is a well intentioned piece, but it misses the point (Weekly Worker May 18).

The question is not its historical position in English law, but the role it plays, not only in England, but throughout the common law world. If it were changed in this country it would undoubtedly have a persuasive effect elsewhere. There is a rule of double jeopardy in the legal structure of all EU countries and with it operates the principle 'innocent until proved guilty'. It behoves us (socialists and communists in Britain) to recognise the potential damage that can be done to the world's legal system if we allow this change to take place.

Although it is true that rule in a class society is inevitably that of the ruling class, the existence of a judicial system that grants due process and recognises that proof is needed is certainly a civilising influence. This latest campaign to abolish the rule against double jeopardy is part of an attack on the jury system. The politicians are not getting what they want from the judicial process. In particular, the jury system has been a block to their arbitrary power. In a sense, this has always been a problem for them and, at various times in the past, judges have locked up juries for not reaching the verdict they wanted. The jury system, after all, is based upon the proposition that we should be judged by our peers, not by our governors. Straw and Hague are both on record as having a desire to weaken the jury system. (They are certainly at odds with the legal professions as a whole, and, even the Labour and Conservative lawyers' associations.)

Majority verdicts, in lieu of unanimous verdicts were introduced into England and Wales more than 30 years ago. More recently the right of silence has been weakened. It used to be the rule that a spouse could not give evidence against their partner - but now they can.

The question of double jeopardy is just part of the attack by Straw. His offensive includes laws making one responsible for the action of others: eg, your children; giving the police powers to demand the password for your computer; confiscation of properties without proving that it was part of an illegal whole; the use of victim impact statements; the use of evidence not acceptable in court at the moment to decide whether a person should be retried. The latter point implies that the person on his retrial is assumed guilty.

It is not surprising that this has come under attack by professor Mark Findlay, University of Sydney. The particular point about inadmissible evidence was attacked by David Pannick, QC, fellow of All Soul's College, Oxford.

The rule against double jeopardy also prevents a person being tried twice on the same facts even if the second charge is a different one from the first. For example a person who has been acquitted or convicted of an offence under the Health and Safety at Work Act cannot afterwards be prosecuted for manslaughter if the death arising out of the same incident had already occurred at the time of the first trial. Apart from responding to this attack on due process of law, we should defend the rule against double jeopardy because it is the rule which stops the government from prosecuting the same person again and again. If they do not get the 'right jury' they will simply repeat the process until they do get it - and a guilty verdict.

Exceptions to the rule against double jeopardy are few and far between, and they are more apparent than real. A rapist who feigned insanity in order to escape a prison sentence was subsequently successfully prosecuted for 'perverting the course of justice'. Defendants who have procured an acquittal by telling lies in the witness box have (very rarely) been prosecuted for perjury, if new evidence indicates the undoubted nature of their lies. Yet in continental European countries a defendant is not permitted to give sworn evidence because of the obvious problem that people will perjure themselves for the sake of their liberty or that of their spouse or children. Common sense compels us to recognise that miscarriages of justice are possible. And to be tried twice is, therefore, a double risk of the miscarriage of justice.

Yet there are even stronger arguments against repeated trials. Firstly the police will not bother to investigate cases conscientiously or perhaps even make sure of the defendant's guilt in their own minds. Why should they need to do so? If the defendant is not convicted at the first attempt they can always be tried again. Secondly, the threat of retrial can be used as an intimidatory process. Thirdly, the common law expects an allegation of a crime to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. One of the roles of trial is to determine truth, not just to punish. If the defendant has already been acquitted once there cannot be proof beyond reasonable doubt. One only has to think of the Stagg incident, where the police tried to use an agent provocateur to bring him to trial for the murder of a woman on Wimbledon Common, to realise that the police, once having found an assumed criminal, will just pursue them beyond all reason. In fact the case was so blown apart that one of the few people that one could be fairly sure did not commit the crime would be Stagg.

Further, the police have been able to extend the length of time they hold a person for questioning since 1984 and a current case is that of the man accused of the murder of Jill Dando. Neither I nor anyone else knows for certain whether he is innocent or guilty, but nevertheless I am left with an uneasy feeling that if you question people for days on end, you are likely to get the right results from the prosecution's point of view.

Another example of this assault on legal processes is that Straw called upon "wives, parents and children" to hand over people involved in the recent May Day disturbances - a tactic more reminiscent of the Nazis than of a bourgeois democracy.

Straw and Hague are taking the view that sentences should be what they say and that longer sentences are better. Insofar as they are doing this they are abandoning also the principle that the criminals can be reformed. Implying that the job is simply to remove them from the social scene or, at very least, deterrence is their main weapon in terms of the harshness of the punishment rather than, as Karl Marx put it, "the certainty of discovery".

Of course, no one wants nasty maniacal murderers, rapists or other violent persons loose on the streets and it must be remembered that if you convict the wrong one you are leaving free some very dangerous characters. The logical conclusion for this is in the USA where the lock-'em-up principle has led to two million people under lock and key and the widespread reintroduction of the death penalty.

It is no answer to these criticisms to say that new evidence may come to light (perhaps in the form of new techniques, such as DNA testing). Further technical developments might, in time, produce the opposite results.

Communists have to take an attitude to law. Not only in regard to how it has operated under capitalism, but also in the knowledge that the way we fight for law and due process in this society will determine its nature under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Many crimes that take place here and now would do so under any social system. Many of the horrors that capitalism punishes we would punish too. But hard cases make bad law.

There is no way that we can guarantee a perfect system, but we can devise a legal system that mitigates against the worst excesses. We need a defence, not only against the capitalist state, but against our own state also. The best defence is the jury system. This involves due process of law, which must be based upon rationality.

Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy