Letters

SA inaction

In recent weeks we have witnessed a media frenzy and hysteria whipped up by the state and the police about mayhem on May Day. Protesters have been demonised in the press, activists subjected to police harassment, intimidation and surveillance, and a peaceful squat in London has been raided in the early hours - dubbed as a ?training ground? for May Day mayhem anarchists.

We in the Birmingham S26 Collective are active on a whole range of working class issues, defend the right of workers to use violence and believe in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. May Day is a litmus test for all those who claim to be revolutionaries ... in the face of the state/media attacks on protest does the left stand up in solidarity or does it remain silent? After all it is so much easier to spend a pleasant Saturday afternoon selling papers.

Where does the Socialist Alliance stand on this? Where are the press statements by the SA condemning the state/media hysteria and defending those who are willing to protest against capitalism? When The Observer talked of ?police marksmen on May riot alert? what was the SA response (April 22)? We understand that at the Birmingham SA conference the SWP didn?t have a problem with the police being armed, but surely even the SWP doesn?t believe that the police should be allowed to shoot protesters?!

Maybe the media?s dubbing of all protesters as anarchists (whereas the protesters come from a wide range of political traditions) has something to do with the SA?s silence ... However, this would be an amazingly short-sighted view of what is happening. We direct action-orientated anti-capitalists, (who - gasp! - include lots of working class activists), are experiencing the ?dry run? for what the state will inflict on workers more broadly when the class moves into struggle.

Your inaction now can only strengthen the ruling class and further discredit sections of the organised left in the eyes of those radicalised activists who need your solidarity.

SA inaction
SA inaction

Celebrate May 1

May Day was first designated the international workers? holiday after tens of thousands marched for an eight-hour day in Chicago on May 1 1886. More than a century later, the issues raised by that May Day demonstration are as relevant as ever.

During recent weeks, police, politicians and media have done everything in their power to create an atmosphere of fear and menace around the May Day activities. The real target of this orchestrated hysteria has not been any alleged ?May Day conspirators?, but our democratic rights: not least our right to protest.

Ever since the new coalition against capitalist globalisation emerged in Seattle in late 1999, authorities in one country after another have sought to delegitimise, demonise and even criminalise anti-capitalist protest. That process has been clear in the run-up to this year?s May Day. Police and politicians effectively served a warning that anyone exercising their right to demonstrate in central London would be considered fair game for truncheons, rubber bullets and even strategically-placed sharpshooters. Whether their activities are legal or illegal, violent or non-violent.

The corporate world order is on the defensive - and the propaganda against May Day demonstrators is part of the counter-attack. Those who benefit from the unchecked rule of private corporations want to paint their critics as dangerous and violent people. But it is the managers of the great multinational corporations, and the politicians who dance to their tune, who are the really dangerous and violent people in our society.

In the coming general election working people will have the chance to reject the negative, no-choice politics of Blair and Hague and to cast a vote for the positive values of May Day - the values of the labour and trade union movement, the values of freedom, equality and international solidarity. These values are scorned by New Labour, but they remain as relevant today as ever. They are the values the Socialist Alliance will inject into the general election campaign.

Celebrate May 1

Plea for politics

For someone coming into left politics, the Socialist Alliance can be seen as something of a godsend. It is a chance to hit the ground running, to meet the movers and shakers of the left, to put faces to the names we read about every week in the left press, and most importantly, the opportunity to debate with organisations on the left.

But looking past the healthy sheen of the Socialist Alliance, one can see that it is desperately hamstrung. The decision of the Socialist Workers Party to shift towards electoral work was one of the most optimistic turn of events of the last decade. It is without doubt that, without the SWP, the Socialist Alliance would have more limited appeal and power.

However, with the SWP came its ability to demote actual politics to the lowest rung of the ladder. It is no secret that, programmatically, the SWP are the weakest link in the Socialist Alliance amalgam. Any attempts to raise political and programmatic questions with the SWP are usually met with a patronising chuckle, a look that wouldn?t be out of place between nurse and geriatric patient, and a sigh and demand that we ?get on with what needs to be done?.

?What needs to be done? in the SWP?s inward-looking world of course is the printing of leaflets, the pounding of streets and the utter patronising of the working class. We?re all aware that leafleting needs to be carried out, yet this shouldn?t be the central issue of every local meeting. SA meetings are where members and supporters should be formulating their united politics and working towards carrying these forward to the working class. From the various reports emanating from around the country this patently isn?t happening.

The word ?revolutionary? sends shivers up the spine of the SWP. A while back, the ?r? word was mentioned at an SA meeting when our candidate admirably confirmed that he was indeed a revolutionary. Eyebrows were raised, tuts were tutted and there was a general feeling of ?Ah well, you?ll learn, son?.

At present, the majority of us see the Socialist Alliance as the way forward, and, indeed, we will do everything in our power to ensure the bridges built remain in place after the election and that the present structure is transformed into single, democratically centralised working class party. But the Socialist Alliance needs to debate its politics. Those who pound the streets canvassing should be admired; those who write and produce the leaflets should be applauded. But they should also be held to account for their inability to discuss politics, not only with their comrades within the Socialist Alliance, but also with the working class.

Plea for politics

SA swamp

The Socialist Alliance is a political swamp, with a programme to the right of most of its adherents. This policy is no doubt tailored to attract left Labourites and reformists to the alliance in order to ?win them to a revolutionary programme?. Yet the SA has no revolutionary programme but a reformist one that looks very similar to many of old Labour?s promises.

The Socialist Alliances are supposedly vehicles for left unity in these reactionary times. Most of the groups participating in the venture pursue unity through submerging their political differences in order to present a common reformist minimum programme that treats socialism as an abstract goal realisable only in the distant future. Marxists do not pretend there is unity where there is none; such a policy can only disorient those who practise it as well as broader layers of the working class.

For these reasons the International Bolshevik Tendency, the organisation which I now support, has chosen to remain outside the Socialist Alliance. The IBT never supports candidates of a popular front, which are mechanisms for class collaboration and therefore counterposed to any sort of independent working class action. When a left group takes the first step of giving electoral support to popular frontists such as Livingstone or the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, it is often downhill all the way from there, as each subsequent step takes them further and further to the right.

The CPGB has an unhealthy regard for bourgeois democracy which contributes to the policy of support for popular fronts. The CPGB claims that increased democracy will somehow awaken the consciousness of the working class and thus lead in a socialist direction. But the key question is always which class rules, and no amount of ?democratic? reform will change the fact that the bourgeoisie holds power - nor the fact that they will do whatever they consider necessary to hang on to it. This is elementary for any serious Marxist.

Unlike social democrats (and the CPGB) Marxists do not pretend that democracy and socialism can never come into conflict. When they do, we automatically put the struggle for socialism first. Establishing a workers? state will inevitably entail certain ?undemocratic? measures against the exploiters.

The CPGB bolsters illusions in bourgeois so-called democracy. The Weekly Worker pushes the absurd and reactionary view that the British ruling class has somehow become anti-racist. The CPGB claims that the British bourgeois state is not in itself racist, and that Blair and co are sincere in their official anti-racism. Yet when did the ?anti-racist? multicultural Britain campaign begin? At exactly the same time Murdoch?s press were whipping up ethnic hatred against Romanian asylum-seekers, and at precisely the same time that the draconian Asylum Bill was introduced with its dehumanising voucher system! Claims were made at the time by the British government that Roma (gypsies) have a tradition of begging that is not welcome in ?our culture?, that of multicultural ?cool Britannia?. Anyone who claims this kind of propaganda is not racist needs their head examined. But the CPGB is still for some reason determined to show that neither the British state nor capitalism is inherently racist.

Capitalism promotes inequality and social injustice on a global scale. The development of the global capitalist system relied heavily on the slave trade, which could not be maintained without a racist ideology to justify the treatment of black slaves.

The CPGB claims to be ?open? and ?democratic?, but for me a correct programme and political clarity are worth a lot more than the all-inclusiveness of a swamp.

SA swamp
SA swamp

Moralising

Dave Turner is correct in assuming that I have reservations about the composition of the platform at the anti-National Front demo some few weeks back (Letters, April 26). To flood the platform with Dick Emery-lookalike clergy and an assortment of radical glitterati may go some way towards gaining press publicity in the pages of The Guardian, but does not make for serious working class politics, aimed at undermining any potential base that groupuscules such as the NF seek to develop. I have no doubt that such vicars and liberals may genuinely find fascism and racism distasteful and I have no problem with their attendance at such mobilisations. However, such prominence given to these people led to messages of the quality of ?the police are here to defend us? and blunted our own, working class, anti-fascism.

Likewise I have no problems in calling for a discussion on the strategy of taking on the NF, particularly since this particular demo failed to stop them. We need an open discussion about how to take on the fascists (more notably the BNP than the NF) and for that discussion to be sober in its assessment. Sometimes it is appropriate for large-scale mobilisations. On other occasions the deployment of hit squads may be more appropriate.

Dave throws in a false demon, accusing me of suggesting that working class people are susceptible to fascism. Nothing could be further from the truth - most workers look at the NF and the BNP and see them for what they are. However, I do think it is fair to say that the arguments these individuals put forward - say, for example, on the issue of asylum - have real currency throughout society. It is also fair enough to say that in pockets the BNP can take advantage of working class alienation from Labour and attract reasonable levels of electoral support - we ignore this at our peril. We need to be on guard against the growth of these people who poison our communities.

Organising politically rather than moralising sermons from the clergy (and unfortunately comrade Dave Turner) would seem to me a better weapon in this fight.

Moralising
Moralising

Welsh weakness

I suppose it?s a back-handed compliment for Cymru Goch to be abused so regularly in the Weekly Worker, with Cameron Richard?s article being the latest example of the genre (?Weakest link in chain?, April 26).

The article is broadly correct in explaining the weakness of the Welsh Socialist Alliance centre and its paralysing sectarianism. But the CPGB?s fanatical pro-British approach demands the boot be put into both Cymru Goch (?left nationalists?) and the whole idea of a Welsh identity (he questions the ?inappropriateness of the WSA as a separate identity?, presumably suggesting that the WSA become an English regional alliance under the network banner).

Cymru Goch?s socialist republicanism, like that of the Scottish Socialist Party, is a thorn in the side of the CPGB?s revamped vision of a British road to socialism. Which is surely why the Weekly Worker indulges Cameron Richards? bizarre and pointless fantasy about what would happen if the WSA became the WSP on the Scottish model. Developing and deepening the alliance along the lines of the SSP has been argued consistently by CG from the outset and recently found support among a leading non-aligned member, Steve Bell, the prospective WSA candidate for Torfaen.

Let?s leave aside for a minute the fact that the dominant blocs in the WSA - the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party - are united in their opposition to such a move and analyse what Cameron has to say. Such a move would, according to Cameron, see the WSP seek ?to forge an anti-imperialist united front with Plaid Cymru? followed by the possibility that ?the WSP will win a majority in the [Welsh] parliament, the Marxist programme will be declared and Red Wales triggers off the international revolution?.

Now this is all fine as fantasy politics, as Cameron acknowledges, but he then goes and says: ?This is the programme of Cymru Goch, the champions of the WSP in the alliance.? Sorry to spoil the spin, comrade, but CG does not have any such programme. As revolutionaries we know there is no parliamentary road to socialism and as for the idea of an anti-imperialist front with Plaid Cymru ... you might as well say we want to forge an anti-capitalist front with the Liberal Democrats. Grow up!

But why this crude attempt to smear CG, yet again, as nationalists (admittedly an improvement on ?national socialists?, a term previously used to describe us in this paper)? I can only assume that the growing support for republicanism in Wales is disturbing some of the British nationalist elements in the WSA. There are elements within both the SWP and SP in Wales who are sympathetic to socialist republicanism, even if they have yet to break ranks with the party line. The non-aligned WSA members are also open to this school of thought. The main problem within the WSA remains the reluctance of both the SWP and SP to put alliance before narrow party interests.

Cameron hints at the core of the problem - they take their orders from the party ?centre? in London. Quite naturally, the party centre is more preoccupied with the 85% of the UK that is England than the five percent that is Wales. In a mirror image of our wonderful political system, in which John Prescott?s DETR can site three GM crop trials in Wales despite the assembly?s 54-0 vote for a ?GM-free Wales?, the British left treats Wales as an oversight or an afterthought.

On key issues such as GM or foot and mouth, the WSA centrally has been completely silent. There have been no national campaigns. It has been left to local CG members of the WSA to produce leaflets for Corus workers in Shotton, Ebbw Vale and Bryngwyn and we waited in vain for rail renationalisation leaflets.

As a result, the non-aligned majority in my WSA branch have voted with their feet and not rejoined. These are not comrades who want to be spoon-fed - they are experienced campaigners who despair of seeing any activity initiated by the WSA centrally.

Until the main players in the WSA start to consider a wider and deeper alliance on the lines advocated by Steve Bell and CG, I maintain that non-aligned members will see little point in joining what is little more than an electoral pact between the SWP and SP.

The reason why the WSA is the ?weakest link? compared with England and Scotland is because it has failed to develop any distinctive Welsh identity that makes it relevant to the majority of socialists in Wales, let alone the broader mass of working class people. (Can someone tell me, by the way, why the CPGB argues for ?one party, one state? without renaming itself the CPUK?) Furthermore, having people like Cameron attempting to deny that there is any distinctiveness with the throwaway line, ?Wales is not oppressed by England?, will not encourage many Welsh campaigners - who do understand that there is a national dimension to politics in Wales - to join.

Welsh weakness
Welsh weakness