Letters

Adapt to Labour

Ian Mahoney?s article criticised the positions of the Alliance for Workers? Liberty and the International Socialist Group in their varied calls for a new workers? party and their view of the form such a party is likely to take and, more crucially, the form it should take (Weekly Worker April 19). The Socialist Workers Party has also recently laid out the future it sees for the Socialist Alliance after the elections and reveals its own outlook on the question of party.

There appears to be the view within a large part of the left that mass parties (ie, parties of the class rather than any current of thought) are de facto reformist, tending towards bread and butter issues, while revolutionary parties are based around a particular ideological outlook and are usually small. Many of these comrades will look at the British SWP and see it as huge in size for a ?revolutionary? party rather than the painful inadequacy in this regard.

The reply of Martin Thomas (AWL) to the criticisms of comrade Mahoney talks of the rationality of the AWL?s adherence to the Socialist Alliance in terms of the battle for independent working class political representation, now that the avenue for this has been closed off by the Blairite New Labour faction in the Labour Party (see this issue, p9 - ed). He says that the AWL will not walk away from the labour movement and the fight to reassert independent working class representation.

The Labour Party was formed roughly at the same time as many continental social democratic parties in Europe. Although like the social democratic parties the Labour Party was based on the working class, most importantly the trade union organised layer as its bedrock, and despite the participation and sometime affiliation of several Marxist and more leftwing currents, the party was not a product of Marxism and not even formally committed to the overthrow of capitalism.

The badly written clause four, cherished by today?s left, was written by the Fabian Webbs, the right wing of the party, who pitied the working class, hated the 1917 revolution and later gushed at the marvels of 1930s Stalinism as a form of new civilisation. Clause four was a sop to the radicalised working class following the Russian Revolution, to bind them to the reform model of the Labour Party. The Labour Party fundamentally was the political bargaining tool of the bureaucratic leadership of the trade unions. It certainly was deformed at birth and, although a step forward from what existed before, did not represent independent working class politics.

The Labour Party until recently has been one of the most important arenas for working class politics in Britain. That the current core of my own organisation excluded themselves because of the tradition they originate from, in my opinion, represents a tragic mistake on their part, but also provides a fresh perspective on the effects of Labourism on those that adopted the correct entry/fraction tactic. Comrades from the AWL and even Militant would talk of the strategic task of Marxists as being to split Labour, to undermine the reformist hold on the labour movement. However, the result more often would appear to have been an adaptation to Labour and a mythology of what it represented.

So what of today and the attitude of the Socialist Alliance, the need to create a movement for a new workers? party? The reformist forces that represented the working class or sought to do so are spent. Those that stand positively for the working class are overwhelmingly those that claim to come from the revolutionary tradition. The SWP talks of creating a home for left reformists, one that does not bother them with questions of politics or challenge their political prejudices. The SWP sees its own ideological current as the sole agency for changing society. The AWL and the Socialist Party talk of a new workers? party that needs to go through some kind of reformist ?stage?, before being won to a Marxist programme.

That revolutionaries comprise the vast numerical majority of the Socialist Alliance is surely undeniable. Are the ideas we represent so alien to the class? Are we so unable to fight and build a workers? party born of the SA that reflects the actual ?real? views of the membership? Should we not fight for programme that is necessary to change society, according full democracy to those who disagree with us?

The CPGB will fight for any future Socialist Alliance-based formation to become a revolutionary party. We will not walk away if things do not go our way, any more than we advocate walking away from the struggle in the trade unions, despite their limitations. However, we will fight for what the SA party could become, and not what more pessimistic revolutionaries think is most likely.

Adapt to Labour
Adapt to Labour

Obsolete skills

My article on the Unison minimum wage demonstration ended with the view that, ?As a priority, we need to start fighting practically for all union officials to be subject to regular election; to instant recall; and to be paid the average wage of the skilled workers they represent? (Weekly Worker May 3). The word ?skilled? was an editorial insertion which, in my opinion, not only leads to an unsustainable formulation, but is potentially damaging to the fight against bureaucracy.

Firstly, I would seriously question the contemporary relevance of any substantive demarcation of labour power into ?skilled? and ?unskilled? categories. When Karl Marx elaborated the principles of his critique of political economy, such a consideration was, of course, important. Craft skills were a crucial component of a youthful industrialised economy. For a further century, such categories probably remained relevant to economic analysis. Certainly, they were so from the viewpoint of working class organisation. I would submit that this is no longer the case.

Ever intensifying division of labour has all but eliminated craft trades and the sectionalised trades unionism that was based upon them. Just to pose the question, ?Skilled or unskilled?? - train driver, train guard, journalist, printer, computer programmer, computer technician, call centre operator, nurse, care assistant - illustrates the arbitrary nature of any attempt to conduct a sorting exercise.

Secondly, if we were to demand that union officials? wages be based upon the average of a higher paid sub-set of the union members they represent, aren?t we simply giving sustenance to the seeds of a new caste formation?

We must be uncompromising in our fight to get rid of a vestige of historical social relations - one that continues to be an immense obstacle to workers? power - the labour bureaucracy.

Obsolete skills
Obsolete skills

May Day

The bourgeoisie and their police might have won the battle for London streets on May 1. But they are facing a much bigger fight - and they know it. More and more people are starting to question the way global capitalism is organised and how we are ruled.

We communists face a huge challenge. Can we provide answers for these people? Can we convince them that a truly human, non-exploitative society can only become reality through the self-emancipation of the people? Or will the bourgeoisie be able to integrate the protests into a neatly reformed form of ?progressive globalisation?, as billionaire finance speculator George Soros hopes (The Observer May 6)?

Despite all the criticisms we might have of the protests as they are at the moment - they are utterly fragmented, atomised, consciously organised to be leaderless and without a programme - they show that there is a growing mood against the existing system. This mood could be transformed into a very powerful movement.

Without a doubt there are millions of people who do not like what capitalism does on a daily basis: they are against the exploitation of the so-called third world, against the reckless despoliation of nature, against their own exploitation at their workplace. There are millions of people who are not prepared to accept Margaret Thatcher?s famous Tina (?There is no alternative?). During May Day, people were literally queuing up to take a leaflet for our ?Anti-capitalisms? school. These people are hungry for ideas and they are looking for answers. However, the left still has to win these people over to a socialist programme. With their Globalise Resistance the SWP is seeking to establish some sort of hegemony over the protests - but like the rest of the left they have not succeeded yet.

Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie is aware of the increasing scale of the discontent and is preparing to take them on board.

We need mass mobilisation to these events. The trade union movement, the youth, the dispossessed and the discontented - the more people we can get onto the streets, the more obvious will become the need for serious organisation.

May Day
May Day

Bob crowing

Among the assorted environmentalists, anarchists, members of the local Socialist Alliance and other left groups on the April 28 May Day demonstration in Newcastle were a couple of Socialist Labour Party supporters.

While marching I had a conversation with an SLP member from Berwick. After showing him Simon Harvey?s article in the Weekly Worker (April 26), I asked him what his thoughts were. He stated that comrade Harvey was ?always talking shite? and was probably ?a bloody Trot?. After enquiring further about the SLP and their miraculous financial funds, and referring to the SLP?s support for Milosevic and Saddam Hussein and their tyrannical regimes, he told me to ?not believe the propaganda? and that I should know by now not to believe everything I hear.

By coincidence the main speaker at the rally was Bob Crow, assistant general secretary of the RMT, who was until recently a leading member of the SLP. He closed his well received speech with the assertion that what we need was socialism to deal with society?s problems, but was silent on how he thought we ought to get it. Or, more pertinently, how we should vote at the general election. Is he still advocating Scargill?s party as the vehicle for socialism, or does he think his former organisation, the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star), is the group to back after all? Or will he extend his support for SA candidate Louise Christian to the alliance as a whole?

Bob crowing
Bob crowing

Untrue

On a minor point, I wonder why you publish stuff that you must know to be untrue: eg, the ?Troubled Waterson? piece last week (?And?, May 3). You must know (1) that Julie is a London-based SWP central committee member who was in Scotland for the period leading up to unity and (2) that no full-timers in Scotland are losing their jobs anyway. After all, you published the documents. If this became your method, people would stop taking you seriously!

On a more important point, can you explain how Hackney Unison thinks it can stand council workers in elections to their own council? Unless Brian Debus is a union full-time employee, of course.

Untrue
Untrue

Christian unrecruit

With reference to my letter ?Christian recruit? (Weekly Worker April 19), I would like to state that I have not joined the CPGB and will be joining the Communist Party of Britain. The reason is I don?t agree with alliance parties. I don?t believe they work. There is far to much bickering within groups who join together. Each group has their own views on socialist ideas and the pressures will be too much.

I think that the Socialist Workers Party, being the biggest single grouping in the Socialist Alliance, will want to dominate the party, and you will find it hard to stay united. I have said this before: I cannot understand why we need two, three communist parties in Britain. We managed with one for well over 60 years. We could do the same again.

Christian unrecruit
Christian unrecruit

CRE boost

Interviewed on Radio Five Live on May 1, Tory shadow spokesman on health Liam Fox refused to answer questions relating to the race row currently consuming the Conservative Party. Instead he would, he insisted, only concentrate on ?what people were really interested in?.

By that he presumably meant issues like the euro, dear to Tory hearts, or the economy, where they anticipate a downturn, and of course his own speciality, the NHS. While it is true that in a recent Mori poll the foot and mouth epidemic and the problems with the NHS were cited as one and two in people?s priorities, ?immigration and race? actually came in fifth. Normally ?race? does not even make the top 10. Now possibly for the first time since the 1970s it is a top five priority. Why has this happened?

Certainly there is a welter of evidence of a widespread uneasiness and resentment over the issue of asylum. In addition, other surveys have indicated high degrees of disenchantment with the establishment?s handling of race-related matters generally. For example, one recent poll commissioned by the Commission for Racial Equality found 75% disgruntlement among whites at what they perceived as a government bias in regard to minority issues. In other words a rejection of the role of the CRE itself. If it cared, the CRE made no comment.

Meanwhile, the recent incidents in Bradford and Oldham would almost certainly have exacerbated these feelings of alienation further. Without any doubt the ?pledge? demanded by the CRE, which has caused such furore within Tory ranks, poured fuel on that fire. The mishandling of the affair by Hague will undoubtedly have gladdened Labour hearts.

The ?mongrel race? comments of Tory MP John Townend, while ignored by Hague, were fully exploited by Labour and the media for two whole weeks. Townend is a long-standing member of the Tory right and as such he may claim Britain is in danger of ?mongrelisation through immigration?. He may even believe it. But that is not what he said. Rather he was objecting to foreign secretary Robin Cook?s claim that there was no such thing as a British race. Yet even while knowing this, race relations ?experts?, Labour and the media constantly repeated the ?mongrel race? phrase as a mantra. With an eye to the election, some like the GMB?s John Edmonds went even further, claiming that Townend ?effectively described Britain?s ethnic minorities as mongrels?.

Looked at objectively, the CRE pledge, Robin Cook?s comments on ?tikka masala?, and additional gratuitous comments from Bill Morris on the subject of race all point to Labour itself playing the race card as a matter of deliberate policy. Labour?s intention in all of this was clearly to wrong-foot the Tories, who up until recently felt the issue was ?playing quite well?. The seizing by Labour of the Townend remarks and the belated backing down by Hague has changed all that. Instead of looking smugly racist, the Tories now look shallow and hypocritical on the issue.

For the ?racists? who made immigration a top five priority, the Tories are overnight exposed as party who ?cannot be trusted on race?. This was the exactly the result Labour wanted. In the Labour camp there will be a feeling of triumphalism among strategists. But a what cost to the credibility of anti-racism?

Only last week Nick Griffin crowed that the Tories had ?legitimised? the BNP?s concerns on race. Now with Hague?s humiliation in the face of the Labour-led media onslaught, the BNP have been ?authenticated? as the only party in whom genuine racists can place their trust. This is not, by any stretch of imagination, good news for anti-fascism. Moreover what the affair exposes is that is the left rather the right which is now most comfortable playing the race card. How long this will last is moot.

Certainly the downplaying, for a second time in a fortnight, by the police, media, and the left of the underlying racial nature of the clashes in Oldham at the weekend hint at an underlying nervousness on the issue.

For the CRE who never tire of racialising social issues, whose job it is to bring race to the foreground at every opportunity, who approve of the pivotal role race plays in the media on a weekly basis, to then turn around and demand from politicians that it should not be exploited at election time, leaves them open to the accusation of being out of touch, or of charlatanism.

Either way, the serious questions it raises about the establishment?s willingness to play to the gallery when it suits will not to be lost on the watching public. The whole affair can only add to the sense of, in particular, working class disenchantment with the overall anti-racist posturing by the establishment.

It cannot be said with any certainty how much effort the BNP will put into the general election, with their focus as it is on the local elections in 2002. Thus it may not be possible to measure the effect on its new ranking as the ?only party who can be trusted on race?.

What can be said with absolute certainty is that until the Socialist Alliance, who will find itself confronting the BNP at the ballot box next May, divorce themselves entirely from the liberal agenda on race, it can never hope to be regarded as the party ?who can ever be trusted on class?.

If the SA enter the contest by continuing to totally discount working class perceptions on the related issues of race and immigration it will look as ?shallow and hypocritical? as the Tories do currently. In that case there will be only one winner. With ominous consequences, the BNP will have been handed the mantle ?radical alternative? on a plate. But unlike the Tories the left will have no one to blame but itself.

CRE boost
CRE boost