Letters

Dumping paedophiles

Mark Fischer’s article provided excellent and sensitive analysis of the issues surrounding the case of Venables and Thompson, the Bulger killers (Weekly Worker June 28). However, I feel I must take issue with him on the nature of some of the protests last summer on the paedophiles issue.

To be sure, the agenda of the press - especially the outing of paedophiles by the News of the World - is not to be trusted and likewise those that gathered outside the court hearings of Venables and Thompson and some of the spontaneous public near hysteria over the paedophiles issue was not something that deserves the mantle of working class politics, any more than the strange public events following the death of Princess Diana. But the issue of the dispersal of paedophiles into the community and the reactions of some communities, especially in Paulsgrove in Portsmouth, should not be clumped into the same group.

Although understandably individuals leading these protests were affected by hysteria on the issue, it is well known that schedule 1 offenders and paedophiles on release on licence are often housed in low-priority housing, in much the same way as asylum-seekers are treated. It is also true that many offenders, well known as model prisoners, have to be released even when agencies dealing with them know there to be extreme risk of their reoffending.

Dumping of paedophiles, whether it be in areas of low-take-up private renting or council estates, is bound quite rightly to provoke a response, and working class people should openly discuss and organise about these issues. Unsavoury elements, the screamers and shouters (it is well chronicled how abusers often use such events as cover) need to be undercut, by self-organisation.

Is it unreasonable for working class communities then to react when such people are continually dumped in their areas? If this is not a class issue I don’t know what is. Communists and socialists should be with the class and at the disposal of the class. That does not mean tailing every change in public opinion, but it does mean where workers are organised, whether it be politically, industrially or in communities, we cannot absent ourselves, no matter how unpalatable and relatively unsophisticated the situation may be.

Dumping paedophiles
Dumping paedophiles

Keep the pound

Tina Becker argued in favour of the current neutral position of the Socialist Alliance on the euro (Weekly Worker June 21). But I think that the economic and political arguments against entry into the euro zone are compelling.

Economically, there is a qualitative difference between the euro zone and the national states. Eurozone has a central bank to exercise monetary policy, but doesn’t have a proper government or a proper parliament to exercise fiscal policy. Roughly, that means that the only available tool for the control of the economy is use of interest rates, rather than taxation and public spending. That is, monetarism, the most aggressive form of capitalism, is not just the current policy, but is institutionalised. Also, the independence of the Central European Bank is qualitatively different: it is absolute, because there is no institution powerful enough, like a parliament, to challenge it, or take it back altogether.

At a social level the main forces behind the euro project are the big European multinational corporations. That contrasts with some historical examples like Germany or Italy in the 19th century, where the people were actively involved in the process of unification of small underdeveloped capitalisms. A comparison of the institutions these processes left as a legacy is revealing. On the one hand we have national parliaments, as a sign that the people, at least momentarily, have asserted their power and exercised their will, and on the other hand we have a central bank, as a sign that the most aggressive capitalists had it their way.

Politically we socialists have always taken into consideration the illusions the people have for bourgeois democracy, taking part, for example, in elections. An abstention from the referendum would act as a double snub of these illusions. A snub of the fear that power will be transferred to completely unaccountable bodies, and a snub of the referendum process itself, which after all is the highest point of bourgeois democracy. Also, having in mind that we are a small political force and we cannot by our abstention cast doubt on the legitimacy of the referendum, let alone wreck it, the message to the people will be, ‘We couldn’t make up our minds’.

Finally, a ‘no’ campaign need not be negative or defensive. It can put forward a wide range of issues, from the independence of the Bank of England, to the powerlessness of the European parliament, to the globalisation of capital and the backlash against it. Actually, such a campaign can be used to strengthen our links with our comrades outside the UK, rather than cutting them off.

Tina Becker said that the unification of the European working class is long overdue. But how are the workers of Europe going to be united, and why, if not in the course of their fight against the plans of the bosses who are already organised on a European level? I think she will agree that such a fight is “long overdue”.

Keep the pound

F-type political prisoners

We are writing to invite you to participate in a march, which is to take place on July 14 in London in support of the ongoing hunger strikes in Turkey. It will assemble at 12.30pm at Temple tube.

Hundreds of Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners have been on hunger strike for more than seven months, during which time 20 political prisoners and four members of the families of the political prisoners have died. Many political prisoners are currently suffering from neurological diseases such as Korsakoff syndrome, which are irreversible. On December 19 2000 the Turkish security forces carried out an operation, ironically called ‘Return to life’, in which 30 political prisoners were massacred.

The political prisoners are campaigning against the introduction of F-type prisons, where the prisoners have been kept in solitary confinement and isolation and are not allowed to use common areas unless they denounce their beliefs and political alliances. The political prisoners also believed that they will be vulnerable in isolation as they will be taken for interrogation from prison and will be tortured.

The Turkish government has constantly refused to negotiate with the political prisoners and their families. There are reports of inhuman and degrading treatment, including regular beatings at newly opened F-type prisons.

International human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, condemned the isolation regime in F-type prisons; Amnesty International called upon the Turkish authorities to end abuses in the prisons and ensure that prisoners be allowed to associate widely with each other for at least several hours each day.

All over the western world more and more prisons have been established to intern millions of people, the majority of whom are the very people who are victims of the present world capitalist system, which is called globalisation. In many western countries, particularly in the USA, prisons are used to break the will of the detainees and punish them for the sake of punishment. Thousands of prisoners have been kept in isolation units called SHUs (special housing units) in contravention of international human rights agreements, which prohibit prolonged use of solitary confinement as a method of punishment.

The Turkish state is following the example of the US government and bringing the ‘benefits’ of globalisation to the people of Turkey and North Kurdistan, where there are more than 10,000 political prisoners. The Turkish government has been supported by western governments in her dirty war against the Kurdish people: more than 40,000 people have been killed and 4,000 villages destroyed; thousands and thousands of people have been detained and suffered brutal torture; hundreds of political prisoners have become victims of Turkish repression in prisons.

In the case of Turkey, the human rights rhetoric of the western powers is nothing but an example of sheer hypocrisy: the Blair government waged ‘human rights’ wars against Iraq and Serbia. However, the Blair government has not done anything to stop the total destruction of North Kurdistan. The British government has also ignored the plight of more than 10,000 political prisoners, almost all of whom are survivors of torture. The Blair government has also refused to ban the sale of torture equipment and armaments to Turkey.

The Turkish government will not enter into negotiations with political prisoners to end the F-type isolation regime unless it is faced with growing international pressure. Political prisoners in Turkey should urgently be supported by any means necessary, including the boycott of Turkish goods and tourism.

The last seven months of resistance in Turkish prisons has proved that resistance against the national governments must be organised on an international level. We would like to see you marching with us to protest against both the brutality of the Turkish regime and the complicity of the British government.

F-type political prisoners
F-type political prisoners

Local radicals

Now that the general election is over, many Socialist Alliances will be keen to look towards the local elections next year to consolidate and build on our support.

The Weekly Worker in its reporting of the unfortunate clash in one of the recent Hackney by-elections may have mistakenly given the impression that workers employed directly by the council cannot contest elections. This is incorrect. In fact in the past a member of the Socialist Party and myself, who both work for our respective local councils, have stood in borough elections. Workers employed by their local council can contest local elections. If, however, they gain the most votes they cannot be elected. In other words they have a valid candidacy, but are unable to assume office.

This issue, along with the restrictions on political activity on a limited number of council officers, is being taken up by the public service trade unions, as it may be in breach of the Human Rights Act. The ‘election’ of some of our comrades will highlight this undemocratic situation and bring the issue out into the open.

Local government workers have been at the forefront of opposition to Blair’s privatisation agenda and have helped inflict a number of defeats - especially over housing transfers to housing associations and private companies, with many workers being politically radicalised in the campaigns. It is no coincidence that Unison is amongst that growing number of those unions that are seeking to review their relationship with the Labour Party.

New Labour’s reaction against myself when acting as an election agent in the Marlowe by-election, when we gained 18%, the Special Branch action taken against our candidates in the GLA elections, and the more recent action taken against us in Haringey and Hackney concerning election posters clearly show that Labour have a deep-seated fear of us gaining a foothold in local government.

It is therefore important that those SA members who work for local government and want to make a stand and contest local elections should be encouraged and supported.

Local radicals
Local radicals

Not only spiteful

Ian Mahoney writes of so-called “auto anti-Labourism”, a charge levelled against socialists and communists arguing that a vote for the Green Party is preferable to voting for Labour (Weekly Worker June 21).

I am one of those people who voted for the Green Party. Why? Because the Green Party, although not either working class or Marxist, is to the left of the Labour Party.

Why does Ian Mahoney think that a vote for Labour is preferable to a vote for the Green Party? Such an attitude as his is, in my honest opinion, not only spiteful, but also counterproductive to the cause of proletarian revolution.

John Bridge wrote that the Green Party was not socialist (Weekly Worker June 21). I disagree with this opinion. The Green Party is petty bourgeois socialist. My point of reference is the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Not only spiteful
Not only spiteful

Dead Tories

Michael Malkin’s piece on the Tories’ current woes Weekly Worker June 21) is an intelligent analysis. However, it overlooks a crucial factor that underlies the very real problems that the Tories are facing: namely, the relationship between the Conservative Party and big business.

The Tories’ anti-European Union approach before and during the general election has alienated considerable swathes of big bourgeois figures from the traditional party of British business. This alienation has been accelerated by the rebirth of the Labour Party as the centre-right New Labour, which, although it has yet to receive the solid allegiance that big business traditionally gave to the Tories, has been getting the conditional support of considerable numbers of prominent businessmen.

What can the Tories do? It is clear that they recognise that the violently Eurosceptic line and hard-right, anti-asylum-seeker, Tebbit-style, anti-foreigner, anti-gay approach did not win over enough of the electorate, and the promotion of Portillo is an indication that they wish to compete with New Labour for the centre-right ground.

There is very little difference between the Portillo faction’s approach and that of New Labour. Both share the same pro-big business economic policies with the privatisation of as much of the public sector as they can lay their hands on, both are fashionably ‘inclusive’ and ‘multicultural’, both are wary of the euro, but don’t really know what to say about it until their mentors in the US bourgeoisie have worked out their own line on it.

Malkin says that it is foolish to write off the Tories. What we can say with some assurance is that the Conservative Party as we knew it - either under the Thatcherites or their predecessors - is dead, just as old Labour is dead. The Tories can try to reinvent themselves as a centre-right party in direct competition to New Labour, or as a hard-right outfit with Poujadist and even semi-fascist leanings.

The former course will alienate the Tory hard right, and New Labour would have to make some disastrous errors before the Tories could capture the centre-right arena - that is to say, regain the confidence of big business - with any certainty. The latter course would reduce the Tory party to an insignificant, if venomous rump.

It is unlikely under present conditions that the Tories will be able to reinvent themselves sufficiently to be able to beat New Labour in the next election, and probably the one after that.

Dead Tories
Dead Tories