Letters

Cowardly

So the photo of our dead comrade Carlo is accompanied by the message ?? - the implication being that he had learned his (Weekly Worker July 26).

What are the rest of us to learn? That the nasty anarchist hordes shouldn?t attack the police and riot or the police will shoot us? That we should parade peaceably and just sell our papers to each other and quietly build the party? What a timid and cowardly response. In any case the police do not need an excuse to repress us: they do it because that is their function, not because we annoy them.

I suppose someone could have said something similar about Peterloo, or Featherstone, or Tonypandy. Of course if we all stop at home no-one will get hurt - that?s true. But haven?t you missed the point then completely?

Cowardly
Cowardly

Disband police

Regarding the discussion that the Weekly Worker has been carrying about street violence and the police, I would like to put forward some arguments that have been discussed within the Lambeth left.

As you know, some days ago the police killed a black guy and two days later there was a demo and a small riot. One element of the debate should be the Marxist attitude towards looting. After the demo called last Friday SWP members did not participate in the rioting, but some activists supported the looting on the grounds that it was a way in which the youth could express their discontent against police racism.

Other comrades say that it is a method of the lumpenproletariat that alienates workers, divides the community, weakens mass protest and justifies police repression. Many of the looters were kids interested basically in sports shops.

Another discussion concerns what to do with the police. Some comrades believe that we need to reorganise, democratise or disarm them. However, if the police did not have guns they would have other weapons. Leftwing comrades argue that the police, as a separate body from the population, are a pillar of the bourgeois state and, in that sense, have to be disbanded and replaced by workers? and citizens? guards, whose members should be elected and recallable by assemblies.

Some comrades argue that there are police who have sympathies for socialists and that we should support any action they take inside their force for a union or the right to refuse orders. Perhaps we should support critical elements in the police force and some of their demands. However, we need to argue that the police, even if it is reformed, will always be the capitalists? watchdogs. Socialist policemen should be in favour of a new institution completely controlled by the population and based in the neighbourhoods.

Disband police
Disband police

Not available

According to your website, the Weekly Worker is available for sale at the Byers Road branch of Barratts in Glasgow. There was no sign of it for the first few weeks I?ve been here, but it has been on sale for the last couple of weeks.

The paper has improved a lot since the last time I was living in Britain, by the way.

Not available
Not available

Scab Scargill

Just a couple of subsidiary points to my article about Scargill?s treacherous call for the state to ban election broadcasts of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party (Weekly Worker July 26).

It is not just the Spartacists who are likely to be having kittens about the consequences of Scargill?s scab antics in this regard. When this question was raised on the UK Left Network internet discussion list by the author of this piece, a whole gaggle of hard-line Stalinist followers of Scargill, together with other sentimental Scargill-worshippers, even leading SSP member Eddie Truman, went into full witch-hunt mode, using various fake pretexts to demand the exclusion from the list of the individual who had committed the ultimate crime of l?se-majest? - ie, calling Scargill a scab. Eddie Truman regarded this characterisation as ?unforgivable?, notwithstanding the fact that Scargill has boasted, in writing, that he has written to Blunkett?s home office demanding that even the SSP be banned from election broadcasts in Scotland itself.

It appears that our Eddie, who is so strident in denouncing anyone from south of the border who even questions the desirability of Scottish separation from the UK state as some kind of ?English imperialist?, undergoes a Jeckyll and Hyde transformation the moment Scargill?s name is mentioned. Bowing before the cult of Scargill?s personality, this particular left-nationalist comrade gives an arch ?little England? chauvinist a blank cheque to demand a Westminster-led attack on the democratic rights of his own party! SSP members should ask this comrade why he cannot defend his own party?s democratic rights, and instead is leaping to the defence of the person who is urging the state to push the SSP off the airwaves, while damning Scargill?s critics instead!

One Stalinist supporter of Scargill ranted that ?the working class? would and should deal with those who dare to call Scargill a scab, to the applause of others of the same ilk. Given that these same people only a short time earlier were echoing the News of the World?s reactionary campaign for ?the working class? to lynch ?suspected paedophiles?, this again highlights the odious and anti-democratic politics that Scargill has promoted through his total and brazen rejection of elementary democratic norms and culture for his ?party?.

One thing is clear - workers? democracy is not an optional extra for any organisation, and it cannot be arbitrarily separated from broader aspects of working class politics and programme. Any violation of workers? democracy, if it is not fought and corrected, will inevitably lead sooner of later to the crossing of class lines. This history of Scargill?s organisation is living proof of that.

Scab Scargill
Scab Scargill

Take your pick

In an otherwise commendable article robustly criticising Arthur Scargill?s odd and brattish behaviour in relation to the Socialist Alliance - any day now I expect him to threaten to take his ball home - Ian Donovan perpetuates the notion that Trotsky was assassinated with an ?ice pick?.

Such an item is, in fact, a rather lightweight tool constructed after the style of a bradawl with a stout, sharply pointed cylindrical blade. Such a tool is perfect for chipping bits of ice off a large block, for which it was designed. For assassinating the founder of the Red Army and second greatest leader of the Russian Revolution it is, however, inadequate. It is, no doubt, for this reason that Ramon Mercader used an ice axe for his murderous task, merely sawing off half of the handle to make it less obtrusive in his OGPU raincoat. That he made the wiser choice of weapon was tragically confirmed in Coyoacan.

Such an item is, in fact, a rather lightweight tool constructed after the style of a bradawl with a stout, sharply pointed cylindrical blade. Such a tool is perfect for chipping bits of ice off a large block, for which it was designed. For assassinating the founder of the Red Army and second greatest leader of the Russian Revolution it is, however, inadequate. It is, no doubt, for this reason that Ramon Mercader used an ice axe for his murderous task, merely sawing off half of the handle to make it less obtrusive in his OGPU raincoat. That he made the wiser choice of weapon was tragically confirmed in Coyoacan.

Take your pick

Joined up

Contrary to the claims of my Anti-Fascist Action critic, I never said that the world view of the BNP as the sole reason for its success letters Weekly Worker. I wrote: ?The whole point about the BNP is that, while they do ?community work?, they also provide a generalised perspective and a world view, a cobbled together ideology?. It would seem clear that here I am not dismissive of the comrades? much beloved community work, but am in fact merely pointing out that there is a link between this work and the fact that the BNP also provides a ?world view?.

My Afa critic points to several focuses for BNP agitation in Oldham. What does he imagine informs this? We should not view concentrated agitation on issues of immediate concern to working class communities and general propaganda in favour of a ?world view? as being mutually exclusive. We should view them as being mutually complementary - one does not make much sense without the other.

Our answer when it comes to agitation and propaganda should not be more of one and less of the other. We should instead seek to develop a ?joined up? approach to politics. In seeking the answer purely in more community work the Afa comrade reflects the narrowness of the economist left. For example, he wants to develop a programme for ?working class communities?, whereas we would look to develop a programme for the class as a whole. It is this narrowness that, when it comes to matters of ideology and articulating a world view, leads to the left tailing the agenda of the bourgeoisie. Given that Afa - and the CPGB - criticise the left?s uncritical championing of multiculturalism - a product of this tailism - this strikes me as being rather ironic. It suggests that there are serious contradictions between some aspects of Afa?s diagnosis of the left?s problem and its proposed cure.

My Afa critic also dismisses the categorisation of BNP supporters as being ?atomised and ideologically confused? as ?arrogant nonsense?. However, he makes no case to disprove it. The fact that many who voted BNP acknowledged that they did not have a clue what they were voting for should say something to the comrade. Instead, he tries to confuse the issue by making it one of ?acknowledging a problem?, when in fact it is a question of orientation. To orientate towards sections of the class that are in fact declassed would be a successful recipe for years of fruitless activity.

I agree that the left has failed to ?fill the political vacuum in working class communities?. The question that seriously arises from that, however, is how practically we fill this vacuum. To answer that question we must critically address many issues. In the process we must recognise that to replace one form of narrowness with another will not advance our common cause one inch.

Joined up
Joined up

SA reformists

I agree with Jack Conrad?s proposals for the Socialist Alliance - at any rate, for that part of the SA standing in the Bolshevik tradition (Weekly Worker July 26). Like Jack, I want the principal groups to fuse into a single Leninist organisation. And I accept his interpretation of democratic centralism: while it has taken a painfully long time, I now recognise that the regimes I tolerated as a member of the Socialist Workers Party and then Scottish Militant Labour were bureaucratic caricatures of the genuine article.

I long harboured doubts about the CPGB alternative, but have been won round by clarification regarding their defence of centralism. It was a relief to read the critique of Martin Thomas?s advocacy of a ?right? for SA members to campaign against an action while it is being carried out! And I like the repudiation of minority groups in the SA demanding an automatic right to vote on leading bodies, rather than simply to attend and speak. Setting a threshold (albeit a low one) for obtaining observer status rights is equally important.

I do have one problem with Jack?s proposals: they fail to address what should be done with those already on board who make no claim to stand in the Leninist tradition. It is simply not good enough to say they should be free to organise one (or more) faction inside a Leninist party, with an inalienable right to express disagreement with its revolutionary programme. It is, alas, not credible to suppose many reformists will sacrifice much to build a revolutionary party. A powerful Leninist organisation would attract towards itself masses of honest reformist workers, and intellectuals, under certain conditions: a successful workers? revolution abroad or a rising class struggle at home. But these conditions are absent today. That is why Jack?s proposals are, in my opinion, incomplete.

Unless he is ready to wave goodbye to honest left reformists in the SA like Mike Marqusee (not to mention the many dishonest ones hitching a ride on board ostensibly revolutionary vehicles), then Jack needs to flesh out his theses. Specifically, he must explain how revolutionaries can relate to honest left reformists happy to work alongside us without (yet) becoming revolutionaries themselves.

Of the long-term Trotskyist entryists WP alone seem willing to abandon the strategy of building a party along the lines of old Labour circa 1980. Although the SWP dismissed entryism during its most productive years, an undeclared faction within that party has clearly been won to the strategy of cultivating, and draping around themselves, a thick, left reformist overcoat. The tragic history of the Second International seems to have faded from memory.

Although determined to steer clear of that road to nowhere, Marxists relate to the world as it is (pregnant with all its opportunities) as a prerequisite for remodelling it into what we want it to become. Although uniting the revolutionary left is an urgent priority, in parallel with this must go a separate, but related process: the uniting of all honest leftwing socialists sick of writing Blair a blank cheque come election time.

The sectarian wing of the Socialist Party in England and Wales acts as a fifth column whenever it stands candidates against the rest of the SA, standing on artificially determined single-issue tickets. We are, nonetheless, witnessing a tectonic shift inside the trade unions, one likely to end in electoral challenges to Blair. SPEW, the Alliance for Workers? Liberty and the International Socialist Group are wrong to place all their eggs in the basket of anticipating a mass reformist workers? party.

Elements of a comprehensive strategy for relating to the left reformist opposition to Blair exist scattered throughout many Weekly Worker articles. But if Jack wants to win a majority at SA conference, he needs to incorporate these into his proposals for the SA?s democratic structures.

SA reformists
SA reformists

Tommy rot

In an amazing display of ignorance or dishonesty, Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist Party MSP, has claimed the BNP vote ?fell between 1997 and 2001? in the general elections:

?I think the BNP result in Oldham was distinctly to do with the circumstances within that city at that time. If you examine the BNP and NF results in other parts of the country, they did nowhere near as well. In fact the BNP and NF results fell between 1997 and 2001. It?s not the case that they?ve been striding forward on all fronts. There was a specific racial tension which has been built up in Oldham and Burnley?.

An Anti-Fascist Action post on the UK Left discussion site puts the record straight: ?In the 1997 general election the BNP stood 56 candidates, gaining 34,868 votes. In the 2001 general election they stood 33 candidates and received a total of 47,195 votes; which means the BNP gained 12,327 extra votes with 20 less candidates.? 1997 - BNP candidates averaged 658 votes (1.2%); 2001 - BNP candidates averaged 1,430 votes (3.9%).

The following quote is taken from July?s Searchlight: ?If one removes the five seats contested in the north west, the average falls to 2.8%.? So even taking out the ?special circumstances? in the north west the BNP still more than doubled their percentage from 1997! It would be interesting to see how Tommy can manipulate the statistics to show any different.

People trying to convince themselves that the BNP are an irrelevance to modern British politics are just deceiving themselves. On Friday June 8, while the left was hand-wringing and trying to convince themselves that they had made a breakthrough into the mainstream of British politics, the BNP were starting their campaign for the local elections in May 2002. In the weeks following the general election the BNP went back to the areas where they stood, delivering ?thank you for your vote? leaflets and canvassing for May. And the left has done what?

What will the left be doing to counter the BNP in the May 2002 elections? Anti-Nazi League choirs giving adrenaline-pumped choruses of ?Nazi scum, off our streets?? Or the other old favourites, lobbying politicians and police to ban and imprison?

Like many on the left, Sheridan puts the Oldham result down to ?special conditions?, but ever since Derek Beackon got elected on the Isle of Dogs in 1993 this excuse has been offered up rather than face the facts. What about the 26% the BNP got in Bexley last July? In a mainly white area, concentrating on social issues, they beat the Tories to finish second behind Labour.

To suggest the north west is the only area where the BNP did well in the general election is also wrong. In east London they got five percent or more in Dagenham, Barking and Poplar; in Yorkshire just under five percent in Dewsbury and Bradford; and in the Midlands also just under five percent in Dudley and West Bromwich.

With the real figures being so readily available we can only conclude that this was a deliberate attempt to mislead. To suggest the far right are in decline may reassure the left that there is no need to worry, no need to change, but without a doubt this strategy is doomed to fail. For anti-fascists to seriously challenge the growth of the BNP, the starting point must be accurate information.

It is disappointing, if not surprising, that Tommy Sheridan (or the Weekly Worker) have not yet admitted this mistake.

Tommy rot
Tommy rot