17.10.2001

Anger takes to streets

Anti-war movement begins to learn politics

Over 40,000 people marched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square on October 13 to protest against the Bush-Blair war on Afghanistan. This was a brilliant turnout. All the more so, given the fact that overwhelmingly the demonstration consisted of those new to politics. In addition to the smattering of veteran CNDers, demo clowns, the phalanxes of the organised left and the Socialist Workers Party, some three-quarters of the demonstration were made up of university and school students, muslim groups and a whole kaleidoscope of people. They came from just about everywhere: Birmingham and Bradford, Oxford and Oldham, Stoke and Stockport, Newcastle and Newport ? and of course London and the south east.

The diversity of the turnout is not a cause for celebration in and of itself. That we can leave to the CND and Labour left platform speakers. To stop this war, and all wars, will need unity around the correct politics. Those politics are the politics of socialism. However, socialism is the self-liberation movement of the masses - crucially the working class, as it breaks out from the shell of capitalist society. And that class does yet not exist. It has to be made, or make itself, through struggle. That is why we welcome the diversity of the October 13 demon-stration. People are on the move and embarking on struggle. Encouragingly, the leaflets of the left were eagerly taken. There was also a ready audience for papers. Discounting those that were distributed free at the end of the demonstration, sales of the Weekly Worker reached almost over 400. Our literature stalls report healthy results too.

What attracted particular press and media attention were the sizeable groups of muslims. They took over a corner of Trafalgar Square for an impromptu gathering and even managed to secure an unplanned platform intervention. Politically this strand of the demonstration was extremely contradictory. Not surprisingly all expressed outrage against the US bombing of Afghanistan. Most were at pains to emphasise their rejection of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. But there was a minority. A minority that can only be called islamic fundamentalists, chanting their ?God is great? slogan, along with bloodcurdling condemnations of George W Bush and capitalism, Zionism and the Jews. And this minority itself contained a minority that was openly in favour of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA. However, despite some hesitation, the youth on the fundamentalist contingents - presum-ably often bitterly divided on sectarian and ethnic grounds - were willing to take leaflets and talk.

Heading the march was the banner of the official organisers, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Despite the fact that CND, together with the Socialist Alliance and the Green Party, had been joint sponsors of the Brighton march two weeks earlier, where CND national chair Carol Naughton had remarked on the positive spirit of cooperation amongst all those who had worked together to prepare for that occasion, neither the SA nor the SWP was permitted a speaker. CND appears to have turned against the left.

The SWP put most of its energy behind its present flag of convenience - the Stop the War Coalition. Certainly Stop the War placards outnumbered those of the SA. Nevertheless, every one of the 3,000 SA placards, produced by the SWP, were taken by marchers - mostly by people who are not yet members. While this meant that the SA was easily the most prominent left grouping, the message they carried was hardly a socialist one: ?No to war?.

This was not what had been agreed by the SA executive, which had settled for ?Stop the war?. A slogan that is not quite so completely and unambiguously pacifistic. But the SWP?s own banner and placards read: ?Stop this bloody war?, leading one to suspect that perhaps the comrades were keen to ensure a clear demarcation. The ?revolutionary? SWP is meant to stand out within the broad anti-war movement, including the Stop the War Coalition and, it seems, the SA.

Socialists, if they are serious about their programme, are obliged to present clear, consistent, working class politics. Liberals, radical muslims, pacifists and reformists will neither be fooled nor won over if we water down our politics in an attempt to make ourselves appear less ?extreme?. If we deliberately set out to create a swamp, we will only succeed in getting ourselves bogged down.

More importantly, if we are serious about halting Blair and Bush in their tracks, rather than simply wanting to recruit to this or that leftwing sect, then we must adopt winning politics - the politics of the only force capable of defeating them, the revolutionary working class. And that means striving to transform the Socialist Alliance into a united, effective organisation - a working class party.

That is why the tendency for the SWP to downgrade the SA within the anti-war movement and put it on the backburner until the local elections in 2002 is so counterproductive. For example, although the SWP?s Rob Hoveman, a national vice-chair of the alliance, ordered 5,000 SA ?Stop the war? leaflets, all but a couple of hundred were left unpacked. Nobody was organised to distribute them.

The SWP leadership seemed to have decided that only Stop the War Coalition leaflets would be handed out by its members. So leaflets printed for Media Workers Against the War also remained in their boxes. Again, despite the presence of SWP comrade Jonathan Neale of MWAR, nobody was organised to hand them out.

The need for unambiguous socialist politics becomes all the more obvious when we recall what came from the platform on October 13. Almost without exception what we got was the liberal conscience of the bourgeoisie. Carol Naughton, CND chair, was in favour of ?bringing those responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks to justice?, but opposed the use of force to achieve that. Does she favour sanctions like those imposed on Iraq - estimated to be responsible for the deaths of nearly half a million chidden? Some CND leaders have indeed advocated sanctions. Others a UN war.

Alan Simpson MP followed that line when he said he was ?all for intervention? against bin Laden and the Taliban. But it should be ?diplomatic and legal?. Code words in such circles for the UN - which, besides the capitalistically advanced countries organised in Nato, the EU, etc, is made up of a witches? den of proto-imperialists, oppressive bureaucracies, oil monarchies, military dictatorships, kleptocracies and other such blood-suckers.

You do not have to share Clauswitz?s understanding that ?war is a continuation of politics using other, violent, means? to see the problem in deferring things to the UN. What happens if the US prefers to act through that body and - as in Korea 1950-53 - the war is fought under the auspices of ?international law?? It still means US aircraft bombing Afghan towns and villages, a massive displacement of human beings into neighbouring counties and an imposed government. A UN imprimatur does not make an unjust war a just war.

UN and other such pacifisms disarm the working class and can under certain circumstances play directly into the hands of the warmongers.

Peter Manson