Letters

Birmingham abuse

Birmingham?s Small Heath district saw an exceptionally large ?Stop the War? meeting on Monday October 29. Local Stop the War Coalition press officer and Socialist Workers Party member Rumy Hasan has reported it in the most glowing terms: ?Around 1,500 people crowded in ? One of the largest political meetings Birmingham has seen in years. The size and diversity of the meeting shows the gathering strength of the anti-war movement.?

The ?diversity? of the meeting was, however, strictly limited, in a way that raises grave questions about the SWP?s role as organisers in the anti-war movement. Inside the meeting, so we are informed by Steve Godward, a Fire Brigades Union activist who was a Socialist Alliance candidate in the June general election, British-Asian women (but not white or black women) were directed to sit in a separate section of the hall.

Some British-Asian women sat in mixed sections of the hall without trouble, but one British-Asian woman who objected was abused. When the British-Asian woman protested, and Steve remonstrated with the SWP organisers on the spot, the local SWP full-timer finally intervened in her favour, though very reluctantly.

An Iranian socialist, Arash, was refused admission and threatend for distributing anti-fundamentalist leaflets.

Jim Denham reports on the next stage: ?At the Birmingham Stop the War committee two days later, the SWP were obviously expecting criticism. They attempted to pre-empt it by opening the discussion with an ecstatic report on the meeting from their full-time organiser. The meeting organisers were to be congratulated and thanked for allowing us to take part, etc. Actually, the Small Heath meeting had been to all appearances a Stop the War Coalition meeting, publicised by Stop the War Coalition leaflets, with a typical ?Stop the War? platform, and with the SWP playing a high-profile role in running it.

?When comrades raised the question of the exclusion of Arash, some young men who said they?d been stewards at the meeting stated that he had only been excluded because he was a risk to the security of the meeting and they had been told (by whom?) that he had a record of threatening women. Women at the committee meeting objected very strongly to this allegation, stating that they knew Arash and could not believe it of him.

?A resolution condemning violence and aggression within the campaign was moved by Stuart Richardson of the International Socialist Group. It did not mention the incident with Arash specifically in its text. It was overwhelmingly passed - but with the SWP voting against!?

An extended discussion of these incidents on the Socialist Alliance email list since then has elicited no challenge from the SWP on the essential facts of the matter.

Birmingham abuse
Birmingham abuse

Republican SA?

Dave Craig remarks that I cannot recognise what is staring me in the face because I do not go along with his assertion that the Socialist Alliance?s general election document People before profit was a ?republican socialist manifesto?

Comrade Craig is of course quite correct when he states that the SA manifesto ?calls for the abolition of the constitutional monarchy?. It also contains demands for the protection of the environment, but that does not lead me to describe it as a ?green manifesto?. I know how to differentiate between a minor feature and a dominant characteristic.

Dave writes of the SA?s priority pledges as though they were some inexplicable aberration. They were not. These almost exclusively trade union-type demands perfectly summed up the economism of the majority of the affiliates, which unfortunately - despite much that was positive - characterised the manifesto as a whole. The sad truth is that it would still be more accurate to describe People before profit as economistic rather than republican.

The SA?s manifesto was no more republican than that of the Socialist Labour Party or, for that matter, the policy documents of just about the entire left. They all have demands for the ?dissolution of the monarchy? and the ?abolition of the antiquated, unelected, undemocratic House of Lords? buried somewhere within them (SLP Manifesto).

The problem with describing our election platform as a ?republican socialist manifesto? is that this implies that the SA is jam-packed with republican socialists rather than economists. It understates the size of the task we face. Similarly with the Scottish Socialist Party, which also demands the abolition of the monarchy. If that means the SSP is already a republican socialist party, then clearly there cannot be much of a role within it for specifically republican agitation.

Republican SA?
Republican SA?

Acceptable fundamentalism

The common aim of supporting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan has speeded up the rapprochement between the terrorist islamic state in Iran and the United States, making a mockery of claims that this is a war against terrorism.

On Sunday November 11, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, admitted that Iranian and US military advisers are working side by side with Afghan opposition forces trying to bring down the Taliban: ?There are places in that country where there are some Iranian liaison people, as well as some American liaison people.? Rumsfeld added that, as a nation bordering Afghanistan, Iran has ?a legitimate interest in what happens in that country? and can influence events on Afghan soil.

On November 12, news agencies reported that the Iranian and US foreign ministers - Powell and Kharazi - had a ?brief but friendly exchange at the United Nations? and that between November 10 and 12 Iran?s ?reformist? president, who is visiting the US, appeared on various TV channels to present the acceptable face of islamic fundamentalism.

Reporters did not ask about the serial political murders ordered by Iran?s ministry of intelligence. No one mentioned the fact that women were stoned to death in Iran in 2001. No reporter questioned why so many teenage girls are flogged every week in Tehran for not covering every strand of their hair under their veil. After all, this week?s good fundamentalist could not be challenged about the appalling human rights record of the government he has presided over for the last four and a half years.

The recent developments are not surprising. Iran has long been the main backer of the very forces that today the US and UK claim to be the liberators of Afghanistan - the Northern Alliance. This alliance - whose record of human rights violations equals, if not surpasses, that of the Taliban and its ally, the government of Iran - is responsible for many atrocities in Afghanistan in the early 1990s following the defeat of the pro-Soviet regime. Over the last 24 hours they have already started summary executions and torture of prisoners of war in Harat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul.

Workers Left Unity-Iran condemns the coming to power of the new Taliban in Afghanistan - the islamic forces of the Northern Alliance. We remind all that this was only achieved with relentless bombing by the US, military and financial support from fundamentalists in Iran - a situation that will unleash a new era of civil war in one of the world?s most impoverished countries. The US rapprochement with the terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran proves once more that this war had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, especially state terrorism.

Acceptable fundamentalism
Acceptable fundamentalism