Letters

No trust

Articles, announcements and comments generated by those at the helm of the Socialist Alliance never cease to raise a smile in our workplace, even from a ‘good sort’ like Steve Godward.

Steve opened his article by stating: “It was not until about an hour afterwards that it sank in what had happened at the Socialist Alliance conference. Chairing means you are concentrating on quite technical questions.”

OK, we’ll accept this as an excuse for being party to a shambles, but it appears that it has taken almost a month since conference for yet another member of the national executive to attempt to distance himself from the ruling clique without actually upsetting them.

It did not take comrade Tess McMahon that long. Within a week of conference she was explaining her reservations about the conduct of conference to the ‘internet indies’. The skulduggery was initiated by the Socialist Workers Party with political cover supplied by Resistance supporters culminating in just one slate being presented to the membership, excluding extremely able but outspoken comrades like John Bridge and Phil Pope, and almost excluding Martin Thomas - no doubt hoping this would cause the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to follow on the heels of the Socialist Party!

Comrade Godward goes on to explain that he had to read the Weekly Worker’s report on conference to find out what had taken place and, like the majority of the SA membership, he had no idea that John Rees (the SA’s real leader) had been holding talks with various groups (who no doubt included more religious groups whom the SWP see as the new natural allies of truth, democracy and human liberation).

It was whispered long ago, before the ‘Liz Davies fiasco’ that Liz would ask a question of our national secretary, but her answer would be via a phone call from John Rees - showing exactly where the decisions are made regarding the strategy and day-to-day running of the alliance.

It is also interesting to note how many comrades had to see their motions thrown out to allow John Rees to have air time under the pretence of getting the SA to support the STWC (as if it wasn’t doing this already to the exclusion of everything else). But, as we found out, it was just an excuse for a bit of ‘tub-thumping’ and ‘spin-peddling’ to the SWP troops, who on cue gave rapturous applause, just like a real party conference.

Steve Godward goes on to explain that “we lost our way” and points out things that have been said in this paper over and over and over again. This is awfully tedious: to read the same dialogue dished up by a plethora of SA members either making excuses for the SWP executive or for their own association with them.

The comrade finishes by reminding us that “trust would be a good first step” - has Steve been asleep like Rip Van Winkle? Has he just awoke? This phrase was the one most of us were saying when we voted one person, one vote in December 2001 - how wrong we were.

No trust
No trust

Sleeping better

Comrade Power writes of the commitment to politics that the CPGB seems to demand (Letters, June 5). In my time amongst them I would affirm that the comrades are an intense bunch to be around - many of them have sacrificed a great deal for the sake of communism.

But it is a great disservice and indeed quite shameful of the comrade to lambast them for this. Every communist must ask themselves what they will do, and those who answer that at the expense of bourgeois careers, semi-detached houses in Surrey and ‘normal’ family relations deserve better than comrade Power’s derision.

I faced up to those questions and felt that I could not commit so heavily to a political movement that seemed so hopeless in the 90s. I have a great respect for the CPGB hard core, and I sleep better knowing that there are people of firmer conviction than I. I believe that the CPGB are probably the only folks in this thing because they believe it.

The SWP and other organisations have become institutions for the paying of mortgages for central committee members, whilst they churn out dull and insightless books, and avoid that great tragedy of actually having to get a job.

I burnt out quickly on communism, the SWP and all that jazz; but, as the song says, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”.

Sleeping better
Sleeping better

Socialist SF

Contrary to what Phil Kent writes, Sinn Féin does have a working class programme and platform (‘Worse than Galloway?’, June 5). Its base is working class. Its support is on both sides of border.

SF calls for a united Ireland. It continues in the revolutionary tradition of Irish republicanism. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (who?) have faded away. Living Sinn Féin is the voice of Irish unity, nationalism and socialism.

John McDonnell’s remarks at the Connolly meeting were sharp and uncompromising. He called for nationalists to have democracy, for the unionists to participate in democracy. But, most unlike New Labour, he called for the concepts of “class, capitalism, solidarity and imperialism” to be regained in the Irish working class movement. The CPGB would agree that any party which says it speaks for labour must have these concepts at the heart of its political ideology. New Labour has claimed the end of class consciousness. So that we can all become middle class!

Socialist SF
Socialist SF

Smoke and mirrors

Your article, ‘Yes, we have no WMDs’, was excellent (Weekly Worker June 5). Thank you.

I’m a citizen and resident of the United States. What you describe in the article should have been obvious to anyone who took the time to analyse what our government was feeding us: see past the clumsy smoke and mirrors, and recognise it for the deliberate lies and propaganda that it was.

Well, ‘should’ doesn’t happen over here too often. I can’t speak about life in the United Kingdom, but in the US, it’s ‘life among the nitwits’ and ‘hail to the creep’.

Smoke and mirrors
Smoke and mirrors

Twisted reality

I should think many of us have seen the film The running man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The time is this century, the good ol’ US of A is a totalitarian society and the Schwarzenegger character is a cop.

He flies his own helicopter gunship and is ordered to fire on citizens who are rioting for food. Refusing to fire on innocent civilians, he is knocked unconscious, jailed, accused of false charges and assigned to a penal colony. Meanwhile, life goes on in the ‘land of the free’, which is numbed by a steady diet of fabricated news. Then one day Schwarzenegger and some friends escape from the penal colony, and TV footage of their escape catches the eye of national TV’s top gameshow superstar.

The ratings for his show appear to be of mega proportions (it is beamed on screens the size of billboards to the desperate millions too poor to live indoors). The gameshow host wants them higher still, and as he sees Schwarzenegger escaping from his guards, he decides that this convict is the ideal guest for the programme, which consists of criminals who are given a chance of freedom if they can defeat the heavily armed killers who are guest stars on the show. This gives Arny his chance to tell the gameshow host, “I’ll be back”, and the former to reply, “Only in a rerun”.

Maybe I personally liked this film because it was a bit 1984-ish; and it appears to have prophesised the sick but popular interest in ‘reality TV’ programmes. Although not something that I personally get a kick out of, according to the ratings, millions of my fellow citizens actually tune in to shows such as Big Brother and I’m a celebrity get me out of here for many, many hours - even when the subjects are asleep!

But I think what I have just read in The Guardian is going a bit too far and is, let’s say, a tad insensitive, even for a politically incorrect animal such as myself (Saturday May 31). Apparently ‘aunty’ is considering a reality gameshow format that will ask the public to vote on whether individual asylum-seekers should be thrown out of the country. It must be further on than the simple ‘idea’ stage at the BBC, as it is reported that the proposed show has been given the working title of You, the immigration officer, and understandably has drawn fire from angry MPs and refugee groups. They actually sent out emails to asylum organisations seeking suitable candidates to appear in the hour-long show - unbelievable!

We can only hope that it comes from someone’s twisted humour and the BBC will quickly put our minds at rest - but the BBC is continually coming under the shadow of commercialisation and reform, so don’t hold your breath.

I would like to point out to comrades that to complain, comment and give feedback to the BBC you can go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback or fill in a ‘serious complaints’ form at http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/contactus/serious_form.shtml.

Twisted reality
Twisted reality

Absent SWP

I note that the SWP have been congratulating themselves on almost having stopped the war. Personally I find this astonishing claim indicative of the height of self-delusion that the organisation is capable of.

With such success behind them, does this now mean that their involvement with the anti-war movement is at an end? I raise this issue because the anti-war groups based in Surrey recently held a conference with the intention of bringing together all those who have been active in the anti-war movement. There were approximately 70 delegates, representing some 15 groups that took part in protest activity at the May 31 conference, called by the Surrey Stop the War Coalition (where, unusually, the SWP does not play a leading role).

The diversity of the delegates was a testament to the broad alliance that the STWC sought to build. There were Labour Party supporters, Liberals, Greens and even a Conservative. There were anglicans, catholics, quakers, a muslim and a pagan. The CPGB were also in attendance, as were members of the Communist Party of Britain and the New Communist Party, and a significant number of ex-members of the ‘official’ CPGB.

One group, however, was notable by their absence: there were no SWP members. What has happened? The numerically largest left group certainly has members in Surrey - some have been at the very forefront of the anti-war movement. So where were they? Is Surrey an anomaly or have the SWP now decided that they have bigger and better campaigns to wage elsewhere?

Absent SWP
Absent SWP

Stay divided II

On June 5, you published most of a letter from me concerning the recent split in the International Socialist Organisation in Australia and the importance of that regrettable development for revolutionaries here in Britain (‘Stay divided’).

Unfortunately you saw fit to cut the final two paragraphs of that letter for reasons of space and, while I acknowledge that the letter was of some length, I must assert that the reason for this cut was political and against your own avowed principle of openness. The cut was political and therefore censorious in that it was only in the final paragraph that I was able to hint at an alternative course of action for revolutionaries to the sectarian Socialist Alliance strategy which you propose in your columns.

The subhead given the letter, ‘Stay divided’, was also politically misleading, as the final paragraph concerned itself with a plea for revolutionaries to seek unity with the working class rather than pursue the sectarian goal of a misalliance of socialist sects.

It was also in contradiction with your policy of openness - a principle inappropriate in a revolutionary paper in my view, which should not be some kind of open forum, but rather a voice for a given viewpoint - as it prevented a viewpoint rarely heard on the far left in this country being aired.

Therefore I am resubmitting the final two paragraphs to your paper for publication and have added a little further material to explain why in my view the Socialist Alliance projects, here and in Australia, are sectarian. Readers of the Weekly Worker will be aware that this paper has long been a advocate of the position that the far left groups loosely gathered together in the Socialist Alliance should become a single party.

This schema is also advanced in relation to Australia, which country has a political structure similar in many ways to that in Britain; it even possesses a Labor Party to which the trade union movement is directly affiliated - contrary to my assertion previously. Could you not have cut that error from my earlier letter!

In Britain the SWP, the leading component of the SA, endeavours to limit the SA to electoral interventions and little else, seeing it as a united front. In Australia the course of development is somewhat different and the Weekly Worker's schema of turning the Socialist Alliance into a party has been passed. No doubt when this new party becomes reduced to nothing more than the present Democratic Socialist Party, the Weekly Worker will find reasons enough for its failure. It is possible, however, to indicate today why this putative party will fail with some degree of certainty.

Any party worth its salt needs must have a united view of the major questions facing it both nationally and internationally: it must have a single programme which all accept. This quite simply cannot be achieved in Australia unless some of the constituent parts of the new party abandon principled positions in favour of those of the DSP, who will form the leading faction in the party. The only other alternative is compromise and obfuscation designed to conceal deep-going principled differences.

Just to take a few examples of the questions facing the new party. How will its militants operate within the unions? Would the new party support imperialist intervention, as the DSP did in East Timor, when next Australia violates the sovereignty of others? How should the Socialist Alliance party relate to the Labor Party? What attitude should be adopted towards Palestine? All of these questions, and more besides, are probable split questions for at least some of the various tendencies now trapped into a spurious unity with the DSP.

Where then does this leave those comrades who have left the ISO and those SWP comrades who still wish to build a revolutionary workers’ party? Well, Marcus Ström's suggestion that the best thing the Australian comrades could do is remain in the Socialist Alliance, reassess their politics and fight for the SA to become a revolutionary party is an idiocy (Weekly Worker May 29). A nonsense indeed when the entire political tradition of these comrades must mean that they reject the ideas Marcus claims as revolutionary, ideas that are in fact nothing but Kautskyism given a left gloss.

Better that they do reassess their past of course, but collectively outside the ranks of the Socialist Alliance, asking how and why the IS Tendency has moved away from the politics of working class emancipation, socialism from below, and engages in squalid manoeuvres with groups like the DSP. Better yet, that they enter into discussions with Soc Alt, who correctly predicted that the Socialist Alliance was a dead end, in order to resume building a revolutionary alternative.

In Britain the scene is far darker for revolutionaries who would take their stand on the IS tradition. What is for certain is that they will need to argue within the SWP to abandon the fruitless petty electoralism of the Socialist Alliance, leave alone the impending lash-up with a noxious mix of aged Stalinioids and muslim obscurantists, and return to the task of building a revolutionary alternative in the working class and in the colleges.

What is for certain is that in both Australia and Britain the Socialist Alliances are sectarian, as they must counterpose themselves to the Labour Parties which remain based on the trade unions, which are the only mass workers’ organisations in existence. Any strategy which seeks to go around this fact is doomed to an existence on the fringes of the workers’ movement and at best will find a niche as a marginal electoral body similar to the Independent Labour Party of the 1930s - and this only if circumstances conspire in its favour. Circumstances which are unlikely to appear in Australia and Britain, I would argue, but which have developed in Scotland.

Electoral work in the current circumstances of Australia and Britain then is likely to be a fruitless pursuit, especially if carried through in conjunction with muslim obscurantists and that wing of the trade union bureaucracy which looks to the dreary Morning Star for its ideas, unless a base within the working class is already in place. Such has not been the case in either country and as a result electoral results have been poor.

The question then arises as to how a revolutionary alternative might be built today and the same answer must be given as would have been given 30 or 40 years since. That is to say, by revolutionaries placing the interests of the working class at the centre of their theoretical and, where practical, propagandist work. This should not be understood as a proposal to reject left unity, but rather as a proposal to unite revolutionaries with the mass of workers on the basis of revolutionary socialist ideas, as they develop towards those ideas on the basis of their own struggles and concerns. A spurious, politically compromised organisational unity of small left groups can only act as a barrier to this organic conception of class consciousness arising from the struggles of the working class ourselves and revolutionaries seeking influence from within the mass organisations of the class.

Today, however, in contrast to the situation 30 or 40 years ago, few revolutionaries see the need to build serious rank and file tendencies within our class, preferring instead to ally with left bureaucrats both in the unions and through bankrupt electoral manoeuvres. In Britain and Australia a socialist alternative is urgently needed. It will not be found in the Socialist Alliance projects, wherever they may be.

Stay divided II
Stay divided II

Naive SA chair

As with Steve Godward, so with most independent Socialist Alliance members, “socialism is not a hobby of ours, but something we believe in” (‘Aim for socialist working class party’ Weekly Worker June 5). We all joined the Socialist Alliance because we, too, hoped it would “give people a real leftwing alternative to the Labour Party”. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask?

Steve’s article raises so many questions. How could the chair of the conference himself be kept unaware of what was going on in front of him? Was it really just a matter of “acoustics”? Why were there no Socialist Alliance speakers on Stop the War Coalition platforms - just Liberal Democrats and imams instead? Was this really just “a great mistake”? Steve got a “shock” when John Rees came to Birmingham and cut the Socialist Alliance out of his negotiations with other forces. Was this really just because Rees “had not thought” to invite the local SA? Why is the Socialist Alliance the only organisation that “does not have its own paper”? Did all this really happen because we have “lost our way”?

Steve’s own predecessor as chair of the SA has told us that its representatives at anti-globalisation and Stop the War meetings deliberately suppressed all mention of the Socialist Alliance. We also have documentary evidence that Socialist Workers Party members were told not to promote the SA on the STWC marches. What more evidence does Steve need that the SWP does not want the Socialist Alliance to develop, for fear that it would supplant the SWP itself?

The SWP has “committed so many people and so many resources” to the new executive - a hand-picked slate bureaucratically imposed on the conference by tricks that would have shamed any Labour or Stalinist conference in the past - precisely so as to stunt the SA’s development.

“Let’s give them a chance”? Sorry, Steve, but yes, you are being “naive”.

Naive SA chair
Naive SA chair