Letters

Gibraltar

Since the British captured Gibraltar in 1704, it has served as an important military base dominating the entrance to the Mediterranean.

More recently it has acted as a tax haven. More than 50,000 companies are formally registered in Gibraltar, whose population is only 28,000. Many of these companies are Spanish-owned, operating mainly in southern Spain, and choose to register in Gibraltar as a tax dodge.

As in Catalonia or the Basque country, socialists in Gibraltar should support the right of self-determination, whilst at the same time defending the idea of an Iberian Socialist Federation - including Gibraltar.

Gibraltar
Gibraltar

Treachery

As a former Workers Revolutionary Party member and one-time News Line journalist, I’m not surprised the WRP are still supporting the Ba’athist fake trade unions, and I can only admire and sympathise with the Iraqi Worker-communist Party comrades who went to their rally to try and tell them the truth (‘Break with yellow unions’, December 11).

When I joined News Line at its launch in 1976, it was no secret that our leader, Gerry Healy, was soliciting funds from the Middle East, but we didn’t realise how far this would go. Under the guise of supporting the Arab peoples against imperialism and Zionism, Healy insisted on slavishly following the line of Arab regimes and leaders - not always easy when they were competing with each other to betray their peoples and pretended cause!

To my shame, I accepted a report that the Ba’athist regime was conceding autonomy to the Kurds, but I was shocked when Healy denied the Kurds were a nation entitled to rights (Mike Banda rightly insisted we reaffirmed support for the principle of self-determination for the Kurds). Then in November 1977 I made the mistake of ‘prematurely’ criticising the Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat, or suggesting the PLO had done so. I was removed from News Line’s ‘foreign’ (sic) desk and sent to the Midlands to cover the firefighters’ strike. After the strike I was sacked.

Hostilities between Iraqi intelligence services and the PLO put the News Line in a spot, as did the later outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran, but, when Saddam Hussein was attacking his own people, Healy had no problem deciding whom to support. This one-time ‘revolutionary’ had enjoyed VIP treatment and a motorcycle escort on his trip to Baghdad!

The WRP came up with excuses for the execution of Iraqi Communist Party members, even calling a mass meeting to back the Iraqi regime. But that was not all. News Line photographers took pictures of a student demonstration outside the Iraqi embassy, probably assuming it was just a normal reporting task. But, when Healy asked them to make blow-ups to deliver to the embassy, one at least had the temerity to refuse, and she quit.

In 1985 the WRP blew apart, and that’s when the truth about the leadership’s corruption came out. Unable to face the music, Healy and his loyal acolytes took off, with as many documents, etc as they could grab. One they forgot, left in Alex Mitchell’s desk, was a secret report on a visit to the Gulf states, during which Healy and Vanessa Redgrave had an audience with the Emir of Kuwait, but refused to meet Kuwaiti oppositionists, reporting their approach to the authorities instead!

The ordinary members of the WRP had known none of this, and even the central committee had little idea what had been going on. But inexcusably, some of those who should have known refused to believe or admit anything when the truth began to come out. These are leading the present rump WRP and publishing News Line with money from I don’t know where. Sheila Torrence, until recently its general secretary, told people in 1985 that she could not see why they were making a fuss over “a few Iraqi Stalinists” getting killed.

When I asked one of their members about the embassy photographs, he denied it was true. At least one of his comrades knows better, having taken the pictures along. If the point of all this was to denounce individuals, or the dead Gerry Healy, it would hardly be worthwhile. The remains of Torrence’s WRP and News Line are insignificant in the working class and socialist movement, even though wags occasionally try to embarrass former members like myself by pretending to confuse us with them! (Some comrades who did most to bring down Healy are active in the Socialist Alliance today, as you know.)

But we have to learn how a leader like Gerry Healy went from Trotskyist, working class politics to such a sectarian and opportunist perversion, and how we can overcome such problems, in whatever guise, if we are to build the kind of party the working class needs today.

Treachery
Treachery

SSP or Labour

Matthew McLean seems keen to tell those who advocate dumping Labour that they should reclaim the mass workers’ party that he maintains the Labour Party is (Letters, November 20). Yet he fails to tell anyone how to go about it - although he does seem to imply that it merely involves picking up a piece of paper.

Well, why don’t you try it, Matthew? Move a resolution from your branch or CLP that advocates shifting policy to the left and ridding your party of Blair and co - perhaps Vince Mills will help you.

While you do that, Hugh Kerr, myself and the rest of the Scottish Socialist Party will be building a party that already does have socialist policies and ideals instead of wasting time flogging a dead horse.

Let us know how you get on with that resolution.

SSP or Labour
SSP or Labour

Web resource

Some years ago, the CPGB launched a daily newspaper, but was forced to retreat to a weekly because of resource constraints. Have you considered returning to a daily format as a website? A sort of Daily Worker online?

An electronic web-page format cuts out the cost of printing and distribution - although you could still continue to print a weekly as well. You could also email a pdf version to subscribers around the world at very little cost.

The left, internationally, badly needs a daily source of news. Indymedia is OK as far as it goes, but it is run by libertarian, anarchist and left-liberal muddleheads.

The socialist left tends to boycott it, which is a pity. What we need is a website where people could upload articles, photos, audio and video clips at any time. Such a site could also promote high-level discussion among the different trends within the left using online forums.

I don’t think the socialist left is making full use of the potential of the internet. Why not?

Web resource
Web resource

Worthy

I was sad to read of Al Richardson’s death - though I knew him as Alex (‘Shocking loss’ Weekly Worker November 27).

We taught together at Forest Hill school for boys and, though we did not agree on each other’s philosophy, he was a worthy opponent. I knew if I was going to convince anyone of an argument in the staff room I would do well to try to get Al on my side.

Worthy
Worthy

Reformist unity

Ian Donovan seems to think that the Good Friday agreement is dead, and he rejoices at this (‘Good Friday on the rocks’ Weekly Worker December 4). I disagree. When the agreement was reached, many people were unsure whether it was a strategic gain for British colonialism or for the anti-colonialist forces. Five years on, I think it is obvious that British colonialism lost. Many Irish unionists apparently think so.

The agreement is an attack on institutional sectarianism, which puts unionism on the back foot because that is what unionism is all about. London and Dublin thought the agreement would strengthen the SDLP and weaken Sinn Féin, but the opposite has occurred. This is partly because Sinn Féin has subtly distanced itself from the IRA, is far more skilful than the tame, ‘post-nationalist’ SDLP, and is not awed by British rules and institutions. Also, the agreement has made Irish nationalism much more confident, and Irish people’s revulsion at some of the IRA’s actions is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Sinn Féin is pursuing a nationalism that is democratic, egalitarian, internationalist and non-sectarian. It has a mainly working class base and has some socialist influences. Trimble probably signed because he didn’t want to get the blame for the collapse of the talks, and thought the republicans would not sign, or would split over it. He was wrong.

Donovan says that the aim of the agreement is utopian. But it has different aims for different people. Sinn Féin agreed to it because they thought that it would lead to the end of Northern Ireland (by gradually removing the sectarian discrimination that is its basis), whilst showing the IRA an alternative, non-military way of achieving a united Ireland. It is clear that many unionists now see it that way too, and don’t like it. So it is not utopian from an anti-colonialist viewpoint. Neither is it dead.

Paisley may be willing to wait till 2008 (when the next election to the assembly is due) without entering the executive, but his party can’t afford to do so. By 2008 much will have changed, and there is no guarantee that the unionist voters will turn out for the Democratic Unionist Party so that it can go on saying ‘no’ for another five years. The DUP’s elected members will want to get into office and do something, and their constituents will have other demands to be addressed. Unionism is much weaker and more divided now than in the 1974 events that Donovan mentions.

Also, Britain can’t afford to let the agreement die. It is an international agreement, ratified by referenda in both parts of Ireland; it still retains the support of a majority in Northern Ireland; and its death would be a terrible humiliation for Blair and for Britain, at home and abroad, and would leave Britain with no policy at all on this highly embarrassing problem. The forces in the British state machine who need the union are growing weaker, and Britain’s ruling class doesn’t need Northern Ireland any more. It just needs an acceptable way out.

Ian Donovan proposes that in a future united Ireland some of the unionists should be given the right to repartition Ireland if they “democratically” so decide. He says: “Consistent democracy demands that the populations of those territories with a clear majority of British-Irish be allowed the right to self-determination.” This means, he says, that “the area, roughly amounting to one county (Antrim) and four half-counties, where there is a clear majority of British-Irish, exercises autonomy, up to and including the right of outright secession if the population democratically so decides.”

This is monstrous. It means that Donovan (and presumably the CPGB) is not opposed in principle to the partition of Ireland. If the unionists exercised their “right” to a separate state, such an arrangement would reproduce the injustices of the previous partition. Its borders would be tailor-made to make a minority into a majority; demographic changes would make its artificial borders open to demands for revision, inwards or outwards, thus fostering sectarian voting and sectarian thinking; it would deny the nationalists (and other democrats) living in those areas their democratic rights; it would deny the majority of the Irish people their right to rule the whole of Ireland.

If the unionist enclaves were allowed to join the UK, the arrangement would retain all the negative effects on Britain of having a colony within the territory of the British state and within its political system. Like partition does now, it would poison Britain’s parliamentary democracy, poison Britain’s judicial system, undermine the civil rights of everyone in Britain, maintain a hotbed of reaction within the British state, give the most reactionary forces in Britain the ability to engineer a crisis at any time they choose, obstruct progress towards a more open and democratic society in Britain and justify the maintenance of a British military presence in Ireland. It would probably lead to a restoration of the republican armed struggle, justifying more repression in Britain.

For Britain to recognise such “self-determination” would be a flagrant breach of the agreement, which provides for only two options for the future of Northern Ireland - remaining in the UK or joining a united Ireland. Only a referendum, held not less than seven years after a previous one, decides.

Whereas Britain, in 1920, cut Ireland in two, and the province of Ulster in two, in order to thwart Irish democracy, preserve sectarian discrimination and save the empire, Ian Donovan’s policy would cut Ireland and Ulster in two again and also cut four counties in half. To use the kindest word, it’s gerrymandering.

In the event of a united Ireland, the agreement still safeguards the legitimate minority rights of the unionist community as regards parity of esteem, religious and other human rights, freedom from sectarian discrimination and the right to campaign for unionist political objectives. The unionist/protestant community will become about 20% of a united Ireland instead of less than two percent of the UK, and will be in a strong position to safeguard their legitimate interests and concerns. Any chance of the sectarian tables being turned is extremely remote.

Ian Donovan calls Northern Ireland a “province”, a “statelet”, and even a “state”. It is none of these. It’s a colony. To call it a province is to collude in the imperialist fiction that the six-county colonial remnant, cut from the nine-county province of Ulster in 1920, had some kind of historical validity. It’s a lie. In the nine-county province, the majority of unionist over nationalist voters was too slender, so three counties were shed merely to increase it to a safer level.

Ian Donovan says: “Tellingly the slogan of Sir Edward Carson - the founder of unionism - was a ‘protestant nation for a protestant people’”. Donovan’s memory is at fault here. Unionism existed long before Carson was born, the quotation is uncharacteristically incoherent, and I doubt that Carson (who was a Dubliner) ever claimed that the protestants of Ireland were a nation. The 1920 Government of Ireland Bill, that partitioned Ireland, provided for a council of Ireland and Carson welcomed the bill, hoping that it would lead in the long run to Ireland being “one and undivided, loyal to this country and loyal to the empire”. So Donovan can’t claim Carson’s support for the false ‘two Irish nations’ theory.

When the crucial vote on the bill was taken in the House of Commons, the Irish unionist MPs abstained, all except for one, from a Dublin constituency, who voted against. They left the dirty work of partitioning their country and their province to the British MPs. No Irish representative voted for it.

The Northern Ireland problem is one of unfinished decolonisation, and the solution is to complete that decolonisation. This is much more than just ‘troops out now’. All anti-imperialists should support the Good Friday agreement and campaign for its full implementation because this will enable a successful campaign leading to the decolonisation of Ireland. Decolonisation will be a defeat for the most reactionary forces in Britain and Ireland, promote a lasting peace, and remove a historic barrier to a more democratic society in Britain, weakening the influence of the military and intelligence services on British affairs. As Karl Marx wrote, in connection with Ireland’s position within the UK, “Any nation which oppresses another forges its own chains”.

Sectarianism, like racism, is a product of the divide-and-rule policy of Britain’s ruling class, and it’s a weird sort of communist party that would have any truck with it. Donovan, like many ultra-leftists before him, has found a leftwing reason for supporting a rightwing policy.

Reformist unity
Reformist unity

Two masters

Those who thought up the idea of the Socialist Alliance ignored one serious flaw at the set-up stage. A little time spent reading St Matthew would have reminded them that “No man can serve two masters”.

Two masters
Two masters

Democratic?

It is a serious mistake to judge Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism by the actions and positions of their self-styled so-called ‘followers’ today. The problem with typically British offshoots of Trotskyism - in fact they are actually centrists of Trotskyist origin - like the SWP and Workers’ Liberty is not that they are Trotskyists, but that they are not Trotskyist enough. In fact their politics are an eclectic hybrid of old-fashioned British left liberalism and Trotskyism gutted of its content.

Take the issue of internal democracy. This is what one SWP leader wrote in 1977 about the internal life of the Trotskyist international Left Opposition in the 1930s:

“Trotsky encouraged the various sections of the [Trotskyist International Left] opposition to interest themselves in each other’s activities. He wrote interminable circulars and epistles explaining, say, to the Belgians why the French fell out … and so on and so forth. He did all this in the belief that he was educating and training a new levy of communists, new ‘cadres of revolution’.

“... Trotsky’s method legitimised and encouraged the pretensions of people who, though they could not gain so much as a toe-hold in their own working-class movement, felt able to pronounce on the details of policy and tactics all over the world ... And the baleful influence of this tradition was to persist; a poison in the bloodstream of the movement long after propagandism had been officially abandoned as a struggle orientation.

“One particular aspect of the evil, factionalism, took a strong hold in the early period and was never subsequently entirely eliminated. Some factional struggles are an inevitable overhead cost in the growth of any serious revolutionary organisation. Permanent, persistent factionalism, however, is not an overhead cost, but a disease.

“As Cannon wrote later, ‘There is no greater abomination in the workers’ political movement than a permanent faction. There is nothing that can demoralise the internal life of a party more efficiently than a permanent faction.’

“A light-minded toleration of factionalism certainly cannot be attributed to Trotsky. His approach to the development of cadres nonetheless encouraged it precisely because it enabled petty bourgeois cliques to justify their existence on ‘theoretical’ grounds” (Duncan Hallas, ‘Trotskyism reassessed’).

Unlike Trotsky, it seems that for James Cannon, Hallas and the SWP the internal life of working class organisations must of necessity be less democratic than even bourgeois democracy - even the British parliament allows permanent oppositional factions to exist. They are in fact institutionalised and formally recognised - a title is given to the leader of the largest oppositional group: ‘leader of the opposition’.

Are Trotskyists really less democratic than bourgeois democrats? It can be seen from the above extract that Trotsky had a very different and much more democratic approach to internal democracy than the phoney, workerist Cannon and the British SWP. Cannon had obviously not outgrown the Stalinist methods that he experienced in the US Communist Party in the 1920s.

While it is obvious that no one on the left should worship disunity and factionalism for its own sake, it is clear that the option of establishing a short-term, long-term or permanent oppositional faction is an essential democratic safeguard. No political leadership has the right to deny this safeguard.

This right is comparable to the right to secession for oppressed nationalities which the Bolsheviks defended from 1917 to 1924 and which Stalin later trampled underfoot. If Lenin and Trotsky were correct to defend the right to self-determination and secession for oppressed nationalities within the proto-Soviet Union, why oppose the right for oppositional groups within the revolutionary party to establish permanent factions, if they so desire? The same methodology applies to both situations. And, incidentally, it should also apply to social groups (women’s caucuses, lesbian and gay caucuses, etc).

In all cases, while no one should encourage factionalism (or indeed the Balkanisation of workers’ states) for its own sake, it has to be an option, a safeguard. In fact, history shows that disunity and splits are most likely to occur when factions are disallowed or restricted. The SWP is responsible for more splits than any other organisation on the British left. This is a direct result of the primitive Cannonist restrictions on factions that has infected it, and most other Trotskyist groups, in the post-war period.

The key point here is that this was not the approach of Trotsky - as Hallas makes clear in passing in the above extract. I also recall a suggestion from Trotsky in In defence of Marxism that the Shachtmanite opposition in the US SWP should be allowed their own independent public journal, if they so desired, and that Cannon rejected this idea. This small reference is a significant indicator of their differing approaches to internal democracy.

Democratic?
Democratic?

Stalinist Galloway

So George Galloway thinks that “socialist countries” like the USSR failed to “achieve the right balance” in terms of democracy; this “failure of socialist democracy” weakened “these once mighty parties”, which is “why there is now no Soviet Union” (which is, let us remember, the “biggest catastrophe of [his] life”). Acknowledging this is an important “criticism of our own movement” (Weekly Worker December 4).

Socialism is such a difficult recipe to get right! You add a pinch of democracy and a dash of labour camp - then, before you know it, your hand has slipped and you’ve poured a whole bottle of totalitarian terror, fascist-style labour fronts, state-induced famine, mass purges, anti-semitic witch-hunts, motherhood medals and brute-force colonial imperialism into the mix!

Oh well, stick it in the oven and see what happens - we can always add some more democracy later! The few CPGB members who have any self-respect left will see that Galloway’s bluster about democracy is a cover for the classic Stalinist combination: pro-capitalist class collaboration at home and support for bureaucratic totalitarianism abroad.

Stalinist Galloway
Stalinist Galloway

Expelled

The CPGB’s decision to expel John Pearson has attracted criticism from a few people outside the Party (Letters, December 11). The process has been portrayed by some as if it somehow epitomised the authoritarian behaviour of a sect unable to tolerate those critical of the leadership’s line.

Unfortunately, many of these critics do not understand - or have chosen to ignore for the sake of partisan point-scoring - the principles of democratic centralism by which the CPGB operates.

As communists engaged in the serious business of working to change society, rather than merely discussing it, we accept that the most effective way of marshalling our limited forces is to work under the discipline of a democratic collective. This calls for unity in action in all our political interventions. The CPGB leadership (the Provisional Central Committee) is democratically elected by the whole membership and entrusted with the authority to direct our interventions. Sometimes that requires them to make judgement calls on issues that arise in between the regular aggregates at which Party policy and strategy are decided. Should their judgement prove inept, corrupt or simply fail to reflect the views of the wider Party, our leaders - individually or as a whole - can be recalled, dismissed and replaced by the membership at the next aggregate.

These are held around once every six weeks, so there is no possibility of an unrepresentative leadership being able to wreak havoc while a passive membership waits for a fixed term of office to run its course. At no time has it been suggested that comrade Pearson’s criticisms of the leadership or party policy were grounds for disciplinary action, nor has he been required to retract his views on any issue. As a CPGB member, John has always been free to argue his case and try to persuade the membership to change its strategy - both privately at our aggregates or via our internal email discussion group; and publicly in the pages of the Weekly Worker or by publishing his own factional documents.

But once a decision has been made to participate in a democratically agreed party action, he, like all other members, is required by our rules to support that action. Once the intervention is over - ie, immediately after a meeting or a demonstration - he is again free to criticise it.

Comrade Pearson’s expulsion from the Party is not an outcome that any of us would have wished. However, his repeated refusal to accept the legitimacy of decisions made through our democratic structures left us in an impossible position. These were not innocent mistakes caused by failures of communication, but deliberate attempts to sabotage agreed actions. We could not send, say, a five-person delegation that included John to participate in an action with any confidence that we would actually be able to rely on the support of all five.

Ultimately, therefore, it boils down to trust. By repeatedly letting down his comrades and diminishing the effectiveness of their interventions, comrade Pearson lost the trust of the membership. And a collective cannot operate without trust.

This does not mean that we have lost our respect for the comrade, which is based on his many years of activism in the working class movement. We shall continue to work with John Pearson on issues where we agree and debate in a comradely way with him on those issues where we disagree.

Expelled
Expelled

Mandates

It is a pity that Phil Pope did not attend the CPGB’s Communist University this summer. Had he done so, he may not have been so keen to rush into print in support of comrade John Pearson (Letters, December 11).

Our understanding of democratic centralism was debated in detail, with particular reference to the thorny issue of mandates. It would be correct to say that the majority of the membership felt the leadership line - as presented by Jack Conrad in the ‘Party notes’ column - was too rigid.

After a fruitful discussion, there was general agreement regarding mandating, communist work within working class bodies, etc. John Pearson subsequently claimed that the leadership’s apparent ‘softening’ on this question was a vindication of his own actions. It most certainly was not. Nobody believed that comrade Pearson had acted in good faith when he breached Party discipline under cover of Stockport Socialist Alliance.

It has been put to comrade Pearson that the motions he claimed he was ‘mandated’ to support had been initiated by himself. He has not denied this. Indeed, he has made clear that the motions had his wholehearted support. The situation, then, is not as you perceive it, comrade Pope. Having lost the argument within the CPGB, comrade Pearson arranged to be ‘mandated’ by Stockport Socialist Alliance to present his own position - in opposition to the Party majority - at various SA bodies. To put it plainly, he was not mandated by Stockport SA; he was mandated by himself! That is his prerogative, but it does put him outside the CPGB.

I presume you believe in working class democracy, comrade Pope? The majority decides. And, having lost the argument, the minority works with the majority to implement any decision. But the minority have rights too. We did not seek to gag comrade Pearson. Nor was he expelled for holding minority views. He was expelled for refusing to abide by majority decisions - basic democratic principles, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Mandates
Mandates

Reformist Respect

The support of the CPGB and the SWP for the new Respect coalition provides an amazing vindication of us ‘pure socialism sectarians’: you simply cannot combine advocacy of socialism/communism to replace capitalism with advocacy of intermediate demands to reform capitalism.

No matter what the intention, no matter what the stated balance between advocating socialism and intermediate demands, you always end up 100% being an advocate of intermediate reforms of capitalism.

Why should socialists/communists not support Respect? Simply because every ounce of energy and effort put into supporting this vague reformist project will be a deduction from the energy and effort which could be put into advocating socialism/communism. Such a postponing and ultimate abandonment of the struggle for socialism/communism is simply unforgivable.

Jack Conrad says it might be more helpful for Respect to say that its demands for democratic rights and a world based on need and without war can only be realised through the replacement of capitalism by socialism and communism, where the rule of the majority working class replaces the rule of capital. Well, yes, true! But the simple fact is it does not say that and therefore makes not a jot of contribution toward making such an argument. By no stretch of the imagination can Respect be described as a socialist or proto-socialist organisation if it makes no reference whatsoever to the need for socialism.

There is nothing in Respect’s demands to distinguish it from any other group or movement wanting to reform capitalism and therefore make it ‘better’ and certainly intact. If you use vague, reformist demands to attract support, you simply attract vague, reformist people into membership. You do not attract or make socialists.

Why do socialists and communists need to provide material support for Respect in order to challenge its reformist programme and membership? Surely it is far more effective to be organised in an independent working class socialist party which puts all of its energy and resources into advocating socialism and opposing all those who accept capitalism, reformed or otherwise.

Reformist Respect
Reformist Respect

Shallow Respect

The Socialist Workers Party and a few friends get together one Sunday and produce a declaration for a new movement that is going to solve “the crisis of representation, a democratic deficit, at the heart of politics in Britain”.

This declaration is one of the most shallow and inadequate documents to have come from the left in decades. Yet this 500-word document is meant to rally a new movement against Labour, arm it in the elections in June.

What is wrong with it? It wants an end to the war and occupation in Iraq - good. How and when? It does not tell us. Does it want troops withdrawn now? In six months? Two years? Does it want the UN to replace them? Silence.

This vagueness runs throughout the declaration and is quite deliberate. The less clear you are, the fewer people who are put off, goes the argument. Keep it as broad as possible. But what happens when these questions are asked - on TV, at public meetings, on the doorstep? Make it up as you go along?

It wants to bring back into “democratic public ownership the railways and other public services”. Well, by definition the “other public services” are already in public hands! Does it mean the steel industry? The mines? Telecommunications? Thomas Cook? And if so why does it stop at only Tory-privatised industries - the Labour Party clause four was bolder: it used to call for the commanding heights of the economy to be in public ownership. What about the banks, for example?

And is a Respect government going to pay for them? Or expropriate them? Silence again. On education it puts forward no policy on grants or top-up fees; on the NHS it does not even mention foundation hospitals. It refers to the rights of refugees, but does not come out against immigration controls. It is against “the destruction of the environment”, but does not put forward a single policy to prevent it.

Could this declaration have been written on the top of a bus on the way to the meeting? It is more specific on the euro - joining would “outlaw government deficit spending”. Just as well we have Gordon Brown championing deficit spending then! And what is socialist about deficit spending anyway - if you tax the rich sufficiently you don’t have deficits.

Joining the euro will, we are told, “reinforce the drive to privatise and deregulate the economy”. Doesn’t this drive come above all from Blair, always trying to bludgeon the Europeans to follow Britain’s example? The authors clearly are suffering from a bad case of ‘anti-European xenophobia’.

The word ‘socialism’, of course, does not get a look in. For this is not meant to be a socialist document in any sense. At best it is a democratic populist platform - one that any number of faith groups, radical journalists or, for that matter, Labour MPs in and outside the Campaign Group could sign up to. It is ‘old Labour light’.

Shallow Respect
Shallow Respect