19.02.2004

No respect for principles

In pursuit of the latest 'get-rich-quick' scheme of Respect, the Socialist Workers Party has dumped the demand for 'open borders'. Eddie Ford takes a closer look

Watching comrades lose all dignity in pursuit of the latest get-rich-quick scheme is never a pretty sight. Nor is the sight of principle after principle being gleefully jettisoned a particularly edifying one.

Convinced that the big time is just round the corner - or maybe the next one after that - the Socialist Workers Party and those riding piggyback on it have effectively liquidated the Socialist Alliance into the populist Respect coalition. Thanks to the ‘clever’ machinations of these comrades, we have moved from a hard won socialist alliance - with obvious flaws - to a non-socialist alliance.

Take the SWP specifically. Unlike inveterate SWP-bashers, we are concerned about the fate of all comrades who consider themselves real socialists and communists, yet appear happy to allow their right-galloping leadership to merrily dump on its own history.

Nowhere can this can seen more clearly than the symbolically charged issue of immigration and open borders. Almost four years ago, when 58 Chinese ‘illegals’ were found dead in a sealed truck at Dover, Socialist Worker declared: “A socialist Britain would make everyone welcome who wanted to come here. They would be a precious resource to build our futures. Immigration controls should go” (my emphasis June 24 2000).

But zoom forward to 2004 and what do we find? The SWP taking the lead in defeating a call at the January 25 Respect launch conference to legalise all migrant workers - that is, flatly rejecting the demand for open borders and the free movement of peoples made by the Socialist Worker of yesteryear. Life cruelly responded only days later with the deaths of 19 - possibly 20 - Chinese immigrant cockle-pickers at Morecambe Bay.

Yes, you could have smartly responded at this point, but Respect is clearly a non-socialist organisation - therefore the SWP comrades were wearing their non-socialist hats on that day. However, in their own press “the socialists” will surely take a more principled - well, socialist - line on this tragic event.

So we open up Socialist Worker and read: “These are the latest deaths among desperate people who come to Britain hoping for the chance to scratch out a better life” (February 14). So far, so good. The editorial continues: “Ministers may talk about targeting gangmasters, but they are a symptom of the problem, not the root cause. New Labour fuels the rightwing argument that asylum-seekers and migrants should not have the same rights that anyone else might expect.” Okay so far; nothing to disagree with.

The ‘What Socialist Worker thinks’ piece continues: “Many of these workers are likely to end up in jobs like cockle-picking in Morecambe Bay, hoping they live long enough to gather a bit of money together. New Labour praises the system we live in, where money and trade freely cross borders and organisations like the European Union and WTO champion deregulation and curb workers’ rights. Yet workers who try to move around face abuse and exploitation. The government and their big business friends are the ones who have the blood of Morecambe Bay on their hands.” And that is that. The editorial grinds to a halt here.

You do not have to be paranoid to find a deafening significant silence in these comments - where is the call for open borders? What happened to “Immigration controls should go”? Some might say that it is implied in the final paragraph above. The sentence, ‘If capital is free to move across borders, then labour must be too’, is crying out to be inserted between “exploitation” and “the government”. But you can be sure that this omission is no accident. Every phrase has been carefully weighed up. Socialist Worker is censoring itself.

A more principled note is struck in the regular column ‘What the SWP stands for’ in the following week’s issue. It ends with the bold call - “Down with the borders and all governments who defend them”. To ensure  

As we all know, the SWP has a longstanding tradition of jumping on whatever bandwagon that happens to be moving and, chameleon-like, adapting its politics to suit. Marxists call it bowing before spontaneity. So in the 2003 anti-war movement the SWP duly became pacifists. Now in 2004 they have George Galloway as a front man and Respect. That means becoming respectable social democrats and trying to ‘make a difference’ by getting elected.

Yet at the same time, in its select circles and through the pages of Socialist Worker, the SWP’s writers have up to now still preached their version of the good message of ‘pure’ socialism - albeit, usually, in a dull and unimaginative way. Recent events however, strongly intimate that we may well be facing a new order of opportunism in the SWP. In the rush to become respectable we are surely seeing a dangerous lurch to the right - how else to explain the fact that the comrades are now positively embarrassed to be associated with militant demands for republicanism, workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage and open borders?

Of course, the SWP and like thinkers have always insisted that immigration controls were ‘inherently racist’. If so, by implication what does that make Respect and the SWP?

What is true for the SWP is also true of course for its little helpers - especially its ally of convenience, the International Socialist Group. Hence, at the SA national council meeting on January 17, the ISG’s Alan Thornett almost boasted about how at the Respect launch conference he would be voting against things he “absolutely” supports - on the grounds that adopting programmatic principles would “rupture the process”, and that would be “ultra-left”. After all, as comrade Thornett seems to believe, the movement is everything; the aim nothing - or at least, not worth that much and can be easily bargained away for the right price (like a seat on Respect’s executive, for example?).

Naturally, this rank opportunism made its way into Socialist Resistance, the ISG-sponsored monthly journal. So we were treated to an article on the January 25 launch conference by comrade Jane Kelly, in which she writes: “The main pressure at the convention was from the ultra-left - groups and individuals trying to amend the founding statement to make it more explicitly socialist or in some cases more openly revolutionary. The majority were aware that Respect will have to appeal to its right in this period if it is to have any impact …

“Rather we will need a programme which responds to the main issues of the day, including some key demands that directly challenge the system as a whole …

“As an example we could look at the issue of asylum-seekers and refugees. As has been said, this is the cutting edge of racism at present, and will play a role in what is likely to be a very rightwing debate during the elections in June. It is essential that we have a good position on the issue, and that we raise it within Respect - not that they adopt our positions wholesale, but that a debate takes place. While much of the SR position could be accepted by Respect, [the calls for] ‘an end to immigration laws and for open borders’ is clearly too advanced a demand for such a broad organisation as Respect” (my emphasis, February).

This position, regarded as “too advanced” for the coalition as a whole, is proposed by comrade Kelly as the position a Socialist Resistance platform might adopt within Respect. But don’t worry, being armed with “a clear programme” and wanting to “build a revolutionary party” “does not mean putting forward a full revolutionary programme at every point”. Heaven forbid! Much better to adopt a “good position” for yourself which you can ritualistically parade on special occasions.

In fact at the Respect founding convention SR comrades put forward - and then had remitted - an amendment which proposed the “scrapping of all existing immigration legislation”. This, explains comrade Kelly, is not the same thing as “arguing that there should be none”. Well, the phrase is ambiguous, but I can assure you that most comrades interpreted it at the time as being synonymous with open borders. Otherwise, why not say what you think should replace “existing” immigration laws? All this strikes me as an attempt to patch together two irreconcilable positions: one held by ISG worthies like Thornett and Kelly, who want to pander to an imagined constituency to the right; the other by the movers of the SR amendment.

The result is that Socialist Resistance’s “good position” is effectively for internal consumption. Apparently, in order to blunt the “cutting edge of racism” and challenge what promises to be “a very rightwing debate” the essential internationalist demand for free movement of peoples can merely be hinted at - or dispensed with altogether. No wonder there is extreme disquiet among the non-ISG supporters of Socialist Resistance.

Of course, such convoluted excuses for the latest opportunist turn are less likely to be found in the pages of Socialist Worker. SWP leaders prefer to leave that to the likes of comrade Thornett - they simply announce the latest turn - or in this case omission - without comment.