Letters
Offensive
In a recent article you used the phrase ‘on deaf ears’ (‘Lessons of the Socialist Alliance’, June 24). This is extremely offensive to those of us who are deaf or hard of hearing. You wouldn’t use racist or sexist language, would you? It was impossible for me to read further. Cut it out!
Offensive
Offensive
Eurocommunist
With all due respect and honesty, I am afraid that I have to cancel my subscription to the Weekly Worker - as it is incompatible with my status as a member of the Communist Party of Britain. The pro-European Union line, with its ideas of a European Communist Party, contradicts the anti-EU line taken by the CPB and the Morning Star.
Perhaps the CPGB should realise that the Eurocommunist line cost it several members in the 1980s and furthermore should realise that the EU is a pro-business and imperialistic monolith that was instrumental in fomenting and encouraging the dissolution of Europe’s last communist state - namely Yugoslavia. The above monolith does not sound too friendly to communist ideals, does it?
I appreciate that the above sentiments may seem sectarian, and to show that there are no hard feelings - only a difference of opinion - you may divert the remaining money from the subscription cheque to the party’s appeal.
Eurocommunist
Eurocommunist
Inaccuracies
There are some puzzling inaccuracies in the report of the CPGB aggregate by Mary Godwin in last week’s paper (‘Assessing Respect’, June 24).
First of all, Mary states that my motion on Respect was presented as an “alternative” to the motion put forward by Jack Conrad. This is simply untrue, as the record shows: my motion was presented 24 hours or so before Jack presented his, and it would therefore be more accurate to say that his motion was presented as an alternative to mine. This is borne out by the fact that both myself, and several other comrades, voted for both motions.
Also, the fact is that in the aggregate, reflecting this order of submission, my motion was presented first. Quite why comrade Conrad is cited as presenting his motion first is quite puzzling, as it does not accurately reflect what went on in the meeting.
Also, Mary states that I had objected to the publication of a report by Manny Neira about the January 25 Respect founding convention, which inaccurately claimed that Respect seemed to be developing a worse internal regime than the Socialist Labour Party. While I certainly criticised this article as being inaccurate and in many ways politically untruthful, as subsequent exchanges made clear, I was not criticising its publication, but rather the non-publication of criticism of this article.
In particular, I was complaining that the vast bulk of the critique of this article that I submitted for publication was not actually published. All that was published was a vastly truncated letter that would have been incomprehensible to most readers. This is ironic, in that comrade Conrad used the aggregate to proclaim that he was in favour of publishing a wide range of different views on Respect. Unfortunately, on this occasion the CPGB broke with that excellent practice for some reason.
I would not normally make public criticisms of this kind, but when inaccurate accounts are given in the public press of my actions and what I said, I think it is right to correct such inaccuracies.
Inaccuracies
Inaccuracies
Save Aslef
The time has now come for all members of our great society to restore its democratically elected general secretary and assistant general secretary to their positions, and demand the resignations of EC members Tyson, Donnelly, Moran and Usher.
Since Shaun Brady ordered an investigation into the society’s finances and Paul Blagbrough produced his comprehensive and damning report, the above EC members have conspired to prevent you, the members, from learning the truth by cancelling the annual assembly of delegates, thereby conveniently preventing scrutiny of our dire financial situation. Of course they have a vested interest in covering up what was perpetrated by the now disgraced Mick Rix.
When Shaun Brady attempted to have all claims for expenses accompanied by bona fide receipts, they, the EC members, sent out a circular overruling his instruction. Why? They set up the Kelly inquiry currently costing £50,000 per month of our money. (Kelly works for John Hendy QC, Rix’s great friend and political ally). They suspend Brady and Blackburn for the barbecue incident involving the disgusting Samways (twice debarred from office for his abusive, drunken and violent behaviour).
Eliminate corruption from our union! All members should support branch resolutions demanding the reinstatement of the democratically elected Brady and Blackburn and the restoration of decency and democracy to Aslef.
Save Aslef
Save Aslef
Leave Aslef
Surely Dean Hooper should be questioning why socialists would want to be in Aslef in the first place, rather than how to reclaim it (‘Reclaim the union’, June24).
Aslef is an elitist and sectarian society that often makes deals at the expense of other railworkers rather than in solidarity with them. They have always had a ‘me first’ attitude, which is why they remain separate. The tackiness and embarrassment caused by recent incidents should cause members to question the whole concept of Aslef.
Socialist and progressive train crew need to examine why they are members of such an organisation rather than worry about its leadership.
Leave Aslef
Leave Aslef
Gay rights
Before I comment on the Palestine Liberation Organisation and homophobia, let me begin by recalling the US Socialist Workers Party’s track record on the gay rights issue. Back in 1978, the legislature of the US state of New Jersey rewrote the state’s criminal code. One of the most sweeping changes was the lowering of the age of sexual consent to 13, which had the backing of the majority of the left.
The National Organization of Women, one of the writers of the bill, hailed the change as “extending maximum protection to young people” in their sexual relationships with their choice of partners. The change was vehemently opposed by police organisations, the religious right, reactionary pro-family groups and reactionary trade union leaderships. The SWP, anxious to suck up to the trade union bureaucrats, came down heavily against the change, arguing that the bill was authored primarily by “adults who wish to be unrestricted in their sexual activities with children”, prompting the Spartacist League to run an article in their Workers Vanguard entitled, “SWP: from ‘Gay is good’ to ‘Save the children’”. The state legislature beat a hasty retreat, changing the law to provide for an age of consent of 16, before the new criminal code even had a chance to go into effect.
On the PLO, there’s this wacky liberal theory that oppressed nations of people react to oppression by living exemplary lives, championing the rights of minorities within their societies. Communists, on the other hand, understand that the opposite is often true, and that the call for the right of a nation to self-determination is not a moral principle, but rather a political tactic. It is advanced in order to bring the class question to the forefront, for nationalism obscures the class question, tending to unite workers with their exploiters. The cultural level of a people can be no higher than the economic level that they have managed to achieve.
Outrage believes that it can pressure the PLO to change its policies on gays, but the truth is that the PLO reflects the views of the social elements who control the wealth, and they aren’t about to alienate them. The PLO does not exist in a vacuum, for it serves a class, and that class isn’t the working class.
The only solution to the Israeli/Palestinian question would be a socialist federation of the Middle East and, should the PLO ever manage to establish a Palestinian state, it will be a state of, by and for the Palestinian capitalists, and the Palestinian working class will soon learn that its fundamental enemy is the capitalist system.
On ‘rights’ of a different kind, David Broder writes: “Indeed, the only party standing in the European elections with any commitment to animal rights is the Green Party” (Letters, June 3).
As a human chauvinist, who believes that (most) humans are superior to other forms of animal life because they alone have the ability to produce, I concede that the issue of animal welfare should be on the agenda - once the class question has been resolved and human beings are no longer divided into social classes. With the disappearance of the profit system, humans can then take up the then non-diversionary issue of animal welfare.
Sorry, but human welfare must take the front seat. Later for the ‘rights’ of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, monkeys, crickets and spiders.
Gay rights
Gay rights
Confused?
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Anyone who looked to the Revolutionary Democratic Group’s Dave Craig for advice on how to vote on June 10 must be very confused. |
Click here to find out how you can donate to the Summer Offensive 2004, our annual fundraising drive. |
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So, even if on June 10 Dave misread his ballot paper and genuinely thought he was voting for an individual, and not the organisation that rejected republicanism, surely in practice that individual has exactly the same position as, say, Lindsey German, the unity coalition’s candidate for London mayor. I can guarantee you that comrade German and her Socialist Workers Party share the same paper commitment to a democratic republic - SWP comrades told us so at the founding convention. It is just that, right now, they do not believe the issue has much “purchase” (to use the phrase employed by comrades from the equally economistic Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, whose candidates Dave considered were worthy of support on June 10). So comrade Craig could not put his cross next to Lindsey’s name. Instead Lorna Reid of the Independent Working Class Association got his vote for mayor. Funny that - search as I might, I couldn’t find any reference to a republic in the IWCA’s election statement (although it does favour making her majesty’s police force “answerable” to local communities). But perhaps Lorna told Dave in private what she forgot to let the rest of us know. By the way, according to comrade Craig, voting for Respect unconditionally (what he did in the EU elections) means “surrendering … our ability to criticise [the SWP’s] lack of principle and their opportunism. That is a heavy price to pay in exchange for nothing more than the hope that Respect might discover democracy at its October conference” (June 10). But what seems to have clinched his decision to vote for Respect was the fact that, at the “public meeting in Luton”, Galloway solemnly declared that Respect’s founding declaration was “not set in stone” and “would have to be reviewed at the next conference” (June 24). Confused? Not half as much as Dave Craig. |
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Confused?
Confused?
SADP and Respect
Your decision to rejoin the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform is the right one. Not to have done so would have lost the gains since its foundation and left it dominated by rightist elements such as the AWL. A strong SA will be a counterweight to the swings of the SWP within Respect.
Respect is just an electoral alliance so far and it should be kept that way: as yet there is not enough agreement on the left about what kind of party is needed and what its programme should be. Hence the arguments over Galloway and the worker’s wage. I agree with the worker’s wage proposal. However, using it as a block against working with Galloway would have been daft. This is not a problem with an electoral platform. It would be if Respect were a party.
Finally, you are absolutely right about the question of abortion rights. Any ‘party’ that didn’t have something as basic as that in its programme could not have the support of socialists. Even the Liberals have a better position than Galloway.
SADP and Respect
SADP and Respect
Red Platform
It now appears quite clear that the only organised opposition that the leadership of the CPGB is prepared to tolerate is a licensed one.
After a few short weeks, the regular column of the Red Platform has been removed from the pages of the Weekly Worker. In Mary Godwin’s report of the June 19 aggregate of CPGB members (‘Assessing Respect’, June 24), we find an explanation. The motion proposed by John Bridge, tells us, firstly: “The Provisional Central Committee was correct to provide a regular column in the Weekly Worker for the Red Platform minority in our organisation. These comrades declared themselves partisans and disciplined CPGB members.” But, reading on, we then learn that comrade Bridge disagreed with the political approach of the Red Platform, which he branded, “crudely leftist and profoundly mistaken”.
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The Red Platform is an oppositional grouping and comrade Bridge is one of the CPGB leaders that it is opposing. He is hardly likely to share their politics.
But then we come to the substance of the incumbency’s dislike for the platform of the oppositional group. RP is “especially sectarian” towards the Socialist Workers Party creature, Respect! Well, here in my opinion is the real reason for the disappearance of the RP’s column. They were upsetting John Rees, George Galloway and other leaders of Respect, to which the CPGB majority has decided to apply a ‘positive engagement’ (formerly, of course, the approach was one of critical engagement). The CPGB leadership’s unprincipled politics of SWP-chasing requires the silencing of the expression of any fundamental disagreement therewith, lest retribution be brought forth from the courted party.
The final paragraph of comrade Bridge’s successful motion can only be honestly described as distilled cynicism: “The CPGB will overcome the leftism and sectarianism that exists in its ranks through patient education and open debate.” What open debate? The readers of the Weekly Worker are no longer permitted to read the views of the Red Platform, except where those views meet with editorial approval.
The regime which the incumbency in the CPGB manages to maintain is a gross parody of democratic centralist methodology. The truth is that the organisation remains under the heel of a fundamentally Stalinist clique.
Red Platform
Red Platform