Letters

SPGB

Phil Hamilton thinks the Socialist Party of Great Britain is not part of the class struggle of the working class, and indeed abstains from it (‘100 years of solitude’, June 17). How then can he agree with the Marxian view that “struggles between the interests of the existing social classes and fractions of classes [are] caused by economic development, and ... that the particular political parties are the more or less adequate political expression of these same classes and fractions of classes” (Engels)?

As Mr Hamilton argues that the SPGB abstains from the class struggle, I would be interested in knowing what material position he would contend members of the SPGB are in. For, if you are a worker, then you cannot abstain from the class struggle. If you are a capitalist, you cannot abstain from the class struggle.. In fact, there can be no such thing as abstaining from the class struggle. So, we can see that our opponent is returning to this ahistorical bourgeois liberal conception of society as being composed of atomised individuals.

I would also like to comment on his view that we should support the Palestinians, as they are being terrorised by the Zionists. This is the most utopian nonsense I have ever heard. Scientific analysis cannot rest upon sentimental, moralist nonsense. All questions can only be considered in terms of economic classes and material relationships. How can you possibly say it would be progressive for the Palestinians to win a war against the Israelis? By this of course, I mean historically progressive, not progressive according to Mr Hamilton’s moral structures.

Although some - and I emphasise the word ‘some’ - criticism can be given to the SPGB for not relating socialism to the present, I would commend the SPGB for at least spelling out in clear terms, like Marx did, what socialism actually is. This is something Mr Hamilton fails to do. This is indeed something which the CPGB and all its friends on the capitalist left have never done.

SPGB
SPGB

Michael Moore

Your article on Michael Moore’s website was very good (‘Radical populist’, July 8).
Moore, too, has a pretty good record (for a liberal) on communists, having featured some geriatrics from the Communist Party of the USA on his TV Nation back in the 90s. He has also had positive things to say about communism’s achievements. So far as I know, he has never red-baited anyone on the left - a remarkable achievement here in America.

Michael Moore
Michael Moore

Draft programme

Further to comrade Russ Early’s letter (July 8), the draft programme of the CPGB states in part that: “ ... the socialist revolution must triumph more or less simultaneously in most of the advanced countries if it is nor to suffer deformation and counterrevolution in one form or another.”

I believe that to be correct. In fact, it does much to explain both the degeneration and the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union, the latter of which Russ attributes to the demolishing of the Berlin Wall, when in fact it was the result, rather than the cause, of the collapse of the USSR.

The Stalinist ideology that advances the prospect of building socialism in one country is both reactionary and utopian, and served to limit the extension of the gains of October in the interests of a self-serving bureaucracy that flourished in the USSR. They feared losing their political power at home to workers’ democracy abroad.

The book The revolution betrayed is both a scathing condemnation of Stalinism and its theory of ‘socialism in one country’ and an explanation of what went wrong with the Soviet Union.
Communists seek to mobilise the working class by intersecting the class struggle and advancing their revolutionary programme. You cannot manufacture class struggle: you can only intersect it and direct it. Countries represent the international division of labour, and no system that ignores the interdependency of the resources, both human and material, of all countries, can long endure.
You can learn a lot from the class enemy. The capitalists are well aware that the system that serves their interests cannot possibly survive in isolation, and the working class had best understand that this law applies to socialism as well. There can be no strategic ‘peaceful coexistence’ because the two systems are contradictory. One must gobble up the other, for both systems require the same human and material resources.

Draft programme
Draft programme

Laughable

The section of your draft programme dealing with ‘Our epoch’ is a laughable mixture of the blindingly obvious and the hopelessly idealistic. How is the working man meant to decipher all this? Communism must directly relate to the proletariat’s everyday complaints. If socialism is ever to be achieved, it needs to be practical and relate to the here and now.

Laughable
Laughable

Laughable

Laughable
Laughable

Inspirational

I have just read through the ‘Immediate demands’ section of your draft programme and what really reaches out to me is the determination of equality and overall a better place communists are trying to create. Very inspirational and totally acceptable!

I am in support of the Communist Party and look forward to the day when capitalism, nationalism and other problems are finally overcome!

Inspirational
Inspirational

North Birmingham

According to Marcus Ström’s report on the Socialist Alliance national executive, “Stuart Richardson, the NBSA [North Birmingham SA] treasurer, had refused to pay out 80% of the branch funds to Steve Godward’s election campaign for the Birmingham city council, as agreed by an NBSA meeting” (‘Assessing the new and burying the past’, July 1).

Later he refers to a “democratic decision to give 80%”.. To write this I can only conclude that Marcus has not followed the debate on this issue. At the NBSA meeting on April 27, three comrades voted who were not members of the SA. One had stopped paying in February, one had only paid £22, not £24, and another’s membership had lapsed. How can you have a democratic members’ meeting when non-members vote? The executive also received a letter dated May 29 on this matter from “Steve Godward and comrades from the NBSA”. Half of those who signed the letter, including Steve Godward, were not members of the NBSA, since their membership had lapsed.

Marcus states 80% of the funds were for Steve Godward’s election campaign. Now NBSA has stood in several election campaigns since the 2001 general election when I was elected the treasurer. On each occasion I was asked to pay election expenses, which I did. On this occasion I was asked to pay 80% of the funds to an account named ‘Erdington Socialists’.

Now it has been confirmed to me that this is the account of the North Birmingham Independent Socialists. The money was not specifically for “Steve Godward’s election campaign”, but the ex-comrades of the NBSA wanted me to transfer most of the funds of the NBSA to their new political project.

As I have stated in previous correspondence, I considered it wrong to transfer funds specifically donated to the Socialist Alliance to the Independent Socialists. It is also important to note that the Independent Socialists excluded some NBSA members from participation in Steve’s election campaign. It was not a campaign of the NBSA.

The funds have not been “stolen”, as some wild reports have suggested, but are now under the control of the national executive of the SA. As I understand it, the NEC at its meeting on June 26 agreed to reconvene the NBSA in September so that NBSA members can resume activity as the Socialist Alliance. The NBSA was suspended supposedly for the duration of the election by the NBSA meeting on April 27, but has not been reconvened. In my view the NBSA funds will again be available, as they should be, for the activity of the NBSA and not for the Independent Socialists.

By the way, the importance of the defence of asylum-seekers is again emphasised by the disgusting New Labour campaign in the Hodge Hill by-election. As I noted in my previous correspondence, Steve Godward’s campaign failed to use the term ‘asylum-seeker’ and so did not raise the slogan ‘Defend asylum-seekers’ in his election leaflets. In contrast, Respect raised precisely this slogan in its Euro election leaflet sent to 23 million homes.

Hodge Hill is a relatively poor working class area in the east of Birmingham, adjacent to Erdington, where Steve stood. Part of the constituency, Alum Rock and Washwood Heath, has a large Asian population in which Respect received 26% of the vote in the Euro election. In the other two wards, Hodge Hill and Shard End, Respect received low votes.

In the New Labour leaflet circulated on the weekend of July 10-11 the main headline is: “Say ‘no’ to Lib Dems’ asylum plans - Liberal Democrats want benefit ‘handouts’ for failed asylum-seekers”. It goes on: “Liberal Democrats’ plans to give benefits to failed asylum-seekers were condemned as a ‘damned disgrace’ by retired police officer and local resident Roy Hunter.”

The quotes above show vividly that socialists cannot avoid a clear and principled defence of asylum-seekers. Avoiding taking a position on their defence shows the opportunist limitations of Steve Godward’s campaign.

North Birmingham
North Birmingham

LRC and Respect

I note the importance certain publications gave to the Labour Representation Committee convention. I welcome any intervention to push the interests of labour forward.

However, the Labour Party is full of politically ignorant and non-socialist-minded people, who are not the best leaders or the vanguard of the working class and will never be so. The only reason why Labour produced decent politicians was the influence of the Communist Party in the labour movement. That influence is now gone. Hence it is unlikely that the Labour Party can produce vanguard material in significant or even insignificant quantities. The Labour Party has always been about keeping the working class and trade unions as voting fodder. No socialist or progressive can want the maintenance of that situation.

I can’t understand why so many people are undermining Respect and its performance in the elections. The important thing for Respect is to keep united, keep pushing a broad socialist agenda and keep going. Had the Socialist Labour Party managed this, then there would not have been the need for Respect. That Respect gets a good vote in certain key areas is good news. That is evidence that the project is on target. I hope that the members and leaders of Respect understand that the project is about the next three, five and even 10 years. Respect is a grassroots organisation whose aim is to build even more grassroots!

The LRC, by contrast, is about little Englanders - the same white, male and English people with all their problems, wanting to dominate the working class movement. A new movement has to be progressive in its culture not just in its politics. It has to involve the humble and the excluded and build a mass movement capable of removing the fetters that crush the masses. The traditional left is dominated by the same ‘little Englanders’ culturally and organisationally.

Three hundred or so people turning up at an event sponsored by MPs, CLPs and unions is pathetic when that constituency is supposed to be several hundred thousand. The oppressed are abandoning the Labour Party in their droves, never to return. I have to congratulate Respect in managing to keep a high profile in spite of a media blackout and in spite of being only a few months old. And for not boring the pants off those who engage in politics.

LRC and Respect
LRC and Respect

Paint it red

If yellow, according to Trotsky, is the colour of rotting capitalism, then the rainbow alliance of the Respect coalition will turn to mud unless class politics are addressed. If some parties on the left see their size as an issue, then why should they care what a bunch of ‘ultra-lefts’ think? The point is, parliamentary parties are large, but their politics are bland.
With the so-called ‘end of communism’ in the early 90s, the left should be painting the brightest of reds, not a kaleidoscope of colours, which will only end up as a mess, causing more disappointments.

Paint it red
Paint it red

Abortion

I thought your readers might be interested in the comments made by Dave Crouch, a leading SWP member, at the end of his session on ‘The Bolsheviks and religion’ at this year’s Marxism.
Responding to criticism from Toby Abse about Respect’s silence on George Galloway’s views on abortion, Dave said: “George Galloway says that he is opposed to abortion. Now that is his personal opinion. It is not his policy. His policy is to defend a woman’s right to chose … That might become a problem in the future. Who knows? I doubt it myself.

“But I think it is healthy to have that debate in Respect. The way we are going to convince George Galloway that he is wrong is by confident women having the argument with him. That’s how we are going to make sure that Respect carries forward that fight.

“Blair is out to restrict the time limits on abortion. Respect must be right in the forefront of the fight against that.”

If this reflects a general viewpoint of the SWP leadership, this is a welcome development. If it is comrade Crouch’s individual stance, I do hope he will energetically argue for this line both inside his organisation and at Respect’s autumn conference.

The Respect executive should have made its attitude clear at the time. But better late than never, as I hope comrade Crouch will agree.

Abortion
Abortion

EPSR

The Economic and Philosophic Science Review must truly be a collector’s item, if they are as fanatically homophobic as you suggest (Weekly Worker July 8). Most radical organisations had abandoned such positions by the middle 1970s, by which time empirical psychiatry had determined that gay people were no more mentally disturbed, degenerate or underdeveloped than heterosexuals.

To be fair, leftist homophobia has never been as bad as that existing amongst the political and theological right. Even prior to the emergence of contemporary feminist and gay rights movements, when pseudo-Freudian conceptions of sexuality were common currency, few European leftist groups proposed legal persecution. And even the EPSR would have no truck with the US fundamentalist-financed scams which claim they can ‘reprogramme’ homosexuals.

Searching the magazine’s online archive, one can find the EPSR condemning press homophobia back in 1999 - more recent than those wacky anti-gay quotes your article cited. Might it be that even this eccentric corner of the left had reconsidered the evidence and changed its line?

EPSR
EPSR

Obsession

What is with this obsession with the Socialist Workers Party? Here we go again - slagging them off in one breath and then using their Marxism festival for your own ends. How about attacking the real enemy, Tony Blair, for a change?

Obsession
Obsession

Green relevance

Whither the British left? As an American communist who is concerned for the fate of the left globally, I have followed first the Socialist Alliance and now the Respect project with increasing cynicism and depression.

All of the attempts by the CPGB, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty et al to build a pluralist, open socialist party have been met with an insuperable barrier time and again - the SWP and the cult of Tony Cliff. One can easily see that, if one wishes to build a communist party in Britain, the SWP cannot be ignored, as it is the largest remaining of the ostensibly Marxist groupings. Yet, as all good cult leaders understand, the SWP’s heads understand that permitting real democratic debate would mean the possibility of being sacked. They will never permit dissident factions to win control of any group with SWP participation.

Any attempt to build a party without the SWP would lead to stagnation, yet attempts to build a party with SWP help seem to lead towards that grouping becoming their plaything. No, this is not a healthy situation, and most sane leftists will grow tired of the SWP’s myriad of old projects with new faces.
Reading Peter Tatchell’s article a few weeks back, I was struck with an idea for a pre-emptive move that would negate the entire need for the bond with a cult-like SWP - the CPGB and the rest of the groups fighting for democracy within the SA and the Respect coalition should liquidate themselves into the Green Party.

Inside the Greens, they should constitute themselves as an (eco) socialist faction. It is far more likely that a socialist faction within the Green Party will be able to build up a strong leftist party in Britain than a small grouping led by the SWP. The UK Green Party, by all accounts, seems to be receptive to an anti-capitalist message, albeit a petty-bourgeois version.
Advantages to this are: the party has the potential after years of grassroots efforts to win seats in the European parliament, and perhaps in the national one as well; a socialist message would reach a larger audience (the GP’s membership base and sympathisers); and, if the state of the party’s internal democracy were only a wee bit better than the SA’s or Respect’s, the socialist faction would have the ability to challenge the mainstream Greens for control of the party, as their support grew. Best of all, the SWP would fade into irrelevance.

I know none of this will be welcomed by those who wish for a pure communist party. Here in America, many of us (including myself) have entered the Greens and begun to build a Marxist faction there - granted, the electoral and political potential for a socialist party is different here. In Britain, as in America, the need to present the left as a real alternative is the first step towards building a communist party. Engaging a new generation which has no strong party identification and does not participate in politics is extremely important - and the Greens will free you of the straightjacket into which the SWP bound you. A socialist tendency in the GP will double the old audience, consolidate the left and perhaps engender spirited debate.

The alternative, it seems, is continuing electoral and social irrelevance of the Marxist left in Britain.

Green relevance
Green relevance

Hijab

It is ironic that Dr al-Qaradawi was the keynote speaker at the conference on ‘A woman’s right to choose’ to wear the hijab, when he himself does not believe women should have a choice. He says the hijab is obligatory for muslim women and a husband has the right to force his wife to wear it.
Writing on his website Islam Online, Dr al-Qaradawi states the following: “It is obligatory on muslim women to wear the hijab (ie, cover the whole body except the face and hands, and the feet according to some schools of jurisprudence) ... A muslim husband is to order his wife to wear the hijab ... Muslim wives are to obey their husbands and wear the hijab … However, if the wife does not obey him and he has lost all hope of convincing her of wearing the hijab, he should, rather, divorce her if they are still in the beginning of their marital life and have not begot children yet”
(www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english).

The conference was completely one-sided. It demanded the right of women to choose to wear the hijab, but it did not defend their right not to wear it. Very few young muslim girls freely choose the hijab; mostly they adopt it because of pressure from their family and community.

The conference provided a platform for religious tyranny under the guise of human rights. We call for an honest and inclusive public debate covering all sides of the issue, including the views of liberal muslim women who oppose the hijab as an instrument of male domination.

For many muslim women, refusing to obey orthodox muslim expectations can be dangerous. “Not conforming to the sexual and gender norms of the community can result in domestic violence,” reports Safra, a UK-based research and support group run by lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender muslim women (www.safraproject.org/dvrrep03.htm).

It is clear the conference had nothing to do with ‘a women’s right to choose’. It presented wearing the hijab as ‘a choice’, while at the same time insisting that it is obligatory. Outrage affirms the right of every individual to free religious expression, but deplores the hypocrisy of the conference organisers and their failure to defend the right of women not to wear the hijab.

Hijab
Hijab

Manchester picket

On Saturday July 11, members of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign (UK) attended the boycott picket of Marks and Spencers in Manchester’s city centre, in protest at the company’s trading policies towards the state of Israel.

People from a variety of campaigns also attended in order to protest against the fact that on Saturday July 3 the picket had been attacked by seven men, who later revealed in a Jewish newspaper that they were all ex-members of the Israeli Defence Force. According to witnesses present, the seven got out of cars and proceeded to verbally abuse people. They tore up campaign literature, which explained to members of the public what kind of conditions Israel was placing upon the Palestinians, and they even chased one woman trying to call the police - who eventually turned up around 20 minutes after being contacted!

Present at Marks and Spencers on the 11th was the Likud organiser for Manchester, who was standing by the doors observing the picket line. He may have approached the store’s security staff, who complained about the sticking up of material carrying anti-wall slogans, etc.

Our stall was approached by many people who took literature and spoke to members of the campaign. A few Jewish young people, who explained to picketers, that they attended a Jewish high school in Manchester, enquired why Palestine had taken Israel’s land.

Whilst no trouble occurred on the 11th, a Jewish newspaper has stated that a “counter-picket” has been called by a Manchester-based pro-Zionist organisation for Saturday July 17.

Manchester picket
Manchester picket

No wall

Now that Israel’s separation barrier has been declared contrary to international law by the International Court of Justice, the EU must act. The United Nation’s own court has declared that the UN general assembly and security council should take note of the opinion in determining how to bring to an end this illegal situation.

We demand that our governments - individually and collectively as the EU - comply with their obligations under international law. They must support UN resolutions demanding compliance with the advisory opinion. The wall is the frontline of an invasion and a military occupation that is now 37 years old.

It is many years since UN security council resolution 242 - calling on Israel to withdraw from the territory conquered in the 1967 war - was passed and many years since semantic games were first used to defy the explicit will of the UN. Legalistic games were played with the right of the International Court of Justice to offer an opinion on this matter. In the meantime many Israelis and yet more Palestinians have died, while others continue to live in fear.

It is time to end games of international diplomacy. It is time to recognise that a court of justice is precisely the right place to discuss something described as “illegal” by - among others - Jack Straw, the UK’s foreign minister, and the international committee of the Red Cross. Military ‘solutions’ such as the barrier being built by Israel engender fear: they do not overcome it.

No wall
No wall

Aslef debacle

Aslef’s current problems are a product of its elitism and laddish culture historically, problems made substantially worse by the misleadership of Dereck Fullick and Lew Adams in the 80s and 90s. It was perhaps too much to expect one man, Mick Rix , to go in and sort it all out.

There is an analogy with the Labour Party. Kinnock and Hattersley attacked their own left wing in the 80s, seeking electoral popularity, and in so doing paved the way for an even more rightwing leadership in the form of John Smith and eventually Tony Blair and New Labour.

There is a need for one rail organisation to represent all railworkers. This was graphically illustrated in the bosses’ use of Aslef during the signalling and train crew strikes in the 90s. It would also do a lot to undermine an internal culture that contributes to all railworkers not being effectively represented. However, this is not the panacea that some in the RMT make out.

There are two problems with just saying this. Firstly, there would still be a need for a network of activists at a rank and file level who could organise action when the leadership of the merged unions accepted poor deals or refused to fight. Secondly, is Aslef in any fit state to merge with? In the short term the members of Aslef have to fight to obtain effective representation and accountability within their own organisation and that means insisting on an annual conference. Part of the solution lies in electing principled people as officers and EC members, and not careerists desperate to stay away from train driving. But it also means electing people who have the courage and rationality to campaign for a merger with the other rail unions in the interests of Aslef members as well as other railworkers.

The association’s slogan is ‘Unity is strength’. It is about time they practised it.

Aslef debacle
Aslef debacle