Letters
Personal
I read the Hannah-Donovan open letter of resignation from the CPGB, which you decline to print, elsewhere on the web. It appears to be a pristine example of one of the far left’s most crippling afflictions: the incapacity of individual leftists to subordinate their usually more than medium-sized egos to larger political aims.
Even if Hannah-Donovan are 100% right in their claims concerning the leadership’s overindulgence of a particular comrade, this circumstance would seem to justify quitting only in the eyes of those whose personal standing in the organisation is more important than the programme that they, and it, purport to serve.
Will the disgruntled pair (at least one of whom I know to be inveterately political) now attempt to start their own organisation on the basis of some thoroughly contrived difference of principle with the CPGB? As a 15-year veteran of Trotskyism, I would hardly be nonplussed.
Personal
Personal
A bitt odd
Peter Manson claims that Ian Donovan and Andy Hannah left you for reasons that have “little to do with the politics of the CPGB”. Yet Dave Craig, a member of another group, manages to explain perfectly well what the political issues were, with Donovan at least - even if he puts his own interpretation on who is right and wrong and why. Even I can understand what he is talking about!
Isn’t this a bit odd? Who is telling the truth?
A bitt odd
A bitt odd
Creature rant
More abuse, conceit, and saccharine single-issue sentiment from Tony Greenstein, but still not the remotest sign of any ability to discuss the political questions raised (Letters, September 30).
This self-righteous abusiveness and shallow refusal to place their individualist concerns in the context of the broader interests of world revolutionary perspectives is just the sort of thing by which older communists (life-long anti Stalin’s imbecile revisionist theories, which destroyed the international communist movement; lifelong pro the dictatorship of the proletariat) recognised the single-issue freemasonries of ‘the personal is the political’ era as products of the CIA’s ‘human rights’ worldwide brainwashing campaign to halt the spread of communist ideology, and as demented and naturally spontaneous anti-communists for every giant CIA stunt.
So there was every Trot, fanatically cheering on every Solidarnosc move, swearing that ‘rank-and-file socialism’ was the aim of the blatantly anti-communist stunt cleverly dreamed-up and financed by the Vatican, the CIA and the known Pilsudski fascist, Lech Walesa.
The outcome? Crap bourgeois ‘democracy’ which wrecked the east European welfare states; consumerism, courtesy of exploitation by western corporate imperialism; and Polish state forces now helping the vile imperialist warmongering occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ‘left’ mostly protesting in reformist terms instead of agitating for the American empire’s defeat because their shallow anti-communist mentality has effortlessly translated into a fully counterrevolutionary, petty bourgeois cringing at ‘terrorism’(read Marx, Engels and Lenin on this cringing), and at every scrap of CIA garbage propaganda about ‘Saddam’s mass graves’ etc, etc - missing the World War III that imperialism in crisis is now preparing.
Not a “world Jewish conspiracy”, Mr Greenstein, to create ‘Israel’ as a desperately-needed belligerent toe-hold on the Middle East in an inevitably anti-imperialist post-war world with communist revolutionary ideology gaining rapidly in all directions (in spite of Stalin’s monstrous efforts to curb it), but a clever imperialist conspiracy.
And Scargill opposed the election of this “creature”, to quote your disgusting abuse, as Socialist Labour Party vice-president, which was achieved without the block vote of the fantasy North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association, but because older communists, responding to actually reading the Economic and Philosophic Science Review (instead of just scurrilous anti-communist leaflets lampooning it) agreed there was a chance to get back to a real Bolshevik Party. Stalinist Scargill’s programmed expulsion of said “creature” put a stop to that hope.
Creature rant
Creature rant
Anti-semitism
It seems there’s no pleasing Royston Bull (Letters, September 30). It is not enough for him that Roland Rance has actively supported the Palestinians for decades, remains a consistent opponent of Zionism and holds to the creation of a single democratic, secular state. No, in addition to this, Rance and others must confess that the founding of Israel was “one of the foulest acts of imperialist hypocrisy ever, and certainly ... the most endlessly poisonous colonisation of all time”.
Such a crass lack of reason and proportion cannot be viewed as anything other than a reflection of Mr Bull’s vicarious anti-semitism (a charge he always sneers at but always fails to disprove). Indeed, in his EPSR rag, Bull has stated that Zionist oppression of the Palestinians makes the crimes of the Nazis and the US war on Vietnam look “mild in comparison”.
The Palestinians need active solidarity, not shrill denunciations of “world Jewry” from third period tanky-reactionaries like Bull.
Anti-semitism
Anti-semitism
Whose interest?
Well, at least no-one can accuse Royston Bull of dissembling. The two-state solution in Palestine, he tells us, is an “evil fraud”, and a unitary, democratic and secular Palestine is “utopian”. What, then, is the solution? According to Bull, it means “driving this rotten Zionist stunt into the sea”.
For decades, a mainstay of Zionist propaganda has been the lie that the Palestinians intend to ‘drive the Jews into the sea’. This position has been frequently and explicitly rejected, both by the PLO and its constituent organisations, and by the islamist forces of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We might ask, whose interest is Royston Bull serving by trying to revive and propagate this untrue claim? It’s certainly not that of the Palestinian people.
Whose interest?
Whose interest?
Who did what
Having denounced “Jewish/imperialist colonisation”, thereby promoting the notion that there are “Jewish” interests for Jews and class interests for the rest of humanity, and having denounced long-standing anti-Zionist activist Roland Rance as not having been “heard denouncing the foundation of the state of Israel”, Royston Bull then goes on to tell us that the issue is about political understanding, not “boasts about who does what or grotesque distortions about who did what”.
But then his outrageous slur on Roland, I suppose, was a “grotesque distortion about who did [not] do what”. So perhaps he is being consistent after all.
Who did what
Who did what
WRP and Bull
I’d have preferred not to waste time bothering to reply to Royston Bull’s outbursts, but after talking about his heroic ‘revolt’ in the Workers Revolutionary Party, and those (the great majority) who gave him and his mate no support, he finishes asking: “And Pottins?”
For those readers who are bursting to know the answer, it is simple. Pottins had been sacked by Gerry Healy early in 1978, well before the departure of Bull and fellow-journalist Steve Johns. It all started the previous November, with me critically reporting Egyptian president Sadat’s announced intention of going to make peace with Israel, and suggesting he was betraying the Palestinians. I was given a bollocking in Healy’s office, and removed from News Line’s international desk and despatched to the Midlands, ostensibly to cover the firefighters’ strike, which I did, but in effect it was attempted constructive dismissal.
When this did not work, Healy dispensed with ceremony, and just gave me notice. I don’t know whether Bull, Johns, Alex Mitchell or anyone else objected (I think the late Jack Gale, whose close colleague I had been, expressed misgivings, but Jack was already ill, and was removed from the board by other means).
By 1979, having taken a factory job and being active in the workplace I was seriously concerned at the widening gap between the WRP’s theory and practice and the realities of working class life and struggle. Having experienced the autocratic internal regime, and seeing no way to challenge it, I took my exclusion from the party then with relief, and a feeling of freedom. I wasn’t at the congress which expelled Bull and Johns, and knew little or nothing about what issues they raised, or whether Bull’s version now is accurate (nor, judging from his question, did he know or care where I was).
It wasn’t until after the expulsion of Healy and his acolytes in 1985 that I rejoined the WRP (Workers Press). To be fair, when I was working on News Line, Roy Bull did defend me on one occasion when I was involved in a row over tasks at the centre (I’ll spare you the details as I’m saving it for a spot of comic relief to leaven my memoirs).
But Healy was able to turn this (and me) against him, because the sad fact was that by then Bull and Steve Johns, who had been quite popular in the party, were notorious for skiving. Nobody even bothered to ask them to help either in the centre or on paper sales, etc, and they did as little as possible on News Line. Wondering how they got away with it, I didn’t know whether Healy just valued their journalistic skills or they had something on him! Whatever it was, they kept it to themselves. I was amazed when I heard they had shown the energy to ‘rebel’, and guessed Healy had cunningly given them ‘enough rope’ to ensure they were not missed as much as they might have been.
Johns and others soon found new berths in the capitalist media. I don’t know about Bull - he had been quite a gain coming to News Line from the FT (and the Communist Party), and was quite an intellect, whatever his quirks and limits. But his original allies deserted him, and he has come to a sad pass politically.
As for Roy’s brand-new interest in Palestine and call for ‘driving the Jews into the sea’ (including the 30% or more Israelis hailing from Arab countries?), I doubt anybody other than a Zionist propagandist desperate for material will take this seriously. Certainly nobody genuinely involved in the Palestinian struggle for their rights will. So I won’t.
WRP and Bull
WRP and Bull
Refreshing
While not wishing to intrude on what appears to be some very old WRP feuding, I must say that the charges against the EPSR of anti-semitism and homophobia are really quite erroneous: in fact deliberate misrepresentation.
Having read the EPSR with great interest for some time now, I find nothing of this nature in it and I would like to thank you for drawing my attention to this publication, whose revolutionary fervour is quite refreshing. There’s no such thing as bad publicity!
Refreshing
Refreshing
AWL and imperialism
Mike Macnair’s honest self-criticism regarding his original articles on the AWL and imperialism was refreshing and suggests that my rather terse correspondence was not in vain (Weekly Worker September 23). AWL comrades welcome a serious exchange of views on imperialism with the CPGB, particularly if it brings our respective political assessments into sharper relief.
If readers want to read our arguments, our website (www.workersliberty.org) has an index of most back issues of the magazine Workers’ Liberty, though sadly not all the material is online. We are happy to provide copies of articles to comrades interested in reading our views, including those now out of print.
Firstly, there are some points of agreement with Mike Macnair. The AWL believes that the ‘imperialism’ described by the classical Marxists - the relations between the great powers, the relations between capitalist states and the colonies, and the tendencies towards war - does not adequately describe the present world order nor provide a guide to action for the working class in the current situation. We also reject the political conclusions drawn from that analysis, such as the anti-imperialist united front. We also agree that some of the classical texts were problematic and contradictory even for the time they were written - for example, Lenin’s concepts of finance capital and his arguments about the aristocracy of labour in his book Imperialism.
However, there are substantial points on which we clearly disagree with the CPGB.
1. On method, the point is not to start with the classical texts, their political conclusions or indeed abstract postulates - rather our analysis should begin with the reality of modern capitalism. One of the disappointing things about the articles in the Weekly Worker has been the lack of concrete analysis of capitalism since 1945. The AWL view, which we call the “imperialism of free trade”, at least has the merit of starting from the actual tendencies of capitalism since World War II - and freer trade has clearly been one of those tendencies.
2. The AWL argues that decolonisation was a real step forward. The fight for national liberation in the colonies for independent national states was a significant change. This is particularly true in relation to industrial development, and the concomitant creation of powerful working classes in the former colonies. Since winning independence, many of these states have also developed a more powerful bourgeois class as well as states that act for these capitalists. Some states have become centres of capital accumulation in their own right. All this means that defining them merely as ‘semi-colonies’ fails to grasp important changes.
3. Our argument about sub-imperialism follows from this assessment. I can’t understand Mike’s assertion that the concept of sub-imperialism has no predictive power. The concept implies that bourgeoisies in a number of intermediate states have developed the same kind of expansive drives (at least regionally), including the drive to war that the big powers had a century ago. Wars waged by Argentina, Iran and Iraq, Serbia, Israel, India and Pakistan, etc over the past 20 years, as well as the role played by states such as China, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, etc, suggest that ‘sub-imperialism’ is a useful designation.
4. The AWL argues that the concept of ‘defeatism’ developed by Lenin during World War I was incoherent - see articles by Hal Draper in Workers’ Liberty. ‘Defeatism’ predates Lenin’s analysis of imperialism and was not part of the programme of the Communist International - until Zinoviev revived it in 1924 as a stick to beat Trotsky with. A better method is to follow Clausewitz and define the politics behind wars, including the class character and aims of the combatants, the nature of the wars they are waging and the consequences for the working class. This was the method of Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Trotsky and others during World War I - ‘defeatism’ adds nothing to it but confusion.
The pressing practical need behind this discussion is the situation in Iraq. The AWL does not think US and British soldiers are playing a progressive role in Iraq. We oppose the occupation and are in favour of self-determination. But we don’t think the ‘resistance’ are a national liberation movement, in the sense understood by socialists in Lenin’s time, or indeed in the wars in Algeria, Vietnam, etc. Instead we focus on the emerging Iraqi labour movement, because like Lenin we believe the “real anti-imperialist force” is the working class in Iraq and across the globe.
In short we think working class anti-imperialism needs to be clarified - and distinguished from the nebulous, classless anybody-but-the-US ‘anti-imperialism’ the SWP are advocating. I hope the CPGB will join us in this work - and stop appearing to straddle the two opposing poles.
AWL and imperialism
AWL and imperialism
Iraq resistance
I have watched with interest the debates surrounding the so-called resistance to the US coalition’s occupation of Iraq. Enthusiasts for these terrorists might do well to examine some of the links on your own website, particularly one to the Worker-communist Party of Iraq.
On one page the authors detail what they term “political islam’s crimes against women” in the Iraqi city of Mosul and note that “mass killing is practised against women working as interpreters or as workers with foreign companies”. What brave men these ‘fighters’ must be to gun down women on their way to work. The applause offered these degenerates is merely one more chapter in the long story of the UK left’s increasing irrelevance.
Iraq resistance
Iraq resistance
Join later
There are a couple of matters that require clarification regarding my article published in last week’s Weekly Worker (September 30). First the headline, “Boycott now, join later”, is not my own. It doesn’t give a proper reflection of my argument.
We did not boycott the Respect founding conference. The Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform put forward an alternative strategy for Respect called ‘Britain at the crossroads’ and a number of motions on a worker’s wage, immigration controls and republicanism (these were formally moved by different groups because of limits in how many motions the SADP could submit). The alternative strategy and all the motions were defeated.
The decisions of the founding conference made it absolutely clear that Respect is not a republican socialist workers’ party and is not a step towards such a party. The party is the most important question. Yet Respect has fostered massive illusions that it is a step towards such a party. On the contrary it is a barrier to it.
I certainly said, “Boycott now”. A boycott is an absolutely clear response. Anybody who is a serious and militant republican and socialist must reject Respect’s royal socialism, which is nothing more than the left wing of the ruling class. ‘Boycott’ means we didn’t simply forget to fill in our membership forms. We deliberately did not join and urged other comrades to do the same. ‘Boycott’ means political hostility to Respect on the basis of a programme, whose attitude to democracy is worse than the Liberal Democrats.
We were not alone. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Alliance (DP), Independent Working Class Association, Communist Party of Britain, Alliance for Green Socialism, Workers International, International Socialism League and Workers Power did not join.
But ‘boycott’ means a specific tactic for a specified period of time. That boycott lasts until October 30. This does not mean we will join Respect after that. I simply say we should review the situation in the light of its decisions. So the headline, “Boycott now, join later”, is misleading. We are not calling on people to join Respect in November.
Neither does the sub-heading reflect my argument. I did not argue that “‘wait and see’ is the best approach towards Respect”, as the introduction suggests. On the contrary I have argued for building and strengthening the alternative socialist forces that have gathered round the Socialist Alliance (DP). Instead of collapsing into Respect or acting as critical cheerleaders, we put our efforts behind working class candidates standing on a republican socialist programme (People before profit).
My original article says: “Respect is being formed or established between March and the October 2004 conference. This must be met with a boycott and open criticism of the project”. But the edited version in Weekly Worker says: “The October 2004 conference must be met with a boycott and open criticism of the project.”
My original point was not focused on boycotting the October conference. Rather my emphasis was the period between conferences. I am not criticising the editor for this. I am sure the intention was to clarify what I was saying. I merely want to set the record straight.
Join later
Join later
Sad SWP
I used to be a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and Iraq and Blair have rekindled my interest in politics. I have scoured the internet for all things to do with Respect and I have been dismayed. Respect seems such a waste of energy for socialists. It reminds me of the old Revolutionary Communist Party (The Next Step), crossed with the worst of Eurocommunism.
When I was in the SWP, the slide to the right had started and the local organiser started becoming ever more shrill at those who dissented from the central committee line. All debate ceased and I, like many others, voted with my feet and stopped going to meetings. The party atrophied and all that was left was a small bureaucracy of branch committee members who had no-one to order around. Sad.
They hail 572 votes as a victory. It is not surprising that members of the SWP are leaving or becoming inactive. I am not going to join the CPGB, but keep up the good work.
Sad SWP
Sad SWP
Revisionist
Hillel Ticktin writes about a matter he has never known (‘A Marxist party without deformations’, July 15).
The destruction of Stalinism has brought him a big opportunity to build up a Marxist party. Thus he presumes that Marxist parties have never existed! The international proletariat have been such fools that they remained without a party of their own. He knows nothing about the Third International and its feats.
My view is very similar to his, but for opposite reasons. The catastrophic collapse of Lenin’s project at the hands of petty bourgeois revisionists pushed the world out of its historical track. Now the dominant means of production aren’t the proletariat’s. Hence unions of Marxists, not parties, are to be formed, for the socialist revolution is not on the horizon. This has been suggested to the Marxist factions here in Jordan.
Revisionist
Revisionist
ESF Snouts
I noticed that there was no mention in your article of the cost for the unwaged to gain entry to the European Social Forum (‘In safe hands?’, September 30). Is this because the sum demanded shows just how out of touch those are who are both the main organisers of the jamboree and those they have slotted in as chairs and main speakers?
£20 is what these people expect the unwaged to pay: that is, more than a third of dole or sick money. Now if any of these illustrious freeloaders seriously believe that someone living on such a low income is going to hand it over to hear a mixture of overpaid trade union bureaucrats, trust-fund lefties and individuals who have got their greedy snouts in the local and national government trough, then I suggest they think again.
Far from worrying yourselves about how you too can join the top table of British left reformism, the CPGB comrades would be better organising alongside those who refuse to be ripped off by paying this fee and find ways to help them avoid doing so. You know, old fashioned activities like occupying the buildings where the ESF is to take place and by so doing democratise this authoritarian charade. Or are you more comfortable in the company of political and trade union bureaucrats?
Finally on a point of information, why do you feel it is necessary to call a snout in the trough like Mr O’Neill “comrade”? Are you that bad a judge of socialists that you fail to recognise a freeloader when you see one and an individual, at that, who is too devious or cowardly to place his politics openly before the working class?
ESF Snouts
ESF Snouts
Fake Nader
There may be many miles of ocean separating me from the US presidential election, but I can see when some American leftists are barking up the wrong tree.
I favour a critical vote and support for the Socialist Party USA, so I’m not particularly bothered whether the Greens are mounting an effective challenge to the Republicrat duopoly or not. As far as I’m concerned, socialists in the US should use these elections to put their own independent working class politics on the agenda, and the SP is by far the best vehicle to carry out the job.
Is the fare Ralph Nader offers any better? True, there’s name recognition, a decent momentum and some policies worthy of critical support. However, despite the attacks the Democrats have made on his campaign, I was not making up the claim that Nader is concerned with pressurising the Democrats to return to their supposedly progressive roots, as comrade Jonah Birch seems to suggest (Letters September 30).
For example, sifting through Nader’s voluminous open letters to Bush and Kerry, I found a piece (dated June 22) urging Kerry to adopt John Edwards as his running mate. Apparently Edward’s boy-next-door image goes down well in the media, and he would not stand for the legal injustices heaped upon the American working class, writes Nader. Such friendly advice from one presidential candidate to another hardly smacks of serious opposition to me: more like sowing illusions.
May I also suggest the comrade looks at my review of Nader’s website (Weekly Worker August 5). In his reply to Democrat national committee chairman Terry McAuliffe (dated June 18), our anti-war and pro-labour hero attacks the Democrats for not fielding what he calls “challenging candidates”.
Lamenting the recent losses the Democrats have made to Republicans at state and federal level, Nader calls for “new energies and bold strategies inside the party and parallel to it” to see off the Republicans. What possible objective could ‘comrade’ Nader have in mind? The Democrats “need to be pulled away from the corporate supremacists who have so seriously weakened the party’s appeal to working families everywhere”.
Comrade Jonah may think it’s “laughable” that the “Nader/Camejo campaign is … about reclaiming the Democrats”, but for dear old Ralph it is no laughing matter. Nader’s objective is there in print, exposing himself as a fake alternative in the process.
Fake Nader
Fake Nader
Centrist CPGB
Peter Manson’s reply to the recent open letter from Andy Hannah and myself is exactly the kind of mud-throwing that he himself complains of (Letters, September 30).
Its dishonesty is shown by the fact that he still cannot bring himself to admit publicly that the CPGB have instituted leadership pre-vetting over electronic discussions internally. He seems to think that objecting to this on principle is a ‘personalist’ attack: a most curious myopia, not comprehending that anyone could object to ‘editorial control’ over private debate as a principle. But the fact that he cannot bring himself to accurately state what the issues in dispute actually were speaks volumes - he is hiding something. He meanwhile consoles himself that material already circulating on the internet is now being circulated in the CPGB - damage limitation under any other name.
Meanwhile, Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group seems to be under the impression that the current that grew out of these events - Manny Neira’s Red Platform/‘Party’ - represented some kind of healthy reaction to ‘opportunism’ over Respect. One decisive programmatic position that they have adopted collectively shows that this is nonsense. They have decided to support the euro, and advise the working class to vote ‘yes’ in a referendum. Based in the super-affluent nirvanas of Camberley and Guildford, they are the quintessence of middle-class ‘socialism’, with a publication whose ethos is not dissimilar to a Guardian supplement. The Red Party is socially light-years away from the predominantly working class immigrant populations Respect aims to address, even if it sometimes does so in a flawed manner. Their liberal imperialism over the euro shows this.
May I remind comrades of the Marxist principle of refusing to vote any confidence in economic measures which express the economic and political strategy of the capitalists? It is in the fundamental interests of the working class to take no responsibility for the running of the capitalist economy, and to give no support to economic measures that advance the interests of imperialist capital. A European superstate, were it born out of the present EU bloc or Eurozone, would be an imperialist superstate, dominated by the core bourgeoisies of Europe, whose role in the world would be similar to that of US imperialism - a rival behemoth that would co-exploit the majority of the world’s population in a dialectic of partnership and rivalry.
To vote approval to the main economic-political project of the bourgeoisie of a would-be imperialist superstate is class treason, no matter how much ‘socialist’ rhetoric and how many tinselled red stars adorn it. The reason why many Marxists, correctly, refuse to support the ‘no’ campaign is that, implicitly, voting ‘no’ in the current context means choosing the pound over the euro (since no one is practically proposing the abolition of money as any kind of immediate perspective). Voting for the euro is voting for European capitalism, just as much as campaigning to ‘defend the pound’ is campaigning for a vote for British capitalism. This is a decisive programmatic question that, notwithstanding the good (liberal) intentions of some of its participants, marks the Red Party as a rightwing, liberal-imperialist split from the CPGB. Indeed, on this they have moved to the right of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which still maintains a position of abstention. Beside this strategic accommodation to capital, the various acts of opportunism of the SWP over Respect pale into relative insignificance.
Comrade Manson tries to paint my resignation from the CPGB as something driven by personal disputes. He conveniently does not mention that in May 2004, three months before my departure, I wrote an internal critique of the politics of the majority of the CPGB, and in particular its kind of conciliation of the politics represented most fundamentally by the AWL, and in the CPGB by the (then) Red Platform. In that document I accused the CPGB leadership of centrism, of capitulating to imperialist ‘public opinion’ on the question of Iraq, refusing to explicitly solidarise with the popular uprisings that were taking place in Fallujah and Iraq, vis-à-vis the occupation forces. This amounts to a refusal to unconditionally defend the right of self-determination of Iraq - a question that I regard as one of principle.
I attributed this to the ‘third campist’ dogma that the organisation had extrapolated from the Cold War, which extended the (already partially flawed) method of refusing to take a side between seemingly comparable gangs of oppressors in that period to a refusal to take sides between the oppressor and the oppressed in Iraq, when the oppressed fight under reactionary leadership. Peter will remember an exchange between us, where I berated the Provisional Central Committee majority for (correctly) siding with the Kosova Liberation Army when a struggle against occupation took place in 1999, even when our ‘own’ imperialist government intervened military to give them ‘support’ (the kiss of death!), yet refusing to solidarise with the masses fighting ‘our’ imperialist army in Iraq. Peter rather lamely replied that there was a difference between mere “non-working class forces” (the KLA) and “reactionary anti-imperialism” (the shia, sunni and nationalist insurgents in Fallujah, Najaf, etc).
Particularly on Iraq, this is the kind of politics that was most consistently expressed by the Red Platform, though in various ways it is also shared by most of the CPGB leadership. It is this which also drove CPGB antipathy to Respect. Shared third-campist and islamophobic political appetites led the ‘soft’ PCC majority to collaborate with Manny Neira in violating democratic centralist norms, in publishing (for instance) personalised attacks on George Galloway that undermined decisions that the CPGB (including its leadership) had voted for in two aggregates.
The CPGB’s whole political profile regarding Respect is schizophrenic: while claiming to critically support Respect, they often act in practice no differently from its rightwing, islamophobic critics, in a manner that can only outrage those who see something positive in the project. That Peter Manson can dismiss these differences, and the blow-out/conflict with Manny Neira that resulted from them, as ‘apolitical’ and ‘personal’ is a disturbing sign of political degeneration and myopia.
Centrist CPGB
Centrist CPGB