27.10.2004

National and trade union rights - one struggle

One of the most publicised events at this month’s London European Social Forum was the shambolic stunt which led to the abandonment of the ‘End the occupation of Iraq’ October 15 plenary session. Objecting to the presence of Subhi Meshadani, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and one of the scheduled platform speakers, a very noisy Worker Power-dominated group of 40 spurned all offers of compromise and effectively held the meeting to ransom - exclude Meshadani from the platform or else no meeting. Obviously, the democratic rights of the 800-plus in attendance who wanted to hear all the speakers, including Meshadani, mattered little for our ‘fifth internationalist’ WP comrades, determined as they were to impose their minority view on the majority.

As we pointed out, this anarchist type action - which was clearly not WP’s finest hour - allowed the Socialist Workers Party’s Lindsey German to pose as the heroic champion of the meeting’s democratic rights, a quite monstrous turn of events, given her organisation’s wretched role in stifling all dissenting/independent voices from decision-making and influence within the ESF. Not that any of this prevented WP from declaring on its website that it is “proud of the part we played in exposing the IFTU as a pro-imperialist union” (www.wor-kerspower.com). In reality, WP’s sabotaging of the meeting did quite the opposite, frustrating those who wanted to use it as an opportunity to highlight what they regard as the IFTU’s treacherous role in Iraq.

Naturally, unlike the hapless WP group, Respect’s George Galloway has had no problems in getting his anti-IFTU message across - first, in the London-based daily, al-Quds al-Arabi (September 30) and then in the Morning Star (October 2). In these articles, Galloway explicitly accuses the IFTU of directly collaborating with the British government in order to thwart the anti-war movement.

Now, as Cameron Richards reports (see opposite), it is the turn of the Stop the War Coalition to be rocked by fierce argument over the nature of the IFTU. It is unsurprising that there are such tensions and disagreements over its role, as well as that of its British representative, Abdullah Muhsin. Muhsin - and the IFTU as a whole - claim to be against the imperialist occupation of Iraq, as do, of course, all the trade union bosses in Britain, who are busily raising cash for the IFTU.

Yet the very reasonable suspicion is that the union tops have no stomach for a real fight with Blair over the war and are on the lookout for excuses with which to depart from the STWC and sidle up again to the Labour leadership, especially with a general election looming - ‘mustn’t let the Tories back in’, such will be the message from the trade union dignitaries. Huffing and puffing about Andrew Murray and the ‘extremist’ STWC statements therefore fits the backsliding bill nicely. More significantly still, the IFTU and Muhsin have also provided perfect cover for the nervy union bosses, with the likes of Dave Prentis using Muhsin’s letter to Labour Party delegates at Brighton as a justification for his failure to support the union’s anti-occupation policy - which is for the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops from Iraq.

By all accounts this is not the position of the IFTU leadership, being that imperialist troops should stay until at least the January elections and support for UN resolution 1546, which, amongst other things, talks of “welcoming the willingness of the multinational force to continue efforts to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in support of the political transition, especially for upcoming elections, and to provide security for the United Nations presence in Iraq”.

Writing in The Guardian, Abdullah Muhsin said that “the deployment by US forces of helicopter gunships and F16 against civilians reminds Iraqis of the brutality of state-sponsored violence”, and then adds: “We have received enormous support from the TUC and British trade unions. I was invited to the Labour Party conference as a guest of Unison. Addressing a fringe meeting, I was joined by speakers who supported the IFTU line against the war and the occupation. My speech called for the removal of foreign troops and a genuine transfer of power to the Iraqi people. I explained the IFTU’s policy of support for UN resolution 1546. I did not offer voting advice to trade unions on Labour’s Iraq motions and confined my remarks to urging solidarity with Iraqi workers” (my emphasis, October 23).

Muhsin’s account seems at variance with the facts. Yes, obviously, there was a fringe meeting, chaired by Labour MP Harry Barnes, a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, where Muhsin spoke alongside Bill Ramell MP, Owen Tudor (TUC international secretary), Keith Sonnet (Unison) and Brian Joyce (FBU). However, when it came to the actual conference vote on Iraq, Muhsin’s “advice” - not offered of course - was printed for all to see in the party’s official daily briefing for all delegates and in a special ‘open letter to trade union delegates’. It read: “You have two options before you this week. One would give hope to all those in Iraq who want to see free trade unions and political organisation grow and thrive. In line with UN security council resolution 1546, it says that the multinational force is there to help our democracy. The alternative asks for an early date for the unilateral withdrawal of troops which would be bad for my country, bad for the emerging progressive forces, a terrible blow for free trade unionism, and would play into the hands of extremists and terrorists” (see Unison website - www.unison.org.uk).

As we know, this “early date” for withdrawal was rejected by conference, which instead opted for giving “hope to all those in Iraq who want to see free trade unions and political organisations grow and thrive” by backing imperialism. Muhsin may write in the pages of The Guardian about “the IFTU line against the war and the occupation”, but in reality he ascribes a progressive, ‘civilising’ role to imperialism - especially if it is wearing a UN hat. This view is further confirmed by a letter Muhsin sent to The Guardian, in which he supported the call to invite the stooge Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to the Labour Party conference, on the grounds that it would present “an opportunity for those who honourably opposed the war to extend support to Iraqi democrats who are trying, in the most difficult circumstances, to construct a vibrant civil society” (August 18). Right now, thanks to “Iraqi democrats” like Allawi, the people of Fallujah are undoubtedly enjoying the experience of living in “a vibrant civil society” - brought to them courtesy of the bombs, bullets and missiles of US-UK imperialism.

The IFTU’s website hardly gives the appearance of a militantly anti-war/anti-imperialist organisation. Explicit condemnations of imperialism hardly jump out at you, yet there are voluminous excoriations of the islamists. Indeed, there are many bland, neutral passages like the following: “In August, the White House supported the establishment of an Iraqi National Council comprising 100 Iraqis from various tribal, ethnic and religious groups in an effort to influence the composition of an electoral oversight body. Yet this month, two large political parties, each of which has long been viewed with suspicion by Washington, came out ahead in the voting.” Or the following: “One thousand, three hundred delegates representing people and organisations from Iraq’s 18 provinces defied the extremist wreckers and terrorists - both islamist fundamentalists and Saddam supporters - by gathering in Baghdad’s Convention Centre on Sunday August 15 2004 to elect an interim National Assembly and to engage in an open national dialogue on Iraq’s future” (see www.iraqitradeunions.org/en).

In fact, from reading the IFTU’s website, you would be hard-pressed to even know that the battle of Najaf had even taken place or that the imperialists now intend to launch an all-out assault on Fallujah. All this gives the unmistakable impression that the IFTU is quite content to see the imperialists, whether in the form of the US-UK or UN, stay in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. Frankly, the IFTU leadership regards the imperialists as the ‘lesser of two evils’.

We should not be astonished. Muhsin is a longstanding and eminent member of the Iraqi Communist Party, which has ministers in the interim government. Regrettably, over the past few decades the leadership of the ICP has played a disgraceful role. From 1972 to 1978 it pumped out tireless propaganda to the effect that Saddam’s regime was a “reformist” one, implementing “progressive and patriotic measures”, and this saw the ICP proudly joining - under Moscow’s guidance, of course - Saddam’s Patriotic and Nationalist Progressive Front government, with two members of its politburo serving as cabinet ministers. Saddam himself described the then ICP leaders as the “left wing” of the Ba’ath party. Anti-Saddam Iraqis, including even rank-and-file party members, were routinely dubbed as “infantile leftists” or “reactionary Kurds” by the ICP leadership.

Today, the ICP leadership is in collusion with imperialism. This took the form of a declaration on July 13 last year by its general secretary, Hameed Majeed Mousa, that the ICP would join the Paul Bremer-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), effectively meaning that some of ICP leaders were receiving their salaries straight from the occupation authorities. When the IGC was finally abolished, the ICP fully supported the formation of Allawi’s stooge interim government, and now has one senior and two junior ministers serving under Allawi and his US masters. In an ICP communiqué of August 26 this year, we read that “the meeting called once more for activating the mechanism of consultation and coordination among patriotic forces to play their desired role, in coordination with the interim government, to activate mass participation in restoring peace and confronting criminal and terror elements, as well as supporting the political process” (www.iraqcp.org). Who can question the “patriotic” credentials of the current-day ICP?

With regards to the IFTU, to read official ICP communiqués like the above, and the editorials in Tareeq Al-Sha’ab, the ICP’s central organ, is to know the politics of Abdullah Muhsin, Subhi Meshadani and the IFTU tops. Indeed, previous articles by Muhsin in the Morning Star of yesteryear have merely been abridged translations of official ICP statements on the situation in Iraq. As is so often the case with capricious ‘official’ communism, yesterday’s ‘comrade’ is tomorrow’s ‘imperialist collaborator’.
Genuine communists, on the other hand, demand that all imperialist troops leave Iraq and - as 850 members of the UK Black Watch brigade make their way north to act as “backfill” for US forces now intent on wiping out resistance in Fallujah - we support the defeat of the occupation forces.
The struggle for democracy is indivisible. In other words, the fight for genuine trade union and workers’ rights is inseparable from the fight for national self-determination. And the imperialists are the bitter enemies of both.