11.11.2004

Haunted by the past

The SWP seems to have dropped its idiotic claim that abortion is "not an issue". With a double-page spread in last week's Socialist Worker the comrades are now trying to cover their left flank - and, says Tina Becker, to justify why at Respect conference they voted down a motion for a campaign to make a woman's right to choose a reality

Revealingly, Socialist Worker editor Chris Bambery has chosen to approach the abortion retrospectively, rather than making the Socialist Workers Party’s current position clear. And there precisely lies the crux of the matter: the SWP is all over the place on many things - but nowhere can it be seen in a clearer and purer form than in its attitude towards a woman’s right to choose.

At a meeting to launch a national campaign to defend abortion rights on September 16, Candy Udwin, speaking “on behalf of the SWP”, told us that there was really nothing to worry about - “it would be extremely difficult to encroach on existing rights”. She argued that, as there was no sign of any such threat, there was no need to launch any campaign on abortion (Weekly Worker September 23).

Unfortunately for the SWP, reality very rarely fits into their little scheme of things. Not only have we seen for the last few months a growing campaign by a number of rightwing politicians and media against the existing 1967 Abortion Act. Hardly three weeks after comrade Udwin’s comments, The Sunday Telegraph launched its front page attack on the British Pregnancy Advisory Service for supplying women an address in Spain where late abortions are carried out (October 10).

At this stage, even the SWP comrades must have got the message. They were faced with a few problems though: Respect’s main figurehead, George Galloway, is a well known and outspoken critic of abortion. Ditto the Muslim Association of Britain, which the SWP have been desperately trying to court - so much so that even in its absence MAB is treated as Respect’s right wing (albeit a phantom one, because you would be hard pressed to find a single MAB member at most Respect meetings). Last but not least, comrades from the CPGB were putting forward a motion to Respect conference that would commit Respect to actively fight for free abortion on demand - ie, for an extension of existing rights.

Undoubtedly, the pre-conference meeting of Hackney Respect which I attended was not the only one which saw comrades - including those not linked to the CPGB - calling for Respect to adopt such a policy. We can assume that many SWP members, too, have asked why on earth they were not allowed to support a motion that in fact sums up what many of them have been fighting for all their political lives. The SWP motion passed instead limited itself to opposing any attack on existing rights.

SWP tensions
The SWP had to take a stand. From what we understand, the duumvirate of John Rees and Lindsey German spent many hours trying to reach a rotten compromise with MAB and a number of leading muslim figures, particularly in east London. This is, of course, where George Galloway is hoping to get elected to parliament in 2005 - pretty unlikely anyway, but impossible without the thousands of muslim voters in the area who supported Respect in the June 10 Euro elections. Given the SWP’s top-down approach - from the mosque to the masses - their willingness to water down their commitment to a women’s right to chose is understandable, though nonetheless despicable.

What they put forward was a two-point formulation: firstly, “opposition to all forms of discrimination”, including discrimination based on gender; secondly, “self-determination for every individual in relation to their religious (or non-religious) beliefs, as well as sexual choices”. This was concluded with the bald statement that “Respect therefore opposes any changes in legislation that restricts abortion rights.” In other words a totally passive stance, a promise that Respect, if not its only MP, would neither initiate nor vote for any legislation in parliament which attacks existing, highly restricted, rights.
This is the compromise the SWP wanted to put forward as an alternative to the CPGB’s motion, which would have committed Respect to a campaign to make a woman’s right to choose real.

We stand by the straightforward principle that a women should be free to have an abortion - as early as possible, as late a necessary. In other words restrictions on late abortions must be ended, along with the stipulation that an abortion can go ahead only with the signatures of two doctors. The CPGB also considers it an elementary requirement that elected representatives of our movement should be bound by conference decisions. There should be no ‘conscience votes’ or other such liberal get-outs. If George Galloway opposes abortion that is his right when it comes to his personal life. But in parliament he must act as the obligated representative of Respect.

Anyway, not surprisingly, the negotiations between the SWP and MAB et al failed. Obviously MAB takes its principles far more seriously than does the SWP. It would not, could not, condone the existing laws. For them abortion is murder, a sin against the word of god and that is the end of it.

Of course, if the Rees-German SWP leadership could have got away with dropping the issue altogether, undoubtedly they would have done so. If they could have dragooned their members into simply voting down our motion as a bloc, they would also have done so. But huge tensions have built up in the SWP over Respect and the populist policies it is standing on and promoting in elections. It says a lot when a loyal and longstanding member of the leadership like John Molyneux writes in the normally deadly dull Pre-conference bulletin in a way that implicitly criticises the SWP’s shift to the right in Respect.

With the negotiations with MAB coming to naught, Rees and German felt the need to tack slightly to the left. In order to reduce the strains within its own ranks the SWP leadership agreed to add a point to its compromise formulation. SWP members in Lewisham and Greenwich were told to introduce the phrase, “Respect supports a woman’s right to choose”; this was absent in the motion passed in Hackney the previous day (see Weekly Worker October 14).

Needless to say, another platitude. When presented with a motion making this slogan concrete the SWP voted it down. What the SWP means by supporting a women’s right to choose is doing nothing to further erode existing legislation. The SWP has no stomach for committing Respect to actively campaign on abortion (not even on the level of defending the 1967 act).

This is a disgrace. If you do not fight for what is necessary, you are unlikely to be able to even maintain the current state of affairs. If it becomes a matter, not of arguing for firm principle, but rather of counting the number of weeks till an abortion is no longer permitted, then the other side begin with a distinct advantage. They will use parliament to keep whittling away, week by week, to the point where to all intents and purposes abortion is once again illegal.

David Steel’s bill did not come out of thin air. Nor was abortion made legal because of the generosity of the ruling class. The existing legislature was introduced as a compromise between, on the one side, those who confidently and militantly fought for the right to choose and, on the other, the camp of reaction, the anti-sex brigade, the churches, the moral re-armers, the so-called ‘pro-lifers’ who had been put on the defensive by the ‘permissive’ 60s.

At Respect’s conference, SWP members followed the lead of John Rees - without exception - and voted down our motion. But behind the scenes, all is not well, many branches have seen “lively” debates on this and other issues relating to Respect.

When we were young
Then, a few days after Respect conference, George W Bush got re-elected - on the basis of, amongst other things, a moralistic-religious campaign against abortion and gay marriage. His victory will not only re-invigorate the pro-lifers in this country. It will have put even more pressure on the SWP leadership to come clean on the question of abortion.

In this context, the November 6 issue of Socialist Worker makes interesting reading. The double-page feature is more of a vox pop than a proper article. It merely quotes individual women activists and retells the campaigns they fought in the 1960s and 70s.

Nevertheless, it is of great symbolic importance and is undoubtedly meant to reassure the SWP ranks that they have nothing to worry about - Chris Bambery is reminding them of their proud past in fighting for abortion rights. It is supposed to prove that the SWP still stands for the same principles and remains firmly based on revolutionary politics. Of course, without a written programme that members could use to hold them to account, the Rees-German leadership believes it can get away with shabby manoeuvres like this.

But does the feature succeed? If anything, the double page underlines just how far the organisation has moved to the right. Entitled ‘Defending women’s right to choose’, it gives a deliberately misleading impression of the 1967 act, implying that today women have that right. We are told that most major trade unions now have a policy that supports a woman’s right to choose and that the 1967 act legalised abortion. Nowadays, though, the SWP is silent when it comes to raising demands that go beyond the 1967 act: a significant silence.

Not that the contributions are worthless. On the contrary, they are refreshingly clear about the politics the SWP used to fight for. In the 1970s, Margaret Renn was editor of the short-lived Women’s Voice, the magazine of the SWP’s equally short-lived front for socialist feminists. She writes that “the arguments always shift, but not that much. We had to argue about when life begins, which people still argue about. If life begins at conception, abortion should be illegal. I believe life begins at birth, so women should be able to do what is in their best interests. If they want an abortion, for whatever reason, then that’s their choice.” Quite right.

The main contribution is from a non-SWP member. Angela Phillips, journalist and author of Our bodies ourselves, correctly warns that “we should never relax our guard or forget the fundamental issue - that women have the right to control their own bodies”. Her recollections of getting the TUC to commit itself to help organise the 50,000-strong demonstration against the 1979 Corrie bill, which attempted to restrict the 1967 act, is very interesting. Particularly if it is compared to Respect’s current policy of studied inaction:

“We had major problems winning the male hierarchy of the trade union movement to supporting abortion rights. They said that abortion was too controversial, that it was divisive, and that raising it would split the union movement.

“A group of us went to raise the issue at a TUC meeting, but the union leaders wouldn’t let us speak. Ken Gill was in the chair. He was a longstanding leader of the engineering union and a Communist Party member. He wouldn’t let us open our mouths. So I passed a resolution condemning the Corrie bill through my union executive to get moved at the women’s TUC.”

Sound familiar? One only has to substitute the words ‘trade union movement’ with ‘SWP’ and ‘Respect’ - and voilà, you get an almost classic repeat of history. Before and during Respect conference, CPGB comrades (and everybody else who supported our motion) were accused of wanting to “divide” and “split” Respect. chair Nick Wrack, now a member of the SWP, “wouldn’t let us speak”. The conference only took place on a delegate structure in order to ensure that we would not be able to “open our mouths”.

At the conference itself, Chris Bambery proudly boasted about the fact that “these people did not even get any delegates elected”. The reason, Chris? Your successor as national organiser, Martin Smith, instructed all SWP members to make damn sure that not a single CPGB member or sympathiser slipped through the net. The disgusting way in which CPGB sympathiser Bev Laidlaw was prevented from taking up her elected position as a replacement delegate says it all (see Weekly Worker November 4).

Sadly, this is where the similarities between the TUC and Respect conference end. Comrade Phillips goes on to describe how there was “no major opposition” to her motion and how she and other women trade unionists successfully convinced the TUC to fight an active campaign against the threats. That was the TUC of 1979 - clearly to the left of Respect in 2004.

Support or accept?
It will be interesting to see how the new constitution and resolutions adopted at Respect conference will be put into practice - particularly after the overwhelming defeat of the CPGB’s constitutional amendment (that Respect members should only have to “accept”, not “support”, the founding statement and conference decisions) was voted down overwhelmingly.

In opposing the amendment, the SWP’s Lindsey German went into anti-CPGB overdrive. The motion, she said, was “moved in bad taste. If you don’t support the founding declaration [she conveniently forgot to mention the decisions of annual conference], then you don’t accept the basis on which the organisation is set up. Why don’t you go and found another organisation?”

I wonder if it really had not occurred to her and other SWP members that George Galloway disagrees with, and perhaps does not even accept, the position on abortion that was adopted at conference. Does the SWP leadership now demand that he “support” the formulation that Respect favours “a woman’s right to choose”? Even though this phrase is meaningless in the context of the rest of the abortion motion, it is unlikely that Galloway and co will be out there campaigning for it. But of course, they will not have to. Some Respect members are more equal than others, it seems.

Comrade German’s frothy speech was only directed at us - quite possibly in order to initiate a campaign to expel CPGB comrades and other difficult people from Respect. If that is the plan, then we will not take it lying down. ‘Revolutionary’ organisations that restrict and make light of the democracy in our workers’ movement cannot be allowed to get away with it.

The SWP has single-handedly strangled the Socialist Alliance, the best chance in decades the British left had of uniting on a relatively principled basis. The comrades not only allowed, but actively assisted, London mayor Ken Livingstone in turning the European Social Forum into a safe, bureaucratically run jamboree. The Stop the War Coalition - which, just like Respect, is kept free of ‘troublemakers’ on its executive - is switched on and off by the SWP according to its needs.

SWP comrades who are unhappy about the opportunism of the leadership should not be blinded by such games. They must demand that their organisation takes a real and active role in building a pro-choice campaign. It would be an act of criminal opportunism to turn away from such an important task.
The fact is that we urgently need to build a working class-based movement to defend and extend abortion rights. Yet the SWP has made it clear that it will not take the lead on the question. Comrade Udwin has already shown that it might even be prepared to prevent such a campaign getting off the ground.