21.09.2005
Broaden the anti-war struggle into a class struggle
Anything less than the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of UK forces weakens the argument that they have no right to be in Iraq in the first place, says David Isaacson
In the general election the Weekly Worker and CPGB refused to give support to any candidates that failed to call for an immediate and unconditional US-UK withdrawal from Iraq: ie, troops out now! We voted only for working class anti-occupation candidates and, to our surprise, only four Labour candidates were prepared to publicly make such a demand. We have been criticised for our refusal to back leftwingers like Jeremy Corbyn, particularly since he is portrayed as staunchly anti-war and anti-occupation. Yet, like so many other Labour lefts, he is unwilling to go so far as to make a statement that might be construed as calling for the defeat of 'our boys and girls' or as support for 'the terrorists'. For example, at a rally in Leeds on Saturday September 10, once gain he was only able to call for the withdrawal of troops "as soon as possible". However, anything less than the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of UK forces weakens the argument that they have no right to be in Iraq in the first place. We want to see imperialism defeated, not withdrawing at its own convenience. This would open up a space for the advance of our own, working class, forces. Clearly that implies the mobilisation of those forces, particularly in the US and Britain, against the occupation; and it also means favouring the victory of the democratic, secular and socialist forces in Iraq, as opposed to that of reactionary anti-imperialists. Of course, there are those - not least the Socialist Workers Party - who, on the basis of their belief that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', attempt to paint such reactionaries in progressive colours. In the name of keeping the anti-war movement 'broad', they argue against putting forward the politics of working class anti-imperialism within the Stop the War Coalition. That is what SWP leader John Rees said at this year's Marxism (see Weekly Worker July 14). Comrade Rees has in the past taken a rather different position, however. In a Socialist Worker pamphlet entitled Socialism and war (there is no publishing date, but he writes about the movement against the first Gulf war in the present tense) he states that "socialists should not feel their opposition to imperialism obliges them to stand mute as the working class and oppressed battle against the ruling classes of the third world. We should support their struggles and urge that, were socialists to lead those countries against imperialism, the fight would be all the more effective. We must not lend the leaders of nationalist struggles 'a communist coloration', Lenin warned. So, though socialists were as opposed to US imperialism as Ho Chi Minh, they were unsparing of their criticism when he murdered Vietnamese Trotskyists and when his repressive regime weakened the war against the US by attacking workers' living standards and right to organise ... "Socialists want the defeat of imperialism and the victory of the Iraqi working class. We oppose our own imperialist governments, hoping for their defeat. If defeat came at Saddam's hands we would still welcome it. But we hope for it at the hands of Iraqi workers who could both crush Saddam and prove far better opponents of imperialism" (p14-15). A position which comes as quite a contrast to what the opportunist leadership of the SWP says today. It refuses to make parallel comments, as it fears this would threaten the foundations upon which Respect and the STWC are built. It says the anti-war movement must be kept broad almost for its own sake. Political differences must be "left at the door", to quote George Galloway, and fighting within STWC for working class anti-imperialist politics cannot be countenanced as it would alienate the pacifists and 'muslim activists', for instance. Yet without correct politics people will soon tire of Grand old Duke of York marches, and without a strategic vision we will never see beyond the next demonstration. Allow me to quote yesteryear's comrade Rees once again: "Simple calls for peace do not go far enough because they do not address the question of how we get rid of the system which produces war. Also they fail to address the connection between war and the domestic policy of the ruling class. War and oppression always go hand in hand with repression and exploitation at home ... "If the peace movement does not reach out to these struggles, if it restricts itself to simple demands for peace and does not broaden the struggle into a class struggle, it will deny itself the best chance of stopping the war and of developing a struggle that can strike the power to wage war from our rulers' hands forever" (p12).
Worker