Letters

Rebel

Mike MacNair’s series of articles on revolutionary strategy currently running in the Weekly Worker is a useful and timely one. This problem is clearly a global matter and requires some analysis of history in order to theorise a way forward.

As comrade MacNair shows, some European neo-Eurocommunists are trying to grapple with this but are getting it hopeless wrong. The Socialist Workers Party’s Alex Callinicos has entered the ring with them and has delivered a few gentle jabs, but mostly he bobs and weaves about all over the place - the sort of thing that gets a crowd booing.

Socialist Worker, very unusually, printed a report of Alex Callinicos’ ‘battle’ with the new Eurocommunists - ‘The Politics of the new rank and file’ (March 25).

Comrade Callinicos contrasts the militancy of rank and file organisation in the former vanguard industries of the 1970s with the lack of rank and file initiatives today. He says the explanation for the lack of militancy today is that “the strong workplace organisation that eventually broke Heath’s government was targeted by his Tory successor, Margaret Thatcher”.

There is no analysis of what made the workers strong enough to win against one Tory government but not another. Perhaps it was down to the personal qualities of Thatcher. Of course, Callinicos knows the source of rank and file strength, but it does not suit his purpose to reveal it here - that would undermine the ‘strategy’ he wishes to promote.

At the end of his article, by which time he is pursuing another theme, he finally admits that “in the 1930s and 1940s the rising shop stewards movement was knit together by the Communist Party.” If he looked honestly at the history of that party he would see that its degeneration and eventual liquidation coincides with the period of defeat he writes of.

In fact, the weakening of the rank and file started well before the defeat inflicted by Thatcher and correlated with the decline of the CPGB. An obvious conclusion is that the working class was disarmed in the face of a ruling class assault by the organisational and political collapse of the Communist Party.

Failing to acknowledge this, Callinicos has to resort to banalities: Thatcher defeated the workers, this shifted the balance in the unions in favour of union leaderships who are all rotten, who won’t fight and therefore we are in a vicious cycle of defeats and low morale.

Perhaps recognising how demoralising, mechanical and simplistic this all is, he reassures readers that “There was nothing inevitable about this pattern. There have been key moments when the situation could have been turned round”; for example the miners’ and dockers’ strikes. He laments: ‘if only the workers had rallied’. This again misses a vital factor - the declining influence and power of the force that “knit together” the shop stewards movement - the Communist Party; and, of course, the inability of the SWP to step into its shoes. What we have instead is subservience to spontaneity.

Callinicos unfolds his argument further. We are told that “sectional workplace organisation” is “only a shadow of what it once was”. He correctly says that “workplace activists are critical to holding union organisation together”. However, he adds: “Because they are usually unable to mobilise the offensive power of the rank and file, these activists find it hard to act independently of full-time officials.” This is because, though “admirably committed”, they have nevertheless been “worn down by an endless war of attrition waged by the bosses”.

An endless war of attrition? That is nonsense. In a period of atomisation and low combativity, the left for the most part walked into union positions virtually unopposed. Once there, it is true that they kept the union machinery running - but that is all. They have no organic connection with the rank and file - they have often in fact constituted themselves as petty bureaucrats.

To help cover his retreat he spins that “uniting the trade union left, especially at the rank and file level, certainly remains an important task”. But, he warns, “any leftwing strategy that starts from an orientation on the existing union militants runs big risks”. He says that one of the greatest of these is “settling for the narrowed horizons of activists worn down by holding basic organisation in an era of defeat”. (As if these “narrowed horizons” are a given; as if these militants cannot be critically engaged with to change their ideas.)

But the SWP is on a different road now and Alex is selling the turn to his members. “The existing trade union left reflects to a significant extent the past”, with “all its many strengths and weaknesses”. The working class is changing, he says. (As if it has not always been in a process of being made and re-made.)

The category that fits the work of the present period is the fight for political rank and fileism, according to this SWP chief. What sort of politics is the key question, of course - and here the Weekly Worker’s warnings that the SWP has constituted itself as a conduit to bring petty bourgeois politics into the workers’ movement rings particularly true.

Callinicos argues for broad, cross-class popular fronts that can “provide the impetus needed to win trade union struggles and rebuild rank and file organisation”. Thus, “the greatest mobilising force today is resistance to imperial war and to neoliberal capitalism”; and those “workplace activists who know how to tap the spreading political awareness are more likely to group people around them than those who concentrate exclusively on the trade union nitty gritty.”

Of course, this has always been true - Lenin’s comment that a working class politician archetype is not a trade union official but a political tribune of the oppressed springs to mind. But what type of politics is key. We do not have to wait long to find out what Alex has in mind - “this is why building Respect is so important. The development of a serious and credible challenge to New Labour from the radical left will help over time to give rank and file workers the confidence to wage battles that can restore a feeling of their own power.”

When the old reformist CPGB leadership and the Eurocommunists published similar nonsense, members rebelled. Are there people left in the SWP with the political will and nous to learn this positive lesson at least from the CPGB’s history?

Rebel

Newspeak

In relation to your recent debate on abortion, why are so many women getting pregnant ‘by accident’?

Are women so stupid that they can’t remember to take one pill, once a day? Or are they so stupid that they can’t find a man who can maintain an erection with a condom on?

If you think abortion is so great, why do you use special language (newspeak) to hide what it actually involves? Why don’t you show us pictures of the victims of this monstrous crime? Surely you have nothing to hide?

Nobody has an absolute right to ‘choice’ if it involves the killing of others. Or can I go out and ‘choose’ to murder somebody because I don’t like her? Aren’t you denying my ‘choice’ if you try to stop me?

Newspeak

Candidate swap

A strange thing has happened in Hackney Respect. On January 17, our members’ meeting elected nine candidates for the local elections (embarrassingly, six of them members of the Socialist Workers’ Party). Eddie Barnes, a solicitor who represents asylum-seekers and migrants, has since withdrawn his candidature. This is a real shame, particularly as comrade Barnes is staunchly in favour of open borders - a sharp contrast to the SWP’s mealy-mouthed evasions on the question of immigration controls.

One would have expected the local Respect executive to then call an emergency members’ meeting to elect a replacement candidate. Another option would have been to automatically choose the 10th prospective candidate who had put forward their nomination at our meeting on January 17. As it happens, this was the CPGB’s Anne Mc Shane.

Readers will not be too shocked to learn that nothing of the sort has happened. The local Respect executive, which is of course dominated by the SWP, has simply replaced comrade Barnes with a “Turkish activist” called Fero Firat. The comrade has obviously not been subject to a hustings by Respect members, nor do we know his political affiliation. In addition, the executive has not thought it necessary to even inform local Respect members of the swap. The new name is simply listed on the Respect website.

True to form, a complaint by the CPGB to local Respect secretary Mike Simons (SWP) about the undemocratic nature of this proceeding has so far remained unanswered, although we live in hope.

Candidate swap
Candidate swap

Printing costs

In response to the piece by Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member Sofie Buckland (‘Rights and wrongs’, April 6), there was no line from Respect to vote for Jamal el-Shayyal in the part-time ‘block of 12’ National Union of Students election.

Sofie, people would maybe view you as more credible if you didn’t write such unsubstantiated lies.

Printing costs

Extraordinary

Mark Fischer writes, in his tribute to the late Paul Whetton, that “The Leninist and Workers Power [were] the only two groups to come out of the Great Strike with any genuine political honour”April 6).

Comrade Fischer really should explain and justify that extraordinary statement - particularly as the subject of his article, Paul Whetton, worked closely with Socialist Organiser (what is now the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) throughout the strike.

Extraordinary

Clamp down

Recently I have been reading articles about fascism and the British National Party from the Weekly Worker archives on the CPGB website.

I have concluded from the articles that the ruling class has no need at present to support fascist parties, the reason being that the working class is atomised and, since the defeat of the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85, working class consciousness as a class does not exist. The working class is therefore not a danger to the rule of big business and the rich. This means that the ruling class will actually clamp down on and politically undermine parties like the BNP if they start to become electorally successful, rather than turn to them for salvation in the face of a revolution.

The statement by Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking and Dagenham, that white working class Labour voters are turning to the BNP has made alarm bells ring. Press reports show that the lack of affordable housing in Barking and Dagenham, partly caused by Thatcher’s so-called ‘right to buy’, is the number one issue in the elections. Former Dagenham Ford workers have bought their council houses and moved to the leafy areas of Essex or further afield.

Black and Asian workers have bought these low-priced former council houses, causing tensions with the poor white working class council tenants who regard the newcomers as competitors for scarce local resources. The lack of affordable housing has forced the sons and daughters of these poor council tenants to move away from the area.

This has allowed the BNP to exploit the after-effects of the closure of Dagenham Ford, which once employed 30,000 workers, together with the shortage of affordable housing. It is interesting that Thatcher’s council house sales were aimed at breaking up Labour’s traditional support amongst council tenants. Ironically, this has not led to an increase in support for the Tories, but has backfired and pushed white working class Labour voters into the arms of the BNP.

I would like to read an article in the Weekly Worker about the BNP’s campaign for the local elections on May 4. A theoretical analysis of the threat posed by the BNP would be welcome, including a precise definition of the BNP - is it a neo-fascist, fascist or rightwing populist party?

Clamp down

Listen

John Smithee misunderstands my point.

I am in favour of defending past gains and extending them where possible. But most workers no longer live in council property, nor do they want to. Given a choice, most people would choose to own their home; and in so far as a home is personal property rather than capital there is nothing wrong with this.

We should struggle to make sure that there is sufficient housing of quality to satisfy everyone’s personal and social needs. We need to tackle the problem from the point of view of private home ownership because it is both the majority position and the most progressive. I am not trying to divide the working class between the better and worse off, but I think John is.

The problem with private ownership is that the residents are isolated and atomised and cannot defend their interests against the money market. I am assured that a four-bedroomed house can be built for £50,000. Our housing is grossly overpriced and under-specified.

To rectify this situation, land would have to be nationalised and its price taken out of housing costs. To convince home-owners of this will not be easy because some are using the capital value to supplement their inadequate pensions, others to finance projects that they cannot finance from their inadequate salaries and yet others are helping their children and grandchildren get on the housing ladder - it is not only home-owners whose earnings are too low.

Capitalism has the knack of trapping workers between the devil and the deep blue sea. Only with a developed, comprehensive programme can we organise the class in its own defence. Capitalists will not give up this source of profit unless they are forced to.

John writes like he thinks that council housing is either an act of capitalist charity or the state is a neutral agency. Council housing is just as dependent on the money market as private housing.

We are still paying interest on houses built before World War I that have long since been demolished. Capitalism lives off debt but expects us to pay for it. Council housing is not democratically controlled but managed by the local authorities. These have little independence from national government, with its sponsored monopolies (eg, housing trusts, quangos) and pseudo-markets like green belt land, which keeps the price of land artificially high.

The state long ago lost its faith in Keynesian economics and, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the west has overcome its fear of the working class. It is no good going cap in hand to the state with sensible practical suggestions on how to keep the poor quiet - they have little need or ability to listen.

Listen
Listen

Size matters

In response to Eddie Ford’s article on the Italian elections, I would point out that Rifondazione is the biggest communist party of the European Union and that maybe you should respect the decision made by Fausto Bertinotti and the majority of the party.

You have the right to criticise the decision to join the government, but in Italy, our decision has been based on a discussion lasting many years.

Size matters

Correction

In the process of editing my article, probably for reasons of space, the editors twisted the meaning of one argument and omitted another (‘A blow for democracy’, April 13).

In the published version it said: “In contrast a common heritage that could bring unionists and republicans together could be a campaign for monuments to IRA men like Tom Barry and Dan Breen to be erected in the UK.” My original submission meant something totally different: “If the establishment really believes commemorations of world war dead might be a potential common meeting ground for unionists and nationalists, and if we are to celebrate a common heritage, then it should campaign for monuments to IRA men like Tom Barry and Dan Breen to be erected in the UK.”

I was hitting at the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the establishment. It is totally utopian and unrealistic to believe that the establishment will campaign for something such as that!

The editors also omitted the following: “Far from commemorating the ‘Great War’ as a positive event, it should be acknowledged as a ‘crime against Europe’ and a ‘war upon the German nation’, in the tradition of Irish foreign policy pioneered by Casement and Connolly. The likes of Connolly thought that a rising was justified because Britain had embarked in a world war and suspended democracy.” One of the major reasons why the rising was a ‘blow for democracy’ is that it was very much a protest against the ‘Great War’.

I hope this will clarify any misunderstanding.

Correction

Pathetic lie

The essence of Peter Tatchell’s reply to criticism over the anti-muslim March for Free Expression is the bizarre view that it is ‘sectarian’ to refuse to unite with the Freedom Association in defence of the ‘right’ to publish racist caricatures deriding muslims as terrorists and barbarians.

The Freedom Association, you see, was supposedly a vicious far-right organisation in the 1970s, but no longer. This far-right leopard has apparently changed its spots in truly Damascene fashion.

This is a pathetic lie. If you take a look at its website, the Freedom Association actually boasts about its history, including the fight it waged against militant trade unionism in the 1970s. Its idea of ‘freedom’ is simply the freedom to exploit the working class without let or hindrance.

This conception of ‘freedom’ led the association to support the Pinochet coup in Chile. Leading figure Brian Crozier was one of those involved in shadowy and thankfully unsuccessful plotting to bring about something similar in mid-1970s Britain.

Tatchell’s whole construction, including the bullshit about how this bloc of liberal muslim-baiters, Pinochet-loving ultra-Thatcherites and reticent BNP supporters (and the odd, token, befuddled person from a muslim background) supposedly expressed ‘solidarity’ with muslims under attack from bigots such as themselves, beggars belief.

What it really expresses is the capacity of pro-imperialist liberals such as Tatchell to lie, including in some cases to himself.

As for ‘guilt by association’, I would point out that Peter Tatchell chose to associate himself with these enemies of the workers’ movement, so his ‘association’ with them is 100% voluntary. Whether or not he feels ‘guilt’ about this association is a matter for him.

Pathetic lie
Pathetic lie

No liberal

Defending his participation in the March for Free Expression (MFE), Peter Tatchell claims that it was initiated by “liberal bloggers”. In fact, the main instigator and organiser of the MFE was a man named Peter Risdon, who runs a blog called FreeBornJohn. Risdon’s politics could in no way be described as liberal. Prominent among the list of recommended links on his blog are such hard-right anti-muslim websites as Jihad Watch, Little Green Footballs, Steyn Online, Gates of Vienna and Western Resistance.

In one post Risdon reproduced Winston Churchill’s notorious diatribe against islam, which reads in part: “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the prophet rule or live.”

Risdon commented that “it is always good to read any prose, however tactless, that derives from a time when people felt able to say what they actually thought about cultures different to their own”.

Tatchell asserts that the Freedom Association, which was one of the official sponsors of the MFE, are not racists. In reality, this organisation has a clear record of supporting racism under cover of defending “free expression”.

In 2001, for example, the association’s chairman, Christopher Gill, spoke out in support of Tory MP John Townend, who claimed that “our homogeneous Anglo-Saxon society” had been diluted by non-white immigration. Gill said: “I don’t think there is any doubt that it has been diluted. If you pour enough water on a double scotch it ceases to taste like whisky. As chairman of the Freedom Association, I will defend John Townend’s right to say what he wants to say. We must have freedom of speech and people must not be put off saying what they like. I can understand John’s concern and I support him. He struck a chord with millions of British people. The whole nation was changed by the passing of mass immigration in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Tatchell also defends another of the MFE’s sponsors, the Libertarian Alliance, against the accusation of racism. This is an organisation that issued a press release applauding the acquittal of BNP leader Nick Griffin on race-hate charges at Leeds Crown Court in February. Sean Gabb, director of the Libertarian Alliance, was quoted as saying: “Doubtless, there are people who take offence at the expression of certain views on race and immigration. But free speech that does not include the right to give offence is not free speech.”

The press release went on to reiterate the Libertarian Alliance’s demand that all legislation against racial hatred and discrimination should be repealed and that “the Commission for Racial Equality and all similar organisations should be abolished, and their records burned”.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that fascists were attracted to the MFE. As Tony Greenstein has pointed out (Letters, April 6), the British National Party urged its supporters to join the MFE’s Trafalgar Square rally and subsequently reported that around 40 of them did so. The fascists appeared in the guise of the BNP’s front organisation, Civil Liberty, whose propaganda was openly distributed among the demonstrators, without any intervention by the stewards. Yet Tatchell continues to claim that there was “no BNP profile” at the event.

If rightwing defenders of “free expression” had demonstrated in support of the freedom to incite anti-Jewish sentiment, and had paraded around Trafalgar Square brandishing placards featuring anti-semitic caricatures, while fascists busily circulated their literature among the crowd, would Tatchell have been happy to appear as a platform speaker? One would assume not, yet he shamelessly justifies his involvement in the no less obnoxious March for Free Expression.

The explanation is that, when it comes to muslims, Tatchell has in practice abandoned anti-racism. Instead, he pursues an islamophobic agenda which has taken him onto the same political ground as the most repellent sections of the right. The “free expression” upheld by Tatchell - together with the Freedom Association, the Libertarian Alliance and the BNP - is the freedom to promote bigotry against a minority community.

No liberal