Letters

BNP and change

How can one explain the election of 11 members of the BNP to Barking and Dagenham council? I think there are five main reasons.

First, Margaret Hodge, New Labour MP for Barking, made a huge error when, three weeks before the elections, she told The Sunday Telegraph that eight out of 10 people on the doorstep had told her that they “might” vote BNP.

Second, the New Labour government’s refusal to allow the local council to build council houses has meant that the contracting supply of such homes has been allocated on the basis of points-based need rather than entitlement, as in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.

Third, the deindustrialisation of the area, including the loss of jobs on the docks and at Ford’s of Dagenham, has left displaced workers with a future on benefits or in low-paid, insecure employment.

Fourth, the policies of the three main capitalist parties are based on focus groups composed of middle-class floating voters living in the 50 super-marginal seats, mainly located in the southeast of England.

Fifth, the BNP has been able to use immigration as a lightning conductor for the disillusionment of white working-class people with the well-heeled Labour members of the political establishment.

More generally, the election of BNP councillors, mainly in former Labour strongholds, shows in a negative way that, dialectically speaking, a qualitative change has occurred in British politics. This change will allow communists to substantially increase the level of support for their ideas, provided that they carry out their work properly over the coming period.

BNP and change
BNP and change

Enlightened

I enjoyed Gordon Downie’s piece on the Reith lectures (Weekly Worker April 27), so I Googled his name and came across an article on a website called Musical Pointers (www.musicalpointers.co.uk). It’s a dialogue between Gordon and fellow musician Ian Pace from 2004.

In it Gordon says this: “Given that the proletariat are themselves a product of capital, and represent a low revolutionary potential, I would advocate a model along the lines proposed by Isaac Deutscher and others, in which a radical intellectual vanguard guides this process through enlightened leadership. No current organisation of the left dare advocate such a programme publicly, because of its Stalinist and Maoist overtones.”

I wonder if he still agrees with this statement. And if he does, maybe he could let me know where he’s found a “radical intellectual vanguard” and “enlightened leadership” in the CPGB.

Enlightened
Enlightened

Previous issue

At the risk of sounding like a cut-price Guardian corrections column, I would like to point out that you incorrectly give the name “International Workers of the World” for the Industrial Workers of the World (‘From world war to councils of action’, May 4).

I corrected this error in a previous letter (Weekly Worker March 10 2005).

Previous issue
Previous issue

Gross distortion

Members of the Committee for a Workers’ International and others in the Labour movement in Germany have always warned me not to give interviews to the Weekly Worker because of its tradition of gross distortion, misrepresentation and outright lies it adopts towards political opponents.

I discounted these warnings and gave an interview to you. However, in the light of the articles you have written, I am of the opinion that maybe the critics of your newspaper are correct. Nevertheless, I am taking this opportunity to take up the most glaring inaccuracies and distortions in Tina Becker’s articles and hope this letter will not be distorted in the same way as the position of the Socialist Alternative was in the original articles (Weekly Worker May 4).

Those articles on the new left in Germany contain many errors and misinterpretations. I was quite surprised to see this after having had conversations with Tina in which I clearly stated other positions than those that are presented. For example, she writes that I said in my speech for the election to the national committee of the Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG): “I am obligated only to the Berlin WASG and nobody else.” I never made a generalised statement like that.

On the contrary, I explained that I always acted loyally to the democratic decisions of the WASG, but that the decisions of the congress stand in contrast to the programme of the party, because congress in effect decided to support the Linkspartei.PDS in the Berlin election campaign - which equals supporting a policy of social cuts and privatisations.

Therefore, I said that on the question of the Berlin regional elections, I only feel obliged to the democratic decisions of WASG Berlin and not the national congress. This is the attitude of the majority of the members of WASG Berlin and of many members nationally.

Tina Becker is surprised that I still received more than one-third of the vote in the elections to the national committee. Her surprise shows that she did not understand what happened at the national congress of the WASG. It also shows that her estimation that only 15% supported the political position of Berlin WASG is wrong. The votes I received more or less equals the more than one-third who voted against the main motion by the party leadership. The main controversial issue was whether competing candidatures between WASG and L.PDS should be ruled out or whether it was possible that common political ground could be found.

It is also not true that the motion that spoke out against administrative measures against the Berlin WASG called on the WASG Berlin to withdraw its candidacy in the Berlin regional elections. This motion (which received 143 votes) did not take any position on the question and simply stated that the conflict in Berlin is a symptom that the programmatic and strategic direction of the left had not yet been discussed.

The article refers to the proposal for a joint election manifesto for Berlin that was presented by the WASG national leadership and the L.PDS Berlin leadership. Tina says this manifesto would on paper give a leftwing position (against privatisation) and she claims that SAV is haggling over the small print.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The joint manifesto gives the L.PDS leadership the possibility of continuing its policy and actually presents it as a continuation of the last four years. The manifesto does not, for example, call for an end to one-euro jobs, and does not exclude further privatisations of sections of public hospitals or of public houses. This is no “small print”.

Truth is concrete. So is Marxist politics. The CPGB member who is active in the WASG fights for Marxism in a different universe, while putting up no real opposition to the course of the leadership on Planet Earth. In one of his contributions at the weekend he simply stated: “Marxism is the solution”. At the same time he supports the “unconditional merger” of the WASG and L.PDS, hoping that this would lead to a new mass workers’ party. Unfortunately an unconditional merger under the present circumstances would most likely lead to a missed opportunity to develop a new mass workers’ party.

A merged party under the present circumstances would be dominated by the present L.PDS, which has only around 6,000 active members out of 60,000 members, the majority of which are old-age pensioners. Many of the present 12,000 WASG members are likely to become inactive or even leave the party, as they do not want to end up in a formation that joins in coalition governments with neoliberal social democracy. The new party would start with a policy of the lesser evil, participating in regional governments and implementing attacks on the working class. It might - due to the lack of an alternative - gain in elections. But it has become more unlikely that it will attract fresh layers of working class and youth.

Opposition must be organised now by left forces within both parties to fight for a democratisation of the merger process and for a change of course. Socialist Alternative (SAV) is an important force in building this opposition. The fact that Tina’s article is very unsubtly trying to smear the SAV’s position is shown by the chosen headline. On the contrary, far from blocking with rightwing forces, it was I and other SAV members who made it clear that genuine socialists can have no common ground with the right wing. As I explained in the interview on the same page, there were no agreements with such forces and no cooperation at the congress.

But Tina seems to see only what she wants to see. Such an attitude leads nowhere in working class politics.

Sascha Stanicic
SAV, Berlin

End of the line

I read the article ‘Vote Socialist Party, but ...’ (Weekly Worker April 27) and the CPGB pamphlet In the enemy camp, by Jack Conrad, and the two don’t really add up.

The article exposed the reformist and opportunist nature of the practice of the Socialist Party, while the thrust of the pamphlet is that the way for principled communists to conduct parliamentary work is on the basis of the early Third International and Lenin’s Leftwing communism.

The SP signally fails in its various campaigns to offer any challenge to the capitalist system or advance the fighting ability of our class. Further, any parliamentary or local election campaign by these reformists can only give credibility to those institutions that is never deserved.

I think the CPGB needs to clarify its reasons for advocating a vote for the Socialist Party and probably change its line.

Steve Revins
Birmingham

Satisfied?

On the face of it, members of Respect can feel very satisfied with their results in the English local elections on May 4. The organisation won 12 seats in Tower Hamlets, three in Newham and one in Birmingham.

However, Respect has tended to portray itself as ‘a party for muslims’ and talks of representing ‘the whole community’ on leaflets. Respect does not even attempt to portray itself as an organisation of the working class - indeed, muslim businessmen are welcomed with open arms. Socialism is hardly ever mentioned.

Respect’s election results have highlighted the problem of specifically targeting muslims. Every single Respect councillor elected on May 4 is Asian. In every single ward where more than one Respect candidate was put up for election and where some of them had Asian names, the Asians received higher votes than their non-Asian compatriots.

The Socialist Workers Party has been the dominant force politically and numerically within Respect. It is the SWP that has ensured Respect’s policies have been watered down in order to avoid alienating a previously largely phantom muslim right wing.

Of course the new councillors are not all rightwing; indeed Salma Yaqoob is a leftwing force for good within Respect. However, the likelihood is that the majority of the new councillors are indeed rightwing and will prove to be a liability. This is illustrated by the recent history of defections to and from Respect. Some of Respect’s councillors are careerists and some are deliberate agents of big business who have infiltrated it in order to ensure that it betrays the working class.

None of the new councillors are in the SWP. Indeed, as far as I know, only one Respect councillor is in the SWP: Michael Lavalette in Preston (and he was elected as Socialist Alliance). The SWP’s best hope of getting a new councillor lay with Respect national secretary John Rees, after he was moved to Bethnal Green South. He received more than 900 votes, coming sixth in his ward and third among the Respect candidates.

SWP members will be envious of the election successes of the Socialist Party on May 4, increasing its total number of councillors to seven (with one elected in Coventry, two in Lewisham and one in Huddersfield - the latter as an anti-hospital closures candidate).

Hopefully, many of the genuine SWP members will get involved in the SP-led Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and this campaign will swiftly move towards the formation of a new mass party of the working class in England and Wales. The new party should be organised like the Scottish Socialist Party, as a broad socialist party with the right for members to form open and officially recognised platforms. Unfortunately, the SP has put forward the suggestion that the party should be organised in a ‘federal’ manner, with the right for minorities to veto majority decisions.

Gross distortion
Gross distortion