Letters

Positives

Charlie Winstanley raised an interesting point in his letter last week: why is the Weekly Worker so consumed with the “obsessional and weekly lambasting” of organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party and Respect? In response, there are several issues to consider.

First, I disagree that the Weekly Worker obsesses. However, I accept the criticism that many articles have the tendency to draw pessimistic conclusions. This is largely directed at the SWP, and stems, I think, from both the nature of the left at the moment and also from the role that the Weekly Worker has within it.

The SWP is the largest group of Marxists in Britain and smaller organisations such as the CPGB are far less visible to the general public. It is precisely this fact that makes the Weekly Worker’s scrutiny of the SWP so crucial. I perceive the paper as more of a tool for review rather than a newspaper as such. I find Socialist Worker useful for finding out about national and international events, and demonstrations. Yet the analysis of the politics behind such events is what is necessary. We can then understand why the left is in such a dire state and know how to prevent this in our own organisations (present and future).

The Weekly Worker does not constantly criticise the inadequacies of groups such as the SWP out of bitter impotence because we are smaller. Rather, by appreciating the current political context, the paper aims to change the left. With this in mind, trying to give a positive take when reporting conferences such as those of Respect, where so-called Marxists oppose motions on open borders, is pretty difficult. It would also be hypocritical and damaging to the class struggle in the long term (although it might make for a cheerier read).

I completely agree, however, that an overly negative analysis, if there are positive gains to report, is just as unhelpful. There is a danger of becoming too consumed in the state of the left. We risk dismissing or neglecting the small victories that should be celebrated as a further step in the advancement of our class.

On that note, I would like to underline the appalling lack of democracy and debate within the SWP, but also to congratulate comrade Winstanley for not yet being sucked into such traditions and for openly admitting to reading the Weekly Worker.

Positives
Positives

Freeman’s fudge

I was very interested in Mary Godwin’s report of the CPGB aggregate. She described the difficulties that Steve Freeman, chief architect of the new Socialist Alliance, is having convincing his comrades on the need for a ‘republican socialist party’. We are told that this discussion is causing paralysis in the work of the new SA.

I agree strongly with comments made by two CPGB members, Mike Macnair and Lee Rock, at the aggregate. Mike criticised Steve’s method of conciliationism, whereby individuals or groups are invited to add their hobby horse to a resolution, provided they agree to accept other people’s hobby horses. The result is an eclectic dog’s breakfast of a resolution instead of a clear, principled declaration.

In the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform we all saw Steve at work at this method, smarming and bull-shitting people into accepting portmanteau resolutions that were internally contradictory. At the heart of all of this effort was the inclusion of Steve’s and the Revolutionary Democratic Group’s own fetish of ‘republicanism’. Most people voted for this without really understanding what he was talking about. Of course, now Steve is seriously pushing ‘republicanism’ in the new SA, his whole method has backfired on him.

For some reason, myself and other members of the present Democratic Socialist Alliance were not on Steve’s list to be telephoned endlessly and offered deals. I don’t know whether to be flattered or pained by this lack of attention. I suspect that Steve knew that we would tell him where to stick his compromises.

Lee Rock made the point that if the Socialist Party’s initiative, the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, takes off, then most of the new SA would be on the side of left reformism, with the SP against the CPGB, on the issue of a Marxist party. I would like to make it clear that members of the DSA at the CNWP conference voted for the CPGB’s motion for a Marxist party and that the DSA is very much in favour of Mike Macnair’s suggestion of “the organisational unity of Marxists”.

The only way Steve Freeman and the RDG would support that suggestion is if they break from their method of conciliationism and stand by their principles. It is best to be honest and clear about differences, not to fudge over them.

Freeman’s fudge
Freeman’s fudge

Fragments

The market rules unchallenged. The population of the world is suffering the genocide of neoliberal capitalism.

People have not been offered a credible alternative. This is the consequence of conservatism and not developing Marx’s magnificent but uncompleted project of the scientific critique of capitalism.

Unless a rational, practical and workable economic programme is created, with all the fragmented left united around it, all else is worth little.

Fragments

Lamentable

Your attitude to attacks by the bourgeois press on leading figures of workers’ organisations is pusillanimous and capitulatory.

In Peter Manson’s latest article on the Scottish Socialist Party, he writes about Tommy Sheridan’s November 2004 enforced resignation as SSP convenor: “The ... demand from the EC that Sheridan should not pursue the action, but instead either come clean or say nothing at all about his private life, was in essence correct. It was reasonable to demand his resignation when he insisted on his right to go to court. But it was not reasonable to agree that the whole discussion (not just the personal details) should remain confidential. The members had a right to know” (‘SSP civil war’, June 1).

This is lamentable on the ground of democracy - presumably, by this logic, all the gutter press has to do to secure the dismissal of any working class leader is to print pornographic allegations against them that cannot be refuted by the person attacked because he/she will be banned from suing on pain of being sacked. Shameful.

I can only link this with your equally scabby gut-level response to The Daily Telegraph’s libellous attack on George Galloway in April 2003, when the Weekly Worker printed an article stating that Galloway was probably guilty and that “the left should lead the condemnation”.

In the face of attacks by class enemies the CPGB either solidarises with those attacks or demands abject surrender. This just underlines why CPGB supporters are unfit to hold elected office in either the SSP or Respect.

Lamentable
Lamentable

Print

Hugh Kerr says he does not know me. Despite that he says I have “unionist politics.” If by that he means that I support the United Kingdom, he is obviously wrong. If he means that I support the unity of the working class, he is right.

Hugh, I know what I say hurts you when everything in the SSP is looking so good. But as an internationalist I simply tell the truth. The SSP is opportunist and nationalist and is bitterly divided into two warring camps.

As for Dave Broadfoot, he criticises the Weekly Worker for reporting the fact that Tommy Sheridan’s Cardonald branch passed a resolution calling for the executive committee’s minutes to be destroyed. According to the Sunday Herald, the resolution was circulated via Tommy’s “own” email (June 4).

The comrade says the Weekly Worker should “not expose people to the possibility of legal or political repression.” This is a clear case of shooting the messenger. The branch wanted the SSP as a whole, not least its leading officers, to conspire to pervert the course of justice. That would certainly “expose people”. Not to the “possibility of legal and political repression”, but its certainty.

The SSP’s exec has voted time and again to urge Sheridan not to pursue his legal case. But as the SSP’s aspiring Bonaparte he will have none of it. He is not accountable to his peers … and for their own narrow reasons the Committee for a Workers’ International and the Socialist Worker platform are supporting him. George Galloway has even warned that Respect “may” stand against the SSP unless Tommy Sheridan is reinstated.

Did he consult with Respect’s national committee before issuing this statement? I doubt it. What does John Rees and the SWP have to say on the subject? Is Galloway making up policy on the hoof? Or is he the SWP’s cat’s-paw?

Print
Print

Imagine that

According to Jack Conrad in the second part of his series on the 1926 general strike, the CPGB was founded mainly by the British Socialist Party and the Communist Unity Groups (Weekly Worker May 11).

But the CUGs never existed - they only exist in the lofty heights of Conrad’s own imagination. What is true is that a Unity Committee was established between a minority of Socialist Labour Party members (Tom Bell, JT Murphy and Arthur McManus) and the BSP executive. This minority was to resign its membership of the SLP soon after the founding congress of the CPGB in 1920.

Imagine that
Imagine that

Flimsy evidence

Think what you will about the former member of British Army Intelligence Corps who goes by the pseudonym of ‘Martin Ingram’, or indeed what motivates him. Whenever he has claimed in the past that a Provisional republican worked for the British state as an informer, he has produced evidence to back up his claim and has been prepared to put himself forward to be questioned, both by journalists and the members of various internet sites.

However, his latest claim that senior Sinn Féin member Martin McGuinness was a Brit tout during the early 1990s is based on the most flimsy of evidence. In fact, the McGuinness name is not mentioned anywhere in the document ‘Ingram’ produced to the media. Instead he asks us to believe that the individual codenamed ‘J118’ is Martin McGuinness. He offers no real explanation as to how this document came into his possession, although one newspaper wrote that it came from a serving Police Service of Northern Ireland special branch officer, which, if true, itself must place a question mark over it.

Unlike previously, when ‘Ingram’ claimed correctly that Freddie Scappiticci, deputy OC of the Provisional Irish Republican Army internal security unit, was the British agent code-named ‘Stakenife’, he does not even offer up any circumstantial evidence to back his claim about McGuinness, beyond the fact that he served very little prison time, which in itself means nothing at all - are we to believe that all volunteers who were either astute or lucky enough not to be caught when on active service accomplished this by being touts? That would place some pretty able volunteers into that category, not least the current chief of staff and a number of other veteran republicans from south Armagh. To put it bluntly, to make such a supposition without further evidence is infantile.

‘Ingram’ also fails to explain why an agent of Martin McGuinness’s importance is known by the run-of-the-mill ID, ‘J118’, whereas in reality he would surely, like Scappiticci, have had his own designated codename, as any information he produced would have almost certainly gone through channels eventually landing on the British prime minister’s desk. Remember, the period we are talking about was the early 1990s, when the Brits had all but decided to give their peace process strategy a roll of the dice.

The Blanket has made efforts to contact ‘Ingram’ to ask him these very questions and others that we have worries about. Unfortunately he has refused to take up our current offer by firming up a date to be interviewed (although he has been willing to be interviewed by papers that take an anti-republican stance), implying he is willing to meet me “some time” in the future, which, considering the topical nature of the current brouhaha he has created, is unsatisfactory in the extreme. Thus I have concluded it is simply not acceptable for him to make accusations of this nature without being prepared to answer certain questions, both about his sources and his own life.

Flimsy evidence
Flimsy evidence

Sceptical space

The da Vinci code may or may not be to Jeremy Butler’s taste. Personally, I experienced it as a good thriller and was never bored for a moment, even though I had read the book (which was a good story written by a poor stylist).

The important point is that Jeremy’s political analysis of the impact of the book and movie is just plain wrong. Of course, the film’s particular notions of christian history are not supportable as a whole, but they have stirred up a heightened general interest in uncovering the real history of christianity (and, no doubt, by extension, all religion). Butler rightly takes note of the fact that the representatives of organised religion feel threatened - and they ought to. Historical evidence greatly undermines church doctrine, leading for now to more of the diffuse “pick ’n’ mix” approach also noted by Butler, which generally makes people a whole lot more approachable from a left perspective than unquestioning belief in received dogma.

Church scandals in the USA and Europe over the past couple of decades have opened up the kind of sceptical space that The da Vinci code has been able to popularise.

Sceptical space

Sense of irony

I have heard a number of arguments about why revolution has never broken out in the UK. I must admit the sinister influence of Noel Edmonds is not one I had previously thought of.

Was the letter from John Smithee a joke? Does he really believe that the proletariat is lulled into false consciousness by Deal or no deal?

In an episode of the sitcom Men behaving badly, the character Gary remarks to a sarcastic farmer: “Nice to see you experimenting with irony down here in the country.” I suspect someone lurking in the East Anglian countryside is, I hope, being ironic too. Get that tongue out of your cheek, John!

Sense of irony

Great betrayal

The word is that Blair wants ‘croquet kid’ John Prescott to stay on as deputy prime minister for as long as Blair himself retains the top job. Not that much longer, in other words.

Predictably, the deputy prime minister wannabes are already lobbying for the position. Names that have emerged so far include Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson, Peter Hain and Jack Straw. I guess the not-so-fab four are all pretty much of a muchness from the point of view of the left. But I can’t think of any members of the Socialist Campaign Group of leftwing Labour MPs that are in a position to mount a credible challenge.

And, speaking of Prescott, his claims to working class street cred are spurious. The list of responsibilities undertaken by his department of nearly a decade reads like a roll-call of failure. It includes Labour’s greatest betrayal - the refusal to build enough adequate housing for the ordinary working people Prescott says he represents.

While Prescott has lost his Dorneywood retreat, he has kept his £134,000 salary and his £100,000-a-year flat at Admiralty Arch. He is a shield for his boss, Tony Blair. The sooner Prescott goes, the sooner we can get rid of Blair and all his rich New Labour cronies.

Great betrayal
Great betrayal