05.07.2006

Ian Donovan's original letter

Peter Manson's letter in the Weekly Worker is a pretty feeble attempt to spin the CPGB's increasingly rightwing politics and give it a veneer of 'principle' (June 15). It is nothing of the sort: it is just an alibi for capitulation to the class enemy.

Peter writes: "The jailing of Alan McCombes, costs of at least £45,000, comrades' homes and party offices being intruded upon and searched, and 13 EC members summonsed to act as witnesses against comrade Sheridan - these are the results so far of the former convenor choosing to go his own way. And it is more than likely that when the case comes before a jury in July the damage to the SSP will make what has gone before pale into insignificance."

Incredibly Peter attempts to blame all this on Tommy Sheridan, for daring to contest Murdoch's smears in the courts. But if the SSP had done what it should have done, and united in defence of its leading comrade in the first place, none of these attacks would have been possible. All of these things, without exception, typify the exploitation of mistakes made by those who undermined Sheridan and capitulated, whispering about alleged 'truth' in the porno-mag titillation that appeared in the News of the Screws. All this proves is that the failure of the left to hang together in struggle against the class enemy means that we will be hanged separately. A very elementary lesson in class politics, which the CPGB seems to have completely forgotten.

Peter pontificates: "Unfortunately though, comrade Donovan has now renounced the principle of the accountability of leaders, rejecting, for example, the notion that Respect's elected representatives should accept only the equivalent of a skilled worker's wage. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that he anarchistically upholds comrade Sheridan's claim to do as he pleases, irrespective of the wishes of the SSP leadership at the time."

The accountability of leaders is abstractly an excellent principle. But accountability to whom, exactly? On some occasions, backward and capitulatory 'leaders' may need to be rendered 'accountable' to more militant and class-conscious elements below. On other occasions, those above may embody correct politics and greater class consciousness. If those 'below' have a lesser level of class consciousness than the leaders, then this 'accountability' tends to act as a transmission belt for the influence of the class enemy into a working class party. The latter is what has evidently happened in the SSP, with lower-level elements in the apparatus, such as it is, capitulating to a reactionary offensive against the party and its most visible leader. In fact, the recent repudiation of their actions by rank-and-file SSPers at an authoritative gathering indicates that these people may not have been as 'accountable' as Peter is trying to spin it.

In such concrete conditions, the kind of 'accountability' Peter is talking about becomes reactionary, and defiance of such 'accountability' becomes a matter of considerable credit. By Peter's logic, Lenin should have been 'accountable' (ie, capitulated) to Stalin and Kamenev in 1917.

This is also true over the Galloway question. Abstractly, of course, I would prefer if George transcended his 'old Labour' politics and his sometimes individualist ways of operation and fully embraced the norms of revolutionary Marxism. But I'm damned if I am going to advocate that George Galloway be 'accountable' to those with views like Dave Osler, or the Weekly Worker, who don't know where the class line lies when George Galloway is attacked by The Daily Telegraph, or when Tommy Sheridan is attacked by Murdoch's porno-comics.

And Peter can spin the issue of the Galloway witch-hunt as much as he likes. The Osler article ran on the back page of the Weekly Worker the week after the witch-hunt broke out in April 2003 - effectively it appeared as close to an editorial as anything not explicitly marked 'editorial'. Peter is taking the rap for Jack Conrad's editorship here - like myself, Peter was away on another continent when these events happened. The fact is that as soon as I had the chance, I wrote an article that was 100% counterposed to Osler's, so blindingly obviously that naming Osler was pretty superfluous. A reader would have to have been pretty dim not to twig the counterposition.

So Peter's attempt to spin my criticisms as in some way belated is pretty dishonest. If in any way I can be criticised as being too soft in my criticisms, that can be put down to organisational loyalty at the time, when I was a member of the CPGB trying to conduct political struggle. But I think my article, 'Galloway witch-hunt and Stop the War', (May 8 2003) defending George Galloway is pretty damn good: it craps all over Osler's wretched screed, which was unworthy of a publication calling itself communist. As indeed is the stance the CPGB have taken over Sheridan.

Communist greetings,

Ian Donovan