Letters

Park life

How interesting: comrades can write heavy-duty polemics about the SWP and this pitiful sect remains as silent as a mime artiste. Then I come along and have a little fun at the SWP’s expense and out from the shadows comes Ian Birchall.

My dreadful sense of humour aside, comrade Birchall raises the question of parking and the disabled. To be dependent on a motorised vehicle is a raw deal, particularly in London, and, as someone who lives on the edge of the congestion zone (and who has been charged for being mere inches inside it), I would be interested in hearing what the SWP’s plans are for transportation. That is, after they finally recruit enough paperboys to overthrow the British state.

Comrade Birchall admits some sympathy for a draconian approach to parking - does he share the view of mayor Ken Livingstone that driving in the centre of London is OK so long as you can afford to pay? What measures would the SWP support to ease the mobility difficulties faced by the disabled, sick and elderly? Would it support the restriction of the car to emergency and essential use only, or perhaps its complete abolition on the grounds of environmental impact?

Park life

Anathema

It is interesting that Ian Birchall considers the Weekly Worker’s publication of a letter to be an endorsement of its content.

Presumably the reason for this notion derives from the fact that the sect to which Birchall belongs only publishes material that has the full approval of the SWP central committee. Open debate and democratic media are clearly anathema to SWP comrades.

Anathema

Sensational

Your article on Tower Hamlets Respect is a decent enough reportage of the meeting, although unavoidably, I guess, it couldn’t really get to the bottom of the events (‘Chaos in Tower Hamlets Respect’, July 6). The report is good because it doesn’t seek to impose an agenda on what was actually known about the meeting.

Why then have a tabloid, sensationalist front page? This just panders to the backbiting urges of the sectarian left, whether in or out of the SWP.

Sensational

Coming clean

Dave Spencer demands that I “come clean, be precise and not call for broad left and left unity in abstract” (Letters, June 22).

I have already done that on many occasions. The Scottish Socialist Party is not a revolutionary Marxist party and has never claimed to be one. It has united the bulk of the socialist movement in Scotland. Until the recent crisis in the SSP the party had strengthened working class opposition to New Labour in Scotland and even won the support of the RMT union.

Unfortunately this is not the case in England, where the overwhelming majority of the UK working class live and work. Here the socialist opposition to New Labour is weakened by its divisions. Five years ago the left was becoming more united through the Socialist Alliance. Since then we have gone backwards. Today the socialist movement is split into three rival organisations - the Labour Representation Committee, Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, with many more on the fringe.

Whilst this disunity goes on, the government and the employers are free to hammer the working class. The socialist movement, or at least the vast bulk of it, must unite into one, democratically organised, mass party, with full freedom of expression and unity in action. The SSP shows what can be achieved, as well as the lengths to which the state will go to break up that unity.

Given the current level of class consciousness, such a party would not limit itself to just those who call themselves Marxists or define themselves as revolutionaries. It would be short-sighted, not to say sectarian, if we did not grasp the opportunity a left unity party would create for rebuilding a new Marxist politics within it. It would enable us to reconnect Marxist ideas with the working class movement.

Dave says the Democratic Socialist Alliance has given up its previous hostility to other Marxist groups and is cooperating with the Socialist Party and Critique, etc. I am pleased about this and if this change of heart is genuine it is only to be welcomed.

Coming clean
Coming clean

Illumination

Mike Macnair’s latest article is a typically brilliant piece of writing (‘“Class lines” against democracy’, July 6). He illuminates the real issues that have been hidden by decades of self-interested obfuscation and twaddle, which has wasted the time and lives of many militants.

It seems to me that the consequence of Mike’s insights ought to be a move away from Respect to more interesting waters - even if they are not British waters and don’t as yet support workers’ ‘movements’.

I despair at seeing the number of contributors to the Weekly Worker letters page who just want to build a ‘new’ Marxist party on the same old platform. The question of democracy is central to the reinvigoration of the movement and Mike, to my mind (at least given my reading of the Paris manuscripts), reports what Marx saw as the link between democracy, social ownership and private property.

Has anyone other than Mike (and several other interesting writers in the Weekly Worker) noticed that the 20th century movement imploded - not once, but several times and for more or less the same reason?

Illumination

Wilde talk

I recently watched the 1960 film The trial of Oscar Wilde. In it Wilde unwisely took the Marquess of Queensbury to court for libel. As a result of the failed action Oscar Wilde landed himself in court again, followed by a conviction for homosexuality.

There seems to be similarities with Sheridan’s libel action against the News of the World. If it is proved that Tommy Sheridan lied to the jury he could land himself in court again charged with perjury. It seems that Tommy Sheridan’s libel action is just as self-destructive as Oscar Wilde’s.

Wilde talk
Wilde talk

Ultra-leftism

In his penchant for polemics and invective, Tony Greenstein’s response.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip last summer, but the Palestinian Authority allowed rockets to be fired at Israeli towns and kibbutzim. Then an attack from Gaza was made into Israel that left two Israeli soldiers dead, while a third, Gilad Shalit, was abducted. Greenstein describes the Israel Defence Force’s response as a “blitzkrieg”, shamelessly linking Israeli self-defence with Nazism.

My point is that the Israeli government can be criticised (for example, the IDF must act with proportionality), but the state of Israel became an objective necessity when the labour movement and democratic forces failed to prevent pogroms and Nazism. Any duplicity with fascism should be criticised, but Greenstein forgets that he is in very poor company in opposing the state of Israel. His polemic against Zionist duplicity is used as a veil for the destruction of Israel.

The German Communist Party (KPD) cooperated with the Nazis, due to their mindless policy of regarding the Social Democrats as ‘the main enemy’, but only a superficial liberalism regards the KPD as equivalent to the Nazis. Thus to link Zionism (for all its errors) with fascism is also false.

Socialists should advocate a two-state policy for Israel and Palestine to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East. Tony Greenstein would, like all of us, prefer one day to live in a world without nationalism, but in contemporary circumstances such a position is the product of ultra-leftism.

Ultra-leftism

Support POWs

We give our full support to the 38 republican prisoners of war in Maghaberry prison who are protesting for better conditions and the restoration of political status. They are demanding free association, an end to controlled movement, the right of access to full-time education, a separate visiting facility and the right to organise their own landings.

It is tragic that republican POWs are forced to take on the British government because political status, which was won by Bobby Sands and his nine comrades in the H blocks of Long Kesh 25 years ago, has been removed under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.

In Glasgow thousands of people marched recently to commemorate the 10 H block martyrs who died in 1981 in opposition to the efforts of the British government to criminalise the republican prisoners and the freedom struggle. Today the issues are no different and we call upon those same marchers and everyone who believes in justice in Scotland to support the campaign for the restoration of political status. Help to avert another tragedy and stop this latest attempt by the British government to brand Ireland’s fight ‘800 years of crime’.

For updated statements from the POWs and the Republican Prisoners Action Group, log on to the website of the Francis Hughes cumann of Republican Sinn Féin at www.rsfglasgow.com.

Support POWs
Support POWs

Cross over

Are you actually saying that ‘Arm the workers’ would be a useful slogan in Britain at this time (‘Vote Socialist Party, but …’, April 27)?

Or would a substantial proportion even of the advanced workers be inclined to cross over to the other side of the road if they came across you proposing any such thing?

Cross over

Paedophilia

Eddie Ford’s June 22 back page article was surprisingly disappointing (‘Not fit for purpose’). So deep has been the press subversion of truth and common sense on the question of ‘paedophilia’ that Eddie’s article repeats some of the basic tenets of their distortion.

People who set out to physically hurt children and kill them are not ‘paedophiles’. The fact that the tabloids have managed to link in the minds of the public the idea that paedophiles are child-killers has effectively damned any notion of a rational or informed debate. There can, after all, be no debate on the question as to whether children should be murdered. This has led to the mass clamour for harsher and harsher sentences for what are actually minor actions.

Despite popular misconception, minor sexual acts with underage youngsters result in sentences far and away more harsh than very serious acts of violence and even murder. A person who forms a physical relationship with a prepubescent is, however, a totally different social and medical phenomenon to a person who seeks to kill children.

One wouldn’t usually refer to the actions of Peter Sutcliffe as those of a ‘heterosexual’. Heterosexuality and murder of, say, women by men are two entirely different entities. Of course, in some twisted and mentally distorted way, Sutcliffe could have been motivated by a deviant sexual motivation, in the same manner as someone killing a child might have, but this is neither heterosexuality nor paedophilia as such. It is just plain wrong to associate the two in the way Eddie did throughout his article.

As for treatment, well, I for one am unsure what could possibly cause anyone to hurt or kill a child and am inclined to believe you must be so far round the bend and inhuman as to be unsalvageable. In terms of the paedophile proper, s/he is offending a social code, which happens to predominate in this part of the world at this time. ‘Treatment’ therefore is likely to be the kind demonstrated by the lynch mobs.

Or else one changes the view of society to be more tolerant and less paranoid against this most despised of sexual minorities. Their activities might be socially repugnant to many, but in reality in the vast majority of cases are quite harmless. One has only to contrast the way in which homosexuality used be regarded in the same manic, murderous and wildly distorted way with at least the official tolerance today.

Paedophilia
Paedophilia

Do you read me?

In Anne Mc Shane’s review of Ken Loach’s new film this sentence appears: “It is very good that such a film has won at Cannes and reflects the current resurgence of radical critique in the arts, particularly in cinema”.

What? This is a statement beamed down from Mars. It’s so gnomic it’s off with the fairies. Impacted kryptonite, auto-generated from the alien mind of Jack Conrad. Can we decode this?

“It is very good” = red emperor’s thumbs-up.

Abstract category waffle to stun brain cells = “such a film”.

Deep, wheezing admiration for the cult of the celebrity = “won at Cannes”.

Illogical beginner’s use of dead 70s’ endless play of signifiers qua post-structuralism = “reflects”.

Former cynic armchair auteur shocks world with upbeat video shop opinion = “the current resurgence”.

Craven Stalinoid love of costume dramas = “radical critique”.

Oblivious to the play of separated images = “particularly in cinema”.

Every word you use has lost all connection to lived experience. Disconnect the red telephone on Mars.

Do you read me?
Do you read me?

Minority view

Since the CPGB’s one constant theme is that revolutionary parties should disagree with each other in public, it is not surprising you should draw the conclusions you do from the Workers Power split in the course of an article suffused with the pusillanimosity and patronising arrogance we have all come to expect of your organisation (‘Workers Power split’, July 6).

However, a quick glance at web board discussions of the split will reveal that others on the left have nothing but respect for the discipline shown by the WP minority - just as any socialist will respect the elementary solidarity of good trade unionists.

WP remained a homogenous group because it was rooted in a consistent political method - Trotskyism. Unlike the rest of the left we recognised the continuing relevance of the transitional method and the workers’ united front, rather than the pandering towards the reformism of the larger left parties or the ultra-left gesture politics of the anarchists. The 2003 perspectives eventually brought about a split because over-optimism about the nature of the period led to the adoption of strategies and tactics that abandoned our well-founded methods.

However, not all of the expelled minority disagreed with the 2003 perspectives at first. You have to remember that 2003 saw the largest international mobilisations in history. It seemed perfectly logical to most of us to attempt to build out of the anti-war struggle a wider struggle against neoliberalism.

The tiny irrelevant sect you so despise took the lead nationally in building social forums and initially had real success in this project, including a 200-strong People’s Assembly in Manchester and a vibrant forum in Cardiff (in which CPGB members participated), which (thanks to WP) won a motion at the second Stop the War national people’s assembly calling for forums to be set up in every city. Had it not been for the wrecking tactics of the Socialist Workers Party this could have become a reality.

It was only in practice that we discovered the impracticability of our aim of “taking the anti-capitalist movement to the workers and the workers to the anti-capitalist movement”, due to the overwhelmingly middle-class libertarian nature of the social forum movement, and the lack of consistent and successful workers’ struggles.

A minority of experienced WP leaders, supported by less experienced youth clung to the perspectives and, despite all the evidence they were wrong, subverted the group’s hitherto healthy democracy. It was this degeneration that made it impossible for the (growing) minority to remain.

However, the “raiding groups” are a figment of your imagination; the minority remain very determined and very clear on our politics, which, like those of the CPGB, involve the desire for left regroupment, but certainly not on the basis of the abandonment of basic principles of class independence and the rights of women that led to your own split over Respect.

Minority view