Letters

Stereotypes

In regard to your article on the protests against Brick Lane, Hussain Ismail did not stand as a candidate for Respect in the May council elections.

I cannot believe you are bowing to stereotypes about the voting patterns of the Bangladeshi community. Most Bengalis that voted for Respect did so not because of links to ‘community leaders’, but despite them. They voted for Respect because of its view on the war and privatisation.

Stereotypes

Cuts no ice

I read your most recent article on the Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG) and was disappointed to read that once again you have criticised the Berlin WASG for standing in the elections (‘Fight on two fronts’, August 10).

The problem with the Berlin Linkspartei.PDS is not that it is “spineless”: the truth is that, just like many in the WASG, it has accepted capitalism and, as a consequence, the logic of capitalism.

It enters into government not as some grand stratergy to win influence for the working class: rather its enters into government because it wants power. It pushes through disgusting cuts and attacks on the working class, not because it has not got enough spine to stand up to the SDP, but because it accepts and agrees with the cuts.

The fact that the Berlin WASG is standing candidates to give the working class of Berlin a real choice in the elections is to be welcomed. The alternative, as you say, would be to call for a critical vote for the L.PDS. In other words, a critical vote for more cuts in services.

You also call for “critical engagement with the L.PDS”, but the so-called left in the L.PDS is pathetic. Your aticle is also silent about the new people being attracted to the WASG Berlin, which includes those who used to be in the L.PDS but are fed up of its cuts. Not the kind of “critical engagement” you probably meant, but it does show what can happen when there is an anti-cuts pole of attraction for workers.

I hope for a good vote for the WASG Berlin, as I would all good anti-cuts candidates. If I were in Berlin, I would campaign and vote for them, not the L.PDS. What a pity the CPGB, for all its talk of class politics, cannot share the sentiment that the victory of anti-cuts candidates in Berlin would be worth celebrating.

Cuts no ice

Class of 2006

Class determines how long you live and whether you will get to university, and two major reports underline how New Labour has left untouched a society dominated by wealth and the social power of the elite.

The extra stress suffered by manual workers means they die seven years earlier than the average. Not only are they more likely to suffer heart attacks, strokes and cancer, but even their body cells tend to age at a much faster pace.

The report by professor Tim Spector of St Thomas’s hospital in London looked at white blood cells from 1,552 female twins. It found that body cells in women with manual jobs have characteristics of those seven years older than those of women of the same chronological age with non-manual jobs.

Another report, by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, found that universities have not widened access or managed to retain students from lower-income backgrounds. It found that elite universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College are failing to reach their targets for students from state schools. The report does not factor in any effect from the government’s implementation of top-up fees, which come into effect from September.

Yet the Russell Group, representing some of the ‘top’ universities, is continuing to lobby the government for even higher fees. The effect of top-up fees is, however, being felt in the decrease in applications to university for September, with a drop of 3.9 percent in England.

Class of 2006
Class of 2006

SSP analysis

Can I congratulate Mike Macnair for the best analysis of the Sheridan affair I have read (‘Sheridan wins first round’, August 10)? He has written an article that is essential reading for anyone who wants to make sense of the issue and its effect on the Scottish workers and the left worldwide.

Macnair’s identification of three possible positions concerning the truth or falsity of the allegations made against Sheridan is masterly. It has helped me understand the legal background of the case tremendously.

I also liked his political analysis - especially his recognition of the News of the World’s smear campaign against Sheridan as an example of Tory/New Labour politics. Macnair identifies the use of sexual morality to create antagonisms between workers that aspire to ‘respectable’ lifestyles and those workers defined by the state (and those organised religious allies of the state Macnair forgets to mention) who do not - for example, “Jews, homosexuals, immigrants, prostitutes, pornographers and political radicals”.

I liked his analogy of the plight of the Scottish Socialist Party as a “car accident” that has happened through the carelessness and inattention of those involved. He could also have mentioned the leadership’s inattention to the influence of Stalinism on the party’s drift into nationalism, purges and accusations of the falsification of history.

The Weekly Worker were clearly correct to call on the SSP executive to make public the grounds of Sheridan’s resignation in November-December 2004. If they had done so, maybe there would have been a chance the accident might not have happened. By opening up to the public the reasons for Sheridan’s decision to resign, the executive would have shown that it trusted the opinions not only of the rank and file of the party, but also of people whom, in other circumstances, it might have considered as enemies.

Liberals might have argued that whatever an individual does in private (as long as it does not harm anyone else) should be tolerated, not condemned. Marxists might have argued that, in a society free from religious bigotry, sexism, homophobia and economic oppression, sex between adults would not be considered embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, fearful, guilt-ridden or dirty in any way.

Had the executive allowed a full, democratic debate, then Marxists could have argued that liberating sex from the commodity form and abolishing prostitution (along with every other form of wage-slavery) would enable people with sex addictions to get immediate treatment and help. Sex addicts would not be verbally or physically abused. They would not need to hide their sexual activities. They would be able to eliminate all harmful and compulsive forms of behaviour from their lives quickly and easily.

If the executive had followed the Weekly Worker’s advice and encouraged an open debate over the way sex is used to divide and antagonise workers, the present problems leading to the demise of the SSP could have been avoided. Its a pity the SSP leadership has been inattentive to the opinions of the rest of the left.

SSP analysis
SSP analysis

Quite useful

I must admit I was pleasantly suprised by Mike Macnair’s post-facto article on the Sheridan libel trial. Its whole tone seems somewhat at odds with the ‘critical but unconditional’ backing of the anti-Sheridan elements on the SSP EC that other, less nuanced Weekly Worker writers have come up with in recent weeks.

Mike’s articles often appear to get bogged down in pedantry and academia, while missing the mark on substantive issues. But on this occasion he has brought out some quite useful points. In particular, his points about the SSP leadership’s feminist-derived moralism regarding prostitution that drove its hysterical response to the allegations made against Sheridan. Reading this, and looking at the ‘balance of probabilities’ for the various scenarios Mike lays out in his article, only reinforces the view gained from reading the coverage in the left and bourgeois press, that there was little likelihood of the jury ariving at any other conclusion than the one it did, providing a competent case was made. As it evidently was.

This combination of a transparently moralistic witch-hunt in a left organisation and the perfidy of the Murdoch reptile press makes for a very unappetising combination. I don’t agree with Mike’s apparent occupation of a middle-of-the-road position in terms of his conclusions. But his analysis certainly conflicts with the knee-jerk impulse of the bulk of the declining CPGB to take the side of those in the SSP who instigated this destructive, tabloid-driven witch-hunt.

Quite useful

Win some, lose some

Tommy Sheridan’s actions went against all previous practice and experiences of revolutionary socialists not to engage with the bourgeois courts, unless it was forced upon them.

That the News of the World suffered a major defeat will delight many people - certainly former trade union activists such as myself who remember the damage that Murdoch did in the 1980s. However, whether the jury find for or against in my experience proves little as to guilt or innocence. Thus I am somewhat saddened that many on the left have based their political position on the jury’s verdict - which seems extremely naive to me and goes against the grain of history, especially recent Irish history.

In jury trials you win some; you lose some. While the jury system should be defended, as it is still the best chance of gaining justice via the law, it is far from infallible and certainly not an exact science, as all sorts of factors come into play - and only one of them will be whether you did the deed or not.

The type of crime you may or may not have committed; the class and sex of the jurors; the competence of the prosecution and defence, how they marshal their briefs and who they decide to call; the degree to which the police or state wish to nail you; and, last but certainly not least, the beak who sits upon the bench - all of these may decide whether the jury finds in your favour.

Thus I was amazed at the comments of some members of the SSP. Those who supported Sheridan prattled about purges of the party and mass expulsions, while praising Scottish justice (and in the process spreading the illusion the Scottish legal system is less corrupt than its English counterpart - which is nonsense, as they are both based on class prejudice).

The anti-Sheridan section within the SSP were little better and raged on about a miscarriage of justice, as if all that was needed was a change of jurors who would bring in a different verdict.

Win some, lose some

Better bet

What a tangled mess the SSP has weaved. For the rank and file who are not aligned to any faction or group, this must be a time of despair and total confusion.

This is what happens when socialist leaderships ignore the lessons of history and compromise their Marxist theory in order, as they see it, to court popularity and boost their numbers. All socialists have suffered from this debacle.

The sad thing is that Tommy Sheridan and his cohorts have learned nothing from this and it looks likely another version of the SSP will be launched shortly.

All of a sudden, entrism into the Labour Party looks the better bet in the longer term for a socialist Britain.

Better bet

Open road

Our politics in the (leaderless) Socialist Party of Great Britain is that, regardless of potential problems, openness is a necessary requisite for the party of the working class.

Consequently, the minutes of our EC meetings are posted on our website for all and sundry to read. Our actual EC meeting are held in public for anyone who cares to observe. To counter the threat of a ruling clique the EC itself is forbidden from proposing motions to conference or making policy.

This is our commitment to party democracy and one of the ways in which membership control of our party is maintained. That is the lesson of the Tommy Sheridan court case and this is the message that ought to be rammed home to SSP members.

Open road
Open road

End of the line?

I really think that the CPGB is taking a pasting in regard to its wrong line on Palestine. I wonder if you would agree to rediscuss this? I detect that your position for a federal solution for Ireland is a similar wrong position.

The CPGB tradition lives in your wrong-minded opposition to the national liberation of the oppressed. Socialism does not transend questions of national oppression: it allies a resolution of that oppression to the creation of an internationalist socialist solidarity.

End of the line?

Federal solution

I cannot for the life of me understand why the Weekly Worker has the same position as Tony Blair in regards to Israel/Palestine.

Having two ethnic states in the region (I assume with the borders drawn at the West Bank and Gaza) will deny Palestinian refugees the right of return, with Israel remaining a mono-cultural and mono-ethnic state. A seperate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would effectively be a Bantustan (or rather two, effectively giving Israel control over its borders and the movement of people).

However, simply calling for a “democratic, secular Palestine” ignores the fact of the Israeli Jews. A practical solution would be a binational federation, which will ensure that the rights of both ethnic groups be safeguarded and that both have representation. They will share political power and this will effectively solve the national question, while not capitulating to Zionism. Neither will it raise the problem of borders.

The people of the Middle East can live together. What is needed is a plan that recognises the rights and existence of both groups. Both the ‘two-state’ and the ‘one-state’ solution fail in this respect. One is privileging the Israelis at the expense of the oppressed and occupied Palestinians; the other is ignoring the existence and needs of the Israeli Jews.

Federal solution

Well done, Jack!

Having dismissed Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Wales from nationhood, Jack Conrad has now dispatched the big yin, Scotland. Well done, Jack!

The only problem is that, by denying nationhood to these four places, Jack has denied nationhood to England. I eagerly await the CPGB’s campaign, ‘There never was an England’.

As Bernard Shaw might have said, ‘You’re right, Jack, but who are we against so many?’

Well done, Jack!
Well done, Jack!

Religion

I would like to comment on an aspect of your draft programme.

I would call myself a Marxist except for Marx’s position of atheism. I believe that Marx threw the baby out with the bathwater when he looked at religion and saw the crud: the corrupt clergy, the massive landholding, the serving of the status quo. But he failed to see any positive aspects - the progressive side of religion, that has helped bring forward humanity’s development. Religious/spiritual motivation was the force behind many a rising/revolt against the established order.

I think that CPGB could learn from history to see that 70 years or so of dedicated atheism and anti-religious actions by the USSR did nothing to undermine religious feeling and allegiance to the Russian orthodox church. If anything it made it stronger, and the church more reactionary. Compared to the mostly indifferent capitalists in the materialist west, where religious affiliation has really shrunk, Russia is highly influenced now by the orthodox church.

The communist materialist position should be like the capitalist one - of indifference: neutrality, except to occasionally use for their own purposes, as necessary.

I think Castro occupies that position - live and let live. Cohabit, cooperate, coopt.

Religion