Letters

Vote Lindsey

Well done, Weekly Worker, for again getting to the fetid political heart of a Respect councillor - albeit this time the Tory being a member of the SWP! (‘I did it for my community’, February 21). It’s a shame your reporter didn’t tell him how such treachery would be paid back in socialist Britain.

It’s also a shame that the article accompanying the interview doesn’t pass muster. It’s just silly to predict Lindsey German, or Respect, will be pulling out of May’s Greater London Authority elections. German is doing meeting after meeting to further her campaign - see electrespectcoalition.org - and Michael Gavan, the victimised Newham council worker, has just been added to the extensive roster of Respect assembly candidates.

And these campaigns aren’t a “pointless charade”. There may be some falling away in support for Respect following the departure of the more communal elements (although not all of them, as the Tory defection shows), but I think there will be an increasing number of people, indeed an even bigger group, who are disappointedly concluding that Livingstone isn’t left at all and will vote for German. Remember, German came fifth in the last mayoral election - beating the Greens and the BNP - and this was before Respect made its breakthroughs with the election of Galloway and London councillors.

I’m a left critic of the Socialist Workers Party and I have never been a member of Respect. The CPGB are also left critics of the SWP but they appear to have forgotten that they were (are?) members of Respect - and that this was before the left-right split. It’s abundantly clear that socialists should vote for and now get involved with the candidature of SWP - and thus ostensible revolutionary socialist - and Respect member Lindsey German for mayor of London.

But what will CPGB members do and which way will they vote in May?

Vote Lindsey
Vote Lindsey

Age concern

Since Thatcher and Blair the word ‘reform’ has taken on its opposite meaning. Time was when reform meant an improvement; now it invariably means the prelude to a worsening of the situation. Blair’s forthcoming ‘reforms’ for 16-19-year-olds, now being carried forward by Brown, are a case in point.

Actually, the implications for civil liberties are quite horrendous, but, buried under the double-speak, I have yet to hear any word of protest from anywhere. Essentially, it will mean forcing young adults to stay at school until they are almost 19. It means abolishing the most fundamental human and civil rights of all those in this category. They will no longer have the right to leave school and make their own way in the world as they see fit. By any clear view, this is conscription - no more, no less.

A high ratio of 16-year-olds can’t wait to leave school and enforced ‘childhood’ behind, and start work or living their own lives. Many of their colleagues who actually want to be at school and are interested in study can’t wait for them to leave either. Freeing the captive adolescents, many of whom who have bitterly resented the imposition of school discipline, makes for a much saner environment for those who want to be there.

How will this impact on the fact that 16-year-olds have the legal right to marry and have children? Get married and have a family, but we’ll lock you up if you don’t go to school? Still worse, lock your parents up because the married offspring with a family have finished school and want to live their own lives?

I suspect this is a stalking horse for a further repression of the rights enjoyed by under-18s. First, there was the smoking prohibition; now it’s the age at which you can drive and leave school. Who would bet it won’t be the age of consent next? That would fit into the Blair trajectory of Americanising the British legal system and copying their laws and outlook. Watch out for the age at which you can buy alcohol going up to 21 or higher.

I would have thought that the left’s youth and student organisations would have launched a major national campaign on this issue, but they haven’t, because I would guess that most of them are in their late 20s and early 30s.

Age concern
Age concern

Independent

In your article, ‘Consolidating gains’, you refer to the International Workers of the World (February 21). The IWW will coordinate activities with groups who are sympathetic to the broad aims of the union. We are an independent union who will only represent the working class.

Independent
Independent

Name and shame

I welcome the decision of the French Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire to launch a new revolutionary, anti-capitalist party, as reported on favourably by Peter Manson (‘Defeat the liquidators’, February 21). The LCR has established itself as the most serious far-left party in France, with just over 4% in last year’s presidential election.

Calling the new party ‘anti-capitalist’, rather than ‘socialist’, ‘communist’, ‘Marxist’ or ‘Trotskyist’, will have some advantages. I have long felt that calling themselves ‘communist’ limits the LCR’s appeal, due to the association with the Stalinist regimes that collapsed in the USSR and eastern Europe, and the collapse of the vote received by the ‘official’ Communist Party, to a meagre 1.9%, seems to confirm this hypothesis.

Calling themselves ‘Marxist’ would cause a similar problem, and using the term ‘Trotskyist’ would limit their appeal to a subset of Marxists. Calling the new party ‘socialist’ could make them appear less radical than they really are, due to the existence of the mainstream Socialist Party, which is clearly in favour of the continuation of the capitalist system. ‘Socialist’ means different things to different people.

I have a minor criticism of LCR leader Olivier Besancenot, who said that the new party will “counterpose, against the management of existing institutions, the perspective of a workers’ government”. The term ‘workers’ government’ would seem to imply a Marxist form of socialism, composed of hierarchies of committees based on workplaces, where the middle class has little or no say. Whereas I would support some degree of workers’ control of industry, I am in favour of a government elected by proportional representation, and I wouldn’t want the new party to exclude socialists like me.

A good sign, however, that the new party would not do so is the fact that the LCR has held discussions with the anarchist grouping, Alternative Libertaire, and anarchists are massively opposed to hierarchical structures. Although AL has rejected joining, the new party could attract some anarchists to its ranks and win the support of others in elections; I have found that the best anarchists tend to welcome the efforts of genuine leftwingers who do stand in elections, even though they do not want to participate in electoral campaigning.

The sectarian Trotskyist group Lutte Ouvrière, which had previously outpolled the LCR, has criticised the proposal for the new party by suggesting that it would attract “liberals and do-gooders”. How could a revolutionary party ever come to power without attracting such well-meaning individuals? Many of them could, of course, be won to socialist ideas, but even those who aren’t tend to play an important, positive role in society.

Name and shame
Name and shame

SPGB democracy

Alan Johnstone brings up a larger issue when he accuses Bolshevism of being inseparable from minority rule (Letters, February 21). However, in the process he implies the existence of a line of theoretical continuity between Leninism and Stalinism.

Unfortunately, whilst this is an accusation often hurled about by the SPGB and the rest of the anti-Lenin left, in this case it fails to stick. If you look at SPGB material you will see that allegations of usurping democracy are always intimately linked by Bolshevik preference for the soviets as opposed to parliamentary bodies. The Russian Revolution itself is therefore dismissed as being premature, the masses condescendingly brushed aside as ‘not being ready for socialism’ and a myth invented where Bolshevism comes out as early as 1917 advocating socialism in one country.

A huge song and dance is made out of the fact that the Bolsheviks initially supported, perhaps enshrined, the demand for a constituent assembly. The subsequent dispersal of that assembly is sometimes presented as proof of the Bolsheviks’ anti-democratic credentials. Whilst this might seem to be going off topic, I think that this issue contains the real crux of the matter, as far as the SPGB’s anti-Leninism goes. Little mention is made of the fact that in any written material you might care to lay your hands on in this affair, the entire Bolshevik approach is based on the direct democratic rule of the soviets as a higher form of popular rule. Thus the soviets are presented as a more viable form of democracy than simple parliamentary politics - something which flies in the face of the SPGB method of advocating the capture of the state through the ballot box.

But what’s the real issue here? Was the assembly dissolved simply because certain theoreticians preferred the soviets? Not at all. We already know that the assembly, far from having taken notice of the effective domination of the soviets since October, dared to convene itself on the basis of election results that cannot, in any fashion, be considered legitimate.

In point four of his ‘Theses on the constituent assembly’, Lenin states: “The convocation of the constituent assembly in our revolution on the basis of lists submitted in the middle of October 1917 is taking place under conditions which preclude the possibility of the elections … faithfully expressing the will of the people in general and of the working people in particular.”

Point five is all too clear, when it claims that “proportional representation results in a faithful expression of the will of the people only when the party lists correspond to the real division of the people according to the party groupings reflected in those lists. In our case, however, as is well known, the party which from May to October had the largest number of followers among the people, and especially among the peasants - the Socialist Revolutionary Party - came out with united election lists for the constituent assembly in the middle of October 1917, but split in November 1917, after the elections and before the assembly met. For this reason, there is not, nor can there be, even a formal correspondence between the will of the mass of the electors and the composition of the elected constituent assembly.”

So did the Bolsheviks react to this slap in the face by dispersing the assembly through “armed force”, as the SPGB like to claim? Again no. It did convene, despite the fact it no longer represented the true balance of forces within the country. After engaging in all manner of high-handed debates, it was ended, according to the Bolshevik, FF Raskolnikov, by a mere request.

Raskolnikov writes: “Choking with laughter, he [the Bolshevik delegate Dybenko] told us, in his booming bass voice, that the sailor Zheleznyakov had just gone up to the chairman of the assembly, placed his broad hand on the shoulder of a Chernov numb with astonishment, and said to him in a peremptory tone: ‘The guard are tired. I propose that you close the meeting and let everyone go home.’” So much for armed force.

It needs to be said, however, that if the assembly really did have a genuine social backing, it would have been significantly harder to break up. In reality it was ended with two short sentences.

SPGB democracy
SPGB democracy

Amnesia

I can only conclude that the ill-named ‘Iranian Society’ (not at all a representative body of Iranian opinion) has amnesia or a highly selective memory.

Let me remind them that, while some comrades perhaps did attend with the purpose of disrupting the meeting, we in Hopi merely asked a question. Hopi did not at any point in the ‘debate’ throw around paper or shout at the panel. That was the Hekmatists, who made up a significant proportion of the audience.

It was in fact the reactionary apologists who shamed themselves in that debate for what I can only assume is a lack of ability to answer a question as simple as that posed by Hopi: ‘Can the Iranian regime be considered anti-imperialist?’

I will not waste too much time arguing about the composition of the meeting, short of saying that those who agreed with what we had to say, both vocally and not so, made up approximately one half of the audience.

I further take issue with the Iranian Society’s analysis of the whole debate. The nuclear debate is a non-issue and, as an organisation claiming to represent Iranians, their seeming inability to comprehend that is little short of astounding. I’m sure most people within Iran are more concerned with the possibility of impending war, the mad economics imposed upon them, the sanctions placed on Iran and the general barbarity of the Iranian theocracy than they are with a debate that is being hyped up by both the Iranian regime, to mask its stomach-churning oppression of LGBT people, women, youths and trade unionists, and by the imperialists, to ‘prove’ Iran is a nuclear-ready state and a threat to the west.

Forgive our intervention, but we could not sit quietly when the parameters of such an event are designed to divert attention away from the real problems Iranians face - their regime and the threat of war! Events held by those who seek to legitimise the Iranian state, involving individuals such as Abbas Edalat (someone who makes a living apologising for the brutal regime under the illogical guise of ‘If you criticise the regime you’re giving the warmongers credibility’), as well as being filmed by Iranian state-funded television, can always expect opposition from Hopi, as lies and apologetics cannot go unquestioned.

We are proud to support the Iranian people above its despotic, repressive elite and are proud we never portray the regime as something it isn’t. The only things that prosper under the current Iranian regime are the bank accounts of its apologists.

Amnesia
Amnesia

Apologists

I enjoyed the response from Manchester University Iranian Society (Letters, February 21) to my article ‘Apologetics and violence’ (February 7).

Whoever wrote the letter could not have been at the same meeting. For two 22-minute-long videos on the events of the meeting, comrades should look at www.partowtv.com, where you will see what actually happened. It is in Farsi, but the scenes will give you some indication of how the event went. I hope that the Iranian Society and their friends from Press TV put the entire event online. Then everyone will be able to see what actually happened.

I find it funny that the Iranian Society claim that they had never heard of Hands Off the People of Iran, when we emailed them a week previously to ask for a stall and had also emailed them months ago about Hopi’s Manchester launch.

As to the reasons why both Hopi and comrades from the Worker-communist Party of Iran (Hekmatist) protested, the panel and the Iranian Society refused to call for the release of our comrades in prison, refused to answer our questions, organised the event with the approval of the Iranian consulate (so our Iranian comrades tell us), had the event filmed by Press TV (an English-language, Iranian state-sponsored television channel) and refused us permission to distribute leaflets. I think that is reason enough to protest.

I don’t think that Hopi and the Hekmatists set about “creating divisions in our own ranks”. The Manchester event was not about stopping war: it was about spreading lies about the Iranian regime. I think any comrade who saw the slide show at the beginning would wonder why the slaughter of the revolutionary workers’ movement had been written out.

As far as I am concerned, anti-imperialists and the Iranian state are not on the same side. Unlike the stooges of Tehran and their friends in the Socialist Workers Party, Hopi supports the only consistent anti-imperialist force in Iran. That isn’t the clerics, the army or the islamists. It is the working class and the social movements of our class - the LGBT, students’ and women’s movements. If the Iranian Society cared so much for Iranian students, then it would be calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the 81 students who now reside in Evin prison. I ask them now to call for the release of all trade unionists, women’s activists, students and LGBT people from prison.

I would call on the Iranian Society to put the entire event up on the internet without edit. I think seeing the contribution from the person at the back on how Iran is the most democratic country in the world would completely expose how the meeting was used by mouthpieces of the Iranian consulate in British universities.

Apologists
Apologists

Not harmless

The article by Jim Grant and David Isaacson (‘Facing up to the fascists’, February 21) is more correct, in my view, than J Conrad’s article (‘What is fascism?’, February 7). The BNP is primarily electoral at the moment, when current circumstances in many ways favour it. But Redwatch is not there just out of harmless curiosity about the left.

There are other problems with the Conrad article. Referring to the “guerrillaist left in Turkey”, it is asserted that they think the system in Turkey has been fascist since it was founded as a republic in 1923. This is factually incorrect, at least as regards the tradition founded by Mahir Cayan, which links Turkish fascism to neo-colonialism, a force which first gained a foothold in the late 1940s and reached its culmination in the western-backed military coup of 1980, whose effects are still being felt today.

As to fascism not being organised along military lines, well, perhaps not in Britain. But in Turkey fascism is expressed through the armed forces, the police and also through ‘civilian’ fascists like the MHP, the BBP and the ‘Idealist Hearths’. A key image of the 1960s in Turkey was one of fascist youths posing with handguns for a camera, as they prepared to ‘resist communism’. The Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was assassinated by the heirs of people such as these, only last year.

Not harmless
Not harmless

Too tepid

Michael Little is wrong to accuse me of “telling the working class that we support religious fundamentalism” because I argued that the Turkish law forcing muslims not to wear the hijab inside state institutions should be abolished (Letters, February 21).

My argument was that people should have the right to wear whatever they choose in public, health and safety issues excepted. This cannot be misunderstood as offering support either to the Turkish state or to religious fundamentalists. But it is a position that can be accepted by open-minded persons, whether religious or not.

It is an attempt to appeal to the majority, to make clear that secularism is unambiguously for the freedom of religion. Something else not embraced by the fundamentalists or the Turkish state. In fact, only secularism can be relied upon to deliver religious freedom. Secularism is not a policy invented by atheists to control and marginalise religion, but an outlook based on our shared humanity which is equally open to all, believers and non-believers alike.

Religious believers surround us and a great many of them are working class. The driving force behind religious belief is alienation, and alienation is produced by capitalism and class society. Comrade Little is dazzled and somewhat frightened by the behaviour of political islam, but for most people religion is a crutch to help them with their problems, not an authoritarian battering ram. So religion is not going to die out this side of the revolution, but neither is it inevitably shackled to reactionary political programmes.

We must have a policy towards religion that will enable us to bring the poor and the workers over to the revolutionary side and prevent the state or fascists from mobilising religious counterrevolution against us. We cannot afford to sit on the fence where religious freedom is concerned, especially in countries like Turkey and the USA, where the religious right is so large and well organised.

In passing, when researching the hijab on the internet, I came across many pictures of glamorous young women wearing headscarves as fashion items. One of political islam’s weaknesses is that it wants to ban sexuality from the public arena. This will not work in the modern industrial world. State bans have turned the hijab into a symbol of islamic courage and defiance. Legalise it and it no longer has this role.

Secularism has universal potential because it has grown out of modern class relations and struggles and is based not on the language of obligation to a mythical, never-changing social order, but on the language of rights in a dynamic society. Rights for individuals, groups, ideas and classes are just as much a necessity for religious believers as they are for atheists. The comrade’s determination to take up the fight for human democratic rights in a rounded way is too tepid by half.

Too tepid
Too tepid

Kurds and Turks

Leading Kurdish and Turkish community organisations in London have joined forces to condemn the Turkish military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack Kurdish PKK guerrillas based there. In a joint statement released at a press conference in the Kurdish community centre in Green Lanes, North London, on Sunday evening, the organisations also strongly condemned the muted response from governments to the news of the attack and branded the invasion as the outcome of an “international conspiracy”.

The silence of the British foreign office, the US state department and the European Union is indeed remarkable and in marked contrast to the typical response to events in, for example, Sudan, Kosovo and Zimbabwe.

Urging united action to defeat the Turkish onslaught, which they feared was aimed at undermining all the gains made by the Kurds in recent years, including in Iraq itself, they called on all democrats and humanitarians to “make a stand against these attacks”.

The press conference heard that inside Turkey, the general public, both Kurds and Turks, were overwhelmingly opposed to this escalation of the conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people.

Turkish troops have for years been making incursions into northern Iraq (southern Kurdistan) in pursuit of PKK forces, but the latest manoeuvres are on a much larger scale, with thousands of troops engaged in combat around the Qandil mountains. Although Turkey’s main economic and military ally, the US has urged the Turks not to prolong their actions, the scale of operations indicates that Ankara is preparing for a long-term presence.

In response, activities planned by the Turkish and Kurdish communities in London in coming days will include protests outside the US, Turkish and Israeli embassies in London and another protest outside the BBC headquarters calling for more balanced coverage on TV and radio.

Kurds and Turks
Kurds and Turks