28.05.2008

Smears stepped up after Hopi vote

Ben Lewis looks at the background to the SWP's hostility and counters the recent attack

What excellent news for the anti-war movement in Britain! Thanks to some hard work from comrades in the Public and Commercial Services union, Hopi has now got its first national trade union affiliate - hopefully the first of many, as our campaign begins to impact on the workers’ movement.

Organised labour must be central to any anti-war movement worth its salt. The working class - the most consistently democratic class - must be hegemonic in the fight to undermine the rotten imperialist plans of the British pseudo-democratic state and look to organise with their comrades in struggle across the globe. However, given the current weakness of the organised working class movement, independent class action against war beyond the usual routine march has been severely lacking.

Yet there are shining examples that catch the eye - most obviously in the recent case in the US of 25,000 workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union taking action to demand the immediate withdrawal of occupying troops from Iraq. This action had resonance within Iraq itself - the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions and the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions came out with a call for the immediate end to the occupation of Iraq and for workers’ organisation independent of the numerous sectarian gangs.

When it comes to Iran, Hopi provides a general framework to coordinate working class political action against war - both in the heartlands of imperialism and within Iran itself. What matters in all this is politics and the ideas that we attempt to win the anti-war movement to uphold and fight for both at home and abroad. Principles matter.

It is a sad state of affairs when the misleaders of the Stop the War Coalition around the Communist Party of Britain’s Andrew Murray and the Socialist Workers Party’s Lindsey German desperately pass off proletarian internationalism and working class independent organisation as somehow divisive, sectarian or providing a left cover for imperialist war. Comrades will remember how October 2007 saw the STWC, at the urging of comrade Murray, deny Hopi affiliation to the purportedly ‘broad’ and ‘inclusive’ coalition run by the ‘socialist’ SWP in alliance with the ‘communist’ CPB.

Comrades will recall that they invited along the Iranian state-funded Press TV to film proceedings and the SWP heartily applauded those who spoke of how wonderfully progressive sex change operations are for terrorised homosexuals in Iran. While a campaign that opposes both imperialist war and the Tehran theocracy is excluded - a campaign with significant contacts and support in Iran - those who engage in apologetics for the regime even as it bans, imprisons and tortures working class militants, are just the ticket.

At the STWC conference, Abbas Edalat of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention In Iran (Casmii), assured us that there are “no forces in Iran who are fighting both against the threat of an imperialist intervention and the regime”. Press TV recorded his speech, as ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ delegates applauded and cheered. Yet the next month thousands of students came onto the streets of Tehran with slogans like “No to war, death to the dictator” and “Hands Off the People of Iran”. They were dealt with harshly - over 80 comrades were arrested, and a small number of them are still languishing in prison today. Others are in hiding. Not that stooge Edalat would have much to say about that, of course. Criminally, the student protests were not even covered in Socialist Worker until February 12 2008, and even then the article did not care to mention that the arrested comrades had been organising anti-war protests.

SWP lies

Given the success that Hopi has enjoyed thus far, it is to be expected that the campaign of hate and lies will only increase. Readers of the Morning Star will have seen that PCS national standing orders committee member and SWPer John Gamble has initiated a new round of attacks against us (see his letter, right).

He parrots the usual nonsense that Hopi is not “primarily concerned with opposing US maniacal military adventures”, but with “splitting the Stop the War movement in Britain.” Yet it was Hopi that applied for affiliation and the STWC leadership that excluded it! And no-one who even glances at the Hopi website could honestly claim that it is “not primarily concerned” with opposing imperialism - pride of place goes to its unequivocal opposition to war and sanctions and the campaign demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US-UK troops from the Gulf.

While Hopi is clear that the main enemy is imperialism, it also recognises the theocratic regime, with its anti-working class, neoliberal agenda, as an enemy. We oppose any imperialist intervention, while at the same time supporting democratic, secular and socialist movements fighting to overthrow the theocracy and create a genuinely anti-imperialist Iran. This is not a “sectarian” cover for imperialism. It is called proletarian internationalism.

Comrade Gamble also appeals to the ‘official communist’ sensibilities of the CPB - disappointed that they did not join with their (increasingly Stalinoid) comrades in the SWP to condemn the front group of the “misnamed [!] CPGB micro-sect”. It is worthwhile remembering that the “micro-sect” he mentions is actually an official affiliate of the STWC. Yet Hopi, condemned as a CPGB front, is barred. Pathetic.

It is extremely insulting to the PCS delegates to suggest that they were somehow “duped” into voting overwhelmingly to affiliate to Hopi. Conference just did not understand SWP objections and some even dubbed them “apologists for the Iranian regime”. I wonder why. The problem for the SWP leadership is that the working class consists of people who are perfectly capable of weighing up the arguments and coming to the right conclusion - irrespective of what the SWP line happens to be.

That applies to Iran too. Yet comrades will remember how the SWP heartily cheered Edalat at the STWC AGM. He told us: “Put yourself into the shoes of an ordinary member of the public. If you tell him, ‘Don’t attack Iran, but it is a vicious, repressive regime’, he gets confused. And he’s already confused by the massive demonisation of Iran.”

This reactionary and elitist view of the working class is almost common sense on today’s far left. “Ordinary” people cannot understand high political questions like we can, so best to keep things simple and not confuse them. How ironic it is then, that PCS delegates looked at Hopi’s implacable opposition to imperialist war, sanctions and occupation, together with its principled emphasis on internationalism, and overwhelmingly voted in favour of affiliation.

One aspect of Gamble’s letter which may have some grounding in reality is the claim that the Socialist Party-led Left Unity preferred to take the Hopi motion to one calling for PCS to affiliate to the Labour Representation Committee. This would make some sense - while the SP has expressed sympathy to Hopi’s aims (although it has not yet affiliated), it might well have found the LRC question embarrassing - on the one hand, it writes off Labour Party work as a waste of time; on the other hand, it does not want to be seen opposing support for Labour lefts like John McDonnell. However, given the SWP’s own lack of any serious strategy in relation to Labour, it is hardly the task of comrade Gamble to lecture the SP on “political priorities”.

He talks of a “lie going around the world before the truth has tied its boot laces”. Yet it is he and his organisation that are the liars - not just in terms of what they say about Hopi, but in terms of their disgraceful apologetics for the Iranian regime. Shame on them.

Given the theoretical meltdown of the left and the erosion of fundamental working class political principle, it is hardly surprising that Hopi’s approach has had such a positive impact across the country. Hopi has been unique in underlining the necessity of politics and principle in approaching the complex issues of war and the Middle East - an anathema to the SWP leadership, given its conscious and repeated subordination of political principle to short-term sect gains and manoeuvres.

The SWP leadership should at least have the decency to debate the vital question of Iran solidarity work in front of the anti-war movement and the whole working class, not smear Hopi with Stalinoid slander and outright lies.