13.11.2008

Whinging, wheedling and whining, the AWL ducks out

The AWL has run a mile from a debate with the CPGB on the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran and accused us of cowardice! Mark Fischer sets the record straight

Since October 14, I have been embroiled in an email exchange with Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty concerning a possible debate between his organisation and the CPGB over Israel, Iran and the prospect of a disastrous new war in the Middle East. As comrades will have read in this paper, this has not gone well (Weekly Worker October 30).

Thomas has ducked, dived, wheedled and whinged. He was argued himself into a position so irrational that, if you did not understand that this was a man desperately attempting to ensure that a debate did not happen but at the same time trying to pin the blame on us for the ‘no-show’, then you might actually fear for his sanity. Or, as I put it in one message, the tension between what he was saying and what he clearly wanted to happen (or not happen more like) was making him appear “slightly unhinged”.

Frankly, it has thus been a bit of a chore to engage with Thomas on this question - like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling at times. It may also be a bit of a chore to read, I suspect, but in the interests of basic hygiene it needs to be done. Think of it as the political equivalent of emptying a cat litter.

You can read the AWL’s version of events on the organisation’s website (www.workersliberty.org), but the nub of Thomas’s case for the CPGB’s supposed refusal to meet the AWL in open combat consisted of one point, repeated ad infinitum. That on October 14, he wrote to our office to propose a debate on ‘Israel, Iran and socialist politics’. He then suggests that we “said yes to the debate (while making reservations on the date, etc). That meant saying yes to a debate about the subject described in that title … later you wrote that ‘There is no possibility that we will accept a debate titled Israel, Iran and socialist politics’. That meant withdrawing from the debate you earlier accepted.”

Comrades will note that Thomas does not quote from any email where we say, ‘Yes, that’s the title we want; we accept’. Instead, our acceptance is drawn by inference - as he put it, the fact that we were keen for a debate “meant saying yes to a debate about the subject described in that title”.

Comrades should note two points about this typically slimy example of the AWL’s method.

First, that we never accepted this title for the debate. All Thomas was initially told was that I would “chase dates and comrades’ opinions today and get back to you” (October 14). In fact, when I pinned him down and demanded he cite the email where we were meant to have acceded, he wheedled that we did not “specifically agree to the title”! (He soon clicked back into “unhinged” mode, however, when a few lines later in the same short email he repeated the accusation he has just admitted to be untrue! He suggested - apparently straight-faced - that “you agreed to [a debate with this title] and now you don’t agree”! As I commented, “do try to get your lies straight, Martin” (November 6).

The consistent position of the CPGB throughout this exchange has been that we want to debate the politics of the Sean Matgamna ‘discussion article’ featured in the AWL’s newspaper, Solidarity (July 24). This was headlined ‘What if Israel bombs Iran?’ and concluded with a call for a discussion on the issues it flagged up. So why did we insist that the headline of that article should be used as the title for the debate and not ‘Israel, Iran and socialist politics’? Simply because the October 12 debate between Matgamna and Moshé Machover of the Campaign for a Marxist Party had a very similar title - ie, ‘Israel, Iran and the left’ - yet on that occasion Matgamna failed to mention the question of an Israeli attack on Iran at all in his opening speech!

In other words, we want to debate the appalling social-imperialist, pro-Zionist politics contained in the article, in which Matgamna excused an Israeli ‘pre-emptive’ attack on Iran’s nuclear installations - an attack that would almost certainly have to employ nuclear-armed bunker busters. Let Matgamna defend this position. This is the debate we have been trying to arrange, but the AWL just will not agree to it. Matgamna knows he would be forced to state openly that he believes an Israeli attack justified and would not be able to get away with the get-out clauses used in his article, such as not “advocating”, “endorsing” or “taking  political responsibility for” an Israeli attack.

But Thomas not only ruled out this debate (irrespective of the title). He also refused to guarantee that Matgamna would be the AWL speaker. Since most other AWL members have ‘re-interpreted’ his words and ascribed to them the opposite meaning to what he actually said, a different speaker would have just muddied the waters. Matgamna himself ought to take responsibility for what he wrote in his own name.

So what exactly is the AWL’s problem with having Matgamna defend his politics? It is a question that has baffled AWL members too. On an internal discussion several had admitted to being “perplexed” by Matgamna’s “odd” decision to “completely [leave] out the whole Iran issue” on October 12. Leading AWLer Sacha Ismail confessed: “I don’t know either why Sean didn’t mention Iran in his opening speech” (see Weekly Worker October 16).

I advised Thomas in my email of November 6: “Cut the crap that the CPGB’s attempt to pin you down on the genuine content of any new meeting is in some way to duck the confrontation. It is an attempt to ensure that the AWL - or specifically, Sean Matgamna - actually defends the July 24 ‘discussion article’ that you seem so reluctant to ... er ... discuss.”

In fact, the CPGB has chased the AWL for a debate on the politics of the looming war on Iran since late May of this year, when it refused an invitation to present a session on the subject to our annual school, the Communist University. Then, on October 12, the AWL’s leading figure actually stood on a public platform in a meeting that AWL’s own pre-publicity told us would prominently feature a discussion of “What would socialists say if Israel bombed Iran?” and totally ducked the issue!

Now the organisation’s second in command, Martin Thomas, has expended considerable time and effort to convince his members and the wider political public that the CPGB’s insistence that we specifically debate the content of Matgamna’s notorious July 24 “discussion article” is an attempt by us to sidestep a face-to-face confrontation with his organisation!

No-one serious outside the ranks of the AWL will believe this for a moment, of course. But does Thomas think his own members are cretins?