26.03.2009

Defiance, not compliance

David Landau celebrates the life of Stephen William Cohen (July 16 1945 - March 8 2009)

Steve Cohen was committed to struggle against all forms of oppression, for justice and for socialism. This commitment was expressed both in activities and in the application of his formidable intellect to progressing struggles, often in the form of publications. No short account of his life, even one focussing solely on Steve’s political activities, can begin to do justice to the breadth and depth of these commitments. I will try to highlight some key themes.

After studying law at Trinity College Oxford and at Birmingham University, Steve trained as a barrister and in 1970 went on to set up an adventure playground in Moss Side Manchester. In Birmingham he got involved in organising the Balsall Heath rent strike - they talked about the ‘Balsall Heath soviet’ in those heady times.

Critical Trotskyism

Steve joined the International Marxist Group in 1968 and left at the end of 1974. He was attracted to this group rather than the other myriad of tendencies on the left at the time because of its dynamism, openness to ideas and discussion, and the seriousness with which it took oppressions that the rest of the left either avoided, such as questions of sexuality and gender, or which they did not see as fundamental, such as racism. He was also impressed by the robust anti-imperialism of the IMG regarding Ireland.

Steve’s disenchantment with the group was around largely the same issues that attracted him. There were limits to how much the group supported self-organisation of oppressed groups, particularly when raised in relation to the internal life of the organisation. There were limits to the extent ideas outside the Marxist cannon could be introduced - from feminism, psychoanalysis and new ideas emerging from the black movement, which we marshalled, for example, in trying to develop an understanding of fascism. The emphasis on debate sometimes just promoted clever debaters to the top and, despite the apparent freedom of discussion and plethora of internal tendencies, there was, Steve felt, an authoritarian streak running through the group.

Everyone in the IMG shared a concern about the lack of an organic link with the wider working class, but Steve and others, including myself, felt that there was a retreat towards the economism that marked out so many other groups at the time, which we never believed was the key to working class politics. And he noted with irony that, as the organisation tried to make a ‘turn to the class’, there were comrades who were rooted in the working class who became more marginalised or dropped out, while it was the ‘intellectuals’ who attempted to put the turn into practice.

Despite leaving the IMG Steve did value his experience in terms of theory and practice in that organisation. He always had a high regard for Trotsky’s ideas and would often refer to their influence, commenting that his views were often more in line with what Trotsky argued than the line of the Trotskyist groups.

He developed strong criticisms of positions he had held before in the IMG. In particular the idea of unconditional, but not uncritical, support for anti-imperialist movements around the world bothered Steve. Those movements which were Stalinist had often been responsible for the murder of thousands of political rivals - often leftwing opponents in the communities they claimed to represent. Or they promoted a nationalism that would come to show its vicious side to minorities in the future. Later he argued that this idea prepared the way for uncritical support offered in recent times by sections of the left for groups driven by religious fundamentalism.

Steve became very interested in the exchanges between Trotsky, Cannon and Shachtman around these questions. These important debates had been lost to the generation of Trotskyists in the IMG, or appeared in a very distorted form - not entirely surprisingly, as Shachtman’s later evolution made his positions easy to demonise. These debates sit at the core of an unpublished novel that Steve wrote and was editing at the end of his life.

Steve questioned Trotskyist and Leninist ideas about democratic centralism, dictatorship of the proletariat and so forth, believing that we have to learn from other traditions such as anarchism and Bundism.

Ireland

A positive thing that Steve absorbed from the IMG days was an appreciation of the centrality of Ireland to the struggle for socialism in Britain - although he later became self-critical regarding the unconditionality of our support for some of the politics and actions of the republican movements.

He made an important contribution to this struggle, linking it to the struggle against racism in general and focussing on the treatment of Irish people in this country. He wrote a pamphlet against the Prevention of Terrorism Act entitled Apartheid in Britain. In these days of ‘war on terror’ and the racism that surrounds this, Steve’s pamphlet anticipated a phenomenon which has spread and eaten deep into the body politic since then.

In 1976 he was invited to speak at a meeting organised by the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) about this pamphlet. The meeting was broken up by fascists and Steve was knocked unconscious.

He got to know Moira O’Shea through his work on mental health at North Manchester Law Centre. When Moira was herself accused of terrorism, Steve was heavily involved in her campaign.

Jewish socialism

Being Jewish was always important to Steve. Not in a religious way, but in recognising an important history, being part of a refugee people, a persecuted people, and in recognising that anti-semitism is still very much alive. This has informed his opposition to racism, fascism and immigration controls.

As the saying goes, ‘Two Jews, three views’. Steve regarded heterodoxy as a central part of his Jewish identity as well as of his socialism, and he challenged the machers - the self-appointed leaders of the Jewish community who claim to speak for all of us, but usually say things we are trenchantly opposed to - at every opportunity. Steve belonged to the Jewish Socialist Group off and on over a number of years and was a member when he died. His approach to life and his humour were quintessentially Jewish.

From his IMG days onwards Steve championed the rights of the Palestinian people. Steve was more radical than many in this regard in trenchantly opposing the ‘two-state solution’ on the grounds that it was inherently racist and could only be achieved through ethnic cleansing, apartheid or a combination of both. Exclusive states, Jewish or otherwise, were anathema to Steve. He took the fight into the Jewish community itself, getting physically thrown out of a synagogue in the 80s.

But at the same time Steve felt that there was an anti-semitic strain contaminating the anti-Zionist movement. Sometimes this was a deliberate use of the anti-Zionist flag of convenience under which anti-semitic ideas were peddled. More often it was unconscious - old anti-semitic notions would emerge. Analyses and leaflets appeared where the tail wagged the dog - Zionism strode the international stage as a thing in itself, higher than capitalism, manipulating the great military powers such as the USA: a throwback to the old ‘world Jewish conspiracy’ ideas.

In 1983 he wrote a pamphlet about anti-semitism on the left entitled That’s funny: you don’t look anti-semitic. This infuriated many. Not even the Jewish Socialist Group would publish it, although eventually the Beyond the Pale Collective did so. Whilst Steve looked back critically at That’s funny, he believed that the central thesis remains even more pertinent today, when there are sections of the left who sing the praises of Hezbollah and Hamas. And he was very concerned that there appeared to be an exceptionalism about how Israel is talked about and acted upon, compared to other equally or more appalling regimes.

He recently characterised himself as a ‘Zionist anti-Zionist’. ‘Zionism’, not because a Jewish state is a good thing, but because of a recognition that Jews live in a hostile world in which they need protection and that this a moving force behind support for Zionism. ‘Anti-Zionism’, because of the occupation, the racism and so forth of the Israeli state. He saw these as two dialectical, anti-racist poles.

He argued that campaigns and actions in solidarity with the Palestinians should always explicitly have opposition to anti-semitism as part of their platform.

Fighting immigration controls

Steve’s work at North Manchester Law Centre opened a door for him on the world of immigration controls. People were coming in facing deportations, or fighting to bring in other members of their families, and falling foul of state bureaucrats who would refuse welfare, educational, health rights and so forth. What before was a theoretical opposition to immigration controls for Steve became a living issue for him as a community lawyer.

He soon realised that a key to success was open campaigning and developed a partnership between community and legal struggles. He was soon involved in a number of high-profile campaigns - Nasira Begum, Anwar Ditta, Said Bibi, Nasreen Akhtar in the late 70s; and later Viraj Mendi, Florence Okolo and the Rahman family, to name just a few.

All this got Steve researching into the history of immigration controls and rediscovering the anti-semitism that led to the introduction of the Aliens Act back in 1905 and the emergence of the proto-fascist British Brothers League at the turn of the 19th-20th century.

Steve saw the necessity of bringing the lessons of these campaigns and of the history of immigration controls to the wider public and wrote a number of pamphlets whilst at the law centre. He also saw the necessity of a specialist centre of resistance and legal support and campaigned for the establishment of the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, of which he was the first coordinator for many years.

Steve saw the weaknesses in the movements resisting different aspects of border controls: the idea that there can be some kind of fair and non-racist control; not seeing the need to marry forthright campaigning with legal tactics; and a lack of knowledge in different professions about how immigration controls impact and what to do about it.

He set about dealing with these by writing a series of books: Immigration controls, the family and the welfare state, No-one is illegal, Standing on the shoulders of fascism and Deportation is freedom which draws close parallels with the ‘newspeak’ described by George Orwell in 1984 and the discourse of the ‘immigration service’ (a good example), the home office and government.

Illness forced him to leave the unit, but he continued to write. He became increasingly aware of the need for a voice which openly called for the abolition of immigration controls and with the assistance of a few of us comrades wrote the No One Is Illegal manifesto. This led to the establishment of the No One Is Illegal group, which has organised conferences, published a number of pamphlets, pushed for defiance of controls amongst the caring professions and so forth.

Since then there has emerged the No Borders Network and the Campaign Against Immigration Controls - all strongly influenced by the ideas of the manifesto. In the last year of his life Steve was concerned to find a way to bring these all under one umbrella.

Mr No Poll Tax

Steve played a small role in the monumental struggle that brought down Thatcher’s poll tax. Under the name of Mr No Poll Tax, Steve entered into a protracted legal correspondence with Bury council as to why he would not and could not pay his poll tax. Ironically Steve was one of the few who would be slightly better off under the poll tax than under the old rates system, but he saw it as a matter of principle to resist an unjust system.

Disability - fighting the system

In 1995 Steve developed chronic rheumatoid arthritis with intense, acute episodes. Over the years these became increasingly debilitating and painful. He required medicines which progressively weakened his immune system, leaving him vulnerable to infection and other illness. He was in and out of hospital in the last few years of his life.

Did this stop Steve fighting? No, it did not. He still went to Lithuania, taking me as his carer, to investigate the role it had as a buffer state in terms of immigration control and to alert students to the evils of developing controls. Whilst in Lithuania he took the opportunity to research the fate of his own family during the Nazi era, visiting the shtettle (Jewish village) where a branch of his family came from.

His illness presented him with a new battlefield. What he found were many wonderful, dedicated workers in the health service and in the local authority caring service, on the one hand, and institutions which could not properly come to grips with or even understand the issues of disability, on the other. He had a series of battles large and small. One was to fight for a different type of hospital chair, as the existing design was unsuitable for many disabled people. Steve got involved in disability groups, bringing to their attention relationships between the struggle for disability rights and the fight against racism.

Steve’s last battle was against the New Labour policy of privatising home care in the name of ‘choice’. The only choice he wanted - to keep his existing regular carers - was not on offer. He managed to win the battle in his own case, but saw this as the opening salvo against a system in reaction and a union in retreat. So that war has yet to be won and has lost one of its most militant soldiers.

Culture

Steve often found literary expression for his political involvements. From his little book of poems From the Jews to the genitals (1975) through to an as yet unpublished novel he finished just before his death relating to all of the themes above and more.

Steve lived his life according to the No One Is Illegal motto: ‘Defiance, not compliance’. He will be sorely missed by his children, Rachel and Tom, his daughter-in-law, Cecilia, his two grandchildren, Fintan and Ellen, and by his friends and comrades.

La lotta continua.