13.05.2009

Confusion and ambiguity

For or against immigration controls? For or against withdrawal from the EU? British jobs for British workers? A London meeting of the No2EU campaign further highlighted the confused political nature of this rotten electoral bloc. Tina Becker reports

Around 30 people attended the May 11 meeting put on by the North London branch of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, entitled ‘Crisis of capitalism - what can the labour movement do about it?’ The answers given by Nick Wrack (billed as “No2EU candidate in London Southwark”), Robert Griffiths (CPB general secretary) and Roger Sutton (South East Region TUC) were rather short and a tad uninspiring: Vote No2EU.

It seems strange that this meeting was not organised by ‘No to the EU, Yes to Democracy’ itself - probably a reflection of the fact that the CPB is unclear as to what it wants to do with this organisation. RMT leader Bob Crow might be the public face of the campaign, but clearly its politics reek of the CPB’s ‘official communism’. The Stalinists are very much in the driving seat.

In his introduction, comrade Wrack (who resigned from his post as national secretary of Respect in protest at that organisation’s failure to give No2EU full support) was very keen for the campaign to “go beyond its current stage towards a party” - adding, probably with a certain prescience, “no matter what the election results look like”. It is unlikely that this chauvinist platform will pick up many votes in the European elections.

But the CPB might well make the election result a determining factor on how to proceed with it. After all, according to its programme Britain’s road to socialism (partly drafted in its original form by no other than JV Stalin), the CPB still believes that a “left government”, made up of Labour and “communist MPs”, will deliver socialism from on high to the grateful British people.

Conceding that “the left today is in a much weaker position than it has been for many years”, comrade Griffiths made a feeble attempt to explain how New Labour represents a “qualitative break” from the “Labour Party of 40, 50, 60 years ago”. Apparently, Labour MPs then were “nowhere near as corrupt as they are now”, because they were “more aware that they are representing workers and their families. They didn’t believe in challenging the system, of course, but they wanted a better deal for the workers.”

But today’s Labour MPs are “open champions of monopoly capitalism” (as opposed to closet champions). He was less enthusiastic than comrade Wrack in describing the future of the campaign, stressing again and again that “We don’t want to be prescriptive about where this is going”. But clearly, one wing in the CPB is hoping the likes of Bob Crow will be able to deliver a new “party of labour”.

Griffiths teased the audience by saying we should “learn from the mistakes that were made in the past and not repeat them”. Was he really going to challenge the Stalinism and little British nationalism pursued by ‘official communism’ for decades? Er, no. He was talking about the mistakes made by “groups like Respect, the Socialist Alliance and the SLP”. And, no, he was not criticising their watered down programme, their economism or their nature as halfway houses. Quite the opposite: “These organisations are characterised by an overestimation of what is possible today.”

Which is why No2EU needs to be “kept as broad as possible”. Which is why it has been decided to keep the “sectarian left” out. Replying to a challenge by CPGB member Ben Lewis, who criticised the undemocratic and backroom method in which the campaign was set up, Griffiths said it was the RMT who told them that “they didn’t want certain people and organisations involved” - a decision he felt needed to be respected. He must have done so with a heavy heart … So only the “genuine and non-sectarian left” was invited to participate and “ultra-left groups” (specifically the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and CPGB) were not “considered eligible” to get involved.¹

The other contentious issue raised concerned the nationalist character of No2EU’s platform. Perhaps because he saw CPGB members in the audience, Robert Griffiths used his opening remarks to deny that “this campaign has anything to do with British nationalism”.

Nick Wrack, too, claimed that he could see “no evidence” of the “so-called nationalism” of the platform. Though he did admit that “there is ambiguity”, especially when it comes to the position towards the EU: “If I was asked in an interview, I would personally say that I am for a withdrawal, but the organisation has no official position”.

Griffiths claims not to read the Weekly Worker (though he does know it is “full of fiction and lies”), but this paper has not only presented a full critique of the chauvinistic and nationalist nature of the election platform;² we have also chronicled the claptrap that No2EU supporters across the country have come up with. They are obviously extremely confused by the campaign’s political platform and its “ambiguity”. For example: At the launch of No2EU in Manchester, CPB member Dave Hawkins defended immigration controls as a great British tradition and said that British workers should be protected from migrants wanting to take their jobs.³

To clarify their positions, we asked the speakers at the meeting if they support the demand for the abolition of all immigration controls. After all, we can all agree on the demand against “Fortress Europe” - but how about taking a clear position against Fortress Britain? We also asked if the speakers would support our call to give concrete meaning to the second part of the campaign’s name: should ‘Yes to democracy’ include demands for the abolition of the House of Lords and the monarchy, workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage and annual parliaments? I am not sure if the demand for “the right to bear arms” could be heard by the speakers, as the chair tried to shut me up at this point.

Robert Griffiths was less than forthcoming in his reply. Pretending to be extremely bored, he demanded that the CPGB should “read our bloody programme. Of course we are for the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords”. He must have been referring to the CPB’s programme, because the No2EU platform does not deal with the question of democracy in Britain at all.

He also tried desperately not to reply on the question of immigration controls. Repeatedly heckled by CPGB comrades on this, he eventually gave in. But all he would say was: “Of course we are. I tell you again, read the bloody programme.”

Well, we did. The No2EU platform makes in fact no reference to immigration controls at all - though it does implicitly oppose the free movement of peoples. And if he was referring to the CPB’s own programme, that only opposes “immigration, asylum and nationality laws which institutionalise racism”.⁴ So we must assume that for CPB members, non-racist immigration controls - for example, those that stop the free movement of ‘white’ workers across Europe - are not only supportable, but desirable.

Comrade Wrack on the other hand had no problem answering our questions. He clearly opposed all immigration controls: “As a socialist, I have always fought for the rights of workers all over the world to live and work wherever they choose.” He also said that he supports our demands to fill No2EU’s platform with content with it comes to the question of democracy (though again, I am not sure he heard that in our view, such a programme should include the right to bear arms - embodied in the US constitution and upheld even by such an arch revisionist as Eduard Bernstein).

In any case, it is a shame that comrade Wrack seems not to have fought for these demands to be included in No2EU’s electoral platform or challenge the chauvinist slogans of the campaign. And if he did, he did not do so publicly. Neither did the comrades in the Socialist Party. But then, they have put themselves forward as the uncritical foot soldiers for Crow. And just like the CPB, they are also only opposed to “racist” immigration laws⁵. Not one member of SPEW was present at the London meeting.

No2EU is part of the slow, painful death of the old left seeking to overcome the obstacle of Labourism with warmed-up (and in this case little British nationalist) Labourism.

1. See Weekly Worker March 19.
2. See Weekly Worker March 26.
3. See Weekly Worker May 7.
4. www.communist-party.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=253&Itemid=16
5. Socialist Party ‘What we stand for’.