Letters

Contempt

I have been reading the Weekly Worker for approximately 12 months and I am struck by the similarity of views in letters and articles concerning others who would probably describe themselves as ‘leftwing’. The letter by Eddie Ford (Weekly Worker 77) seems to sum up the collective view of your writers. His letter in support of the Year of the Party seeks to draw in and inspire pro-Party elements, which will include himself “of course”. But woe betide others who do not fit his criteria of communist perfection.

He has contempt for official communists, revolutionary left, Communist Action Group, Independent Communists, Trotskyists, NCP, Straight Left and all of the Labour Party, plus, I am sure, others too numerous to mention in a paper of only four pages. Who needs the Tories to divide the working class when we have Eddie Ford, who does the job for the Tories inadvertently or willingly?

Lucky for Eddie, others in the CPGB think alike, so he does not feel isolated. As for me, I am just a life-time communist - non-elitist, prepared to listen to other communist and non-communist opinions. I respect others who work in leftwing groups, as it is not easy in our very conservative society, and I am very pro-working class, because - with all their faults and prejudices - they are the class that contributes the most to our very diverse society. If any communist party is to grow significantly, it must shed sectarian and elitist views, take the working class as it is, and agitate, educate and organise it into a class capable of taking power.

I do not think I would be good enough for your party, Eddie: I am too fallible; but, by damn, I am proud to be working class and a communist.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the defeat of fascism. I will enjoy being sentimental and in some way show respect for millions of communists and non-communists who sank their differences and defeated fascism. I will be proud to recall the communists who led the Red Armies and the resistance movements all over Europe and Asia.

If we are to defeat capitalism we need a Communist Party that respects diverse opinion and builds its strength or unity within the working class.

Best wishes in your search for perfection, Eddie. You have helped me reflect on my past mistakes. Your contribution will help us all in our search for enlightenment. Thanks for the memories.

DC Cozens
Dyfed

Left hot air

It appears that the journalist Andrew Rawnsley has been reading the Weekly Worker carefully, if his recent article in The Observer (January 29) is anything to go by:

“The defenders of clause four cling to it as an ideological security blanket in a world of frightening change. They will not let go of a text from the beginning of this century for fear that they cannot find anything relevant or radical to say to the next one.”

Spot on, Andrew! Similarly: “Clause four, part four is not so much a religious icon as a relic. A relic, moreover, of dubious provenance ... the very antiquity of the language gives it that Old Testament flavour.”

Exactly. Incisive insight from a bourgeois journalist which puts to shame the pathetic mystifying drivel in Socialist Worker, Militant, Socialist Outlook etc, which is rallying behind clause four. However, the mounting reformist hysteria is hardly surprising. Homo Sapiens Lefticus Reformisticus is facing extinction, as their delusions of a Parliamentary British Road To Socialism’ (or, if you are an ‘orthodox’ Trotskyist, burrowing yourself deep into the Labourite carcass so you can ‘be with the workers’) melts into the Blairite thin air.

SWP/Militant members should also take note of Rawnsley’s assessment of the ‘new’ clause four: “Draft replacements have tended to be so platitudinous that they could be supported by a one-nation Tory”. At the next general election will the SWP (and their clone-like rivals) be telling us to vote for ‘one-nation Toryism’ with no illusions? The mind boggles!

Perhaps we should write to Rawnsley offering him a regular column in the Weekly Worker or, better still, write to Mr Anthony Blair congratulating him on his brilliant ‘tactic’, which has exposed the rotten nature of Labourism (particularly the leftist variety) far more successfully than a mountain of communist propaganda could ever have done.

Danny Hammil
South London