Letters
Nationalism
Comrade VN Gelis sees everything through nationalist eyes (Letters, June 3). Greek economic problems can best be solved through Greek independence. Hence the call for a return to the drachma because it would be a blow against the big capitalists of the European Union. This case would be stronger if near neighbour Croatia were not trying to get in to the euro in order to improve its economic prospects.
The truth is capitalism is organised internationally and has through institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, G7 (not to mention the US treasury) a fairly uniform economic policy for the world. In the European Union or out, there is no escape from imperialism.
With the boundless enthusiasm of an activist comrade Gelis looks to resistance as the answer, giving examples of states that have resisted and are “still standing”. Zimbabwe and Iran are cited - and perhaps Albania is not so bad after all. Venezuela was the only country on comrade Gelis’s list where the working class can be said to be resisting imperialism of their own free will, having voted for Chávez in free and fair elections.
Nationalists always end up downplaying the importance of democracy and class. In fact the comrade misunderstands Enso White, being unable to think outside the nationalist mindset. White does not believe the revolution must start in the UK. It can start anywhere and, yes, can even begin in a national struggle. Though it will have a better chance of succeeding if it starts as the conscious activity of the working class organising as an international class.
The comrade also misunderstands me. I was not arguing that local struggles are too weak to have any effect, but that they need to be coordinated and controlled by a centrally organised party that can operate across national boundaries. The Bolsheviks did that and they were highly conscious of the national question too, but not as nationalists.
I do not disagree that resistance will occur, but the examples given by the comrade prove there is a big difference between resistance and victory. I like to think that the popular explosion of the Argentinean masses reduced the ability of the capitalist class to exploit the financial crisis to its fullest extent. I welcome resistance, but, as I remember it, they were banging their pots and pans because they had nothing to put in them. Not because they had an economic answer for the world.
Comrade White and I are both for the organisation of the working class by a Communist Party on the widest possible geographic basis. We are for the deepest democratic organisation of that party and part of its remit should be the ability to make centralised decisions. This will give us the best chance of victory.
Nationalism is not an answer. All states are locked into an international world system. The challenge is to make the working class hegemon. Nationalism encourages localism, chauvinism, racism and religious bigotry. Its heroes are frequently dictators - and dictators who only look after a minority of the population at that.
Nationalism
Nationalism
BA safety
Thank you for publishing Peter Manson’s brilliant analysis of the BA cabin crew dispute (‘No to the race to the bottom’, May 27). The idea of Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson summoning Socialist Workers Party members to the Arbitration, Conciliation and Advisory Service to break up the negotiating meeting is ludicrous. Del can’t stand the SWP.
During and before the election campaign, Unite sent no fewer than six personalised letters each to its members, signed by Del and Tone, and referring to actual local issues, urging them to vote Labour. On other matters, even including the rights and wrongs of the BA cabin crew dispute, Unite members hear nothing from their union.
As Peter points out, people are concerned about travel safety. And it’s not just the volcanic ash either. On some planes, heated and pressurised air comes straight from the engines into the cabins without being filtered. This saves the airline the expense of heating and pressurising air from outside the aircraft.
The Aerotoxic Association and others have useful information on this.
BA safety
BA safety
Division
Will Pragnell’s article on the current election for Unison general secretary was most informative, but I cannot see any real advantage in supporting one candidate over the other (‘Holmes and Bannister divide the left vote’, June 3). Roger Bannister has a proven record, but wants Unison to disaffiliate from Labour. If it is possible for him to bring this about then voting for him would in my view would be a mistake. But is it possible?
The real problem is the sectarian nature of the left. Paul Holmes supporters proposed a democratic way of sorting out who should be the candidate, but Bannister and the Socialist Party in England and Wales chose to boycott the activist meeting where such a decision could have been made. Which shows their arrogance and sectarianism - presumably they knew they wouldn’t get a hearing. The rest of the left is also sectarian and unrepresentative of the wider Unison membership. Were they principally motivated by a desire to do SPEW or do they have something more substantial on offer? It sounds like the former to me.
Had Bannister deigned to turn up and argue his case, he could have pointed out that as the best known candidate he would get a much larger vote than Holmes. Is Holmes a man for the future? Has he the skills needed “to develop the base amongst the currently apathetic and disengaged majority”? Will seems to think not, describing him as a left bureaucrat who wants control over the membership, not control by the membership. In fact he thinks the struggle between Holmes and Bannister is just part of the left’s “unhealthy preoccupation with winning union positions”. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of either man.
If this is the case wouldn’t it be best just to go for the left candidate likely to win the largest vote, despite the unappetising behaviour of SPEW?
Division
Division
Draft v draft
I think that Tina Becker’s criticisms of Die Linke’s draft programme are a tad excessive, especially when compared to the weaker points in the CPGB’s Draft programme (‘Danger of honest opportunism’, June 3).
She says: “There is almost an obsession with the Eigentumsfrage (the question of property relations).” Why shouldn’t there be? Scumbags like Bodo Ramelow came out of the woods to say that ‘private property isn’t the work of the devil’ or something along those lines. If you ask me, they aren’t ‘obsessed’ enough, when considering that I’ve written directional commentary advocating the “full replacement of the hiring of labour for small-business profit by cooperative production, and also the enabling of society’s cooperative production of goods and services to be regulated by cooperatives under their common plans”.
According to Tina, “The draft demands ‘the strict separation and democratic control of the police, the federal armed forces and the intelligence services’ (p29). Note that even the secret service is to be retained.” But the programme doesn’t say anything about the secret police apparatus. It just says “intelligence services”, which in common language refers a lot more to foreign espionage and counter-intelligence than to domestic repression. When the KGB is referred to as an “intelligence service”, it is within the context of foreign espionage/counter-intelligence and not domestic repression (‘secret police’). There’s nothing wrong with keeping foreign espionage/counter-intelligence, if you recall the Trust Operation of the Soviet Cheka/GPU.
She writes: “The section on ‘democratisation of society’ is actually tucked away right at the end of this section and starts with yet another workplace-based demand: workers should have the right ‘to veto the closure of plants that are not threatened by insolvency’ (p28). Strong stuff, it isn’t.” That one demand is much stronger than the CPGB’s approach to mass unemployment not based on company insolvency, which calls just for “no redundancies”. I also don’t see the CPGB call for bans on derivatives and other speculation.
Tina states: “It does not get any more ‘radical’ than the demand for ‘more direct democracy through national referenda’ and some rather empty formulations on the need to ‘strengthen communities’ and establish ‘round tables’ (p21). Also, it wants ‘societies, associations and initiatives’ to ‘take over some tasks of society’. Naturally, they should have ‘adequate financing of the assigned tasks’ and should have ‘democratic legitimacy’.”
Die Linke’s take on the mass media question is more extensive than the CPGB’s. “Securing of large, commonly accessible digital bodies of knowledge ... defend and enlarge public spaces of information and culture, as well as press freedom in editorial departments” goes beyond the CPGB’s usual call against intellectual property rights and censorship.
Draft v draft
Draft v draft
Israel mistakes
Tony Greenstein’s latest attempt to delegitimise Israel and dehumanise Israelis comes as no surprise (‘Proving Europides right’, June 3). The knee-jerk response to the tragic violent confrontation between one ship of Turkish Islamists against the Israeli Defence Force (whilst the other ‘aid for Gaza’ ships peacefully sailed to port) is typical of the hysterical and inflammatory language of the voices baying for the blood of Israel.
Firstly, Greenstein writes that the IDF “murdered” innocent Turks, but the action was, in fact, self-defence. This is clearly evident in the film footage released. Secondly, Robert Fisk of The Independent, cited in his support, is no neutral observer. His biased reporting against Israel is well documented. Thirdly, “Israel’s propaganda videos”, supposedly used by the BBC, according to Greenstein, were actually balanced against footage from Al Jazeera, which the BBC did not always acknowledge.
Fourthly, “reaction in the street” was fuelled by anti-Israel and, let us be frank, anti-Semitic sentiments and attitudes, garnered by pro-Palestinian and pro-Islamist organisations, especially on campuses up and down the country, by the likes of Mr Greenstein and his friends. I have witnessed the shameful 1930s-style ‘boycotts’ of stores and shop outlets of Jewish and Israeli goods in recent times, which have left the left looking more and more like the fascists over whom they claim moral superiority.
Fifthly, Greenstein and co conveniently forget why the blockade of Gaza exists, claiming that the Israeli state is simply ‘colonialist’ and vindictive. But he knows that once Gaza was ethnically cleansed of Jews and Israelis, as part of the land-for-peace deal, Hamas used the Gaza strip as a military base, supplied by Iran, from which to murder, kidnap and kill Israelis. If there was no existential threat to Israel, there would be no “paranoia” (note Greenstein’s Orwellian use of psychiatric labels for his opponents) about security issues.
Sixthly, there are hundreds of tons of aid reaching Gaza and the photos on the internet show this. Greenstein’s claim of “starvation” in Gaza is pure hysteria, or wanton propaganda: millions of euros and dollars are sent to the Palestinian territories to the sum of which any welfare state would be satiated. If Israel had not been attacked by armed invasions and terrorism since its formation, it would not have to be so vigilant about its security.
Before lamenting the mistakes of the IDF, perhaps Mr Greenstein should take a closer look at the human rights abuses of his favourite pro-Islamic regimes: Gaza/Hamas, the Arab states and Turkey. If Mr Greenstein was in a court of law, he would be better off seeking justice in Israel than any other of his favourite pro-Islamic states.
Finally, the claim by Greenstein that Israel is responsible for growing anti-Semitism is an age-old rationalisation - à la ‘If the Jews hadn’t done in Jesus’, ‘If the Bolsheviks hadn’t been controlled by the Jews’, and didn’t you know, ‘If the Jews hadn’t upset the fascists, then World War II would have been cancelled.’
Greenstein is marshalling his arguments, as most of the left does, to meet the goal of the delegitimisation and the destruction of Israel. Let us be clear. Whatever Israel does, mistakes and all, it is any bent stick to beat a dog, as far as Tony Greenstein is concerned. Yes, Israel makes mistakes. Every democracy does when defending itself. But the real point is that Greenstein’s argument does not help to remove the worst threat to the solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which is the Islamist-Hamas grip on Gaza by the throat. Once again, Greenstein’s article reveals that the left have thrown their independence overboard for a political alliance with Islamism: it is this pseudo-left which will enter the dustbin of history for betraying the people, not the state of Israel.
Israel mistakes
Israel mistakes
Terrorised
Tony Greenstein fails to understand the rationale for the Israeli regime’s brutal attack on the Freedom Flotilla. A report on Sky News finally revealed the fact that they attacked at night, making the defiance from some of the aid workers, having been fired on first, completely understandable. The regime clearly wanted to terrorise Palestinian supporters, just as they have terrorised ordinary Palestinian people themselves.
Terrorised
Terrorised
Blind alley
If Tom Hicky, Mike Cushman and Sue Blackwell (Letters, June 3) claim to represent “120,000 teaching and related staff in colleges and universities in the UK” for “policies supporting boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel”, they are misrepresenting trade unionists and workers and leading them into a blind alley.
The resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict will not come from shutting down liaison and cooperation between Israeli and British colleges. Only closed-minded bigots would deny the exchange of ideas, scientific innovation, the arts and humanities, and staff/student exchanges, which are the oxygen of democracies around the world. The exchange and cooperation between Israeli and British colleges and universities is the way forward, including those colleges and universities in Palestinian territories.
The political agenda of Hicky, Cushman and Blackwell is the delegitimation of the state of Israel and the destruction of the peace process. The “boycott” is a distraction from the real issue, which is for the Palestinian-Hamas clerical-fascists to accept the right of the state of Israel to exist, or be politically overthrown.
Moreover, the boycott policy supported by Hicky, Cushman and Blackwell gives cover to the clerical-fascist Hamas to continue its military and terrorist objectives, with the support of Islamic states like Iran. T hus their naive anti-Israel bashing plays into the hands of the Islamists and cruelly misleads trade unionists and another generation of duped students who have the misfortune of being represented and mentored by such politically and morally bankrupt ‘union leaders’.
Blind alley
Blind alley
Two ships
Many people around the world are comparing the stories of the Exodus and the Mavi Marmara. While there is a similarity in form, the class content of the two episodes are very different. The pro-Palestinian convoy acted to break the siege of oppressed people in Gaza, while the Exodus was part of the settler colonialist project.
The Zionist leadership in Palestine - who did not lift a finger to save the millions of persecuted Jews and who helped the western imperialists in closing the gates before the Jews, as their only interest was their colonialist project - insisted after the war on settling 100,000 Jewish refugees only in Palestine, where they would be used for the ethnic-cleansing of the Palestinians in 1947-48.
On November 9 1946, a ship was bought by the Potomac Shipwrecking Co, acting as an agent of the Jewish terrorist group, Haganah. It was renamed ‘Exodus 1947’ after the biblical Jewish exodus from Egypt to Canaan. The ship left Baltimore on February 25 1947 and headed for the Mediterranean. Ike Aronowicz of Haganah (special unit of commandos) was the captain and Haganah commissioner Yossi Harel was the operation commander. It sailed with 4,515 passengers from France on July 11 1947.
The British royal navy cruiser Ajax and a convoy of destroyers trailed the ship from very early in its voyage, and boarded it some 40 km from shore. The boarding was violently opposed by the passengers, who argued, among other things, that the ship was in international waters, where the navy had no jurisdiction. Several hours of fighting followed, with the ship’s passengers spraying fuel oil and throwing smoke bombs, life rafts and whatever else came to hand, down on the British sailors trying to board, The Times reported at the time. Soon the British opened fire. Two immigrants and a crewman on the Exodus were killed; scores more were wounded, many seriously. The ship was towed to Haifa and from there its passengers were deported, first to France and eventually to Germany, where they were placed in camps near Lübeck.
The story of the Exodus became part of the Zionist historiography that generations of Israeli Jews grew up on - as generations of Afrikaners grew up on the story of the Great Trek. Arthur Stevens relates in the 1985 book The persuasion explosion that the idea for the book Exodus came about when Edward Gottlieb, an American public relations man seeking to improve Israel’s image in the US, decided to commission a novel about Israel’s origins that showed it in a good light and hired Uris to write it. According to Stevens, “Uris’s novel solidified America’s impressions of Israelis as heroes, of Arabs as villains; it did more to popularise Israel with the American public than any other single presentation through the media.”
With the failure of Israel to win any sympathy for its raid on the Mavi Marmara, the racist incitement against the Palestinian citizens of Israel is reaching a new level that reminds us of the incitement against the Jews in Germany between 1934 and 1941. The incitement is led by interior minister Eli Yishai, who proposed the revoking of Arab knesset member Hanin Zuabi’s citizenship and the formulation of a bill demanding her expulsion from the legislature. The bill calls for the “ousting [of] a sitting knesset member if the member was involved in the action of an enemy country or in incitement against the state of Israel”. Basically, this bill defines Turkey as the enemy of Israel and labels protests against the criminal activity of Israel on the high seas as treason.
This racist trend is not limited to Eli Yishai and is expressed by most of the parties in the knesset, with the encouragement of most ministers. If it was limited to the Zionist parties it would be a better situation. This trend is widespread among the Israeli Jewish population, who are moving further to the right with every passing day. Talab al-Sana, a knesset member for the United Arab List, said on Monday that he had received death threats apparently from members of the public angered by his reaction to Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid convoy. He blames incitement by rightwing knesset members.
It is wrong to call Israel a fascist regime, or to speak of the danger of fascism, because there is no mass movement among the Israeli Jews directed against a bourgeois democratic regime. The rightwing movement is in support of the special kind of totalitarian regime that exists in Israel. What we see is the psychotic reaction of a settler colonialist society that is becoming further isolated among the masses of the entire world with every passing day. They believe their own propaganda that the masses of the world are against the Israeli state not because it is a racist oppressor, but because they are Jews.
The only hope of Jews around the world is to break their ties with the reactionary Zionist movement and support the working class revolutionary programme of transforming society into workers’ states - the transitional step toward a socialist society free of racism. Israel is a death trap not only for the Israeli Jews, but for Jews around the world. When Israel stops being useful to the other imperialists, Jews around the world will face the worst kind of anti-Semitism since World War II. They will see the same rightwing reactionaries that Israel considers as friends turning against the Jews.
Two ships
Two ships
Prize piece
Congratulations on a stunning victory in the Peter Stringfellow Memorial Prize for services to gender equality (‘Prostitution: decriminalise, not prohibit, not legalise’, June 3). In a competitive field, your paper has yet again shown itself second to none in a refreshingly unself-conscious reliance on what some have considered to be astonishingly hackneyed clichés of reactionary misogynist rubbish.
You do not shy away from illustrating an article on prostitution with a picture of depersonalised, fetishised female body parts, shunning the more challenging (though demonstrably realistic) image of a socially inadequate bloke persistently kerb-crawling women, no matter how unwelcome his attention.
Nor do you hesitate to place the responsibility for an inadequate state response in the judicial control of sexual violence where it rightly belongs - firmly on the shoulders of a bewildered eight-year-old girl (‘Victims of British justice’, June 3). Avoiding sentimentality, you take care to remind us of the notorious unreliability of females of any age giving ‘evidence’ in such cases and carefully explain the true nature of youthful sexual experimentation. Those few readers who have direct experience of being inquisitive eight-year-old girls may struggle to remember occasions of accusing our friends of rape. But we are unreliable, of course.
Finally, we benefit from a cogent analysis of prostitution, focusing on its timeless inevitability and the economic hardship which drives women into “this unsavoury line of work”. A commendable gift for understatement. At no point is there any suggestion that we should question why men pay for sex. Men’s need for sexual access to someone else’s body is unchallenged. Presumably it’s natural. Though oddly enough not for women. Conveniently, we have no autonomous sexuality whatsoever and thus we remain free to respond to the needs of others. And we must avoid both the patronising idea that “sex work” is oppressive and the trap of thinking it would be OK to make it an offence to pay for sex with a prostitute subjected to force, whether or not you know force has been used. Apparently, “it is difficult to imagine any reliable way to act within the law”. Really? Readers of an analytical bent may wish to submit suggestions as to how the seemingly impossible might be achieved.
Apparently, “sex workers’ organisations” think it is unworkable. The Eaves Project don’t. But they don’t call what they do “sex work”. They call it prostitution and they don’t attempt spurious defence of the men who use it. Their research showed that half the men who use prostitutes know or believe them to be controlled by pimps. One man said of a prostitute: “She was frightened and nervous. She told me she had been tricked. She seemed fine with the sex. She asked me to help her. I said there was little I could do.” Is there really any difficulty in working out that this woman didn’t want to be there? Clearly, this man understood that her evidence was unreliable and her opinion could be safely ignored, while his behaviour would be regarded as naturally inevitable.
I am once again impressed by your tireless commitment to the fight for women’s liberation. Good luck with that.
Prize piece
Prize piece
Prison flaw
Eddie Ford’s article ‘Victims of British justice’ (June 3) starts off quite inaccurately. He maintains that “The UK, bar the Czech Republic and Albania, locks up more people than any other country in Europe - worse than Turkey even.”
A moment’s check on the reference he gives at the end of this sentence shows that this assertion is wrong. In fact, the reference lists 14 European countries and territories that imprison at a higher rate than the UK.
This Wikipedia list puts the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Jersey, the Czech Republic, Spain, Albania, Luxembourg and Gibraltar ahead of the UK, based on numbers incarcerated per 100,000 population. Even if Eddie protests that much of the Russian Federation is outside Europe, the larger part of the rest of this list comprises moderately sized or relatively large and significant countries that he left out, including Poland and Spain.
But why only compare the UK with Europe and the USA statistically? The UK territories of the British Virgin Island, Anguilla, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands all lock up a much higher proportion of their populations than the UK proper, as do Cuba, South Africa, Israel, Chile, Taiwan, the UAE, Brazil, Iran, Mexico, and Jamaica. UK-Scotland is, after all, joint 86th in this list.
While the thrust of Eddie’s article is along the right lines, exhibiting such an important flaw at the outset does no-one any favours.
Prison flaw
Prison flaw