Letters

Vote Ed

I think that significant developments are occurring within Britain’s Labour Party. Since the May general election, more than 36,000 people have joined. Research by Labour HQ suggests that half of these people are former Labour supporters. Another third are former Lib Dem supporters. The remainder are young people wanting to fight the cuts agenda of the Con-Dem coalition.

As one of those new Labour members, I will be using my vote to support Ed Miliband for Labour leader. Under no circumstances can I support Diane Abbott. Given the racism and sexism prevalent amongst Britain’s working class, I think it is madness to support a black woman for Labour leader. At the same time, Diane sends her son to one of the top four private schools in London, with annual fees of £10,000-plus a year.

Ed has the support of Tony Benn and the executive committees of Unite, Unison and the GMB. Voting for Ed is the only way of defeating his brother, David, who still supports the rightwing neo-conservative George W Bush’s US-led invasion and occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Vote Ed
Vote Ed

Christian plea

It’s been a while since I called anybody a ‘comrade’. I was in Militant and the Socialist Party during the 1990s and left in 1998. A bit of a sad and predictable tale, I fear. I’m sure you’ve heard many similar, so I won’t go into it.

Also in the 1990s, I had a rather dramatic reconversion experience back to Christianity, which I still believe in now. I had happily been an atheist since 1981. So now I am still some kind of a socialist; I believe that the rich should pay a lot more tax; that industries and banking should be nationalised; and that we should dump Trident. But I now am a Christian too, so I’m drawn to liberation theology.

Some years ago, I placed an advert in the Quaker magazine to see if anyone else was interested in starting a Christian socialist party. There is no such thing at present. There are Christian parties which stand in elections, but they are not socialists. And there is the Christian Socialist Movement, but that is buried in the Labour Party. Quite how people calling themselves Christians stayed in the Labour Party when Blair took us to war with Iraq I don’t know.

I received only a single reply to my advert - from a pensioner. So the idea of me (48) and one pensioner starting a new party was not a practical one. And it seemed like a sign not to continue with the idea. Some years later, however, I feel drawn to it again. Do you happen to have other Christian readers who might like to join me?

Christian plea
Christian plea

I give up

In response to the comment by Dave Douglass, referring to Raoul Moat, that “The attack on the former partner was cruel and unwarranted”, when is any attack on a former wife/girlfriend warranted?

He shot his ex in the stomach! I give up.

I give up
I give up

Permanent war

Comrade Tony Clark does get rather carried away with the complexity of life (Letters July 15). Basically we only need one approach to fascism - an ideological one. Violence and non-violence flow from ideology. Politics is about thinking first.

Warfare is not the only form of struggle and in practice the policy of ‘no platform for fascists’ by the left in Britain is not aimed at beating fascists up, but of denying them publicity. Except, of course, it gives them publicity. Comrade Clark’s argument for physical force against fascism is just hot air. He has no suggestions for furthering the battle of ideas. Which is why hot air is all he has to offer.

The truth is, as he shows in his letter, the left is more frightened of two fascists outside the door of a meeting than the British National Party (or was it the National Front?) is of the massed ranks of the SWP. It is the demonisation of fascism that is the problem, when what is needed is a realistic assessment of what actually exists.

And on the subject of the BNP are these the fascists comrade Clark wants us to beat up, or has he some other organisation in mind? Comrade Macnair argues that the BNP are not organising as fascists. In my view one of his valid points. So even if we must engage in permanent hot war against fascism he leaves us with no clue as to who we should be hitting.

Self-defence is not a “coward’s ideology”. It is perfectly rational. If organised fascist gangs were roaming the streets practising violence it would be self-defence to go out and get them. Self-defence does not have to be passive. Certainly chasing the EDL around the country organising counter-demonstrations has nothing to do with self-defence except in the minds of the (wilfully?) self-deluded.

Tiny, racist groups do attack people, but does this make them fascist by definition or just apolitical louts? Even though it would be a good thing to force them off the streets, how do you find them? Is violence the best method for dealing with disaffected youth? What purpose is served by defining these unknown thugs as fascists?

Permanent war
Permanent war

Cruel violations

Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Miami Five imprisoned in the US for fighting terrorism, is suffering under another punishment from the US government. Since July 21, Gerardo has been held in the ‘hole’ - a windowless cell of 7x3 feet which he shares with another prisoner, with little ventilation and reaching temperatures of 95 degrees. He is unable to take a shower and is taken outside in a cage for just one hour every other day.

Not only is this cruel punishment being imposed without explanation, and preventing Gerardo from seeing his lawyers at a crucial stage in his preparation for habeas corpus, but it has also been imposed while Gerardo is experiencing health problems.

In April Gerardo requested a medical appointment for conditions developed while in prison, including high blood pressure. Three months later, on July 20 he was seen by a doctor. The doctor prescribed a blood test for a bacterium which is circulating throughout the prison, but instead, the following day, Gerardo was put in the hole.

This punishment is another in the repeated violations of his human rights while in USP Victorville in California. For 12 years, the US government has denied him the basic right to receive visits from his wife, Adriana.

Please take urgent action on behalf of Gerardo today. Please write, email or fax US attorney general Eric Holder (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov) and demand that Gerardo:

• be returned immediately to the general population
• receive urgent medical attention
• be allowed visits by his wife
• be given space and respect, as he prepares for his appeals.

Cruel violations
Cruel violations

Trojan horse

The next Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza has been brought forward from September to the first week of August; the question is, what are the real aims of the convoy, that on the face of it appear as being to carry ‘aid’ to Gaza?

We say that it is the opposite of what the public claims are. The ‘convoy’ aims to prop up the legitimacy of the anti-worker Egyptian regime, to prop up imperialism and to demobilise the world proletariat by misleading us all into believing that the Gaza siege has been broken; further, it turns the masses’ eyes away from the necessity of confronting imperialism, which is behind the 62-year siege against the Palestinians, through working class methods such as general strikes, etc.

Every tablet or bag of flour is handed over either under the control of the Egyptian regime or of the fascist Israeli regime; in other words world imperialism still controls the fate of the Palestinians; in the last Galloway convoy it travelled under the direct support of the regional governor of Egypt in Sinai, who even offered to cover some (or all) of the convoy costs.

The Galloway convoy is a veritable Trojan horse, giving legitimacy and saving the face of the Egyptian regime, and at the very time that imperialism is launching major attacks on the British working class, they are reduced to acts of charity, rather than a general strike against the UK imperialist regime.

Thus, by lulling the world working class into passivist actions, the Galloway convoy is really about sustaining the imperialist siege against the Palestinians.

Trojan horse
Trojan horse

Sexist cliché

Regarding comrade Dave Douglass’s letter of July 22, just to clarify, Raoul Moat was sent down for battering his child. He got out and shot his ex-partner because she went out with another man, whom Moat murdered.

The police failed to protect his victims. The fact that Moat himself had a tragically damaged childhood doesn’t make it okay for him to shoot women who don’t want to sleep with him. Apologists for Moat include the woman who travelled hundreds of miles to his funeral, though she had never met him, as she admired his evasion of the police and considered him a hero and role model for her children. Yes, a woman with children! So he can’t be that bad, eh? Oh, and ‘White power’ tattooed on her wrist. Sorry about that, boys.

On a related topic, your picture researcher might want to have another look at the political implications of visual representation. Your interesting debate on the French burqa ban (‘French burqa ban has nothing to do with women’s rights’, July 22) is seriously compromised by your choice of (yet another) fetishised image of disembodied female body parts, in this case eyes (with make-up) and nails (with varnish). The western fascination with ‘the secrets of the harem’ and the forbidden fruit of the exotic east is a sexist cliché, with just a hint of racism. It has all the radical potential of a Turkish Delight advert. You might consider a more appropriate image to be women swathed in black in the baking heat while their scantily clad male colleagues jump in the river to keep cool. Think of all that male flesh, glistening with sweat. For some reason, this hasn’t received the same attention in your paper. Wonder why?

Perhaps instead we could look forward to your analyses of the disproportionate effect of public sector cuts on women, the legal challenge to the budget being brought by those pesky bourgeois feminists of the Fawcett Society and the prospects for the settlement of backdated equal pay claims by low-paid public sector women workers. I expect that you’ll be frantically busy writing that, so don’t let me keep you.

Sexist cliché
Sexist cliché

Screwed up

Some years ago, sections of the British left, mainly but not exclusively Trotskyist, used to characterise the national liberation struggle in the occupied six counties of Ireland as an ‘acid test’ for British revolutionaries. The concern underlying this characterisation was that the struggle in ‘Northern Ireland’ was one which was being fought against our ‘own’ bourgeoisie and support for it directly challenged national chauvinism. Despite that theoretical rhetoric, those of us working in the Irish Solidarity Movement rarely, if ever, experienced the pleasure of actually seeing these people at solidarity events.

Working in the ISM meant accumulating more knowledge than anyone sane would ever want about the disposition and workings of, in our case, the English prison system. Despite any variation in the prison one thing was constant: the systematic abuse, torture and degradation that republican prisoners of war were subject to by the screws. In the case of the Birmingham Six, we know that the six were beaten up by the screws to cover up the fact that they had already been subject to brutal beatings by the police. This meant that the prisoners could no longer prove that their confessions had been beaten out of them by the cops.

Unless there is evidence to the contrary of massive progressive change within the prison system - and the constant reporting of violent attacks on asylum-seekers points to the opposite view - Eddie Ford is entirely correct in his statement that “The plain fact of the matter is that POA members are responsible for the daily, direct, physical oppression of the most downtrodden section of the working class - a section which has increased in numbers with each month and year that has gone by” (‘Responding to Ken Clarke’s rehabilitation revolution’, July 8).

Workers who have become screws have crossed a class line and can no longer be considered part of the solution, but rather part of the problem. The decision to give Steve Gillan, the general secretary of the POA prison officers’ union space in a communist newspaper to expound the hackneyed thesis that screws are ‘only doing their job’ is frankly astounding and more than a little disgusting (‘We don’t make the laws. We do a job’, July 15).

Screwed up
Screwed up

Laws and rights

The letters column (July 29) demonstrates that many on the left have not grasped even the basics of secularism. Secularism does oppose state bans on the religious behaving like complete idiots if that is their own choice. And we also demand the same rights for atheists. We are opposed to coerced behaviour, but laws do exist, albeit inadequate, to defend individuals from persecution.

If it is not illegal, it is a right. It does not mean that I have to approve of the behaviour or even to pretend that I do. As for whether anyone has the right to dehumanise themselves. How do you stop it? There are many forms of bigotry that dehumanise people. This rather than clothing is the real problem. Communism is a programme for civilising society. Drugs and alcohol also can dehumanise people but that does not mean that state bans are the appropriate answer.

Robert Wilkinson is wrong to think that Sarkozy is defending secularism. He is shoring up a weak political position by ramping up chauvinism. As capitalism goes into decline, all sorts of prejudices and fears will be invented and crazily promoted. We should be more afraid of the state than of tiny religious minorities that really only appeal to the disenfranchised. Do you seriously believe that rightwing Islam is really capable of taking over Europe?

Equality has a habit of meaning very different things. In France it does refer back to an anti-clericist past when the last bourgeois is strangled with the guts of the last priest. It demonises religion. The comrade has simply not been listening carefully enough to the critics of the French state because he is under the spell of its ideology.

All in all, people should be able to walk down the street dressed how they choose without a law making it illegal. How should a communist deal with clothes and the messages they convey? With abuse and disgust, with fear and outrage, with humour and patience? The choice is ours.

I do agree that people who have authority should not be able to hide their identity, but Tory MP Philip Hollobone has no right to make himself invisible to any of his constituents by refusing to see them if they cover their faces. He is there to serve, not to command, his constituents.

Jacob Richter certainly knows how to make religious people feel like second-class citizens. He wants all religious people to worship in the same building. How is he going enforce such a measure? By state decree? By threats of prosecution and fines? At the point of a bayonet? This type of approach owes everything to the spirit of August Blanqui. It is certainly alien to the spirit of Marxism, which stresses persuasion in such matters. Not force. While we are against the state - any state - forcing religious people to worship and behave according to our atheistic dictats, we recognise a duty by communists as communists to carry out subtle anti-religious propaganda. Certainly when it comes to particular dress codes - men wearing beards, growing dreadlocks, women wearing the burqa, wearing wigs - a relaxed, patient attitude, which does not get hung up on what should be completely trivial questions, is by far the best approach. What we are really interested in is not how people dress, but whether or not, and to what degree, they participate in the class struggle. The more they do, the more this encourages them to develop secular beliefs through their own experience.

Sorry, Bill Cookson, but we do not believe in the slogan ‘rights for whites’. The danger is that it will be interpreted as out and out racism and not a call for equality for all. We champion the working class and universal human liberation.

Laws and rights
Laws and rights