Letters

Unlikely bedfellows

I must correct an error of fact in my article on the state of the Scottish left (‘How did it come to this?’, November 4). I was wrong to report that the Scottish Socialist Party had not attended the RMT-organised meeting on October 2 that discussed left cooperation in next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections. In fact, two representatives of the SSP were present. Frances Curran, co-spokesperson of the party, spoke from the platform. Tommy Sheridan was in the body of the hall, but did not speak.

A recall meeting took place on November 6 and two SSP representatives joined the steering committee of the RMT initiative as observers.

The fact that the different factions of the pre-2006 SSP are attending the same meetings raises a glimmer of hope that the left in Scotland may begin to get its act together.

Moves towards left unity in Scotland (and in Britain) still appear exceedingly remote. Currently, the biggest obstacle to progress is the trial for perjury of Tommy and Gail Sheridan. The suggestion in the SSP’s June 2009 statement that the conclusion of the trial will facilitate a “full, open and democratic discussion around left unity in Scotland” is not at all realistic - a point I originally made, but that the Weekly Worker team replaced with a blunter assertion about the improbability of left unity.

The fact is the trial is deepening antagonisms. Over the last four years, some members of the SSP have given every impression of encouraging the authorities to lay perjury charges against the Sheridans - in other words, of using the state to clear themselves of the accusation Tommy Sheridan pressed after the original libel proceedings in 2006 that they were “scabs”.

But even if Tommy Sheridan goes to prison he will continue to exercise political influence. The aura of martyrdom might even magnify it. The SSP leadership was correct to urge him back in 2004 not to use legal channels to defend himself. It is advice they should have taken themselves.

Nevertheless, there is no substitute for discussion. Negotiations between the warring factions should have started years ago. It is still possible (if unlikely) that Solidarity and the SSP will pull back from offering competing left slates in the Scottish parliamentary elections in May next year.

George Galloway’s expression of interest this week in fighting for a seat in the Scottish parliament complicates matters. Who would top a united left list in Glasgow? A possibly jailed Tommy Sheridan, George Galloway or Frances Curran? Just to pose the question lays bare the barriers to progress.

However, sometimes necessity can make unlikely political bedfellows. In my view, left activists should apply maximum pressure to urge the left to stand only a single slate in each Scottish region in May 2011. Left unity, even on a minimal platform, creates a much more fertile environment to advance the case for the single, yet pluralist, communist party uniting around a principled programme that the working class needs.

Unlikely bedfellows
Unlikely bedfellows

Out of the box

I’m sure the Weekly Worker will have an article or two on the Tory exploitation scheme euphemistically called ‘community work’. This letter is not so much a commentary on this, but a follow-up to my previous letter, ‘Bubbling’ (October 15 2009).

The Draft programme isn’t so much the Draft programme of the CPGB as it is the Draft programme of Jack Conrad, as evidenced by the deficiency of discussion on unemployment and on altering the economic sections of that programme to allow more economically radical demands. Nonetheless, some economically radical demands are more important than others, among them the proposals of left economists Hyman Minsky and Rudolf Meidner, and I feel these should be discussed (also as an out-of-the-box means of discrediting what remains of social democracy):

1. Universalisation of annual, non-deflationary adjustments for all non-executive and non-celebrity remunerations, pensions and insurance benefits to at least match rising costs of living.
2. Fuller socio-income democracy through direct proposals and rejections - at the national level and above - regarding the creation and adjustment of income multiple limits in all industries, for all major working class and other professions, and across all types of income.
3. The realisation of zero unemployment structurally and cyclically by means of expanding public services to fully include employment of last resort for consumer services.
4. The increase of real social savings and investment by first means of mandatory and significant redistributions of annual business profits, by private enterprises with more workers than a defined threshold, as non-tradable and superior voting shares to be held by geographically organised worker funds.
5. Enabling the full replacement of the hiring of labour for small-business profit by cooperative production, and also society’s cooperative production of goods and services to be regulated by cooperatives under their common plans.

Despite the broad economism of the Krichevskii-Trotsky method of transitory action platformism (not at all worthy of the term ‘transitional programme’), these specific demands are more than adequate as replacements for the slogans pertaining to sliding scales of wages and hours, public works, and nationalise-the-top-such-and-such.

Out of the box
Out of the box

Rights for jobs?

I’m sure Weekly Worker readers will be interested in a question raised by the Socialist Workers Party central committee in the second of this year’s SWP internal bulletins (Pre-conference Bulletin No2, November).

Responding to a submission in Pre-conference Bulletin No1 from four rank-and-file comrades, which included the statement that voluntary redundancy can seem like “a victory on points” to workers threatened with compulsory dismissal, the CC was outraged. It took the time in its own rambling perspectives statement on ‘Politics in the workplace’ to dismiss the notion that voluntary redundancy (VR) is ever acceptable: “We are against all redundancies. We think that a VR is a job lost. These aren’t our jobs to sell and we should ‘fight for every job’.”

Not content with voicing this frankly idiotic opinion, the CC goes on to threaten any comrade who might be tempted to leave their job in exchange for cash with dire consequences: “No SWP member can take a VR. There may be cases where there are extenuating circumstances. But any decision can only be made in conjunction with the industrial department and/or the CC. If there is no consultation with the SWP, disciplinary action will be taken against anyone who takes a VR.”

To my mind this is absolutely crazy. It is completely the wrong way to view the question. Revolutionaries do not defend and promote the thing called ‘jobs’, but instead fight for the rights of the workers who do them - along with those of former workers, future workers and the unemployed. Those rights must include the freedom to leave a job, whether to seek a better paid or less unpleasant one, to take early retirement or whatever.

The notion that it is a betrayal of your fellow workers or future employees to take voluntary redundancy is a nonsense. Presumably SWP members who have reached 60 or 65 must on no account accept retirement in workplaces where management are looking to cut staff through ‘natural wastage’. That would be another “job lost”, after all.

While we must not compromise on our opposition to cuts in public services, this is different from demanding the indefinite continuation of all current posts. We are for the scrapping of Trident, for example, and we would positively welcome the transfer of workers employed in producing it to useful work. Surely the demand should be for no loss of income for workers no longer required by either their capitalist employer or the state, not the insistence that everything must remain the same.

Concretely, all workers occupying posts considered ‘redundant’ must be offered either another job with no loss of pay or status, or benefit at the same rate while they are being retrained at state expense. To win this sort of ‘voluntary redundancy’ would be more like a knockout than a “victory on points”.

While, obviously, we are very far from having won such demands, today there are thousands of workers who would jump at the chance to escape a dead-end job (the equivalent of building Trident) in exchange for something like a year’s wages. Good luck to them - and to SWP members who feel the same!

Rights for jobs?
Rights for jobs?

Denied equality

A heterosexual couple, Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, were refused a civil partnership at Islington register office on November 9. The registrar cited the legal ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships as the reason for the refusal.

Katherine Doyle, partner of Tom Freeman, said: “The refusal was expected, but it is still very frustrating. We are committed to each other and really want a civil partnership. We don’t like the patriarchal traditions of marriage and don’t want to be called husband and wife. Tom and I see each other as equal partners. That’s why civil partnerships appeal to us. They are more egalitarian and better reflect our relationship.”

In a democratic society, everyone should be equal before the law. There should be no legal discrimination based on sexual orientation. Denying heterosexual couples the right to have a civil partnership is discriminatory and offensive. The bans on same-sex civil marriages and on opposite-sex civil partnerships are a form of sexual apartheid. There is one law for straight couples and another law for gay partners. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Tom and Katherine’s application is part of the new Equal Love campaign, which seeks the repeal of the twin prohibitions on gay civil marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships. Equal Love is organised by the gay rights group, Outrage.

We see the campaign as a historic quest for justice; morally equivalent to the campaigns to overturn the bans on inter-racial marriage in apartheid South Africa and the deep south of the USA. Our aim is to secure equality in civil marriage and civil partnership law. We want both systems open to all couples, gay and straight, so that everyone has a free and equal choice.

Public attitudes have shifted strongly in favour of allowing gay couples to marry. A Populus opinion poll in June 2009 found that 61% of the public believe that gay couples “should have an equal right to get married, not just to have civil partnerships”. Only 33% disagreed.

Denied equality
Denied equality

Combine or die

There’s a lot of confusion displayed in Peter Manson’s reply (Letters, November 4) to my criticism of the CPGB (Weekly Worker) calling themselves the ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ (Letters, October 28). Peter uses and then renounces terms in an illogical fashion - unless maybe he’s differentiating in the same way that makes BP no longer mean ‘British Petroleum’.

I cannot be the only comrade who has been bemused to hear a CPGB(WW) comrade say in a meeting, “As our party said in 1920 ...” Of course, there is nothing false in that; Peter’s group, but also nearly all other left groups as well, are the descendants of the work undertaken 90 years ago by our forebears. And that work, which clearly needs repeating, is why I am in some agreement with the main point of Peter’s reply - that we need to unite all the best militants in a single Marxist party.

Well, nearly. I’d like to see a Marxist-led party, but I think the best way forward is through a new workers’ party which should seek to organise all those beyond Labour. So I’d rather go for what I would expect to be a Scottish Socialist Party or Socialist Alliance-type of arrangement, in which communists would argue for leadership, as well as the need to be both tighter and lefter, but also where we would act democratically towards members with centrist or reformist socialist views (and who may well form the majority). But, yes, a real, new CPGB is what is ultimately needed.

And I think we had better move quickly; the far left in Britain is in danger of near disappearing. In Scotland, the greatest political organisational advance (at least post-war), the SSP, split into two warring parties, which, as far as I can see, have no differences at all in their political platforms. The vote for socialist candidates in this year’s election was an historic low.

I know that Jill Mountford (Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) will have worked very hard to put across basic socialist ideas to a fair audience in the solidly working class Peckham constituency in this year’s general election. Jeremy Drinkall (Workers Power) did the same in neighbouring Vauxhall. Far-left candidates have in the last few decades often got about 1.5% of the vote. Jill got 0.2 % and Jeremy got 0.3%; and it was similar for other socialist candidates elsewhere.

Combine or die.

Combine or die
Combine or die

No to leaders

Having read both articles concerning the woeful problems of the Scottish Socialist Party (‘Chickens come home to roost’ and ‘How did it come to this?’, November 4), I was surprised that neither writer felt obliged to criticise the leadership factor. Invariably, on the ballot papers, the SSP felt it necessary to add in brackets to its name the qualification, “convenor: Tommy Sheridan”.

Nor did either writer feel it necessary for any debate on the practice of secret executive committee meetings or take issue with restricted secret minutes of EC meetings. The SSP membership was barred from access to both.

Socialism will not be established by leaders, but by thinking men and women. The basic position that ordinary people are not capable of understanding socialism and therefore need leaders to tell them what to do involves a hierarchically structured leadership operating in secret and able to hand down ‘the party line’ to the rank-and-file membership.

The SSP put forward Tommy Sheridan as its leader and sought to get workers to follow him and paid the price of that association. Workers should rely on their own understanding and democratic self-organisation, not on leaders.

No to leaders
No to leaders