Letters

Scab stab

I draw your attention to quotes from articles by Mike Macnair (2006) and from Sarah McDonald (2011) respectively:

“If the allegations are substantially true and Sheridan has simply lied ... in court, then he would have abused the legal process of the capitalist state to give himself a false reputation and smear his opponents in the [Scottish Socialist Party] leadership ... This would amount, as the [United Left majority faction in the SSP] argues, to a gross breach of proletarian morality and a scab attack on the party he co-founded. If this is the case, he should be driven out of the workers’ movement.

“If the allegations are substantially false, then by making and retaining a minute of the November 9 executive meeting which included the statement that Sheridan had admitted to a part of the News of the World’s allegations, the executive majority committed themselves to support for an attack by the Murdoch press on the SSP’s most prominent leader. If they deliberately followed this course of action for factional reasons, then they are scabs and should be driven out of the workers’ movement” (‘Sheridan wins first round’, August 10 2006).

“The verdict in the Tommy Sheridan case should be seen as a blow to the workers’ movement and a victory for the long-running campaign against a prominent working class leader ... But he should not have labelled those on the SSP leadership ‘scabs’ for telling the truth when they were forced to - after all, why would anyone perjure themselves over someone else’s sex life? ... Sheridan was targeted by the News of the World for his role as a working class leader - and that is why we side with him against News International, the police and the state, irrespective of his own foolishness and irresponsible behaviour” (‘Scabs and vengeance’, January 6 2011).

So Mike Macnair in 2006 took the view that, if Sheridan was shown to have lied, then he would have carried out a “scab attack on the party he co-founded”, while Sarah McDonald in 2011 still sees Sheridan as a “working class leader” targeted by the NotW who still deserves solidarity despite (untruthfully) branding his former comrades as liars and scabs.

And, according to Ms McDonald, George McNeilage is the worst villain of the lot: “... demanding £250,000 for helping News International to nail Sheridan. Again, the SSP failed to take action. McNeilage should have been expelled for his blatant crossing of class lines (the significant financial gain making the whole thing even slimier), but the leadership refused to take any action because it was ‘not in their culture’.”

Sorry, I don’t get it. Sheridan lied and tore his party apart. He forced people to go to court and tried to morally blackmail them into perjuring themselves to protect his reputation as a good, decent, Scrabble-playing, family man. When people refused to perjure themselves, he and his supporters (including the Committee for a Workers’ International and Socialist Workers Party) called them liars and scabs. Sheridan and his supporters did everything they could to destroy the lives and reputations of people who had told the truth (see, for example, ‘Sheridan trial shame has left my life in ruins’ The Observer August 13 2006). After the initial libel ‘victory’, Sheridan and his supporters also put people at risk of being taken to court and charged with perjury.

As far as I’m concerned, those SSP people at risk of being charged had no choice except ‘collaborating’ with the police, as a perjury inquiry had been initiated by the judge at the end of the libel case. And McNeilage’s tape, in the end, helped expose Sheridan for the liar that he is.

While not being a supporter of the SSP myself, I took an interest in this case, as many of my family and friends in Glasgow had gone from being Labour supporters to strong SSP voters. The SSP gave them hope and some optimism for the future. That hope has just gone down the drain because of the actions of Sheridan, the CWI, the SWP and the motley crew that make up Solidarity.

So, when the various factions who saw it worthwhile to smear honest socialists ask for support in various ‘fights against the cuts’ and ‘building a new workers’ party’, pardon me if I can’t believe a word they say. When push came to shove, they stabbed the SSP in the back.

Scab stab
Scab stab

Nothing wrong

Aside from the second to last paragraph, which justifies the existence of the Zionist state, and is so jarringly at odds with the rest of the article that it seems spliced in, comrade Eddie Ford’s article, ‘Don’t give in to the slurs’ (January 6), is excellent.

Apart from some clumsy formulations, did Clare Solomon say anything wrong?

Nothing wrong
Nothing wrong

Depravity

While many non-Iraqis have welcomed the return of Muqtada al-Sadr from his self-imposed ‘exile’ in Iran, there are some who can see beyond his phrases of “peace” and “resistance”. I can understand that some on the left do like to cheer the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but al-Sadr’s anti-US rhetoric is given greater prominence than his declaration about wanting to “eradicate” the “depravity” of Iraq’s LGBT community.

Equally as unlikely to grace the British media is the fact that al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, in areas such as Basra, has imposed a ban on such deviant behaviour as listening to music or, worse still, having a non-religious ring tone. And nothing is more offensive to al-Sadr than the sight of men wearing shorts - his issue of a fatwa in 2005 banning such garments resulted in the murder of a coach and two members of Iraq’s national tennis team, while a further fatwa denounced football as “evil” and “sacrilegious”, with sports in general being described as part of an “Israeli conspiracy”.

So, while some may agree with al-Sadr that the US and UK are the “common enemy”, it needs to be remembered that he and his band of marionettes were only ever given their job of ‘forming a government’ in the presence of an ongoing occupation.

Depravity
Depravity

Guilty fascists

It is remarkable that contributors to this newspaper persist in trying to present the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as in some way ‘socialist’ or progressive.

The latest example is Andrew Northall’s letter (January 6). Northall justifies Stalin’s purges of the 1930s on the grounds that they were effective in destroying a “fascist fifth column”. If this had survived, it would have weakened the Soviet war effort against Germany and compromised the future of socialism. It was therefore necessary to arrest and execute 700,000 fifth columnists. Unfortunately, “a number of innocent people died”, but “the great majority were guilty”.

Northall proves the guilt of these fascist infiltrators by appealing to the authority of Oleg V Khlevniuk, a senior research fellow of the Russian Federation. He does not discuss the methods that Khlevniuk is supposed to have used to establish the guilt of this great majority. Nor does he mention any critical scholarly debate of a controversial opinion he attributes to Khlevniuk. Instead he states that interpretations differing from his own are forms of “cold war and Trotskyist conspiracy theory”.

What is striking about Northall’s argument is that it minimises the extent of the barbarity of Stalinism by ignoring the deaths of people through torture and beatings, people worked to death in labour camps and those who died as a result of forced collectivisation. It presents a world war that could have been avoided if German communists had allied with social democrats to prevent fascism as a victory for socialism. Moreover, it assumes that the regime’s justifications for its inhumanity deserve to be supported and admired.

As a Stalinist, Northall rejects Marxist approaches to understanding the purges. These start from Marx’s assumption that the key to understanding a social formation is to examine the mode of its surplus extraction. The Soviet purges can be understood as a means of consolidating forms of control over the alienation of workers’ labour-power. In the absence of an exchange with capital, alienation was achieved through force. Controls included police surveillance and the arbitrary arrest of workers. These served to atomise them and prevent collective opposition to the bureaucratic elite benefiting from their exploitation. The purges destroyed any possibility of internal criticism of the regime, especially from the left.

Northall’s argument assumes that the former USSR was socialist because it had a nationalised economy. The regime needed to exterminate a section of its population in order to protect nationalised property relations from fascist and therefore capitalist and imperialist influence. Nationalisation is, however, only a necessary condition for socialism, not a sufficient one.

Nationalised property is compatible with capitalist social relations both nationally and globally. The recent nationalisation of banks is an example of national compatibility. Fascism or ‘national socialism’ is another. Stalinism is an example of global compatibility. Any so-called ‘socialist’ justification for oppressing workers to protect nationalisation has therefore no theoretical, empirical, political or moral foundation.

Guilty fascists
Guilty fascists

Rule of iron

By their own admission, the Socialist Party of Great Britain is not and cannot become the political leadership of the working class in the struggle for socialism in Britain.

In complete opposition to Alan Johnstone and Stuart Watkins (Letters, January 6), I will put forward what can be called the ‘iron law of leadership’, as far as the struggle for socialism is concerned. This law simply states that leadership is inevitable and cannot be abolished or circumvented. The inevitability of leadership arises from there being different levels of political understanding, ability, motivation and commitment in the working class.

Also, it is important to recognise that leadership may have deeper psychological roots. Human beings have always followed leaders, be it in politics, religion, scientific ideas or even fashion. So I am not going to place any bets on the wiseacres of the SPGB being able to get rid of it in the working class.

Those who are fighting against the idea of leadership in the working class are seeking to behead the proletariat, with a guillotine operated by the SPGB. However, Johnstone is right to point out that the validity of any idea can only be determined by practice, or “concrete developments on the ground”. Defending the scientific method may indicate that he is upholding the SPGB’s anti-leadership theory in a less dogmatic manner. The problem for Johnstone is that historical experience has already dismissed his anti-leadership ideas.

Finally, people who are fighting to destroy leadership in the working class are really opposing formal leadership structures where the leadership is open and accountable, as far as this is made possible by political conditions. While concealing themselves behind anti-leadership rhetoric, they replace open leadership with informal, secret and unaccountable leadership cliques. Unable to escape the iron law of leadership, they opt for informal leadership, behind the backs of the working class.

Rule of iron
Rule of iron

Trust

I applaud the trade union leaders who are mobilising workers to fight against the government’s cuts. It is with sadness that I learnt this week that Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, has issued redundancy notices to all fixed-term contract staff, some of whom have worked for PCS for over four years.

Mr Serwotka has repeatedly said in public that there should be no job losses and repeatedly defends workers’ rights. Is he following Nick Clegg’s example of getting elected by saying one thing and in practice doing another?

Trust
Trust

Nuke refute

Mike Macnair’s article, ‘Pause for thought’ (December 16), on the rule of law was well written, but I do have a concern for something that’s missing in the discussion: civil disobedience.

Even the reformists of the Second International supported illegal actions like peaceful sit-ins or strikes, so long as it didn’t descend into violence proper (and by this, I mean the real violence of smashing windows, burning buildings, etc). It’s like an axis of legal-illegal on the horizontal and peaceful-violent on the vertical.

The Marxist tradition has it wrong on ‘Peaceful means where possible and violent revolution when necessary’. It should be: ‘Legal means where possible and illegal means when necessary, with the bourgeois authorities determining the level of peace or violence’, emulating more the US civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr than the British anti-poll tax action.

I’d also like to ask comrade Macnair personally, or any other CPGB comrade familiar with law or legal history, this question: if we’re going to scrap the ever-bourgeois idea of rule of law and the slogan ‘law and order’, this means replacing words and processes like legislation. Do we replace this with mere rules and rules-making?

On the unrelated topic of my letter about Iran’s nuclear weapons (December 9), Laurie McCauley writes: “He is also guilty of glossing over the truth when he says that nuclear weapons are purely external deterrents. Do Hiroshima and Nagasaki ring any bells? In fact, they can be and have been used as offensive weapons when seen as a quicker option for the nation using them than a protracted air, sea and ground campaign” (Letters, January 6).

I just wanted to clarify by re-emphasising the word “external”. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used against civilian populations, but not against domestic civilian populations. I was referring to nukes being used against their own population.

Nuke refute
Nuke refute

Free speech

Where do we draw the line between religious freedom and free speech on the one hand, and public order and the protection of minorities on the other hand?

Christian street preacher Dale Mcalpine last month won £7,000 in damages, following his arrest and detention by the police in April 2010 for saying homosexuality is a sin. He had expressed his beliefs to passers-by in Workington, Cumbria. As a result, he was charged with making “threatening, abusive or insulting” remarks, contrary to the Public Order Act. The court case was dropped and instead he was offered an apology by the chief constable, and compensation.

As a campaigner for gay rights, I disagree with Mr Mcalpine’s intolerant views. But, as a defender of free speech, I endorse his right to express them. Indeed, I had offered to testify in his defence, had his case gone to court. He did not incite violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. Mr Mcalpine’s views - although they are misguided and offensive - caused no injury or damage to anyone. His intolerant views should be challenged, but he should not have been arrested.

Contrast his case with my experience. In 1994, the Islamist fundamentalist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), held a mass rally at Wembley Arena. Its members advocated killing gay people and “unchaste” women. They heaped hatred and abuse on Jews and Hindus. Together with five of my colleagues from the gay rights group, Outrage, I staged a peaceful, lawful counter-protest. It was six of us against 6,000 of them. Some members of HT threatened: “We will track you down and kill you.” Despite these criminal incitements to murder us, they were not arrested. We were. Our free speech was denied. We were charged under the Public Order Act. In contrast to Mr Mcalpine’s case, the police did not drop the charges and apologise, let alone compensate us. It took nearly two years of lengthy, costly legal battles for me to finally win an acquittal.

A free society depends on the free exchange of ideas. Freedom of speech includes the right to criticise and mock, and to say things that many of us find offensive. Just as gay people should have the right to criticise religion, people of faith should also have the right to criticise homosexuality.

Free speech
Free speech

Obsessed

Perhaps the Weekly Worker and CPGB would be better off trying to build their own party rather than being so obsessed with the internal workings of the SWP. After all it is easy to stand back and be critical of others when you don’t do anything yourselves.

Obsessed
Obsessed