Letters

Million march

There have been calls for a so-called ‘million man march’ in Zimbabwe. Who is making those calls and whose interests do they represent?

Comparing Zimbabwe to Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other countries in North Africa and the Middle East is the height of mischief. The situation in Zimbabwe is one where Zimbabweans, after years of suffering brought about by foreign-inspired political conflict and western sanctions, made a conscious decision to achieve political stability. People of various political persuasions have, through their own chosen representatives, come up with a political arrangement which will lead to a new constitution and elections.

So who are these people calling for an uprising? If they are Zimbabweans, then surely their interests are covered by one of the many political parties which took part in the elections. Those interests are represented today by participation in the global political agreement (GPA). It not, then they are a small minority whose interests cannot override those of the majority.

The above facts raise the question of the legitimacy of those calling for protests. These protests are for what? Replacing the GPA? Replacing it with what? Even if a million people were to march or protest, which is most unlikely, should their wishes undo what the Zimbabwean electorate chose? So far they have called for the removal of president Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party from government. They give themselves the right to replace more than half the Zimbabwean electorate who chose Mugabe and Zanu-PF. This makes them proxies of the Movement for Democratic Change in a back-door attempt to achieve through so-called protests what they could not achieve through the ballot box. Or are the protestors going to also demand the removal of the MDC as well? In which case they then wish to replace the whole electorate, making their version of democracy even more bizarre.

Zimbabwe is on the recovery path economically. Its people are still battling to rebuild their lives after the turmoil of the last 10 years. They do not need more turmoil, which is certain to come about as a result of these planned protests. Businesses will be disrupted, new projects will be placed on hold, and we will all go back to shortages and the attendant price madness that they invoke in some of our citizens. People will die due to lack of medicines; people will go hungry.

Right-thinking Zimbabweans will see these so-called protests for what they are: the chance once again for a few individual Zimbabwean fat cats to profit from chaos and the suffering of the people, whilst they get paid by foreign-funded NGOs. Right-thinking Zimbabweans will see this as a slavish copying of events in other countries without regard to Zimbabwe’s unique circumstances. Right-thinking Zimbabweans will say no to being part of an agenda that is driven by foreign interests in tandem with those of a few Zimbabwean fat cats. Right-thinking Zimbabweans will not participate in protests that are meant to short-circuit the legitimate process towards peace and development rather than conflict. Right-thinking Zimbabweans will ignore a few misguided, power-hungry individuals who seek to usurp the people’s progress towards a better future.

Zimbabwe has thus far charted its own course. When other countries were busy scrambling for so-called ‘aid and support’ from the west in return for the unchecked exploitation of their resources by multinational corporations, Zimbabwe was fighting for the control of its own resources. Now these other countries have woken up to the fact that there is nothing in this arrangement for them and are removing governments that aided and abetted the western corporate looters. Zimbabweans are already a step ahead.

Million march
Million march

Pentacle plan

Weekly Worker readers may be interested to know of some exciting direct-action plans for the TUC demonstration on March 26. The ideas below were arrived at during a representative gathering last weekend, but are subject to endorsement or amendment at a much larger meeting to be held at the University of London Union on March 12-13.

1. Hyde Park and the Pentacle plan: ‘Hyde Park Stay for One Day’ was agreed as the best ‘soft’ option, which will unify the most people, so it had plenty of support, even though some people thought it was not a sufficiently political target. Plenty of activists may wish to skip the march and go straight to Hyde Park to set things up, and make things comfortable. There was also strong support for the idea of re-occupying Parliament Square. In addition, we heard that the Student Activist Network may aim to camp overnight in Trafalgar Square.

The overall conclusion was that we should publish the Pentacle of five points - including Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square to be occupied at early stages of the march, plus (later on) Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly and Hyde Park/Hilton Hotel. We know that we can pull off Hyde Park. This will be the launch pad and should help us achieve the other more political occupations. The Pentacle allows for many different possibilities: people can choose their own styles of music and protest. The Pentacle is designed to keep people partying till Earth Hour at 8.30pm, when we should really ‘cast a spell’ by blacking out London.

2. Synchronised signal at 2.11pm: To improve our chances to go into occupation of both Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square, we agreed that striking simultaneously with a synchronised signal would stretch the police more, making it harder to kettle different groups at the same time. We calculate that the maximum number of people should be along the length of Whitehall around 2pm, with plenty more marchers still to pass parliament. Therefore we decided on 02.11 (easy to remember because of 2011) as the moment to strike!

At that point, all hell breaks loose - signals, flares, foghorns, air raid sirens, beetroot juice, red wine flowing in Trafalgar Square fountains, and general mayhem, out of which people can do whatever diversions they feel appropriate to prove ourselves ungovernable!

Weekly Worker readers may have noted that the Con-Dem government plans to sack one in 10 members of the armed forces, many just back from Afghanistan. Perhaps we should be asking: What is Her Majesty doing about that? Why spend millions on a royal wedding at such an inappropriate time? Everyone else seems to have human rights: aren’t soldiers human too? Between March 26 and May Day we’ll be preparing leaflets to welcome our comrades in uniform and extend them full trade union rights.

With support pouring in from all sides, I think we can expect regime change sooner than might have been imagined this time last year.

For more information, see: www.battleofbritainmarch26.org.

Pentacle plan
Pentacle plan

Critical 'yes'

Probably because the March 3 referendum represents little more than a rather uninspiring sop to national aspirations and concern about the obvious democratic deficit in Britain, it has hardly captured the imagination of the Welsh public. Even if the proposed reform is passed, Wales will not even enjoy the (very limited) powers the Scottish parliament currently holds.

Referenda are hardly communists’ favoured option in terms of addressing the democratic deficit. They have a rotten history, being wielded by such luminaries as Louis Napoleon, Adolf Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini.

Coupled with the fact that, from the point of view of self-determination, so very little is on offer, this might tempt some to adopt a position of ‘actively boycotting’ the referendum. I have some sympathy with this. Indeed, in 1998 the CPGB opted to boycott the referendum on devolution.

However, communists do want to engage with those who recognise the existence of a national question in Wales and wish to do something about it. As such, comrades Nick Davies and Darren Williams (Letters, February 24) correctly point out that by advocating a ‘no’ vote, comrade Gareth Evans (‘Vote no on March 3’, February 17) is effectively calling for the continuation of the current anti-democratic status quo. Communists should have no truck with that. We find it objectionable that the Welsh assembly’s legislative remit is currently so limited. Ditto the situation where, if the assembly has the temerity to desire to pass primary legislation, it must first go to Westminster, cap in hand.

We should certainly not be lining up with the likes of the bone-headed Tory MP for Monmouth, David Davies, in the name of taking “the debate to a much deeper level”, as comrade Evans suggests. Thus far the contribution of David Davies and his ilk to the ‘debate’ has consisted solely of invoking fear about the “vast amount of money” the assembly has cost and how a ‘yes’ vote would put “strain on the union” he so cherishes.

Comrade Evans also seems to buy into the scare story that more powers to the Welsh assembly will facilitate Wales’s separation. He says, for example, that the ‘no’ campaign, True Wales, “has spent an inordinate amount of time (correctly) highlighting that the referendum represents something more than a mere tidying-up exercise”. But the referendum quite clearly is a tidying-up exercise, a minor tinkering with the completely inadequate constitutional order. Of course, we communists are against Welsh independence. Whilst recognising the existence of a national questions in Wales, ours is the call for humanity to shed the flag-waving, imagined community of the nation-state. Yet we must insist on the right of the Welsh people to decide their own future and demand full powers for the assembly - ie, up to and including the right to secede. For us, self-determination in a federal republic is the concretisation of our demands for self-determination.

We must stress working class unity at all levels, when it comes to opposing the cuts. Comrade Evans is quite correct to point out the fallacy of the argument of some in the ‘yes’ camp, who argue that more powers could somehow isolate Wales from ‘English’ cuts. The fact that the cross-party Yes for Wales! campaign does not and, as comrades Davies and Williams admit, cannot say anything about this reveals a serious shortcoming of that campaign.

Critical 'yes'
Critical 'yes'

UnMarxist

I fail to see any Marxism in Gareth Evans’ article about the Welsh assembly referendum

A list of partial benefits gained and failures delivered by the assembly government is possibly of interest, but it hardly constitutes a valid Marxist study of the value or non-value of the assembly. The record of the Welsh assembly government (WAG) is only a measure of the performance of the parties involved, not of the present value or possible future uses of the assembly as an instrument of workers’ struggle. Let us not forget that the present WAG is one consisting of rightwing Labour members with a few nationalist partners who hold a wide range of reformist ideas. So, I suggest, little should be expected. Criticism of the performance of the WAG is totally valid. You could say it is a vital part of the struggle against the reformism of both Labour and the nationalists. Neither offers anything for the workers of Wales.

I would argue that as part of our efforts we should place demands on this motley crew. Demand that they draw up a budget that would meet the needs of the Welsh working class and a programme that would not stop at calls to fight the Tory cuts but would contain measures to engage in the expansion of services.

This would be a programme of demands similar to those forming a Trotskyist transitional programme. It would include social and economic demands, plus most of the democratic demands made in the article.

Supporting a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote would not preclude comrades from raising such a programme. I think raising such demands as part of a ‘yes’ campaign would be more consistent and understandable. Asking workers to vote ‘no’ as a way of extending powers seems to stretch logic, even dialectical logic, to a point beyond understanding.

I also hold the view - as, in my opinion, did the old teachers, Marx and Engels - that we fight for the greatest extension of democratic rights possible, thus providing the most favourable conditions for the workers’ struggle.

UnMarxist
UnMarxist

Better slogans

Eddie Ford states in his article that “proletarian rule is not on the immediate agenda. Therefore our strategy is for pan Arab revolution” (‘Goodbye to Gaddafi’, February 24).

Two obvious points come to mind. If working class rule is not on the immediate agenda, which class is going to lead the struggle for the proposed “pan-Arab unity”? This is presumably on the “immediate agenda”, although it has to be said there is little sign of it from any reports on the ground. Anyway, surely it is obvious that any call for Arab unity advanced by any section of the Arab establishment will have a reactionary anti-working class dynamic. Why then should communists advance a slogan that can only aid our enemy? What next - communists advancing the call for the unity of all Turks or all Slavs? The reactionary implications should be obvious.

Secondly, is the call for workers’ unity in the Middle East in the struggle for workers’ power not a more appropriate slogan for communists to advance rather than the call for the unity of all Arabs? After all, a considerable population of non-Arab people live in the region (Jews, Kurds, Persians, Berbers, Turks, etc). In the case of the Kurds and Berbers, there is a history of national oppression enforced by imperialism and the local Arab ruling class.

The struggle for a united socialist republic of the Middle East would seem a more apt slogan for communists fighting for the unity of the working class of the region. The era of national democratic revolutions led by non-working class forces is long past and it can’t be revived. In the modern world that road only leads to defeat and demoralisation for the working class. The only social force that can advance democratic rights is the working class. A democratic republic is a socialist republic or it is a sham.

Better slogans
Better slogans

ESA nightmare

Starting at the end of March, all 2.7 million people in receipt of incapacity benefit will, at the rate of 11,000 a week, have to face a medical before they are transferred to the new employment and support allowance (ESA), which is replacing incapacity benefit.

Of those 2.7 million, 1.2 million are receiving it on mental health grounds, including depression. The other 1.5 million existing claimants of incapacity benefit qualify on the grounds of physical disability. Since October 2008, all new claimants of incapacity benefit have had to claim ESA instead, and these claimants have had to face a work capability assessment medical after 13 weeks.

Statistics show that 90% of those who are claiming ESA on mental health grounds are failing their assessment medical and are being found fit for work and therefore ineligible for ESA. They have two options: they can either claim job seekers’ allowance (JSA) or they can appeal to a tribunal. Of those appealing, 40% have their ESA reinstated, which rises to 70% if they are represented.

Work capability assessment medicals are carried out by nurses and doctors employed by Atos, a private French-Dutch company, which is being paid £100 million by the department for work and pensions. The assessment medicals carried out by these nurses and doctors, who are not trained in mental health, involve putting into a computer the answers given by claimants to questions originating from a computerised questionnaire. The results of this questionnaire are then analysed by a team of disability analysts, who take very little notice of letters written to Atos by claimants’ GPs, consultant psychiatrists, psychologists and community psychiatric nurses.

It is entirely possible that at least 600,000 of the current 1.2 million mental health incapacity claimants will fail their medical and therefore be found ineligible for transfer to ESA. These 600,000 people will either have to apply for means-tested JSA or will drop out of the benefit system completely, because the other income or savings of the claimant or their spouse makes them ineligible for JSA. For those eligible for the means-tested JSA of just £65.45 a week, it will mean a drop in weekly income of over £25 a week. The savings to the DWP budget will be in the region of several billion pounds a year.

In the 1930s, communists called for ‘work or full maintenance’. In 2011, communists call for a minimum wage of at least £400 a week. This figure should also be used as the level of benefit paid to those unemployed through unemployment or through physical disability or mental illness.

ESA nightmare
ESA nightmare