Letters

Winners and losers

I refer to Tyrone O’Sullivan’s letter (Weekly Worker 86). It is excellent to hear that workers at Tower Colliery have benefited so much since ‘taking control’ and buying the pit from British Coal. Tyrone suggests however that such a strategy should be pursued by all workers as a way “to control their destiny”. I disagree.

The fight to make industries ‘worker-owned’ is a tactical one and something that should be decided by workers in certain situations. But pursuing this strategy on principle is incorrect.

The long-term interests of the working class as a whole do not rest in workers aiming to buy their own particular industry or factory and simply improving their pay and basic working conditions. A much more important political goal needs to be fought for.

Tyrone states, “We are looking to our coal going overseas, not only to Welsh or British Valleys”: ie, Tower will be competing with other pits in the UK to sell their coal to interested parties. We all know that under capitalism competition means there are winners and losers. The pit may be doing well at the moment, but there are no guarantees this will continue.

This, coupled with the fact that Tower is not immune to economic slumps, means that if the pit’s profits drop significantly, tough decisions will have to be made about how to improve its performance. Cuts in wages and enforcing redundancies cannot be ruled out.

I wish Tower miners well in their efforts to run their pit and improve their lot. Nothing however should detract them and other workers from our main aim of fighting for socialism in order to secure lasting benefits for all.

Gareth Phillips
East London

Formalistic

John Walsh’s reply to comrade Chris Ford (Weekly Worker 87) was at times opaque and in some places misleading.

Comrade Walsh claims that “no antagonism exists between” the nations in Britain, which demonstrates why we have a “national working class”. This is why the CPGB does not advocate secession for the “four nations” which make up the UK.

Leaving aside the conflation of concepts (UK, Great Britain, nations, nationalities, etc.), this is a slightly rose-tinted view of the ‘United Kingdom’. There is still what you could call some residual ‘national antagonism’ within the UK, alongside regionalism, localism and parochialism. In so far as these outlooks still exist they must be vigorously opposed by communists.

Secondly, is comrade Walsh implying that if there was ‘national antagonism’ (to one degree or another) then perhaps communists would not be obliged to fight for the unity of the working class - perhaps even that secession would not be such a bad idea after all? I hope not. If there was ‘national antagonism’, communists would be obliged to fight nationalism/separatism even more.

Comrade Walsh goes on to say, “I feel now that a federal Europe would be a step forward”. Confusingly he then adds the rejoinder, “Certainly we should not oppose it on any chauvinist grounds”. So, on what grounds should we support or not support it?

Surely the point comrade Walsh is groping towards is that as communists, as materialists, our task is to harness social development, not stand against it like King Canute. Communists seek the liberation of humanity by going forward, not in attempts to return to the past or to preserve the status quo.

If the bourgeoisie do set up a federal Europe then that will be our starting point: ie, a Communist Party of the European Union would be our counterweight.

Similarly we do not seek to disinvent nuclear technology, despite the fact that it has produced the hydrogen bomb, capable of annihilating the world many times over, or led to hundreds of thousands of actual deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We seek to harness the progressive, beneficial aspects of nuclear technology.

Finally comrade Walsh claims (using Lenin as an authority, somewhat dubiously, I suspect) that “local democracy was the highest form of democracy that the bourgeoisie could achieve and devolution would certainly be a step forwards to greater local democracy”.

It sounds like a step backwards to me! From a communist perspective, how could a bureaucratic Yorkshire parliament be in the interests of the ‘national’ working class in the UK? It could spawn regionalism and localism.

Eddie Ford
South London