Letters

Answer me!

Why is it that, when people keep on arguing we must stay in or join the Labour Party to ‘pull it left’, there is no explanation of how on earth ‘the left’ in the Labour Party will do so? Let’s have some answers to continually repeated questions posed by myself and others.

The Labour Party conference does not make Labour Party policy any more. A little bit of dissent is expressed now and again, but the right learnt their lessons and changed the party’s internal decision-making processes. In sheer desperation to get elected, the Labour left went along with all of Blair’s changes. The Labour Party conference is, and has been, a rally of the largely unquestioning faithful for some years now.

Where have been the left challenges to Blair’s anointment? The media, such as The Sun, told Labour Party members to vote Blair, as he was the only man who would make Labour electable. The left kept their heads down.

Why weren’t the so-called Labour left able to ensure John McDonnell got onto the ballot paper? Twice he received nowhere near enough support even to stand, let alone succeed. He should not have stood aside for Diane Abbott. It’s been a long, long time since there was a left challenge with anywhere near the support previously achieved by Tony Benn and Eric Heffer.

The oft quoted ‘link with the trade unions’ makes Labour the party for the working class. Not one Labour-affiliated trade union will dare ballot their members on retaining the link or at least reducing their donations. We all know why: because they’d lose. An incredible amount of gerrymandering goes on to bar any motions submitted along these lines from being debated.

The trade union link has not seen Labour listen and deliver for trade union members and workers for all the millions donated. Instead trade union bosses have always placed the Labour Party’s electoral considerations way above the interests of their members. In government we can’t fight Labour for fear of letting the Tories in. In opposition we can’t fight for fear of keeping the Tories in! Who were the last unions to finally deliver unity of action over the attacks on pensions on November 30 and the first to abandon the fight? The GMB and Unison - major unions affiliated to the Labour Party. Which union had been calling for a united fight back for two years? The non-affiliated Public and Commercial Services Union.

Yes, it is asserted, we know - Labour have ‘always sold out the workers’. Nothing new with Blair, Brown and co. Inspiring stuff, comrades. But successive quantitative changes lead to a qualitative change. Plenty of people on the left were wise to Blair from the very start, but not the Labour left. For these dullards, the project is always to get Labour elected, no matter how many betrayals, because ‘they are better than the Tories’. Do I have to point out, yet again, that in the civil service thousands of job losses, office closures, privatisation of services, regional pay (now to be spread across the public sector) came in under the last Labour government, and civil service pay restraint and the first attacks on our pension rights?

What about the promises of ‘no tuition fees’, that rail privatisation would be reversed, there would be no privatisation of air traffic control? What about an ‘ethical foreign policy’ and then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? The massive expansion of eye-watering PFI projects? What about ‘We will be sleaze-free’? What about Brown’s dithering over nationalising the banks for how that would look? A Labour government against nationalisation! What about the gap between the rich and poor growing wider under a 13-year Labour government than under 18 years of the Tories, with a government elected on a landslide in 1997 that could (and should) have proclaimed socialism overnight? The anti-terror legislation and the proposed introduction of ID cards? Things can only get better! They did for the rich under Labour.

This little lot is off the top of my head. Just how much more are we supposed to take from Labour governments? Is there any further betrayal (is there any principle left to betray?) a Labour government can carry out that will finally cause the remaining dullards to leave Labour?

Admit the catastrophic decline in party membership (remember those joyous early declarations of so many joining following the Con-Dem government forming). Is the supposed flood now a trickle or even a leak? What is the calibre of these people? What is the state of Labour Party branches today, where the much called for ‘move to the left’ is supposed to take place? How many were at the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy meeting Mike Loates boasted about in his disingenuous, odd letter (March 8)? Who are these better NEC and PLP members he wrote about? How are the sad, desperate socialists still in the Labour Party better than all the thousands of working class activists who left in disgust, unable to stomach the constant betrayals, unable to tell union members constantly battered by a Labour government to vote Labour because they’re better than the Tories?

I knew Mike Loates and I am surprised he is even aware of the Weekly Worker. He was hostile to reading any left papers when I was in the Socialist Workers Party. He used to be in PCS and condemned full-time union officials before leaving the civil service a few years ago to become one! He abandoned his union branch, which is a shadow of its former self. Mike joined the Labour Party as thousands of real socialists were leaving. He supported Oona King over George Galloway because she was black and a woman. Not for Mike any worries about her being a warmonger and the numbers of dead black women and children killed by US/British forces. A very odd socialist indeed. He condemned Galloway’s support from Muslims as ‘communalism’, but had no problems when Muslims voted Labour.

Those still arguing for us to join Labour and ‘pull it left’ need to answer these questions and stop ignoring them. Stan Keable (Letters, March 15) doesn’t think independent anti-cuts candidates will have much, if any, success. He may be right. He may also be wrong. Only one way to find out, as Harry Hill often says. Just because the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and others haven’t done very well in the past does not mean they will always fail.

I can see, in my members, a real hatred of the Labour Party for what they did to them as civil servants. They hate the Tories and the Lib Dems too. I think most people are ready to consider voting for anti-cuts candidates if they see they have trade union support. It is for Labour-affiliated unions to justify keeping the link. Most union bosses do so for knighthoods and peerages (in exchange for putting Labour’s electoral prospects so often above their members’ interests). Those in the Labour Party urging we ‘pull it left’ (your string snapped decades ago, comrades) are the ones misleading the working class.

Answer these questions this time. Stop the bland, hopeless assertions, please. You are talking to yourselves; you’re not fooling anyone who is class-conscious. Finally, yes, millions of working class people still have illusions in the Labour Party. They still do in capitalism. Both attitudes are changing. Our job as socialists or communists is not to once again return Labour to government. We’ve been there again and again.

Answer me!
Answer me!

Dead end

Stan Keable’s letter demonstrates the political and strategic dead end comrades in the Labour Party find themselves in. Comrade Keable uses comments from Mick Loates, of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, that there has been a “vast” improvement in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the trade union representatives on the national executive committee as somehow an indicator of a leftwards shift. Even in dismissing a bit of Loates’s delusions, comrade Keable clearly still thinks that a change has come; though he can’t tell us quite what has changed.

No change has occurred: the bureaucratic machine remains intact and in terms of policy not even social democracy, let alone socialism, gets a look in. The left within the Labour Party closely resembles the necrotic masses from a George Romero movie more than a dynamic movement - faintly remembering that they used to be something and attempting to shuffle along regardless.

As many on the left have pointed out, the viability of strengthening the working class pole in the Labour Party is never going to happen whilst it is a party of austerity and cuts. Despite being presented with numerous openings on the NHS, welfare reform, tax and education, the Labour Party has tied itself in knots trying to appeal to business interests at the cost of alienating its base. The confrontations and struggles against the Tory-led government and the new austerity agenda is taking place beyond the Labour Party. The ironic thing, as Dave Vincent has pointed out, is that in spite of the mass demonstrations, unified strikes and youth riots, the Labour Party has doggedly condemned working class and extra-parliamentary action (‘Striking on March 28 is not enough’, March 8). This is against the expectations of the comrades who assumed that it would shift leftwards and provide space to open up a struggle. It is worth noting that Ed Miliband cancelled his planned address to a rally to defend the NHS on March 8 to go and watch football with billionaire property developer Assem Allam.

Recognising that entry into the Labour Party is at best premature does not signal a retreat from fighting to democratise the unions. It is simply knowing where our forces are and the state of the movement. The left is not in a position to have any sort of impact on the direction or structures of the Labour Party. What we can have an effect on and build is working class action within our workplaces - through our unions where we can, but outside when we must.

Comrade Vincent’s suggestion that we should look for independent, working class candidates in the upcoming election could be useful, but should at most be a tertiary concern. The two key tasks facing the revolutionary left in this period are, firstly, to firstly get its act together and ditch amateur sects for an actual party project; and, secondly, to strengthen and organise the resistance at the base of the unions to the sell-out, sectionalism and ultimately the politics of trade unionism.

Dead end
Dead end

Tusc's progress

Former Chair of the Socialist Alliance and Respect Nick Wrack led an interesting and successful public debate at the Rugby United Railway Club on Monday March 19. The meeting was organised by Rugby Tusc, as a start to the party’s 2012 election campaign.

Nick, who is the Tusc number two candidate in the London Assembly elections in May, set out a clear vision of an alternative to the present reliance on a capitalist approach by the three main parties: “They all see vital services within society as opportunities for profit,” he argued. “The result of such an approach is the privatisation of public services and the driving down of the living standards of working class people.”

Nick applauded the “founding ethos of the NHS”, in which “all members of society contribute collectively to the communal well-being, taking back their individual care needs when required”. He said he is for “a society in which this value informs all our communal action”. This demands the emergence of a party that will represent the views and needs of the working class.

As Rugby Tusc convenor and prospective candidate for Wolston and the Lawfords, I spoke of my long-standing commitment to the ward. I then outlined the progress Rugby Tusc had made. The branch was formed just 12 months ago, but it has already made its presence felt in the area, with a number of stalls, leafleting, public meetings and campaigns against many aspects of the way public spending cuts have hit local people. These have included opposition to bus service cuts, the closure of hospital wards and the Welfare Reform Bill presently going through parliament.

Dave Goodwin (prospective candidate for Hillmorton) confirmed Tusc’s commitment to opposing all cuts in public spending at every level, while Steve Roberts (Bilton) exploded the myth that the pensions pot cannot support the current commitments, using carefully researched figures. It was apparent that the raid on pensions was purely to bolster the bailout of the banks, he argued.

Julie Weekes (Rokeby and Overslade) spoke of the three-pronged effect of the cuts on women. Her research demonstrated that women are disproportionately more likely to lose their jobs; that cut services are more likely to have been used by women; and that the gaps thus created are more likely to be filled voluntarily by women.

Tusc's progress
Tusc's progress

Peak coal

In response to Tony Clark (Letters, March 15), who has argued the same point about “peak oil” repeatedly in our letters pages, I would point out that the early marginalist economist, William Stanley Jevons, argued in his book The coal question (London 1865) that, with continuing economic growth, the supply of coal would run out within a century - ie, by 1965.

The fact that new sources of coal were found does not affect the logic of the argument, but merely the predicted date. But what happened in reality was, rather, that capitalism found both new technologies which economised on coal (electrical power produced by consuming coal centrally was more efficient than local consumption by steam engines) and new technologies which used other energy sources (oil, hydroelectric).

It is certainly true that today’s capitalism is more oil-dependent than Victorian Britain was coal-dependent. But it is a mistake to suppose that capitalism as such cannot change its ‘energy shape’. The decisive obstacle to such a reshaping is the military technology of the dominant power: coal-based for Britain in its heyday, oil-based for the US (tanks and air power). “Peak oil” advocates are at risk of repeating Jevons’ elementary analytical error by simply extrapolating forward current technology.

Peak coal
Peak coal

Day off

I recently got a Kindle device and started reading the Weekly Worker with it. While the PDF makes things too small, browser extensions such as ‘Kindle It’ are an ideal solution. With the Kindle I can start reading on the same day that the paper is released and I don’t have to wait for the mailman to arrive. Despite that, the device reads nearly exactly like the paper (as there is no backlighted monitor), which is why I bought it - devices like iPads tire your eyes after a short while.

I have therefore stopped my regular subscription for the hard copy of the Weekly Worker. But I will continue the ‘subscription’ regardless. I mean, what is a fiver a month for me if it can sustain such a good publication? If only a few hundred of the 15,000 readers thought like this, Robbie Rix could have a day off and we’d get more space for articles and less for his whining (I kid, I kid).

Day off
Day off

Resort retort

This past weekend Mr Miliband proposed an employment programme that would pay businesses the equivalent of the minimum wage to hire people under the age of 25 instead of perpetual unemployment insurance, a programme to be funded by taxes on bank bonuses. Despite the back and forth between Arthur Bough and Mike Macnair that ignored the role of economic interventionism in favour of labour, only state policy can end structural and cyclical unemployment, only state policy can increase labour’s bargaining power, and only state policy can increase real wages.

This Labourite scheme is nowhere close to an employer of last resort (ELR) policy, though, which would: include those aged 25 and over; establish pay rates to living-wage levels and more; not involve payouts of any sort to businesses (the ELR programme is a direct employment programme); and be funded by more substantively progressive taxation (not just income).

Resort retort
Resort retort

Zim 6 'guilty'

Six members and supporters of the International Socialist Organisation have been found guilty in a Harare court of “conspiracy to commit public violence” and given suspended jail sentences. They must also perform 420 hours of community service and pay a fine of 500 US dollars each.

The ISO - which is affiliated to the Socialist Workers Party’s International Socialist Tendency - had organised a public meeting in February 2011 to discuss the ‘Arab awakening’. The meeting had not got much further than watching a video of the upsurge in Egypt and Tunisia when it was raided by the police. All 46 comrades at the meeting were arrested, accused of “plotting to subvert the government by unconstitutional means”.

While 40 were released without charge, the six - Munyaradzi Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, Tatenda Mombeyarara, Hopewell Gumbo, Edson Chakuma and Welcome Zimuto - were detained for a month, during which time they were kept manacled in solitary confinement, subjected to torture and denied medical treatment and adequate food. Comrade Gwisai, a former member of parliament in the early days of the Movement for Democratic Change, reported receiving between 15 and 20 blows in one torture session.

The female comrades were not spared this brutality - including comrade Choto, who suffers badly from asthma and an ongoing condition for which she had recently had three operations. As with all the others, she was denied the medication and treatment she needed until the prisoners won a court order after two weeks, giving them the right to be examined by a doctor of their choice.

They were later charged with “treason”, although this was later withdrawn. It seems the six were targeted because of their role in the movement. Comrades Gwisai, Choto and Mombeyarara were Zimbabwe Labour Centre officers, while Hopewell Gumbo is a former president of the Zimbabwe National Union of Students and prominent anti-debt campaigner. Comrade Zimuto was another NUS activist, and Edson Chakuma is a trade union militant.

The meeting was to discuss the lessons of Tunisia and Egypt and the video being shown consisted of different news reports from international channels like CNN, Sky and Al Jazeera. While Zanu-PF, the party headed by president Robert Mugabe, urged the court to pass lengthy custodial sentences, its ‘power-sharing’ ‘partner’, the MDC, condemned the whole charade as “another assault on democracy and human rights”. The party stated: “We find it strange and barbaric that they are convicted for watching video material that is already in the public domain and can be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world.”

The MDC, set up in 2000 by the trade union movement under the leadership of former Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions president Morgan Tsvangirai, was eventually taken over by an alliance of middle class blacks and white farmers, backed by international capital. It is now part of a government of ‘national unity’ alongside Zanu-PF. The former union leader holds no less a post than prime minister, but the trial and sentence say a lot about the balance of power between the two parties.

Showing where his own allegiance lies, prosecutor Edmore Nyazamba said, apparently approvingly, in his final statement to the court, that the six would have faced death by stoning in ancient times. Likening president Robert Mugabe to Moses, he said that those who disobeyed Moses faced the most severe punishment. “This case reminds me of that in the Bible whereby those who revolted against authority were swallowed up when the ground opened up,” he said.

Although the charge carried a maximum term of 10 years, the actual sentences of two years, suspended for five, will be like “a chain attached to their ankles”, as one comrade put it. But Munyaradzi Gwisai remained defiant: ”We are not deterred. We are not intimidated,” he said. “To the ordinary people, this is not surprising. This is a staple of what is happening in Africa and across the world. So we take it as it comes - the struggle continues.” Gwisai had told the court during his trial that the charges were “meaningless”, “outright silly” and “a case of political harassment by the state”.

Over 100 activists had turned up at the court to show their solidarity on the day the verdicts were announced. The six are now to appeal against their conviction.

Zim 6 'guilty'
Zim 6 'guilty'

Sister act

At a reception in The Edge of Town, Edgware, London at 7pm on Sunday April 1, Fionbarra O’Dochartaig, founder member of the Derry Civil Rights Association, will make a presentation of a civil rights banner to Terry Gavin for her six decades’ campaigning for Irish republican prisoners.

O’Dochartaig was a founder member of the Derry Housing Action Committee in February 1968 with Eamonn McCann and JJ O’Hara (brother of hunger striker Patsy) amongst others. It campaigned vigorously against discrimination against nationalists in housing, suffering arrests and brutality from the Royal Ulster Constabulary until that fateful day of October 5 1968 - the civil rights demonstration in Derry, jointly called by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. The shocking brutality of the RUC against the peaceful marchers, which included MPs Gerry Fitt, Eddie McAteer and Ivan Cooper, is reckoned by many as the beginning of the ‘troubles’. Fit was brutally batoned and the image of the blood pouring from his head was beamed all over the world. O’Dochartaig took part in this year’s 40th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march on January 29 with Ivan Cooper.

Theresa Gavin-McWeeney, known as Terry Gavin to her friends, was born in 1931 into a strong republican family in Leitrim; her father, mother and four brothers were hold-out republicans who suffered under the ‘free-staters’ and then under de Valera. She said: “People were always on the run.”

Terry immigrated to London in 1950 and became a nurse. Aged 19, she became involved in working for Irish republican prisoners, which has been her life’s work ever since. She never held office or was a member of a committee, but worked tirelessly for the prisoners and their families.

She worked closely with Sister Sarah Clarke, whom she remembers with affection as the “mad nun”. Sister Sarah told her: “You do the rubbish deals with the police and the guards; I’ll do the religion” - before she squirted holy water.

She brought “ciggies and matches and food” to Giuseppe Conlon, Frank Stagg and many others. She knew “all the prisoners”. She recounts that an EOKA (Greek Cypriot nationalist movement) prisoner in the late 50s was being harassed by a Turkish guard, but the Irish republicans surrounded him and threatened him with chairs if he didn’t leave the prisoner alone. It worked.

She visited Derry for the first time in 1954 on a ‘rambling tour’ and stayed in a youth hostel and returned many times during the troubles. She was in Derry during the run-up to Bloody Sunday but left the day before the massacre. She picketed Downing Street on her own with a placard with ‘Murderer’ written on it when she heard the terrible news from Derry. She stuck it up against the window of Brian Faulkner’s car when he passed her. She still campaigns for Irish republican prisoners, picketing the Lithuanian embassy for the repatriation of Michael Campbell in 2011 and demanding political status for Irish republican prisoners in Maghaberry.

Sister act
Sister act