Letters
Victims
Given that Nelson Mandela is being lauded as a dark-skinned Mother Theresa, we should pay our respects and draw attention to all those South African militants who suffered at the hands of Mbokodo, the internal security organ of Umkhonto we Sizwe, MK (Spear of the Nation), the guerrilla force of the African National Congress, and so in effect of the South African Communist Party. A Xhosa word meaning ‘the grinding stone’, Mbokodo personnel were trained by the KGB, the Stasi and the Cubans. Their abuses were not mentioned in the two articles in last week’s Weekly Worker (‘Mandela: Creation of a cult’ and ‘Mandela: He was a bourgeois hero’, December 12) but they provide necessary context when evaluating the politics of late 20th century South Africa, both how the ANC has behaved in government and how dissent should be treated.
Paul Trewhela has called the struggle to end apartheid the most successful application of the popular front strategy in human history, and part of achieving this was an internal repression with a faint echo of Spain in the late 1930s. Recent books by him and Stephen Ellis improve our understanding of what the ANC and SACP were all about. Trewhela had first publicised the work of Mbokodo in 1990 in the magazine he co-founded with Baruch Hirson, Searchlight South Africa (www.marxists.org/archive/hirson/1990/quadro.htm).
Another important source is Mwezi Twala, an MK instructor, who in 1984 ended up in Quatro, the MK prison outside Luanda, after being a member of the grievances committee of the mutinies in Angola, an uprising during which Chris Hani fired on the rebels. Twala tells us something about Oliver Tambo, Mandela’s voice in exile, that grates somewhat with OT’s gilded image, shattering it to reveal a reflection of strange fruit:
“Oliver Tambo visited Pango at the height of the terror. The path from the entrance to the admin building was lined - like a scene from ‘Spartacus’ - with men, bloodied and filthy, hanging from trees. When his entourage arrived at admin, where I was officer on duty, Tambo’s chief of staff told us that there would be a meeting at ‘the stage’ (a clearing in the jungle … where we held meetings and discussions). Runners were sent out to notify everyone in the vicinity. On his way to the stage [Tambo] again passed the men tied to the trees. Being officer on duty, I could not attend the meeting, but my deputy went. After a while I saw guards come up from the stage, release the prisoners and take them to the meeting. There, my deputy told me, instead of objecting to their treatment, as I had hoped, Tambo berated them for their dissident behaviour and appeared to approve when Andrew Masondo declared that on the president’s [Tambo’s] next visit they would be in shallow graves behind the stage. The prisoners were returned to their trees ... where the president passed the unfortunate men without a glance on his way out, and they hung there for another three months - followed by three months hard labour” (Mbokodo, p51-2, my interpolations).
And the rationale for all this?
“Mbokodo tried to instil in cadres the belief that the ANC leadership was infallible, and any cadre who refused to voluntarily accept this premise was coerced by threats. Mzwai Piliso [head of Mbokodo] summed up this approach when he said: ‘If you as much as point a finger at the ANC leadership, we will chop off your whole arm’” (p52-3, my interpolation).
Mandela was released in February 1990, and in April ex-MK prisoners issued an open letter to him requesting support for an investigation into the abuses by Mbokodo. From what I can tell he never responded directly, nor did he distance himself from the ANC’s indiscriminate and persistent painting of ex-prisoners as spies and assassins, an incitement that led to murders and ostracism after they returned home from hell. The following year more spoke to the press, and the pressure mounted. In 1992 the ANC conducted a circumscribed inquiry - into itself (http:// www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=95).
It is not without interest to note what often happens to critics of Stalinism. Trotskyists were portrayed as agents of Japan, Nazi Germany and the capitalist class more generally, and it is true that their criticisms of Stalinism were used by the capitalist press to try to discredit the idea of socialism. Likewise Twala’s quote came from a website that extols the Boers. The ‘left’ has a big, big problem in coping with criticism of its leaders, an expression of its stunted conception and enactment of democracy. This is a debilitating force at the heart of any attempt to meliorate capitalism, let alone create the beginnings of a society growing from socialist principles.
Victims
Victims
No platform
The Republican Socialist Platform was set up to promote the need for a republican socialist party. This must be built on the basis of the unity of the social democratic and communist left in England, working in cooperation with republican socialists in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
The last point of the platform says: “We need a different kind of party to the traditional ‘parties’ of the left. Such a party would recognise the central importance of the struggle for democracy in mobilising all oppressed sections of society into a mass movement for radical change, a new democratic constitution and a social republic. This party, drawing on the republican and socialist traditions going back to the Levellers and Diggers and inspired by the militant struggles of the Chartists and Suffragettes, would seek to build and provide leadership for a broad democratic movement, thus becoming a republican socialist party.”
The supplementary ‘Case for the Republican Socialist Platform’ recognises the new political realities of the national question. It says: “The republican left in England has no interest and should have no intention of imposing a social republic on Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. National self-determination and the spirit of ‘internationalism from below’ must stand for an ever closer voluntary union of the people of these countries”.
The Republican Socialist Platform submitted an amendment to clause 2 of the aims of Left Unity to include the demand for a social republic amongst the immediate aims of the party. This amendment was ruled out of order. Although we did not agree that this decision of the standing orders committee was valid, the Platform agreed not to challenge it in the special circumstances of this founding conference.
At the beginning of conference, the Platform had registered 15 supporters. It was decided it would not be possible to win a majority for our platform from this starting point in a new organisation with a majority unlikely to be aware of our views. Too many barriers had to be overcome - the absence of a republican culture in England, the unfamiliarity of a new platform compared to the traditional politics of the left, the impossibility of convincing 400 people of a new political approach in three minutes, the level of support secured before the conference, the ignoring of the platform by the left press and the ruling out of order of our amendment.
The Platform recognised the main task of the conference was to resolve the dispute between the Left Party Platform and the Socialist Platform. Therefore we decided to explain our ideas to conference. In summing up, we would explain why the platform would be even more relevant in 2014 and then withdraw and promise to continue our campaign next year.
It was agreed we would abstain in the voting. Although the remaining platforms contained many points that all socialists could agree with, none offered the necessary strategic direction. We intended to call on all those dissatisfied with the choices on offer - the Left Party Platform, Socialist Platform, Class Struggle Platform and Communist Platform - to abstain in the vote.
The Platform planned to explain our reasons for withdrawing and our call for abstention on voting for the other platforms during the two minutes ‘right of reply’ to the debate. However, the right of reply was abandoned on the recommendation of the standing orders committee. We appealed to the chair to be allowed 30 seconds to explain our decision but this was denied. We asked the chair to read out a brief written explanation. This was denied.
Our supporters abstained. There were about 20 abstentions on the platform voting.
We would like to end by thanking conference for listening to our views and look forward to advancing our case in 2014 as part of the struggle for Left Unity.
The platform can be contacted at RSPlatform@hotmail.co.uk
No platform
No platform
Undistorted
“Why must you distort things?” asks Richard Brenner of Workers Power (Letters, December 12). He was referring to my report of the Left Unity conference, when I mistakenly stated that he had contrasted the “mixed economy” in the agreed ‘Aims’ with the “democratic, planned economy” envisaged by the Left Party Platform, which conference had also agreed (‘Making a safe space for left ideas’, December 5).
Although I had admitted my error to him in an email exchange (I know for a fact that I was not the only one to misunderstand this part of his conference speech, by the way), he insisted that his complaint be published as a letter in its original form - complete with the charge of distortion.
Undistorted
Undistorted
No surprise
Last week, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority recommended an 11% pay rise for MPs, taking their pay to £74,000 per annum, three times the national average wage. This is outrageous. Although party leaders have subsequently opposed it, a number of MPs, mostly Tory, have said they will accept it because IPSA’s independence should not be undermined by politicians. But IPSA is not ‘independent’. And why have other MPs, including Rugby MP Mark Pawsey, not even given their view? We can only guess.
It is bad enough that MPs are likely to get such a massive pay rise when other workers, on much lower wages, will be lucky to get 1%. What to us is even worse, and makes the recommendation so predictable, is that IPSA, a supposedly independent body, in fact is very much part of the same ruling elite as MPs are. Its members are from similar backgrounds and earn even more from their day jobs than MPs’ current salaries. The work they do for IPSA doesn’t pay badly either - the chair gets £700 a day, the other members £400 a day. No wonder they think MPs should get more!
When IPSA was set up in 2009, in answer to the MPs expenses scandal, there were qualifications for membership: at least one of the members must have held high judicial office; at least one must be eligible for appointment as a statutory auditor; one of the members must have previously been a member of the House of Commons; no other person who has been an MP within the previous five years is eligible.
The complete lack of any representation from working people in ordinary jobs was hardly likely to lead to a fair decision about MPs’ pay, and a closer analysis of the background of the five present IPSA members bears this out. The Chair, Sir Ian Kennedy, is an academic lawyer who attended University College London. He was dean of the law school at King’s College London 1986-96. He is presently emeritus professor of health law, ethics and policy at University College London and a member of numerous committees and inquiries, including the General Medical Council, and a former chair of the Healthcare Commission.
The former holder of high judicial office, Sir Neil Butterfield, has been a barrister since 1966 and a QC since 1985. He was presiding judge of the western circuit 1997-2000. Registered auditor, Anne Whitaker, is an audit partner of Ernst & Young, a multinational professional services firm - the third largest such firm in the world by aggregated revenue in 2012. In 2013, EY agreed to pay federal prosecutors $123m to settle criminal tax avoidance charges stemming from $2bn in unpaid taxes. It was ranked the ninth largest private company in the United States in 2010 by Forbes magazine.
Former MP, Professor Tony Wright, served as chair of two Commons select committees. He left parliament in 2010 and is now visiting professor in government and public policy at University College London and professorial fellow in politics at Birkbeck College. He was educated at Kettering Grammar, LSE, Harvard and Oxford.
Liz Padmore is a fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford and attended Oxford University. She was previously a strategy partner at Accenture, the world’s largest consulting firm as measured by revenues. In August 2013, the company reported revenues of $28.6bn with approximately 275,000 employees, serving clients in more than 200 cities in 56 countries.
What this shows is that a small group of highly educated and very well-paid establishment people have been appointed to decide that MPs should get a pay rise which brings them nearer to their own inflated incomes. No surprise there then. The wealthy decide that the nearly wealthy who represent us should earn more. Wow! The fact that 13 million people in Britain live in poverty is irrelevant to them all.
I will have an answer if I am elected to parliament: I will live on the average worker’s wage and donate anything above that to our movement.
No surprise
No surprise
Rotate
‘Leadership’ is not primarily a job title inside a revolutionary organisation. Every member should be capable of leadership: to be an example of militancy and honesty and capable of thoughtful action when a situation is chaotic. Every revolution is chaotic and can easily end up as a riot rather than a revolution.
There are many workers who are spontaneous leaders, but given the nature of bourgeois politics, they may still betray without wanting to. A revolutionary organisation should be teaching and preparing all its members to take leadership in the class struggle and preparing for betrayals. Of course, it also means that a new leadership will begin to arise to replace the ‘historic’ leadership, who then, of course, feel threatened. Often these ‘historic’ leaders think they own their organisations, mirroring capitalist property relations.
We need to question permanent leaders, who in effect own their exalted positions. Their psychology may change over time, forcing their organisations into their framework. It is almost inevitable that these ‘historic leaders’ become separated from reality - eg, Gerry Healy - and become a menace. We should try to practice rotational leadership where possible.
Rotate
Rotate
Chemical legacy
Few countries in the Middle East have experienced the same level of chemical attacks as the Iraqi people. Starting in the 1920s, which saw the first ever gassing of the Kurds by the British, for nearly 100 years every generation has grown up under the shadow of chemical weapons.
Vivid descriptions have been given by Iraqi and Iranian veterans of their exposure to chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war and the various neurological impacts.
Medical experts in the Kurdish village of Halabja are still dealing with the breathing difficulties and disabilities which have arisen among survivors of that fateful day in the late 1980s when planes flew over the village and gassed an estimated 5,000 people.
It was in the first Gulf War of the 1990s, when the Iraqi people once again witnessed the first hand impact of chemicals, that the combination of burning oil fields, depleted uranium, along with a host of other toxins being spewed into the environment, led to it being classified as the most toxic war in modern history.
People involved with Iraq during the 1990s witnessed a dramatic increase in birth defects in the areas most heavily bombed by the UN-sanctioned ‘Desert Storm’, with rates of cancer soaring beyond pre-war levels and Gulf War illness/syndrome still being the unexplained medical condition amongst western service personnel.
According to Iraqi government statistics, prior to the outbreak of the first Gulf War the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
John Pilger recalled a 1999 visit to Iraq in which he spoke with paediatrician Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, who described the many children she was treating with neuroblastoma: “Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumour in two years. Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same.”
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent US/UK occupation, chemical weapons were once again inflicted upon the Iraqi people, which included the use of white phosphorous against civilian populations in areas like Fallujah.
According to acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamil, the US and British military used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion - on top of the disputed figure of up to 900 tons in the 1991 Gulf War.
In context, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned the British government in the 1990s that “if 50 tons of the residual dust (from depleted uranium) was left in the region, an estimated half a million excess cancer deaths would result by the year 2000”.
The Iraqi section of Al-Qaeda, which has since rebranded itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for its involvement in the Syria uprising, were also the first branch of Al-Qaeda to start using chemical weapons.
Between October 2006 and June 2007, Iraq experienced 15 chlorine bomb attacks, according to the US defence department, the first documented case being in Ramadi where terrorists detonated a car packed with 12 120mm mortar shells and two 100 pound chlorine tanks.
Chlorine attacks also occurred in Fallujah, Balad and again in Ramadi, with a later attack against Forward Operating Base Warhorse in Diyala where a car bomber detonated two tanks of chlorine and 1,000 pounds of explosives, with the chlorine alone causing an adverse reaction to over 65 US service members.
In June 2013 the Iraqi army shut down three Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant bomb factories and seized chemicals which were designated for chemical attacks, less than one month before its use in neighbouring Syria. Situated close to the borders with Iraq’s turbulent neighbour, among the ingredients found in the bomb factories were those for Sarin.
Chemical legacy
Chemical legacy
Elves
Saturday December 14 saw local groups across the country staging protests as part of the People’s Assembly national day of action against austerity.
In Middlesbrough, members of the Teesside People’s Assembly asked shoppers ‘Can you afford Christmas?’ in a demonstration highlighting the impacts of the Tory-Lib Dem government’s cuts programme on the living standards of ordinary people.
Santa, his elves and carol singers accompanied ‘Cameron Claws’ around Middlesbrough town centre with a bag of presents for hardworking people and another bag of presents for posh people. Hardworking people got treats such as the bedroom tax, energy bill increases, benefit cuts and redundancies, whilst posh people received tax breaks, bankers’ bonuses, share options, and so on.
As one of our activists, Barbara Campbell, put it: “This was an elfish protest being done in a fun way, but it made a serious point about a selfish government whose unnecessary austerity cuts are attacking the living standards of hardworking people - the people David Cameron pretends to support.”
We will be looking to organise more actions against austerity in 2014. To get involved, email us at TeessidePA@gmail.com, follow our blog at www.TeessidePA.tumblr.com or look us up on Facebook and Twitter.
Elves
Elves
Smooth
It has been brought to my attention that the current regroupment process of the British post- Trotskyist left seems to involve prospective talks and an exchange of ideas between individual activists from the IS Network and Beyond Europe, a self-defined “anti-authoritarian platform against capitalism” consisting of two Greek groups (Antiauthoritarian Movement and Drasi), Plan C from the UK, and Ums Ganze from Germany and Austria.
Just a few words about the German- Austrian component: Ums Ganze is an ‘anti-national’ federation of several local groups from the soft ‘anti-German’ milieu. For them, there is no such thing as human agency under capitalism: it is an impersonal system in which bankers who make a fortune are as much ‘victims’ as workers who now sleep on park benches in Athens. To misquote Marx, their position might be summed up as “Men do not make their own history, only circumstances do”. From this follows that any activism directed against capitalists and their agents is regressive because it is based on a “personalised critique of capitalism” that can only end in barbarism. Examples of such proto-barbaric acts would include strikes for higher wages.
Unlike the hardline end of the ‘anti- German’ spectrum, Ums Ganze are made up of activists who - despite their ideology - have participated in popular struggles such as Blockupy Frankfurt, if only as missionaries seeking to enlighten the protesting plebs about their structural anti-Semitism. One might say that Ums Ganze seeks to cleanse the radical left of its ‘reductionist critique of capitalism’ (read: class struggle) and ‘anti-Semitism’ (read: anti-imperialism) in a gentler fashion than, say, the shock troop ‘AG No Tears for Krauts’ that physically attacked and broke up an Iran-themed leftwing meeting in the city of Halle on November 30 (see http://tinyurl.com/qd5e8wz for a German language report).
The federation’s moderate manners do not preclude friendly relations with some usual suspects. Earlier this month, its local group from the town of Tübingen, LevelUP, hosted a talk on Iran by the hardcore ‘anti-German’ war monger Stephan Grigat, a key activist of the misnamed ‘Stop the Bomb’ campaign on whom I wrote at length last year (‘Anti-Germans: not part of the left’, Weekly Worker October 4 2012). According to the LevelUP advertising, Grigat had been invited to answer burning questions such as “Is Iran’s new president Rohani a bearer of hope or just the friendly face of terror?” and “How should Israel and the west react to the new situation?” (http://www.tueinfo.org/cms/node/21561). During his presentation, he openly admitted his support for neo-conservative positions - a confession that came as a shock to no-one, seeing as he normally prefers to give his talks to right-populist circles these days.
I have been observing the regroupment process in Left Unity, the IS Network et al, with scepticism. Nonetheless, I trust and hope that the comrades’ ‘broad’ political eclecticism and ‘inclusiveness’ will not extend to post-left advocates of Zionism, anti- Muslimism and the War on Terror.
Smooth
Smooth
Grumpy
Mark Perryman does seem rather upset with us, doesn’t he? (Letters December 12). He seems to be upset because we quoted him in order “to make a point”. He doesn’t complain that we quote him inaccurately or out of context. He has no point to make about our “point”. Apparently, just by referencing him at all - or “[dragging] my name into it”, as he dubs it - we have made “this kinda personal”.
The bulk of his contribution consists of informing readers that we are a small organisation - something they already know, comrade. We tell them. We have made no quantitative numerical breakthrough in 30-odd years of existence, but that really doesn’t explain much when you set it all in context. Our trend emerged in the early 1980s in a party - the CPGB - that was in an advanced state of organisational and political decay, part of the general decline and disintegration of ‘official’ communism that saw behemoths such as the Italian, French and Spanish communist parties either reduced to shadows of their former selves or wink out of existence altogether. The Stalinist regimes in the USSR and eastern Europe imploded in the early 1990s, further discrediting the very notion of social transformation. The Trotskyist left has hardly made hay over that period.
So, if everyone’s boat had lifted in the last 30 years while we had remained firmly glued to the mud flat, perhaps this angle of attack might have had some purchase. But it just ain’t so - is it, comrade Perryman?
Numbers aside, we actually believe we have some reasons for optimism and confidence when we survey the three decades of our existence. I could cite the disproportionately high level of influence our paper and publications have, the relatively impressive regular weekly readership and the way our perspectives on the crisis of the left and its potential remedies have been borne out. (Unfortunately in the negative, so far.)
I could, but why bother? Mark Perryman’s petulant, apolitical little piece actually reveals a man scalded by the fact that we continue to exist at all.
For, as he himself references, he did indeed rub “unfraternal shoulders” with me and other comrades organised around The Leninist journal in the factional battles of the CPGB during the 1980s. My particular battleground was the Young Communist League, in which Perryman was a relatively prominent Eurocommunist. Younger comrades may not be familiar with this wretched trend, but in short the Euros were the most degenerate of a host of opportunist factions in the party, the faction that was over-ripe with the process of a full transition to bourgeois politics. Euro luminaries would even castigate the Labour Party and centrist CPGB trends as “sectarian” for drawing a line against alliances with non-Thatcherite Tories, Liberals, etc. In that spirit, militant youth were ruthlessly excluded from Euro-controlled unemployed marches for having the temerity to chant anti-Tory slogans; and anti-poll tax protesters were deemed the ‘unacceptable face’ of the left.
The logic of this meant that bourgeois politicians and establishment figures were solicitously courted and given generous access to the party publications the Euros controlled. At the same time, these same party organs were firmly closed to CPGB members on the left. Perryman and his chums shamelessly trampled over even the constricted norms of inner-party democracy to expel opponents and gerrymander congresses. They made Stalinists look like immaculate democrats.
By the way, the comrade foolishly draws attention to the fact that I use a cadre name by putting a pair of scare quotes around ‘Mark Fischer’. Of course, part of the reason why many of our comrades used them was precisely to protect their party membership against the likes of Perryman and the foam-flecked packs of Euro-witch hunters he ran with back in the day.
I was expelled from the YCL - I was a member of the leadership at the time - after a shameful 1984 incident in Hackney. In order to exclude 15 young communists (a number of whom were black) from their branch AGM, the Euro minority in the meeting actually called the notoriously racist Hackney and Stoke Newington police.
On the night I vigorously defended the rights of these comrades to participate in a meeting of their organisation - despite being ordered by general secretary Doug Chalmers (thereafter dubbed ‘Chalmers of the Yard’) to remain silent and acquiesce. For this ‘crime’, I was expelled. Perryman was a member of the leadership body that expelled me - I assume he voted with the Euro majority.
Of course, the difference between us and the other oppositionists of the time was that we were, and remain, committed to open polemic in the workers’ movement. The sordid antics of the Euros were splashed across the pages of The Leninist (still available on our site, by the way).
Grumpy
Grumpy