The CWI and
IMT: Right centrists heirs of Ted Grant
[ O CIT (LSR/PSOL) e a CMI (Esquerda Marxista do PT): a
direita centrista, herdeira de Ted Grant ]
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| Allan Woods ao lado de Ted Grant, dirigentes do CMI-IMT e fundador do Militant |
Reproduzimos abaixo a crítica realizada pelo Socialist Fight
britânico ao CIT e ao CMI. O CIT é o Comitê por uma Internacional dos
Trabalhadores (CIT, chamado de CIO - Comitê por uma Internacional Operária até
2009) que tem como seção no Brasil a LSR do PSOL. O CMI é a Corrente Marxista
Internacional que tem como seção brasileira a corrente Esquerda Marxista do PT
(EMPT). Trata-se de duas tendências internacionais com maior número de seções,
além do quê, ambas são herdeiras do legado teórico de Ted Grant (1913-2006).
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| Peter Taaffe, dirigente do CIT-CWI |
No texto abaixo, em inglês, o CIT é o CWI, dirigido por
Peter Taaffe; e o CMI é o IMT, dirigido por Allan Woods. Grant, Taaffe, Woods
faziam parte do Militant britânico
até a explosão do mesmo em 1991. A raiz da explosão foi a caracterização dos partidos
trabalhistas e social democratas. Enquanto a minoria, dirigida por Grant e
Woods, seguia caracterizando-os como partidos operários burgueses, o que
justificaria seguir com a política de entrismo dentro deles, a maioria,
dirigida por Taaffe, afirmava que tais partidos não tinham mais nenhum caráter
operário e que, portanto, já eram partidos burgueses sob os quais não era
legítima a tática do entrismo. As diferenças se expressaram em vários terrenos,
por exemplo, em relação a um imposto criado pelo Partido Conservador, o poll-tax, um imposto per capita contra o
qual o Partido Trabalhista não queria lutar. A maioria do Militant, sob a pressão de enormes manifestações de massas, queria
derrotar o imposto, enquanto a minoria considerava que não era politicamente
conveniente lutar contra o imposto para não ter que enfrentar-se com o Partido
Trabalhista. Foi então que o setor majoritário, dirigido por Taaffe, expulsa o
setor minoritário de Grant e Woods.
Grant revisou os fundamentos do trotskismo já em 1940,
baseado em uma profunda incompreensão do caráter do Estado, um dos elementos
centrais do próprio marxismo, revisão que está na base de todo o reformismo da
petista EMPT e do psolista LSR. As duas alas herdeiras de seu legado caracterizam
aos policiais, carcereiros e agentes de segurança como “trabalhadores de
uniforme”, que devem compartilhar dos mesmos sindicatos com os demais
servidores públicos, utilizando a velha justificativa oportunista de que assim
estaríamos dividindo o aparato repressivo. Assim como assumem posições
pró-imperialistas com relação às questões irlandesa, palestina, Malvinas, primavera
árabe,...
A LC realizou uma polêmica importante com o principal
dirigente do CMI, Allan Woods, acerca da “primavera árabe” em um debate na USP que
pode ser acessado no link que contém um vídeo sobre o mesmo clicando em:
Grant’s
basic political error is a failure to understand the state, either the
capitalist state or the former degenerate workers’ state of the USSR or the various
deformed workers’ states of Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia/Kampuchea and Cuba as they emerged after WWII. Ted Grant
characterised a whole swath of left bourgeois nationalist regimes as deformed
workers’ states basically because he crudely equated nationalisation with
socialised property relations (socialist planned economy) and he did not
understand the Marxist theory of the state at all in his later years, a point
we shall deal with later.
The
Grantites therefore fail to understand or accept that the state under
capitalism is the prime instrument of class oppression which has to be
overthrown in revolution by the working class. Under pressure of long-term deep
entryism in the Labour party this has led them to take a reformist position of
socialism through parliament via an Enabling Act and to misidentify the forces
of the capitalist state, the police, the army and prison officers as workers in
uniform; just more state employees who are therefore entitled to form trade unions
and be represented by their chosen shop stewards like any other workers. They
see no problem whatsoever with the Prison Officers Association (POA) being part
of the workers’ movement, when in reality these state forces should be expelled
from the TUC. Their historic and ongoing role in torturing Republican prisoners
in the north of Ireland without a word of objection from the Grantites reveals
their true relationship to the capitalist state.
In their
defence they plead that the Enabling Act orientation is merely a transitional
demand used to mobilise the working class and that the demand to unionise the
state forces is, in fact, a clever Marxist tactic to split the army and police
in time of revolution. So instead the revolution being the act of the working
class itself led by the revolutionary party overthrowing the capitalist state
it is the act of a left socialist government, Labour left in the case of the SA
or some other left government like the Trade Union Solidarity Committee or
maybe the No to the EU in the case of the SPEW. The role of the working class
then is to defend the revolutionary nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights
of industry’ which the ‘revolutionary’ government has already carried out. If
the Trotskyist are a majority in this government the result is a healthy
workers’ state, if they are a minority it becomes a deformed workers’ state.
WORKERS IN
UNIFORM?
Marxists
reject the characterisation of the police, army or prisoner officers as workers
in uniform. In 1905 Lenin was very sanguine on how to split the army and police
in an insurrection:
The
contingents may be of any strength, beginning with two or three people. They
must arm themselves as best they can (rifles, revolvers, bombs, knives,
knuckle-dusters, sticks, rags soaked in kerosene for starting fires, ropes or
rope ladders, shovels for building barricades, pyroxylin cartridges, barbed
wire, nails [against cavalry], etc., etc.). Under no circumstances should they
wait for help from other sources, from above, from the outside; they must
procure everything themselves… To launch attacks under favourable circumstances
is not only every revolutionary’s right, but his plain duty. The killing of
spies, policemen, gendarmes, the blowing up of police stations, the liberation
of prisoners, the seizure of government funds for the needs of the
uprising—such operations are already being carried out wherever insurrection is
rife, in Poland and in the Caucasus, and every detachment of the revolutionary
army must be ready to start such operations at a moment’s notice. i
And Trotsky
clearly rejected such an approach also (there was a Social Democratic police
chief in Berlin at that time as it was a political appointment):
In case of
actual danger, the social democracy banks not on the “Iron Front” but on the
Prussian police. It is reckoning without its host! The fact that the police was
originally recruited in large numbers from among social-democratic workers is
absolutely meaningless. Consciousness is determined by environment even in this
instance. The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist
state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have
had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi
students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects. And above all:
every policeman knows that though governments may change, the police remains. Ii
Of course
we do not advocate such tactics as Lenin advocated above today but it is
instructive to note that neither Lenin nor Trotsky regarded the state forces as
workers in uniform in any way at all. It is a different matter when whole
sections of an army or of the police begin to come over to the side of
revolution. But then they cease to be state forces and became anti-state forces
on behalf of the revolution.
In a
polemic in 2006 against ‘Michael’, who subsequently split to join the
International Bolshevik Tendency, iii Lynn Walsh relied heavily on the attitude
of Marx to the state and Transitional demands in Germany in 1848, quoting from
the Communist Manifesto and the later, Demands of the Communist Party in
Germany (1848). iv What he neglects to tell us is that the ONLY point in the
Communist Manifesto that Marx felt obliged to alter is on the question of the
state. Strategy for Revolution in 21st Century tells us.
“The
experience of the Paris Commune in 1870 led Marx and Engels to revise one
aspect of the Communist Manifesto, in their 1872 preface, the only time they
ever felt it necessary to do so. In their words, “One thing especially was
proved by the Commune, viz. that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.’“ As Lenin
would repeat later in State and Revolution, this means that “that the working
class must break up, smash the “ready-made state machinery”, and not confine
itself merely to laying hold of it.” V
The IBT
replied to this at length in an orthodox Trotskyist document, Marxism vs.
‘Militant’ Reformism, vi with which there is little to disagree and whose
arguments we therefore do not need to repeat. It serves as a useful supplement
to this document, apart from obvious differences in method of approach to the
working class. Failure to understand the Marxist theory of the state was the
specific weakness peculiar to Grantism that led to the collapse of that
tradition into right centrism in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the rest
of the Trotskyist movement. In fact Grant was much better than most other
groups in rejecting the capitulation to the political opportunism of Michel
Pablo, the post war central leader of the Fourth International, in regard to
Yugoslavia at that period, as we shall see later.
HOW THE
SPARTS SEE THE DSM AND THE WASP
The
Grantite attitude to the state in Britain is mirrored in every country where
the CWI or IMT has sections. Here is the account of the International Communist
League of the activities of the DSM (CWI) and its front group the Wasp. Care
needs to be takes as the ICL never countenances any tactical orientation to the
working class via its vanguard at all; it is the most dogmatically sectarian of
all the self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups. We would suggest the ability of the
CWI group to remain in the ANC, albeit as a DEEP entry group, until 1996 was
how they built their group; a clear revolutionary programme might have
attracted far more repression but in reality the ANC do not distinguish between
self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups. As long as an outside centre was maintained
the entry tactic was at least a possibility. Total entryism is only possible
for a brief period of a year or two. Nevertheless the account vindicates our
own position that they are reformists everywhere on the state:
According
to the Daily Maverick (15 October), a meeting of wildcat strike leaders took
place in Marikana, representing miners from several provinces. The article
noted in particular the presence of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM),
which has been active in the Rustenburg area. The DSM says that a national
strike coordinating committee was launched on October 13 and that the committee
is calling for a general strike on November 3. On October 19, Vavi and NUM
officials were pelted with rocks by striking workers at AngloGold Ashanti’s
mine in Orkney, North West Province. Earlier, several DSM members were detained
by mine security and grilled by police after addressing the strikers. The
workers movement must defend the DSM and all others victimized for their role
in the miners struggle!
However,
mineworkers and others need to be aware of the thoroughly opportunist history
of the DSM, which is affiliated to the Committee for a Workers’ International
(CWI [in Canada, Socialist Alternative]) headed by Peter Taaffe. The Taaffe
group formed the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC, remaining inside this
bourgeois party until 1996. In a speech in New York given shortly after the
1994 elections, Taaffe, then the leader of the British Militant Labour
Tendency, opposed the call for a workers’ party, saying: “The working class in
South Africa has to go through the experience of an ANC government. The slogan
of a workers’ party was an incorrect slogan in the period prior to the
elections in South Africa. We wanted the biggest possible ANC majority” (WV No.
602, 10 June 1994).
The DSM
emerged from its entrism inside the ANC when the latter’s “national liberation”
credentials were starting to wear thin as a result of economic policies aimed
at reassuring investors. Indeed, few if any left groups persist in uncritically
cheerleading for the regime and its leaders, who are unashamedly riding the
“gravy train.” But the DSM, like the other reformists who hitched their wagon
to the Tripartite Alliance, maintains its class-collaborationist politics,
which are at bottom the same as those of the SACP and COSATU tops. This can be
unmistakably seen in the DSM’s attitude toward the state (see the 1994
Spartacist pamphlet, Militant Labour’s Touching Faith in the Capitalist State).
Just like their reformist big brothers, the CWI/DSM believes that the police
are part of the workers movement.
In the 1994
speech cited above, Taaffe supported the cop union POPCRU (Police and Prisons
Civil Rights Union), enthusing that “these very same black police who were
tools of the apartheid regime, were radicalized by the situation.” His
conclusion was: “We can neutralize the forces of the state and win them over.”
One can
cite any amount of evidence disproving this suicidal illusion, the cop massacre
of miners at Marikana being an obvious example. In the wake of that event, the
DSM, in a 17 August statement titled “For a General Strike to End the Marikana
Massacre,” violence-baited the Lonmin strikers, rebuking them for “killing
first two security guards, on Saturday, and then two police officers on Monday”
(quoted in a 23 August SSA statement published in WV No. 1007, 31 August). Now,
in a 16 October statement, the DSM refers to a wave of workers militancy
sweeping through the country, which supposedly includes “the police as well as
the municipal workers”! Of the Taaffeites, it can truly be said that they have
learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The police, black and white, are
enforcers for capitalist rule. We say: Cops, prison guards and security guards
out of the unions!
The DSM
calls for “nationalisation of the mines under workers’ control and management.”
A black-centred workers government would expropriate the mines, banks, industry
and land without compensation, while struggling to extend the revolution
internationally. Such a government could only be put in place through the expropriation
of the South African bourgeoisie as a class, i.e., through proletarian
revolution. The DSM statement does not mention socialist revolution, and this
is not an accident. They don’t believe that the workers must smash the
capitalist state and replace it with a workers’ state. In Britain, Taaffe’s
organization claims that industry will be nationalized through the mechanism of
an “enabling bill” passed by the bourgeois Parliament. This is just a version
of what the British Labour Party did after World War II: it’s social democracy,
not communism. Vii
THE MARXIST
THEORY OF THE STATE
Of course
every Marxist student knows Engels famous 1884 definition of the state:
The second
distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly
coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special
public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the
population has become impossible since the split into classes. The slaves also
belong to the population; as against the 365,000 slaves, the 90,000 Athenian
citizens constitute only a privileged class. The militia of the Athenian
democracy was an aristocratic public power against the slaves, whom it kept in
check; but to keep the citizens in check as well, a gendarmerie was needed as
described above. This public power exists in every state; it consists not
merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and coercive
institutions of all kinds, of which gentile society knew nothing. Viii
In 1843
Marx in On the Jewish Question attacked the idea of a regime of rights in the
French Constitution of 1793 partially on the basis that policemen were needed
to enforce these ‘rights’:
Security is
the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of police, expressing
the fact that the whole of society exists only in order to guarantee to each of
its members the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property. It is
in this sense that Hegel calls civil society “the state of need and reason.” …
we see that the political emancipators go so far as to reduce citizenship, and
the political community, to a mere means for maintaining these so-called rights
of man, that, therefore, the citoyen is declared to be the servant of egotistic
homme, that the sphere in which man acts as a communal being is degraded to a
level below the sphere in which he acts as a partial being, and that, finally,
it is not man as citoyen, but man as private individual [bourgeois] who is
considered to be the essential and true man. ix
So here we
see that the policeman protects the property of the bourgeoisie against the
worker as his central task, according the Marx. But there are all forms of
state, the democratic, the totalitarian, the fascist and there are workers’
states. And it was on the analysis of the new workers’ states that appeared
after WWII that Grant displayed both his adherence to certain Trotskyist
principles and his weakness on the state. It is widely acknowledged outside his
own ideological circles by any that are willing to make a serious objective
assessment that his defence Trotskyism’s heritage on both Yugoslavia and China
in 1949 were principled and correct in so far as they went.
In 1957
Bill Hunter produced his anti-Pabloite document, Under a Stolen Flag which must
rank as a spirited defence of Trotskyism, albeit with the left centrist
weakness we have analysed in On the Continuity of Trotskyism. However in Ted
Grant The Unbroken Thread we find a curious gap in the history from the mid
fifties up to the early sixties. As we learn from A Brief biography in
Revolutionary History 2002:
In 1953 a
split took place in the International, with Healy and Cannon leaving to form
their own grouping. This left the International without a section in Britain.
After some discussions, Ted’s group was recognised as the official British
section. By the end of the year Ted again became full-timer worker, and a new
magazine, Workers International Review, was launched. X
Bill Hunter
points out that this was on the basis of supporting Pablo, with whom he
certainly disagreed.:
We must
remark, in passing, that Pablo and Co. show scant courtesy to the little group
in Britain which made an unprincipled fusion with last year. How now, Comrade
G(rant)? You have justified your bargain – two professionals and a magazine, in
exchange for a ‘section’ in Britain with a few ‘principles’ thrown in – by
declaring that Pabloism has changed. This shabby covering has now been torn
away by none other than Pablo himself. On Page 1 of its thesis the
‘International Secretariat’ informs is that: ‘The more and more dramatic events
have followed one another in the USSR, the Peoples Democracies and the
capitalist countries since the 4th World Congress, have completely and
brilliantly confirmed this analysis. (i.e. the whole Pabloite war revolution
nonsense – SF) xi
(We will
analyse how the CWI’s reformist theory of the state evolved from a relatively
good position by Ted Grant in the late 1940s and early 1950s to today’s
reformist one with a thin veneer of Trotskyism in a separate document, The
Marxist theory of the state…)
THE CWI’S
PRO-IMPERIALISM ON IRELAND
Nowhere is
the theory of the state more needed than in the north of Ireland, nowhere is
the Grant tradition as obviously capitulatory as there. We will examine the
article from Militant on the 1974 Ulster Workers strike that brought down the
Sunningdale Agreement which was proposing a timid reformist power-sharing
agreement which would grant some modest protection against discrimination to
the Nationalist, i.e. anti-Imperialist, community in the north of Ireland. In
an article in the Irish Examiner, Welcome for Orange Order is one step on long
journey, July 03 2012, Gerard Howlin comments on the reception given in the
ballroom in Leinster House, in the Irish parliament, to the grandmaster of the
Orange Order Edward Stevenson. Giving the historical background he comments:
In 1795, as
tensions mounted, a clash occurred called the Battle of the Diamond in Co
Armagh. It was a nasty scuffle involving Catholic Defenders and local
Protestants. It did, however, give birth to the Orange Order. If the Seanad
chamber is a backdrop for the Protestant Enlightenment in Ireland, the order
can be viewed, as one historian remarked, as the key force of
counter-revolution. It was the political genius of the order that it could hold
dukes and dustmen in its popular but sectarian embrace. Xii
The skilled
Protestant workers, the institutionalise aristocracy of labour who have
traditionally looked to Apartheid South Africa, to Zionist Israel and to the US
deep South Jim Crow for inspiration, despised the poor ‘papist’
nationalist/Catholic workers and were always determined to form a cross-class
alliance to deny them employment, housing, welfare and life itself whenever
“croppy” became too uppity. But Militant pandered to them thus:
The whole
basis of life in modern society depends on the working class. Nothing moved in
Northern Ireland without the permission of the working class. Even bourgeois
commentators, hostile to the aim of the strike were forced to comment on the
power and ingenuity displayed by the working class. Thus the Times
correspondent commented on the situation in the Protestant Sandy Row district
of Belfast…”Between fifty and a hundred men have operated a rubbish clearance
service, going round in the backs of lorries while others swept the streets. At
the weekend, brown paper rubbish bags arrived and 22,000 have been given to
families in the past three days.” Connections were made with sympathetic
farmers who supplied the areas with cheap food. Xiii
This is the
sentence that leaps out at you from that article: “Nevertheless, the strike
also demonstrated in a distorted form and on a reactionary issue, the colossal
power of the working class when it moves into action.” Who would express such
admiration for a neo-fascist uprising? Would we admire the strength and
discipline of Hitler’s Brownshirts because this showed us what these workers
could do if there were socialists and not fascists? And remember the material
basis for discrimination in the north of Ireland. Here was the real aristocracy
of labour that was originally gathered in 1795 in the Orange Order, whose
declared purpose in its initiation oath is still to “counter-revolution”.
“Nothing moved in Northern Ireland without the permission of the working class”
cannot but choke you. This “nothing” is primarily other workers, Protestants
who had solidarity with nationalist workers and nationalist workers themselves
who were assaulted with fascistic enthusiasm by Loyalist thugs with the covert
assistance of the British Army and the not-so-covert assistance of the Royal
Ulster Constabulary. The various bourgeoisies, from the Irish pro-Imperialists
to the bedrock of Imperialist orthodoxy in the columns of The Times, of course,
were not hostile to this strike, supported it but had to be careful in how they
expressed their support, as Militant were. Hence the mutual admiration between
Militant and the pro-Imperialist bourgeoisie here: “Isn’t it great to have the
workers going on strike for us instead against us for a change?” is the common
theme here supported by Militant. Those in South Africa will recall Mangosuthu
Buthelezi’s strikes against the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal. Do we all remember how
supportive The Times were to the 1926 General Strike and how it complemented
the workers on their ingenuity etc? We though not!
A sectarian
catastrophe cannot be ruled out in Northern Ireland; particularly if the trade
union movement fails to act now. But Marxists reject the siren voices who speak
and write of the ‘inevitability’ of religious civil war. Events in Britain and
Southern Ireland can exercise a profound effect in the North of Ireland. The
worsening economic situation in Britain and its effects in Britain will provide
the opportunity for cementing a class movement of Catholic and Protestant
workers. But as in the past, these opportunities can be missed if the lessons
of the last six years are not learnt. The bitter religious divisions between
the working class will not be bridged by Christian homilies. Sectarianism will
not evaporate if the trade union leaders act as if by ignoring it, it will go
away by itself. The working class of Northern Ireland have demonstrated their
colossal power during the May strike. (our emphasis). Xiv
So workers
participating in a reactionary fascist attack on other workers demonstrated the
colossal power of the working class! This is the most outrageous sentence we
have ever read for a group which claims to be socialist. It is true that an
earlier article, whilst bad, was written in Ireland and at least had some clear
opposition to the strike.
They were
using that power for reactionary aims and to assist their own worst enemies, the
Craigs, Paisleys and co. Let them use it together with the Catholic working
class – and they will be an invincible force. Xv
A MEASURE
OF EQUALITY
But that
was the very reason for the strike, they feared the “Catholics”, in fact all
the political opponents of British Imperialist occupation of the six north
eastern counties of Ireland, would gain a measure of equality, they would be
forced to stop discriminating against them and within their own ranks “Rotten
Prods” would emerge to show solidarity with the nationalists and
anti-imperialists, as they did in the late teens and early 1920s. This labour
aristocracy was not going to yield its privileges to anyone because they knew
that covertly the entire British establishment supported them, including the
trade union bureaucracy and the Labour party, whose left flank was guarded so
assiduously here by the pro-Imperialist Militant Tendency of Ted Grant. The
strike was to stop the possibility of the nationalist community gaining that
limited measure of equality and its success guaranteed just that for another
generation at least. The power of the working class was exercised to prevent
workers unity and the Socialist party, whilst advocating unity, believes it can
only be on the basis of the support for the British Empire. They are THE most
pro-Imperialist sect on the left.
Irish
Marxists – gathered around the Militant Irish Monthly – are the only tendency
in the Irish labour movement, on the basis of a Marxist programme and
perspective, capable of furthering the process of re-arming the Northern
Ireland workers on class lines. Xvi
This is a
complete lie. This utterly shameful article, still proudly displayed in the
archives of the SP/CWI, displays this as a political current prepared to go to
all lengths to defends the interests of British and global Imperialism, and
covering this up with a thin veneer of leftist pseudo-Marxist gobbledegook.
But that
was 1974 what about today? The politics are the same, as Socialist Fight No 12
pointed out:
In an
article on 16 January 2013, Northern Ireland: Flag issue turmoil illustrates
failure of the ‘peace process’ Ciaran Mulholland, CWI Northern Ireland, (the
Socialist Party) gives us this on the riots:
Whilst the
total numbers involved are relatively small there is no doubt that the issue
has acted as a lightning rod for widespread dissatisfaction with the peace
process which has built up over time in the Protestant community. There is real
and genuine anger among large layers of Protestants. There is a sense that
“everything is going in one direction”, that is, Protestants are losing out to
Catholics. In the view of many Sinn Fein are pushing too hard for
concessions-as Progressive Unionist Party (the PUP is linked to the UVF) leader
Billy Hutchinson has argued “Sinn Fein are acting outside the spirit of the
Good Friday Agreement”. This is the reason that the PUP have given for
reversing their previous conciliatory approach on the flags issue. A banner
displayed in the Mount Vernon, where Hutchison works as a community worker, proclaims
“North Belfast Against Cultural Apartheid”.
WHAT ‘THE
PROTESTANTS’ AND ‘THE CATHOLICS’ BELIEVE
The stuff
that “the Protestants” believe is completely false however as the article goes
on to explain. They are blaming “the Catholics” who are sufferings a great deal
more than themselves.
At the same
time many Catholics continue to believe that they are subject to sectarian
discrimination. They hold that they are dealt with more harshly by the police.
They believe that they are more likely to be poor and unemployed than
Protestants for historic reasons, reasons of geography and because of the
residues of sectarian discrimination, there are still differences between the
two communities in economic terms. The poverty rate among Protestants at 19 per
cent is lower than the 26 per cent rate for Catholics. In the three years to
2010 on average, 28 per cent of working-age Protestants were not in paid work
compared with 35 per cent of Catholics.
So the
stuff that “the Catholics believe” is, in fact, true. But nonetheless we must
be careful to avoid drawing any conclusion about whose beliefs are correct and
whose are far-right reaction:
The views
expressed in each community are sometimes true, or partially true. Sometimes
however genuinely held beliefs are simply not true. The reason that such a
complex situation can arise is that there are genuine interwoven grievances on
both sides. The real problem is that the peace process has failed to deliver
for working class or young people whatever their background. The peace process
has failed because under capitalism genuine peace, and real economic
advancement for working people, is not possible. Under the structures
established by the Good Friday Agreement it is assumed that everyone belongs to
one or other of two mutually exclusive communities. Under capitalism all that
is possible is a sharing out of political power, and a sharing out of poverty
and unemployment… Whilst all sections of the protestant community have been
affected by the flag issue it finds its sharpest expression in the most
deprived working class areas. The rioting and the road blocks are in part a
distorted form of class anger directed at the unionist political establishment
represented in the assembly and on the executive.
But the
problems predate the GFA and indeed the Orange state itself from 1921, although
both made a bad situation much worse. It is a complete lie that the ‘two
communities’ are equally to blame. In the medieval church that type of argument
as it is made above was known as equivocation.xvii And “class anger” my arse.
Was it class anger that drove some backward German workers to don Brownshirts
and attack Jews? Leon Trotsky said they were the “storm troopers of finance
capital” and that is what we are seeing emerging in Belfast. Of course it is a
lie that Loyalist anger is directed primarily at the UUP/DUP and the police.
However some rioters justified attacking the police because it had too many
Catholics (by February 2011, 29.7% of the 7, 200 officers were from the
Catholic community). But anger is only directed against all these because they
seen as slacking somewhat in their traditional job of discriminating against
‘the Catholics’.
In a 1999
review of Loyalists, by Peter Taylor Socialism Today told us that the PUP
“initially moved in a socialist direction”. The Socialist party described the
neo-fascist uprising that was the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of May 1974
was displaying “the latent power of the working class” in the “interests of the
majority of the Protestant population” as they saw it; right or wrong we must
respect this prejudice!
In October
1974 current PUP leader Billy Hutchinson, murdered Catholics Michael Loughran
and Edward Morgan in Northumberland Street, Belfast (which links the Protestant
Shankill to the neighbouring Falls Road, a Catholic area). Hutchinson has often
stressed the importance of the working class nature of Loyalism and has argued
in favour of socialism, he is an atheist and has never been a member of the
Orange Order. The SP have always pandered to this neo-Strasserite xviii
Loyalist ‘socialism’ – which opposes the rights of the nationalist community –
a “socialism of idiots”, as SPD leader August Bebel famously described it c.
1890.
THE
MALVINAS WAR, THE CWI DEFENDS THE EMPIRE
If we
scroll on eight years we come to the Malvinas war against Argentina in 1982.
Again Ted Grant could be relied on the rush to the assistance of the empire
threatened by an uppity semi-colony claiming back their national territory
seized as a colony by the British Empire in 1690. Here is another shameful
article in defence of Empire but also containing the key rejection of Marxism
on the state and revolution:
The
Falklands war is not a reason for calling off the struggle against the Tories –
on the contrary, the slaughter of the war and the additional drain on British
capitalism, for which big business will try to make the workers pay, underlines
the urgency of stepping up the struggle to bring down the Tory government.
The labour
movement should be mobilised to force a general election to open the way for
the return of a Labour government to implement socialist policies at home and
abroad. Victory of a socialist government in Britain would immediately
transform the situation in relation to the Falklands. The Junta would no longer
be able to claim to be fighting British imperialism.
A socialist
government would make a class appeal to the Argentinean workers. A Labour
government could not just abandon the Falklanders and let Galtieri get on with
it. But it would continue the war on socialist lines. First, a socialist
government would carry through the democratisation of the British armed forces,
introducing trade union rights and the election of officers. Working class
interests cannot be defended under the direction of an authoritarian, officer
caste, which is tied to the capitalist class by education, income and family
and class loyalties. The use of force against the Junta, however, would be
combined with a class appeal to the workers in uniform. British capitalism will
probably defeat the Junta, but only through a bloody battle and at an enormous
cost in lives. Using socialist methods, a Labour government could rapidly
defeat the dictatorship, which was already facing a threat from the Argentinean
working class when Galtieri embarked on his diversionary battle with British
imperialism (our emphasis).xix
The above
passage contains all the reformist repudiation of the Marxist position on the
state as well as the gross national chauvinist pro-Imperialism so characteristic
of this sect. For instance the “workers in uniform” stuff was explicitly
repudiated by Lenin and Trotsky in their writings on the capitalist state as we
say above. And as for continuing the war if they were in government that is
simply a piece of gross social Imperialism, socialist in name but clearly
Imperialist in content to toady to British ruling class interests and placate
British middle class and workers’ pro-imperialist prejudices. We recall the
pressures of the time (having been assaulted for defending Argentina’s right to
the Malvinas) but what good is a Marxist who cannot stand up to the pressures
from his or her own ruling class? They are simply playing games.
WORKERS
POWER’ DOCUMENT
The key
elements of the reformism of Grantism under a thin veneer of Marxist
gobbledygook are exposed in the 1989 document by Workers Power. Whilst not
agreeing with many details in the piece it does address the essence of the
group’s anti-revolutionary reformism:
In place of
the strategy of the proletarian seizure of power Militant puts forward the
schema of a Labour government with a parliamentary majority and a socialist
programme, implementing the transformation of society by legislative means.
Peter Taaffe argues:
…” in the
pages of Militant, in pamphlets, and in speeches, we have shown that the
struggle to establish a socialist Britain can be carried through in Parliament
backed up by the colossal power of the labour movement outside. This, however,
will only be possible on one condition: that the trade unions and Labour Party
are won to a clear Marxist programme, and the full power of the movement is
used to effect the rapid and complete socialist transformation of society.”
At the
level of strategy this amounts to a parliamentary road to socialism via an
established reformist party—that is a bourgeois workers’ party. Nowhere in the
pages of Militant or its associated journals do we find any references to the
need (in Britain) for workers’ councils as the organs of struggle and of
proletarian power in order to effect the revolution. Nowhere do we find the
argument for a workers’ militia as an alternative to the capitalists’ military
machine. Nowhere do we find the call for a revolutionary party, distinct from
all shades of reformism and centrism, as the necessary leadership for the
proletariat in the revolution. Parliament and the existing organisations of the
working class are deemed sufficient. Indeed, the job of workers’ organisations
is merely to supplement and enhance the work of the left parliamentarians. Even
these existing reformist led organisations are not cited as an alternative form
of political power to Parliament. As Taaffe explains:
“The
struggle to enhance the position of Labour in Parliament has always been
supplemented by the struggle outside Parliament, both of the trade unions and
the Labour Party.”
This
parliamentary strategy leads to a crucial error; the down-playing of the role
of the working class, of its self-organisation as the key to its
self-emancipation in the course of revolution. If anyone, particularly the
reformist leadership of the Labour Party, were in any doubt about the
Militant’s commitment to Parliament, Rob Sewell (now a leader of the rival IMT
which retains the politically identical positions on the state GD) repeated the
essence of their position in an indignant reply to the reformist Geoff Hodgson:
“The idea
put forward by Hodgson that we want to ‘smash parliamentary democracy’ is
completely untrue. Unlike the sectarian grouplets on the fringe of the labour
movement we have stressed that a socialist Britain can be accomplished through
Parliament, backed up by the mobilised power of the labour movement outside.”
The swipe against the left in order to appease the right is a classic
characteristic of centrism. Xx
But perhaps
they have advanced since those days? Not a bit of it. Now that they are no
longer in the British Labour party they can feign well to the left of the
IMT/British Socialist Appeal on domestic as well as in international issues.
But the essential reformist politics remain the same. They are still for the
parliamentary road to socialism only now they are sure the Labour party cannot
do it but a more radical, reformist workers party can perform this task and
tread the path of the old Communist parties via parliament. This radical party
is the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in Britain and the Workers
and Socialist Party (WASP) in South Africa, to name but two. The line is still
the same, lacking even the radical posturing of Gerry Healy’s WRP in its
strident denunciations of all such reformist ideas whilst cosying up to the
reformist Ken Livingstone and defending his sell out of the in 1984 and
toadying to Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini.
LIBYA AND
SYRIA TODAY
In recent
international questions they have been begun to adopt a third camp position, as
can be seen in Libya and Syria. That is they support the Imperialist sponsored
‘revolutions’ on the ground but denounce all open Imperialist intervention.
This is the classic “neither Washing nor Moscow” (or in these cases Tripoli or
Damascus) but international socialism” line. They therefore seek the working
class fighting in their own class interests which naturally, for them, means
they will not defend the semi-colonial regime against a proxy way by
Imperialist-sponsored forces. But it is at least refreshing not to hear the
gross apology for imperialist-sponsored outright reactionary forces in Libya
and Syria (Obama’s ‘revolutions’) that we get from groups like their former
comrades in the Socialist Appeal/IMT, The Socialist Workers Party (SWP/IST),
the Mandelite Fourth International, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, Workers
Power and the Austrian-based Revolutionary Communist International Tendency,
(RCIT) on these questions. But they began in Libya as straight forward
pro-imperialists:
No serious
left force can advocate a policy of abstention where working people are
subjected to murderous attack by a ruthless dictator like Gaddafi. Clearly, we
had to give political support -the position of the Socialist Party and the
Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) from the outset – to the people of
Benghazi when they drove Gaddafi’s forces from the city in a revolutionary
uprising. Xxi
But the
“people of Benghazi” were led by CIA ‘assets’ (who turned out subsequently to
be liabilities) and were lynching Black workers right from the start. The
flying of King Idris’ flag and the whole history of CIA sponsorship of these
groups and leaderships should have been enough to identify who the ‘revolutionaries’
in Benghazi were. But with that un-repudiated history of pro- Imperialism the
shift is only a tactical one to capture those who are seeking genuine
Trotskyist revolutionary politics and will not trouble too much to examine what
they are really saying and how it gells with past positions. As Socialist Fight
No 7 said:
The
Socialist party (CWI) are somewhat more circumspect (that their former comrades
in the IMT):
While many
Libyans are celebrating, socialists have to be clear that, unlike the ousting
of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, the way in which Gaddafi has been
removed means that a victory for the Libyan people was also a success for
Imperialism. Without NATO acting as the rebels’ air force or the soldiers,
weapons, organisation and training that NATO and some other countries like the
feudal Qatar autocracy supplied, Tripoli would not have fallen to the rebels in
the way that it has
So a more
truthful approach, the ‘revolution’ was won with the assistance of Imperialism.
That has sorted out their former comrades in Socialist Appeal but one is left
floundering by the idea that the “victory for the Libyan people was also a
success for Imperialism.” We know that was what they said on the TV comrades
but it was a lie. You cannot advance Imperialism’s victory and the victory of
the working class at the same time, they are mutually exclusive, and one must
advance at the expense of the other, a ‘zero sum’ rather than a ‘win-win’
situation we would suggest. Of course the use of the word ‘people’ might mean
that they accept that capitalists and workers have ultimately the same
political and economic interests in faraway lands. But once you pay the first
tranche of the protection money the Mafia will always be back for more.
The CWI
take a similar third campist line on Syria today. This does put them to the
left of those like the Alliance for Workers Liberty (who do equivocate, it is
true), the Fourth International (Mandel) and Workers Power and the RCIT, who
are still batting for their reactionary pro-Imperialist ‘revolution’ abandoned
now by the more pragmatic leftists.
THE HISTORY
AND GENESIS OF THE NATIONAL SHOP STEWARDS NETWORK
The
Socialist Party/CWI-sponsored NSSN was founded at a conference called by the
National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) on July 7, 2007.
The proposal to re-establish a shop stewards movement came from an RMT
sponsored conference to discuss working class political representation held in
January 2006.
Its
founding conference saw a dispute over Clause 3 of the constitution, which
pledged not to interfere in the internal affairs of TUC affiliated unions. This
effectively meant that no criticisms were allowed of the left trade union
bureaucracy, whose mouth piece it was to become. After four year’s existence it
embarked on a new turn. Following a unanimous decision of the steering
committee, on 22 January 2011, the NSSN held a conference to discuss launching
its own anti-cuts campaign. A motion from a majority on the steering committee
proposed establishing an anti-cuts campaign “bringing trade unions and
communities together to save all jobs and services”, whilst a minority on the
steering committee argued against the motion, opposing setting up an anti-cuts
campaign and argued for “working with Coalition of Resistance, Right to Work
and other groups, to build and launch a single national anti-cuts organisation
early in 2011”. In the debate both sides had equal speakers and shared
responsibility for chairing the debate which lasted two and a half hours, with
the conference voting 305 to 89 to establish an anti-cuts campaign committee
which was elected immediately afterwards.
So after
four years of having successfully resisted attempts to delete Clause 3 at
successive conferences in 22 January the NSSN split and became more openly an
obvious front for the TU bureaucracy. All non-SP members, apart from one or
two, resigned from the Steering Committee. Here is Gerry Downing’s resignation
letter:
I hereby
resign from the Steering Committee of the NSSN because the decisions of the
Special Conference of 22 January effectively meant that the NSSN had openly
become a front for the left trade union bureaucracy. Such aspirations as it had
to represent the independent interests of the rank-and-file of the working class
was now totally abandoned. Despite its left posturing on correctly demanding of
anti-cuts campaigns no platform for Labour councillors who vote for the cuts
the fact is that no national trade union, right or left, has demanded that
Labour councillors it sponsors, supports or influences vote against the cuts or
refuse to implement them, let alone seeks to mobilise its members for
industrial action to defeat the cuts, against Labour Councils where necessary.
In fact
Unite has explicitly instructed its councillors to set legal budgets to
implement the cuts and all other national union leaderships have a similar
attitude. Therefore hollow left posturing by the NSSN SP leaders whilst
covering up for these left bureaucrats is no opposition at all. The RMT now calls
off legally endorsed strikes on “legal advice” that a judge MIGHT grant an
injunction! The NSSN, in gaining the support of RMT General Secretary Bob Crow
and having RMT President Alex Gordon on the Anti-Cuts Committee means the
prospect of endorsing the illegal strike action and occupations now
increasingly necessary to fight cuts and privatisation has all-but disappeared
from the perspective of the NSSN. I therefore call on all serious trade union
militants to build a rank-and-file movement independent of ALL TU bureaucrats
and attend the London meeting on April 9th of those who supported Jerry Hicks
for Unite General Secretary to found the Grass Roots Left in Unite and
encourage such formations in all unions. Non-unite members who agree with the
perspective welcome. Details of venue etc to follow.
Gerry
Downing Unite
Workers
Power’s Jeremy Dear made the following analysis:
Gordon
(Alex Gordon, RMT President at that time) claimed that the NSSN opposition
wanted:
• the NSSN
conference to take a position on the Unite leadership campaign (presumably in
support of Jerry Hicks)
• the NSSN
to oppose the Trade Union Freedom Bill on the grounds that it did not go far
enough
• to refuse
a £5,000 donation from the RMT because this would put the NSSN in hock to that
union’s leadership.
None of
these claims are true. It was a smear speech, aimed at undermining the minority
before the debate. Nevertheless, Gordon’s speech did more than show what an
unprincipled bureaucrat he is, it showed that Crow and his cronies in the RMT
bureaucracy had reached a deal with the SP leadership. Crow and co. would
support the SP’s bid to split the anti-cuts movement with a rival campaign, in
order to weaken the Socialist Workers Party (which they both hate, especially
after a series of articles in Socialist Worker critical of the RMT’s leadership
of the tube dispute) and secure the NSSN as uncritical cheerleaders of the left
wing union leaders. Xxii
As we wrote
at the time:
The SP have
an almost totally compliant membership, clearly to the right of the SWP, for
instance. if we ignore the odd cloud of doubt that passes over the faces of
leftists like Rob Williams and others when a particularly nasty piece of
chicanery is imposed, like the forced split in the NSSN on the 22 January. Jane
Loftus, a member of the Socialist Workers Party voted November 5 2009 to accept
the interim agreement and call off the strikes, just as the strength of the
postal workers was starting to be realised and she was forced to resign from
the SWP as a result. But the SP backed this same sell-out deal with the usual
lame excuses:
“But once
they had a chance of looking at what was achieved by their mass strike action,
many of the workers have drawn the conclusion that the deal (unanimously agreed
it seems by the elected postal executive committee) does allow the CWU to
regain some element of trade union control in the workplace and therefore does
push back the attacks of the bosses. One local CWU leader in the South West wrote
to his members: “We have forced a vicious employer back to the table”. He went
on to say: “We know the interim deal does not settle every single problem in
the industry but it gives us a foothold … Royal Mail set out to destroy your
union. We are still here”. The idea, often put forward in the right-wing media,
that workers are ready to strike at the drop of a hat is wrong. In this case
many think the interim deal opens the way to the reversal of the attacks on
them and their union.” Xxiii
The CWU are
now proposing to accept privatisation because it is “illegal” to strike against
it and will only seek to mollify some of the worst excesses of the deal
afterwards. And Bill Fox and Jane Loftus, CWU Gen Sec and President are still
touring to left circuses as part of an anti-cuts and privatisation opposition!
Counterfire has no pretence at internal democracy so is a most fruitful arena
for reformist demagogs like Tony Benn whose bottom line is the parliamentary
road to socialism with the working class as a stage army who will assist in
getting Labour governments elected. God forbid that they should do anything to
seriously threaten capitalism or even seriously damage ‘the economy’ by any
strike longer than one day.
The SP/NSSN
alibis Len McCluskey’s betrayal at Grangemouth
The
Socialist party Scotland statement, Trade unions must learn lessons from
Grangemouth setback, on 25 October 2013 said:
There was
huge pressure on the shop stewards at Grangemouth following the closure
announcement on Wednesday 23 October. More than half of the permanent workforce
at the whole Grangemouth site had been told their jobs were gone. The oil
refinery was closed. According to Ineos it would remain so, unless the union
agreed to huge cuts in workers’ terms and conditions. The possibility of
closure enduring was a real one. In addition, the Unite Scottish secretary, Pat
Rafferty, supported by the Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, was at that
point urging that the union sign up to the company’s demands.
It laments
more in sorrow than in anger McCluskey’s “mistake”. Then on the 28th on the
Sunday Politics show hosted by Andrew Neil Bob Crow said he “takes his hat off”
to Unite for saving jobs. On the 29th the Socialist party piece was reposted
but “This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party
website on 25 October 2013 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently
printed in The Socialist.” The only difference we noticed was that the words,
“supported by the Unite general secretary Len McCluskey” were gone so that it
was all down to that nasty Unite Scottish secretary, Pat Rafferty. They
really cannot fart now without Bob’s say so.
Of course
they can attack the Labour party leaders and Miliband for starting the whole
affair but that is because, unlike the Socialist Appeal, they are no longer in
the Labour party. But essentially their politics are the same. So the SA can be
fighting syndicalist and the SP can be fighting anti-Labour and still end up in
the same place. They bow, like Rob Sewell, to Stalinist class traitor Jimmy
Reid also. And of course there is no mention of their voting for McCluskey
against Jerry Hicks in the election and no mention of a rank and file movement
to defeat and replace the bureaucracy. However they did mention elsewhere the
fact that Jerry Hicks got 80,000 votes as evidence of the strength of the left
in Unite (which obviously excludes themselves as leftists in Unite). Even
‘sadder’, they thought, were the actions of Billy Hayes, another sponsor of the
NSSN with Bob Crow, who likewise expects and gets no criticism in return:
The
sell-off of the remaining publicly owned parts of Royal Mail was completed over
the last week. This represents the sad passing of the last remaining form of
publicly owned communications.
Of course
genuine revolutionary socialists, trade union militants and fighters for the
class are not ‘sad’ at these betrayals at all but hopping mad and even more
determined to expose these class traitors and replace them with a genuine
revolutionary and fighting leadership.
These are
the affiliates of the NSSN: National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport
Workers (RMT), Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Communication
Workers Union (CWU), National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), National Union of
Journalists (NUJ), Prison Officers Association (POA), Bakers Food and Allied
Workers Union (BFAWU).
