The funeral was a fitting tribute to Dave, turnout of over 300 at the crematorium with the service done by Bob Jelley, who was one of Dave’s students at Caledon Castle School in the 1960s, and now he has retired from his career in education, is a humanist minister. It was standing room only – every seat was taken. Two comrades, Bob himself and Keith White spoke movingly of Dave’s importance in both education and politics and the fact that he absolutely refused to separate any of the aspects of his life and work from each other. Finally John Murray spoke about Dave’s sense of humour and his love of life.

The respect Dave is held in locally was shown by the article in the local paper in tribute to him which appeared the day before the funeral (a better response from the Coventry Evening Telegraph than he generally got when dealing with them!). I believe one of the journalists at BBC West Midlands is also working on a radio programme about his life. It is perhaps summed up by the response of his local printers (he was always a regular customer). When Corinne his wife went to get the Order of Service printed the folk behind the counter started crying when they heard Dave had died, and printed the booklet for free.

There is a collection for additional equipment for his last project – the local kids playground in the park a few yards from his house and the Council has agreed to put up a plaque commemorating the work he put into getting the plyground built.

Comrades at the wake a held at the Humber pub at the end of Dave’s street proposed that an annual political event should be organised in Coventry in his memory.

In Solidarity
Matthew

It is difficult to know where to start when talking about Dave but I’ll just relate a couple of stories about him.

I first met Dave 50 Years ago on a ‘Hands off Cuba Demo in Coventry’ (during the threatened USA invasion of Cuba) in 1962.
It was down at the bottom of Hertford Street, Coventry, on an old bomb site – they were still about then before the building of the precinct, near the Bull Yard and the Three Tuns Pub, where the demo moved off from.

It was a big demo of a few hundred and I was with a contingent of Communist Party youth – the Young Communist League – who were fine but a bit serious and a little humourless, and I remember looking over at a bigger contingent of the Young Socialists, who were Trotskyists I was fearfully and whisperingly told, who seemed full of life, singing songs, playing guitars and chanting socialist slogans. A fairly alluring sight in contrast. But anyway it was there that Dave approached me, from the trots – spoke to me and got me —- and later reeled me in with talk of real social change and revolution -not the peaceful coexistence of Soviet bureaucrats or the stale staid reformism of Labour.

From then on it was CND, Aldermaston marches and support for the Vietnamese against American Imperialism for me and through Dave a closer aquaintance with ideas of how our society could and needed to change.

The result was that Dave became a real influence on me and it became that he was always a friend, as he was to so many of us – a guy you could talk politics with – or history or music and many other things – and how to change our world to a better Socialist one.
But while clearly there was in those days, a strong political line within Dave that sprang from a Marxist and Trotskyist perspective (he was to change more recently) Dave was never a doctrinaire who shut out discussion or a willingness to change if experience and ideas proved him wrong.

We all know of his warmth and genuine interest in his friends and his fabled love of anecdotes and the foibles of himself and his fellows, which is perhaps why he loved Dickens and Shakespeare. Not for him the dull uniformity of regimented socialists and an unimaginative acceptance of a sterile dogma. This approach got him into many arguments and spats with many of the socialist groups he joined or mingled with, who used to think – as his good friend Jack Williams, the fine old contrary trotskyist shop steward from the Jaguar/Daimler used to say – that they’d come down from the mountain with the ten leninist commandments carved on tablets of stone, and who weren’t going to brook any deviance from the party line.
On this theme, I well remember him, out on the street one evening after a meeting, being silenced and open mouthed (which didn’t happen often!) at a supporter of the group around the Militant newspaper, who when Dave expressed some doubt whether the socialist movement had the answers to environmental disaster, changes in the economy, consumerism and other issues, was told that all the solutions to the problems we faced in the world today were to be found in the pages of this group’s weekly newspaper and monthly theoretical magazine. – No wonder Dave was expelled from so many socialist groups and the Labour Party (twice I think – or was it three in the LP’s case?) as he challenged orthodoxy and dogma in his pursuit of ideas that could change the world for the better.

Dave as we’ve said had a profound interest in how ideas could change people and through them change the world. He was rightly proud of his adult education work, the schemes he introduced and pioneered, and the impact they had across the city and upon hundreds of adults who remember him with fond memories.

But Dave was not just a debater, an educator and a philosopher of radical ideas, he was an activist in the socialist movement who tried to put his ideas into practice through his work in that movement and wider community.
There was not much of ‘the remote academic in an ivory tower’ about Dave, although he could easily hold his own against such people and was well read and wrote a lot himself. For he was always down supporting those in struggle against injustice, those on the picket line and those opposing racism and sexism.

I remember him coming down to support a strike in Northampton where a mutual friend, and steward, had been sacked, and sitting down chatting with us and supporters about how he could help build support. — And on this theme of being a serious debater of socialist ideas but also of getting stuck into the everyday battles against injustice – I remember him smiling as he retold many a time an anecdote about how during the miners strike he was outside the Co-op in Earlsdon (in Coventry) high street collecting cash and food to send to the miners, probably with people here, and how he commented to a friend and supporter next to him, that one of the greatest Marxist theoreticians in the UK, who was a Professor at Warwick University, had just gone by and made a donation, and how the immediate reaction from the guy he’d told was that this Marxist can’t have been much of a Marxist if he wasn’t out here himself collecting with us for the miners and their cause! Dave thought that comment was ‘spot on’ – and that typified the view of Dave himself to life, ideas and involvement to change society.

So, we can all remember many, many stories about Dave and no doubt we’ll exchange them now and well into the future, and it’s with a heavy heart that we face that future without Him.

His closest, who he loved dearly, Corrine and family, His son John and his wife, his grandchildren and Margaret will miss him sorely and so will the rest of us —– But better to have known such a guy, a ‘good decent bloke’ in Dave’s language, even though we have now lost him, than not to have known him at all. Take care Dave — You did yourself and us proud….

Any forum which opens up wider discussion on the Scottish Independence referendum is to be welcomed. The key thing will be how open and democratically run the conference is. One very bad Left tradition which hopefully will be avoided is conducting all the conference pre-arrangements behind the scenes, then putting forward a platform party of agreed ‘celebrities’, and avoiding or severely limiting real debate.

I like the opening being made to Socialists from beyond Scotland. Tariq Ali is an intriguing choice. However, I think the current Left electoral alliance in France will be very much past history by the time of the Conference, so I’m not convinced of the value of the French Left speaker. Maybe a socialist republican from Euskadi or Catalunya would be more appropriate. However, the glaring omissions are speakers from Wales and Ireland. How about Leanne Wood, who has just won the Plaid Cymru leadership election as a self declared republican (when would you ever find a candidate prepared to stand as that in today’s pro-monarchist SNP today – and as for the Labour Party!!!). I don’t know Bernadette McAliskey’s position on Scottish independence, but Tommy McKearney is supportive.

Patricia Kirk

I have just been on this site… http://www.economist.com/comment/1373498#comment-1373498 dealing with the most foul and vile examples of Tory… who tell me that Scotland will not be able to feed itself if it chooses independence, that socialism was criminal. Scotland needs to vote with her feet. But first all parties and political ideologies need to put their differences aside and work together in alliance until the independence goal is achieved. Otherwise, resign your selves and Scotland to two or three more decades under the hegemony of The House of Lords, Westminster, Monarchy and the southern political system. Scottish independence could be a beacon and a saviour for the rest of the UK.

I will join your Scottish Republic… but first please throw your support behind a ‘Yes’ vote

http://irishsocialist.net/publication_articledetail.php?aid=178

http://irishsocialist.net/publication_articledetail.php?aid=179

The document contains lots of fascinating points; but I am uncertain – in a way that I shall explain – about what its purpose is. Its overall purpose is clear and (I agree) very much to the point: renewing debate about how communism may be visualised is a necessary step in giving the left renewed confidence and a sense of perspective. But its more specific purpose seems to pull in two direction:

− If the document tackles the question of whether communism is possible, one way of structuring it is to state, and reply to, various common anti-communist objections. And, to an extent, the document follows this course (Does communism run counter to human nature? No, it doesn’t. Does communism presuppose an unrealistic level of abundance? No: everything depends on how ‘abundance’ is conceived.) But, if the document is to be structured in this way, it is important that all anti-communist objections – or, at least, a good many frequent anti-communist objections – be addressed. To be sure the document as it stands is unfinished. But a listing of further possible objections is one way in which discussion of the document might be furthered. I return to this.

− If the document attempts to renew the left’s vision/perspective, one way of doing this would be to focus on the notion of ‘abundance’ and give this theme priority in all that is said. In fact, the document might be retitled ‘Communism and Abundance’ – a title which does justice what the document as it stands so far says. The polemical force of the document would then be that of recapturing an idea frequently used as a criticism of communism and deploying it in a radical way.

Of the two ways of reading and developing the document, the second strikes me as the most attractive. It does so for two reasons. One is that a piece structured around objections tends to have a “backward-looking” tone; a charismatic and confident tone can be difficult to achieve. The other is that I like very much the idea of developing (and, in developing, redefining) the notion of abundance: shifting it away from the idea of having “as much as you want of everything you want” (bottom of p. 2), that is, and taking it to mean (or, rather, include) sharing ‘in another’s growth’ (top of p. 4). Likewise I like the idea of seeing abundance as having ‘literally,the time of our life’ (top of p. 5). These formulations and lines of thought seem to me to go to the centre of “communism” and could be filled out to be the core of an inspiring pamphlet.

I’d like to say a little more about how these lines of thought regarding ‘abundance’ might be developed – and why I find them attractive. In the history of political theory one can, I think, find two contrasting ideas of liberty (or freedom): freedom can be seen (as it is seen by liberals) as “negative” freedom – which comes down to freedom which exists in spite of others. (One is free to the extent that other individuals do not trespass on ones patch.) Or freedom can be seen as existing through others or through interaction with others: this sort of freedom is commonly enjoyed through a good conversation, through meeting new people, through a love affair, etc., etc. Communism (as understood by Marx) involves – and maximises, makes central – freedom/liberty in the second of these meanings. The two meanings map (so I suggest) on to the document’s discussion of abundance: abundance understood in terms of having “as much as you want” (capitalist abundance) links together with freedom in spite of others, whereas abundance seen in terms of sharing ‘in another’s growth’ links together with freedom through.

I have another (related) reason for liking the discussion of abundance. The theme of sharing seems to me central to the notion of communism – not merely in general, but in a specific sense. In seventeenth-century political theory – in, for example, Grotius and Pufendorf and Locke – justifications of private property are frequently based on the circumstance (well, the alleged circumstance) that resources can, at bottom, be used only in an individual way. For an apple – say – to be enjoyed, it must be my apple. (The justification starts by looking at objects which are destroyed through consumption, and then attempts to generalise to wider and wider sorts of thing: from, say, to apples to livestock to land.) In order to rebut such pro-private-property arguments, the key thing to insist upon is, I think, the notion of shared use. What makes use shared (rather than merely individual) is, I propose, the notion of respecting others’ use of the same thing. It’s true enough that apples are, mostly, eaten by individuals: but, broadening the focus, orchards need to be used in an other-respecting way. In the words of the document, helping yourself to “as much as you want” – or, in the words of political theory, presupposing a ‘negative community of goods’ – despoils orchards and relates to others as though they didn’t exist. In E.P. Thompson’s phrase, an individualist use of resources (as distinct from a shared use of resources) overlooks the circumstance that, historically, ‘commoners [those using a commons]…were not without common-sense’ (Customs in Common, Penguin, p. 107).

So – many lines in the document resonate with my own lines of thinking. And I think that infusing the left with a sense of confidence and vision is not just a worthwhile but an essential aim! A pamphlet/document attempting to build confidence and vision is, I think, timely. When Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizak open their edited volume The Idea of Communism with the following declaration – ‘The long night of the left is drawing to a close. The defeat, denunciations and despair of the 1980s and 1990s, the triumphalist “end of history”, the unipolar world of American hegemony – all are fast becoming old news’ (Idea of Communism, Verso, p. vii) – they strike, it seems to me, exactly the right political note.

______________________

I end by returning to an objection which a pamphlet designed to rebut obections to communism might wish to address. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise, and in a world where neoliberalism has until recently been triumphant, the most frequently heard objection to communism is: communism doesn’t work, whereas a market-based economy does. Such an objection is, in effect, a polemical rehearsal of points regarding “socialist calculation” which were first stated by L. von Mises in the 1920s (see his Socialism [current edition Liberty Classics] chs. 5 and 6) and restated by Hayek (e.g. in his The Road to Serfdom of 1944, ch. IV). A sample quote from Mises gives the general idea: ‘Once society abandonds free pricing [i.e. market pricing] of producer goods rational production becomes impossible. Every step that leads away from private ownership of the means of production and the use of money is a step away from rational economic activity’ (Socialism p. 102). Should “socialism” therefore involve a market? Can socialism involve a market? As is well known, generations of communists/socialists have tied themselves in such knots.

I don’t attempt to supply an answer to Mises’ and Hayek’s line of argument here! My only point is that, if the pamphlet/document is to be structured as a series of objections to anti-communist arguments, the Mises/Hayek objection is one which might be addressed. BUT I do have a rather general suggestion about how a Mises-Hayek objection can be answered: the trick is not to let oneself become lost in minutia about how market socialism/co-operative socialism/etc. May be organised but to draw attention to the circumstance that pricing through markets is a drastically poor economic and social indicator. Nor only are millions upon millions left out of account, but where markets are in operation they may “go off the rails”. They may “go off the rails” by generating war and inequality and short-term/long-term blinkeredness. If they stay on the rails, relatively speaking or in however estranged a fashion, they do so because they are socially embedded (rather than market principles pulling society’s strings). In a word, Mises in effect argues that capitalism works, on the whole, whereas socialism doesn’t (and can’t). A response to Mises’ contentions – a response made with neoliberalism’s record in mind – is that capitalism’s claims to provide social order are a fake.

Richard Gunn

April 17th 2012

Hopefully once this is done, I may be able to wrap what I think and feel abut the demise of the SSP into some coherent and elegant whole.(One lives in hope).

Again this debate seems to be of a cyclical nature does it not – how can we build a political grouping which has a clear idea of how to fight the powers that be and at the same time not kill off the fighting spirit; or end up with a political grouping which is a large bloated launch pad for peoples egos; or a narrow road club, who would fit into a snug bar in a Scottish pub? No offence guys!

Let’s start with something obvious – the revolutionary left are not that revolutionary and the people who are on left, who are in larger political parties are offering reforms that would not mitigate, in any substantive way, the evils of living in a free market economy. I think also a lot of people who join the SNP and the Labour party, may start out with leftist ideals,yet, slowly and surely end up becoming a pale and washed out version of themselves, as they become more co-opted into the realpolitik of representational politics.

I’m not all that enamoured with state socialism- where labour value is aggregated to the state. (I worked in the public sector for a many a year and felt deeply alienated by the lack of democracy and whole ethos of that institution).

Cuba may have have eradicated key elements of want, in a less developed economy, but I just don’t buy that Cuba or anywhere else is socialist. The more I delve into the Russian Revolution they more scunnered I am of need for a vanguard of a tightly controlled group of revolutionaries. Sounds a wee bit too much like the Catholic or Orthodox church for me. Count me out.
For me there is need for a whole group of people to come together and openly discuss transitional models, by which we can seek to move away from a profit orientated society to one which is truly open and democratic and based on peoples needs. We are not in any near this situation and time is running out for this earth of ours.

I don’t see a lot of that type of discussion out there at the moment, within traditional socialist groupings. In many ways a lot of the creative thinking seems to be coming from smaller anarchists or left libertarian groupings.

At the moment, I just just don’t see an organised left capable of or wanting to mount a full frontal assault on the way the economy is structured. I can also understand why young people would be very reticent about party politics, yet there is a desperate need for a radical left party which nurtures and respects plurality of positions. Yet I am not an Anarchist…

Raphie starts off with what sounds to be a no-holds polemic against what we three members of the RCN (Bob, Iain and myself) have written. However, once you start reading Raphie’s contribution further, it turns out somewhat differently.

It is not clear from Raphie’s quote whether he thinks our article is highlighting or hiding “some inconvenient truths” about the SSP. It looks, though, as if Raphie means the latter. Yet, his very two next phrases – “a very long article” but “with lots of omissions” – would seem to be making a somewhat inconsistent criticism!

In response to Raphie’s criticism of the article’s length, an even longer article could have been written if it had been our intention to give a full history of the SSP. However, our article was designed to provide enough material and analysis to allow some provisional conclusions to be drawn for those socialists who have been members or supporters of the SSP. We looked forward to other contributions to move the debate further forwards. So, even if we disagree with much of what Raphie has written here, his contribution does advance this debate.

Our article can be taken alongside the continuous fraternal but, where necessary, critical commentaries that the RCN, as a recognised SSP platform, has provided on developments within the party, both on this website and in the pages of ‘Emancipation & Liberation’. Therefore, taking aboard the spirit of Raphie’s “lots of omissions” non-sequitur, our article is not designed to be the final word on the history of the SSP. It should be taken alongside these other RCN contributions. Raphie appears somewhat miffed that our article doesn’t fully cover the USFI contribution; but neither does it cover the RCN contribution! We hope that the USFI will itself write a full account of their experience, just as we in the RCN will probably collate those many documents outlining our own contribution to the SSP, which are already in the public domain.

More seriously though, Raphie goes on to criticise the article for its “factual inaccuracies”. Now, the original draft did have a small number of factual inaccuracies, which others have subsequently pointed out and we have corrected. Yet nowhere does Raphie provide any evidence of any other “factual inaccuracies”. What Raphie does provide though, and some of this is quite new, is additional information. This is most welcome. However, since most of this hasn’t been in the public arena before, we can hardly be criticised for omitting it from our article!

Raphie begins by acknowledging the existence of what we have labelled the “inner circle” (the existence of which has been substantially confirmed in Gregor Gall’s new book – ‘Tommy Sheridan – from Hero to Zero?’) However, Raphie names two entirely different people, Colin (Fox) and Joanna (Dind) (who no longer lives in Scotland) as being members of this “inner circle”, because they “tried to stop the publication of {his} pamphlet on the crisis.” Now, I presume that here Raphie means his pamphlet, ‘Sub-Prime Driven Recession Coming to a Neighbourhood Near You Soon’. Well, if they did try to stop it, they were not very successful, which hardly confirms their membership of an “inner circle”!

Colin is undoubtedly the most influential person in the Edinburgh and Lothian SSP, but he is more of an ‘outsider’ when it comes to the national level of the SSP, and is not part of the “inner circle” analysed in our article. Although Colin is the SSP’s national spokesperson, he was originally elected with the support of many who went on to join Solidarity. Colin broke from Sheridan when it became clear to him that Sheridan’s resort to the courts could only lead to disaster for the SSP. Many members who had originally voted for Alan McCombes as national spokesperson (including the RCN), went on to accept Colin in this role, because he was prepared to challenge Sheridan, after his 2006 court ‘victory’. It was Sheridan who ducked out of this challenge.

Then Raphie does go on to provide his own critique of the SSP’s intervention in the 2005 Make Poverty History and the G8 Day of Action. This is completely new to me. The only political group to raise an open critique of what Raphie calls “the parliament histrionics” – by which he means the silent Holyrood protest made by SSP MSPs, Frances Curran, Colin Fox, Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie – were the CWI. They did this at the next SSP National Council meeting. They argued that such a protest would not be understood by “your average ‘Daily Record’ reader”. It appears to me that these particular readers often set the limits to a lot of the CWI’s politics. This explains quite a lot about their behaviour!

The CWI’s stance appears to be very similar to Raphie’s own critique. However, the SSP’s duties in regard to the G8 summit weren’t confined to what Raphie considers not to be “a burning issue for the Scottish working class”, or what the CWI thinks to be the limits of “the average ‘Daily Record’ reader”, particularly given the large scale retreat in working class political consciousness over the prior years in the face of many setbacks and defeats.

Our European comrades, including those in the European Anti-Capitalist Left, had had to face violent state repression at the Genoa G8 protest in 2001. Therefore, in order to uphold the right to make an effective demonstration at Gleneagles (which also involved many from elsewhere in Europe), our SSP MSPs had to make their parliamentary protest. This meant challenging the Holyrood parties’ supine acceptance of the restrictions imposed by Blair’s New Labour government, Westminster and the UK security forces with the backing of US state. Furthermore, it wasn’t just the incumbent Lab/Lib-Dem Holyrood coalition MSPs who went along with this (of whom we would have expected little else), but also the SNP (meant to be defending Holyrood’s powers!) and the Green MSPs.

Now, realising there was some internal opposition in the SSP to our MSP’s parliamentary protest (they had, of necessity, to make their decision between Executive Committee meetings), I moved the motion of support for their action at Holyrood, at that National Council where the CWI raised their objections. A large majority of delegates gave their support to my motion, with no apparent opposition from any USFI supporters attending. Indeed, I would have been most surprised if they had. Raphie, at the time of the Gleneagles anti-G8 protest, seemed to me to be very much in favour. He threw himself, along with others in the SSP, into challenging the police attempts to prevent demonstrators from leaving Edinburgh:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2005/09/13/obstructing-a-legal-demonstration/

Raphie, however, then goes on to make a political defence of the organisers ‘Make Poverty History’ slogan. He suggests that the slogans – ‘Cancel the Debt’ and ‘Repatriate the Stolen Billions’ – could also have been used “to put pressure on “the politicians, trade unions, NGO’s etc”. I have already made the arguments against socialists tail-ending the official organisers of ‘Make Poverty History’ in the two sections of an article in ‘Emancipation & Liberation’, entitled ‘The political “differences” not mentioned by the ‘Crossroads’ Group’ and in ‘The SWP and CWI – the two faces of sectarianism in the SSP’. These can be found at:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2006/10/03/a-critique-and-exposure-of-tommy-sheridan/

Nevertheless, Raphie’s reply does raise an interesting argument about the use of additional demands for the protest. It seems to me that these could have been raised anyhow, without accepting ‘Make Poverty History’. However, once again, I have seen no record that either Raphie (or the USFI comrades in Britain) ever publicly made these particular criticisms at the time.

Alan McCombes wrote the official SSP pamphlet for the G8 protest – ‘Two Worlds Collide’. I wrote a fraternal critique:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2005/09/13/two-words-collide-nationalism-and-republicanism/
If Raphie had found any problems with the SSP leadership, ‘Frontline’, or even ‘Socialist Resistance’, in publishing his own political critique of the SSP leadership’s stance at this time, he would have been more than welcome to write for the pages of ‘Emancipation & Liberation’. We have certainly published quite a number of articles by USFI members, and we actively encourage wider debate.

Raphie’s second paragraph does go on to criticise the populism, which has underwritten much of the SSP leadership’s politics. We have also written extensively on this – including four paragraphs in the article above, which Raphie thinks is both too long, but also doesn’t include enough coverage of this particular issue! Much of what Raphie says on populism here the RCN would agree with. Although we would also link this with the SSP leadership’s increasing slide towards openly populist politics and its failure to publicly acknowledge the mistakes it has made when dealing with Sheridan and the sectarian Solidarity splitters. Raphie has criticised the RCN for being open in its criticisms of the SSP leadership (even after the perjury trail was ended), although Campbell MacGregor, who is also a USFI supporter, made a contribution at the special post-trial, February 2011, Glasgow SSP meeting, which almost seemed like a seconding speech to the criticisms that the RCN had raised – so I am not sure who is representing the USFI in this case!

Therefore, rather than seeing our article as “a great opportunity missed”, I would point to our criticisms made above and elsewhere on this blog, which address the issue of populism which also concerns Raphie. I would see Raphie’s own comments above, as further contributing to the wider debate we wanted to initiate by writing this article. Indeed, it seems to be our own article, which has led to Raphie publicly airing some of his criticisms of the SSP for the first time!

The last two paragraphs of Raphie’s contribution address the USFI’s contribution to wider socialist unity in Europe. Since the RCN is not affiliated to the USFI, and our one USFI member, Deidre McCartan, has unfortunately died, Raphie is certainly in far better a position to make these points than we are – although there do seem to be times when Raphie thinks the RCN should be doing the USFI’s own publishing work for them in Scotland!

I have a subscription to ‘Socialist Resistance’ and regularly check out the USFI’s ‘International Viewpoint’ website. I also find the articles on the USFI’s Socialist Democracy, Irish section website very informative:- http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/
However, when you read the USFI’s recent book covering the experience of socialist regoupment, ‘New Parties of the Left – Experiences from Europe’, one thing that stands out. There is no chapter on the SSP experience. Alan Thornett does deals with the SSP somewhat cursorily in his chapter ‘Broad parties and the fight for left unity in Britain’. One strange thing though, about Alan’s contribution, is there appears to be little awareness that he is living not only in Britain (a geographical entity) but also in the UK (a political state) consisting of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Alan’s ‘Britain’ seems not to include Wales, which never gets a mention – just England – when it addresses USFI activities in Britain outside Scotland. Ireland, six counties of which form part of the UK, and where the USFI has a public section – Socialist Democracy (SD) – is not mentioned either. SD does not think there is a significant ‘National Question’ in Britain (as opposed to Ireland). SD also has its own criticisms to make of ‘New Parties of the Left’. These can be found at:- http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewNewPartiesOfTheLeft.html

In Scotland, it has often been difficult for non-USFI members to ascertain what are the official USFI stances, since individual USFI members have taken different positions over a number of issues. Perhaps Raphie’s argument, that USFI Scottish members keep a “low profile {which} reflects our philosophy about how you build genuine open parties and win the trust of non-aligned activists”, helps to explain this confusion.

To show how the USFI operates, Raphie provides the example of George Galloway. “We did not criticise his stance over support for Labour candidates in Scottish by-elections. But these were his own positions and not those of Respect which he never sought backing from within for.” Now the RCN has criticised this approach. Furthermore, Alan Thornett’s article outlines just how politically damaging another of Galloway’s “own positions” was for Respect – his decision to appear on ‘Big Brother’. The SSP leadership’s original decision to let Sheridan take his “own position” and pursue his court case as a ‘personal matter’ provides another example of the political shortcomings of this “low profile” no public criticism approach. The RCN congratulated SR when it did make a break with Respect over the issue of Galloway standing in Scotland. However, SR’s belated public criticisms may have had more impact in Respect, if they had already forewarned members of Galloway’s engrained Left British unionism and continued support for Labour, giving the example of his very public articles in the ‘Daily Record’. If it was all right for Galloway to go public and put forward his “own position” outside of Respect, then surely it was perfectly acceptable for SR to make its own criticisms publicly known too, so Respect (and SSP comrades) could make their own judgements.

The RCN has a different approach to “how you build genuine open parties and win the trust of non-aligned activists”. This involves the creation of open platforms. We have made our arguments for such an approach in:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2008/10/04/the-role-of-platforms-in-the-ssp/

However, from Raphie’s latest viewpoint, which claims that “the SSP as a project is finished”, it seems that the time has come for the USFI, or even just its individual USFI members’, to put key documents into the public domain. In the USFI book referred to above, Alan Thornett highlights the fight undertaken by the USFI’s British tendency, Socialist Resistance (SR), in the old Socialist Alliance and later in Respect. Furthermore, SR’s key documents covering the Respect split have been published. This is a very positive move. By adopting the same practice with regard to the SSP, other socialists could then better understand the USFI’s attitude to the ‘National Question’ in the UK; to the changing relationship between the USFI/’SR’ and ISM/’Frontline’; to the particular stances of the SSP leadership that they have disagreed with; and now to their (or is it just Raphie’s?) dramatically changed assessment of the SSP’s prospects.

The RCN would be the first to draw others’ attention to such a contribution. Our intention in doing this would be to engage in meaningful non-sectarian, non-personalised debate. This is what is needed most after the collapse of the SSP, so that we can “listen, learn and then move on”.

Allan Armstrong

Just a couple of questions/points-

Do you have empirical data about the SSP electoral support base from the 2003 elections? You describe the vote as stemming from a united SSP foothold in the working class. I dont doubt this, but I do wonder about the extent to which the SSP leaned on a middle class socialist vote as well? Do we have data from those list seats where the SSP were elected which might give an indication of the class basis of the SSP’s support?

I think you make an excellent critique of both the the NO2EU disgrace and the weakness of the ‘make greed history’ campaign. Some very important points also made about the issue of inner democracy within the SSP during the crucial years leading up to and preceding the split.

The point about populism arising from a lack of theorisation about socialism/communism is also very interesting one. I wonder, how could this be developed within the socialist movement in Scotland? I am in general agreement that the need for a maximum programme, for an alternative, has never been greater. I suspect that the the Glasgow comrades in both the ISG and SSY will be quite open to a discussion on this by the way.

I agree that the need to both critique and ultimately overcome the state is crucial. However, look how difficult the Bolsheviks found this- as we know Lenin very quickly retreated from State and Revolution in the immediate post October context. The scale of the bureaucratic state erected at the end of the civil war and the beginning of NEP is simply astonishing. I am increasingly coming to the position that the state cannot be overcome without an international revolution. In other words, I cant see how an isolated revolution (such as the Russian one) can sustain itself without the state. This obviously raises questions about the national question, especially in the Scottish context.

Brendan McGeever.

For people who wish to remain in the SSP I do wish them well and I hope that they prove me wrong but for me I don’t feel my time would be best served as member any-more.On a personal level it is a delicate issue and have I friends who do not want to fall out with; my heart says SSP but my head says let’s put it to bed and move on.

My hunch is that more and more older people will enticed by the siren call of the SNP (For a number of reasons I think that road is politically a dead end, although of course I support the break up the British State.) The young uns, that seem to be active in politics (Glasgow may be an exception)are more likely to be attracted to various forms of anarchism. As a middle aged punk I am well aware of, the attractions of that particular school of thought, yet I fear that there a key weaknesses with this belief system which are going to be cruelly exposed and found wanting, in the years to come. Left Unity for sure, forgive and forget as best we can, however what comes next I’m less sure.

All hail the Scottish Republic and if your the ‘Sandy Bell Collective’ does that mean that you have the largesse to buy me a pint?

Actually the party inner circle went through an ultra-left phase here. They counterpoised an at the barricades Make Capitalism history to Make Poverty history posing about in the famous red t-shirts. The correct approach was to raise demands that would actually make poverty history and put pressure on the Make Poverty History politicians, trade unisons NGOs etc. In the situation of the 2005 the slogans raised should have been “Cancel the Debt” and “Repatriate the Stolen Billions”. The party carried out the same ultra-left turn in the parliament histrionics on the Gleneagles march when it was not a burning issue for the Scottish working class.

My additional analyse to the article of the SSP is that it was unable to move from populist mild reforms of the credit driven neo-liberal phase of capitalism to capitalism in crisis from 2007. The article omits my writings on the crisis in the party press, website and pamphlet. We were among the first starting in January 2008 to not only full analyse the crisis, predict it’s path but provide a coherent alternative that goes way beyond nationalisation. Adding how Scotland could go it on its own Unfortunately the official party propaganda continued with its populist spin on the solutions as the article points out from Make Greed History to putting forward the illusion that the Scottish Service tax alone could avert the cuts in Scotland.
I have argued over the last four years that analysing, the crisis and its likely consequences and putting forward a coherent alternative is the key task facing socialists. Something that is omitted from your article and most of the official SSP’s propaganda. It is the Achilles heel of the left and will mean that it remains marginal for a generation. A great opportunity wasted

On the USFI we have consistently argued for left unity and have had several unity projects over the last three decades. The USFI were centrally involved the Left Bloc project in Portugal which predates the SSP project. In France the USFI have for over 30 years looked to fuse with the other major Trotskyist groups there and run joint slates. The SSP was certainly an inspiration for the NPA project which has come somewhat off the rails.

On Socialist Resistance (SR) and Respect. SR was the opposition to Galloway and the SWP. Arguing for accountability, proper party structures and a party newspaper. Only when Galloway made a turn to these policies against the SWP did SR back him on these issues only. As the party deteriorated SR left after opposing him over Galloway standing in last Scottish elections. We have opposed his stance on abortion, LBGT rights, Scottish independence and elected representatives’ wages. When he and the SWP tried to get Respect to officially back Solidarity we successfully opposed that to. We did not criticise his stance over support for Labour candidates in Scottish by-elections. But these were his own positions and not those of Respect which he never sought backing from within for. As for our low profile it reflects our philosophy about how you build genuine open parties and win the trust of non-aligned activists.

I agree the SSP as a project is finished and had hoped for small revival after the trial. But the Scottish working class and beyond have taken shelter in SNP as the best way to resist the coalition with the option of independence in the back pocket. This process will take a generation to work through. And with the left’s complet lack of analysis and alternative to the crsis of capitalism then it is likely to remain isolated and farcatured for some time to come.

Allan

I really enjoyed this and I am sure it will bring back memories to many who came to international socialism in the 1960′s myself including. If you do not object I will post it on my blog in the new year.

Mick Hall

Organized Rage
http://www.organizedrage.com/

The review can now also be found on Tommy McKearney’s blog at:-

http://www.tommymckearney.com/Site/Blog/Entries/2011/12/20_Red%2C_Orange_and_Blue.html

Regards

Tommy

Manners and social grace are not an extra add on but should be embedded, fostered and nurtured within the organisations where the Radical Left are involved. The SSP had its manifest faults(for another time) but it had a freer feeling than any other political parties I have been in. I know what I am taking about here, I have been in a few, he chortles to himself as he types. I am no longer a member.

The young uns involved in new movements may have their weaknesses and blind-spots, however they are streets ahead on emotional intelligence; everybody should be encouraged to give voice to their opinions without being wilfully traduced, denigrated or ostracised as out-with the party line. The elitist, outdated, Democratic Centralism,with it’s priestly class leadership is an anathema to me.

Yes Allan, The Calton Hill Declaration is one of the high-points of Scottish Political Culture and should be celebrated as such.

Whilst welcoming the break up the of British State and the repeal of the hated Act Of Union, those on the radical left should not be cheer-leaders for the SNP and middle class nationalism which it has historically proven to be a fair-weather friend to working people.

Good to see you guys are well and in the land of the living. It has been a hard few years, has it not. Yours Aye George M

Mhairi gets to the heart of the matter here. The political conditions which allowed the SSA/SSP to emerge were provided by success of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign and the gallop to the Right by New Labour.

Although smaller groups had been arguing for such a formation as the SSA since 1990, the CWI/ISM had the critical mass to make this happen. They had also learned two lessons which were vital for setting up the SSA – i) that socialist political activity which could have a wider political effect could be organised outside the Labour Party, and ii) that the traditional Brit Left approach to the National Question in Scotland was flawed and needed addressing.

These two conditions provided the political basis for the initial success of the SSA and SSP. Furthermore, as the ISM moved into discussions and debate with others, in the context of trying to achieve wider socialist unity, they began to abandon some of the sectarian practices which characterised so much of the British Left (such as the SWP). This even led them to break with their CWI sponsors (who also retained their old British Left sectarian methods). One of the greatest achievements of the SSP (before the notorious NC) was the cultivation of a fraternal and democratic debating atmosphere, which, for a time, even reined in the sectarian excesses of the SWP and CWI!

However, there was never a full break with the old sectarian methods by the ISM leadership. It was impossible for members to find out who the SSP membership actually were, and who paid subs – something that particularly favoured the Glasgow base of the ISM. Leadership distrust of the wider membership remained, highlighted by the attempt (which badly misfired) of keeping the membership in the dark about the EC deal with Sheridan (minutes withheld); and the later suppression of debate over socialist unity on the spurious grounds that the courts would not permit it.

Furthermore, both sides of the former ISM involved in the split have accepted that the courts are a legitimate arena for settling disputes between socialists. What chance have we got of persuading others that we are creating an organisation that can challenge capitalism if we have to turn to the bourgeois courts to rule on our conduct?

The Sheridan debacle also managed to disguise some of the emerging problems which the SSP would have had to face anyhow. The SSP wasn’t the only Left party in Europe to do badly in the post-2003 elections. The whole Left was on the retreat electorally because of its failure to stop the Iraq war. Ironically, even without the Sheridan debacle, it is likely, after the 2007 Holyrood election, that the SSP would only have had one remaining MSP – Tommy Sheridan!

Mhairi also alludes to the creeping parliamentarianism which began to take over the SSP (accentuated by the retreats in the wider class struggle). Some members, e.g. Hugh Kerr, initially raised the issue of giving the SNP a clear run in Holyrood elections. I am fairly sure that if the numbers of elected SSP MSPs had been sufficient to decide the difference between having an SNP or a New Labour government at Holyrood, there would have been quite a strong tendency within the SSP recommending support for the SNP. Tailending the SNP over the constitution still remains a problem.

Support for a non-nationalist, socialist republican ‘internationalism from below’ approach has certainly grown within the SSP, but I fear that many would happily join the SNP’s proposed pro-Crown, pro-sterling, pro-NATO, Independence Lite/Devolution Max referendum campaign, and turn their backs on one of the SSP’s greatest succeses – the independent republican Calton Hill Declaration.

In other words, the original conditions, which had allowed the SSP to grow successfully, have been changing and provided new challenges. These new challenges needed new political answers. The Sheridan debacle prevented this necessary learning process from taking place.

Mhairi raises some of the vital issues which also need to be addressed. However, given the shrinkage of the SSP much of this debate will now have to take outside its ranks, although I hope that it will be possible to genuinely further such debates within the SSP too. We need to prepare for a new and still very necessary socialist unity project in Scotland (and beyond), which can take on board all these lessons.

This is absolutely critical. Yes, if Sheridan hadn’t been such a fool this would all never have happened, but there was obviously something fundamentally flawed in the SSP that Sheridan could wreck it so comprehensively. At the same time there was obviously strength in the SSP that he didn’t wreck socialism by managing to persuade the SSP leadership to lie and cover up for his flaws and failings.

The lessons of the SSP are things that we have to take into any new movements. These lessons are not new ones, but the SSP experience is a sharp reminder of them – particularly that charismatic leaders can overwhelm democratic processes; that parliamentary engagement has its risks as well as its benefits; that the corporate media are not our friends; that socialism cannot be built without an understanding of the gendered, racial and heteronomative power structures that support the class system but above all that socialism is larger than any one person, any one organisation or any one party.

Debate on the Riots

when normal behaviour is meaningless

Clifford Biddulph suggests that we need to find a way to engage with the contradictory and elemental nature of class conflict in events like the recent riots.

http://thecommune.co.uk/2011/08/21/when-normal-behaviour-is-meaningless/

no justice no peace: the riot is the rhyme of the unheard, let us begin to listen.
2011
Javaad Alipoor continues our debate on the meaning of the UK’s riots

http://thecommune.co.uk/2011/08/18/no-justice-no-peace-the-riot-is-the-rhyme-of-the-unheard-let-us-begin-to-listen/

or does it explode?

Joe Thorne looks for the meaning of the recent wave of inner city riots

http://thecommune.co.uk/2011/08/13/or-does-it-explode/#more-7250

When I read the words “Lady Liberty” I first got the impression you were referring to the United States “Statue of Liberty”. Just to clarify for other readers, that is not the particular “Liberty” referred to in this painting, since this commemor…

All the best,
Aleksandar

However, there is unlikely to be any opposition to Raphie taking his suggestion into the existing Anti-War Movement. If there turned out to be any political opposition, Raphie would be assured of my support over this, just as I supported the Maryhill amendment on the Afghan War at last year’s conference.

Unlike Raphie, though, I do see the Afghan War as “actually relevant to the working class week by week”, and a quite suitable topic for SSP agitation. I have also been on recent SSP stalls addressing fuel poverty. I doubt that the local SSP brqnches would have any difficulty finding another issue if British troops were actually removed from Afghan soil – something which would require a bit more than an SNP call for troops out by the end of 2011!

“Regardless of whether we get the money or not, it would be Gail’s money and she can do whatever she wants with it”, says Tommy. “The action was taken with her primarily in mind, and given what she has had to go through, she deserves it”.

The Fourth International was not divided of the Second World War but some groups that emerged after the war opposed the FI’s line of supporting and building the resistance movements. They argued I think wrongly that the FI was supporting an inter capitalist war. The FI rightly opposed war against Germany, Italy and Japan which was an inter-imperialist war. It is this war that Colin supports as just. Resistance against the Nazi occupation was a just but not the global international imperialist war. We have no idea how things might develop in the present crisis but Colin’s line would be one of complete class betrayal completely disarming the working class. It was this line of the social democracy during the Second World War that made it easy to demobilise what was in effect an insurrectionary movement on France, Italy and Greece and allowed for the welfare state settlement in the UK. This cover of a war against fascism allowed the UK in particular to put down anti-colonial revolutions in the Asia. In my view the line of a just war against fascism is much more dangerous to calling for a vote for Labour in a Glasgow by-election. Mandel’s excellent “The Meaning of the Second World War” is being republished in the spring. I will review and summarise for the SSP as part of the debate on what is the nature of fascism and “just was”.

And as for Colin’s campaigning on the Afghan war I find it totally opportunist, frontist and populist. It is a cynical use of the horrific war. I have repeatedly called for us to build a broad democratic campaign on the single demand of “Troops out of Afghanistan Now” bringing together all those that agree with that demand. They are ignored because it does not serve his purpose. I refuse to be used as fodder by him anymore. It will be interesting to see now that the SNP have pulled the rug from under our feet by calling for troops out by the end of 2011 what Colin will now campaign on week after week. Maybe issues that are actually relevant to the working class week by week. Maybe there might be some democratic discussion about what we should campaign on and come inclusiveness?

And as for Colin’s campaigning on the Afghan war I find it totally opportunist, frontist and populist. It is a cynical use of the horrific war. I have repeatedly called for us to build a broad democratic campaign on the single demand of “Troops out of Afghanistan Now” bringing together all those that agree with that demand. They are ignored because it does not serve his purpose. I refuse to be used as fodder by him anymore. It will be interesting to see now that the SNP have pulled the rug from under our feet by calling for troops out by the end of 2011 what Colin will now campaign on week after week. Maybe issues that actually relevant to the working class week by week. Maybe there be some democratic discussion about what we should campaign on and come inclusiveness?

I can only comment on Edinburgh where I was the only RCN member at the SSP public meetings, which Raphie also attended. I chose to make a different political contribution, along the following lines.

It was excellent that the SSP had a consistent record of opposing the Afghan War right from the start {immediately demonstrating at the top of the Mound when the war was launched}. However, if mass demonstrations of millions couldn’t stop the Iraq War, then the election of even a few socialist MSP’s was unlikely to have very much effect. Furthermore, unlike the mass demonstrations in response to the Vietnam War, which coincided with massive industrial unrest, particularly amongst Black American workers, we face a much more browbeaten working class here today.

However, the current growing concern of the ‘top brass’ in the military over disaffection amongst the ranks was one very hopeful sign. We had even seen this from returning soldiers on the stalls, and others who were even prepared to attend SSP public meetings on the issue. Trying to make direct contact with soldiers is a risky business and you need to be very careful to avoid the draconian penalties for encouraging ‘mutiny’. However, this is perhaps an argument that should be taken up in the wider anti-war movement. I also raised this at an SSP National Council meeting in Glasgow.

The RCN doesn’t have any agreed position on the Second World War. We are united around a much more limited set of platform points than traditional Trotskyist organisations, where (in the past?) you had to agree with all the decisions of the congresses of the Bolsheviks, the CPSU and Third International up to 1923, then the Left Opposition and Trotsky’s ‘Transitional Programme’. However, I understand that even Trotskyists were divided over the Second World War.

I have certainly used historical precedents in many of my political contributions, but funnily enough I don’t remember using the Second World War as an example. I wouldn’t take any definite position until I had examined the issue in some depth. I do feel fairly certain that from the point of view of the various ruling classes that the Second World War was an imperialist war (and I would include the Soviet bureaucracy in this too).

However, from the point of view of those facing Nazi occupation (particularly Jews, Gypsies and Slavs) this was a war where they faced extermination or enslavement; whilst those occupied by the Allies faced the reimposition of US, British, French and Dutch imperial occupation, oppression and exploitation. So, it appears to me in these areas that the main issue was independent class organisation for national liberation and social emancipation. However, I would be more than happy to modify this if I am provided with better arguments backed by real evidence.

I have given my reasons for addressing a different issue at the SSP meetings. However, I would also not agree with Raphie over Colin’s historical argument being more dangerous than Galloway’s very current and real political manoeuvring on behalf of the Labour Party. I also strongly suspect that Galloway would also call the “second world war a just war”, but in his case especially where it was led by Stalin! Also, unlike Colin, I can’t imagine Galloway ever deigning to do anti-war work on the streets, or perhaps not until he got some financial or other reward!

However, SSP members who attended the Convention of the Left in Manchester know that I raised with prominent Socialist resistance members, Terry Conway and Stuart Richardson, the issue that SR had not issued a public statement about Respect member, George Galloway’s pro-Labour articles in the ‘Daily Record’ . This as not done in any hostile way – just some advice that letting Galloway get away with this was likely to have future consequences – and so it has turned out to be! Once again, though, as in the split which occurred in Socialist Resistance’s ranks over ‘Tommygate’, Socialist Resistance has come out on the ‘side of the angels’, a principled position which I have publicly recognised in the past, and am more than happy to repeat again today.

Therefore, the reference to a past RCN criticism, which has been in the public realm, was to indicate that the RCN and Socialist Resistance are now in public agreement – surely something to be celebrated. Thanks also to Raphie for outlining Socialist Resistance’s principled positions over other issues, where the RCN and Socialist Reistance would have been in agreement.

Comradely greetings,

Allan Armstrong

I would be good if Allan acknowledged SR’s long standing principled position within Respect as well as its last stand and put into context it’s so called “indiscretion”

I would be good if Allan acknowledged SR’s long standing principled position within Respect as well as its last stand and put into context it’s so called “indiscretion”

Comradely Greetings
Raphie de Santos

http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?p=63555#post63555

Marx would not have agreed with Alan’s statement that “to be in an ‘oppressed minority’ at all it is first to belong to the working class”. Marx’s many writings, for example, on black chattel slaves, particularly in the USA; and also on the position of Irish tenant farmers in the UK, show that he had a much wider understanding of political oppression than Alan maintains. It is not only the working class who face national oppression.

Alan maintains that “nationalism does nothing to further “this understanding” of “identifying with the working class {as} a rational basis for political action”. I would maintain that a ‘Marxism’ which fails to examine the particular mechanisms of oppression used by the various ruling classes of the world – e.g. sexual, national, religious – provides the ideal opportunity for hostile class forces to provide their own diversionary ‘solutions’ to its victims.

This is why Alan draws the wrong conclusions from the triumph of the social patriotic Pilsudski in Poland in 1919. It was precisely because socialists like Luxemburg and the SDKPL failed to champion Polish independence as part of an ‘internationalism from below’ strategy (as advocated by Kazimierz Kelles-Kreuz) that Pilsudski was given so much leeway. I have already pointed that the relative weakness of post-First World War socialism in Poland, compared even with socialism in Finland (despite facing an even worse defeat in a bloody White counter-revolution), can be largely explained by their different attitudes to the issue of national democracy.

Alan is right to argue that Marx and Engels’ attitudes can not be resolved by seizing isolated quotes out of context. However, I maintain that their developing position on the National Question can best be explained by seeing three main phases in the development of their thought in response to the changed circumstances they faced.

1. A cosmopolitan approach up to the 1847-9 International Revolutionary Wave.
2. Support for ‘historical’ nations (coupled to fervent opposition to Tasrist Russia) from 1847 to the mid 1860’s.
3. A switch to ‘internationalism from below’. The first hints can be seen in their attitude towards the anti-colonial wars in India and China in the late 1850’s, further developed in their approach to Poland and Ireland in the First International from the mid-1860’s, and accelerated from 1875 when they began to acknowledge the possibility of internal political opposition to Tsarist Russia.

However, Alan’s 1882 quote from Engels letter to Kautsky, does highlight one feature of Marx and Engels’ thinking. Reactionary Tsarist Russia always loomed large in their considerations. However, Marx, in 1853, had already entertained the possibility that an independent Southern Slavonian federation could emerge from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, which would be a challenge to Tsarist Russia (just as Engels had initially viewed the activities of Czech democrats favourably in the 1848 revolution).

However, whenever, domestic opposition in Tsarist Russia (either as a consequence of the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, or the formation of the Narodniks) failed to deliver; or whenever, the local Southern Slavonians and Greeks appeared to look to Tsarist Russia for support, then Marx and Engels quickly turned instead to virtually any opponent – whether it be the reactionary Tory, David Urquhart, or Ottoman Turkey – for support against Tsarist Russia.

The political context of Engel’s 1882 letter to Kautsky was Tsarist Russia’s recent defeat of the Ottoman Empire (and its expanding influence in the Balkans and Caucasus) in the 1877-8 war, and the crushing of the Populist, Narodnaya Volya after the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II, in 1881. The exasperated tone of Engels letter is highlighted by his claim, “that six months of independence will suffice for most Austro-Slavs to bring them to a point where they will beg to be readmitted”!

This letter of Kautsky (and a similar one to Bernstein) were examples of private correspondence, in which both Marx and Engels were often very ‘non-p.c.’. Certainly, even towards the end of his life in 1896, Engels could remain disparaging of particular nationalities, which challenged the Ottoman Empire, such as the Armenians and Cretan Greeks, because he still saw them as catspaws for Tsarist Russia. However, in this attitude, he was opposed by Kautsky, Parvus, and even by Luxemburg.

It was really only after Engels’ death that significant new Social Democratic forces would emerge in the Balkans, championing the notion of an independent Balkan Federation, in open opposition to the Ottoman, Hapsburg and the Tsarist Empires. I have little doubt that Engels would have welcomed such a development.

However, the Engels 1888 letter to Ion Nadedje, which I quoted (designed for publication in the Romanian Social Democrat journal), shows that he could envisage a progressive national democratic outcome, in the Balkans. Along with all the other evidence I have provided from the days of the First International to the end of Engels’ life, I think Marx and Engels’ increased adherence to an ‘internationalism from below’ approach can be demonstrated.

As both Alan and I have stated, none of this provides automatic guidance about how to approach the National Question today. However, the initial contribution I made to the Republican Socialist Convention in London consisted of a concrete analysis of the current role of the UK state and British imperialism in a world dominated by imperial capitalism. In my reply to Nick Rogers, I demonstrated the application of ‘internationalism from below’ approach in the context of a particular trade union struggle and the victorious anti-poll tax movement, in which I took part.

However, I notice Alan has not answered the one question I asked him. “After 106 years of the SPGB’s existence, the World Socialist Movement, of which it forms a part, seems confined to the richer English-speaking countries of the world. How can this be explained?” So, I will now also add another question. What is the political balance sheet of SPGB’s existence over the same period for the working class of ‘Great Britain’ it has sought to win to its politics?

Allan Armstrong, 3.5.10

The world of nationalism is full of contradictions, odd ideas and illogical notions. Marx’s and Engel’s earlier (and i claim tactical) position should not be viewed as a permanent blessing for nationalism.

Engels agrees that after the fall of the tsar it would be all right for the small Slavic peoples to have their independence – AFTER NOT BEFORE.

We can , of course , banter Marx and Engels quotes but in regards attitudes towards Slavic independence , writing to Kautsky in 1882 , Engels says “Now you may ask me whether I have no sympathy whatever for the small Slavic peoples, and remnants of peoples, which have been severed asunder by the three wedges driven in the flesh of Slavdom: the Germans, Magyars and Turks? In fact I have damned little sympathy for them.” He adds, “I am certain that six months of independence will suffice for most Austro-Hungarian Slavs to bring them to a point where they will beg to be readmitted.”

The ICO have written to Brian notifying him that unredacted files (i.e ones without the names blacked out) will be retained as long as there are ongoing cases which may require access to them by those involved in court action over the files. This after he had written to the ICO asking them not to dispose of his unredacted file as he would be asking for access to names blacked out in the redacted files. It is a real breakthrough and advance in the struggle for justice in these matters.

Brian’s lawyer also wrote basically informing him a date for a Tribunal would be set after he has notified them of any dates that he could not attend a hearing. Things appear to be moving but of course this will be a long and hard struggle for all seeking some form of real justice over this issue and is only really beginning and will no doubt end up in Europe.

30.3.10

Since they defend Muhammad’s model of mayhem, maiming, and mass-murder, a little reality is in order . . .

If the games were to reflect the Real World, the Muslim team would gun down the Israeli team before half-time, and the referee would call a foul on Israel.

And the crowd would cheer, just like you do.

In the next game, the new Israeli team would take the court wearing bullet-proof armor. There’d be a metal detector at the door, Muslim weapons would be confiscated, and the referee would call a foul on Israel.

And the crowd would jeer, just like you do.

In their third game, the Muslim team’s mascot would self-detonate in the stands on the Israeli side, killing hundreds. The referee would call the game for the Muslims.

And the crowd would fleer, just like you do.

And when the Israelis finally come to their senses and ban Muslims from playing on their court, you and the rest of your anti-Semitic, terrorist-enabling friends would have them expelled from international competition, pass a UN resolution denouncing Israel’s “intolerance,” and B. Hussein would hold a press conference on the “unprecedented opportunity” to force Israel to give up basketball. And the land on which their court sits.

You can’t have “emancipation and liberation” obfuscating for Allah’s malevolence. If anyone does read your ‘blog and isn’t instantly revulsed by your nescient moral inversion, then you’ve aided Allah’s cause.

My father died on 19th April, 1953, aged 86. Wallace was his hero. He fought the English and routed them in places you wouldn’t find on the map. Bruce – ‘He and his spider! Bruce was just a bloody traitor.’

Mary Brooksbank’s father was Alexander Soutar. He fought for union recognition. He became influenced by James Connolly. Clearly he was articulating the long established Scottish subterranean folk tradition of the ‘lower orders’ with regard to the relative roles of Bruce and Wallace.

Allan Armstrong

http://wonkosworld.co.uk_slash_wordpress

How about recognising the right of self-determination for the people of England?

http://toqueDOTcoDOTuk/