The following encouraging developments on the industrial front highlight two of the strategies discussed and debated at the Third Global Commune event, the report of which can be found at:-

Report of the Third Global Commune Event

1. Major gains for Lower Paid at Heron Tower Dispute

2. Brian Higgins and the Anti-Blacklist Campaign Success at Brussels

3. Report of Rank & File meeting for UNITE

1. IWW – Major Gains at Heron Tower Dispute

Following negotiations with the cleaning contractor LCC, who covers contracts at the prestigious Heron Tower – the IWW Cleaners and Allied Grades Branch has secured significant gains to the benefit of our low-paid.

The IWW had launched a campaign to secure full payment of the living wage £8.30 per-hour for, a resolution of staff shortages, issues of  unfair dismissal and anti-union conduct by management.

The IWW has reached an agreement which has secured full-payment of the London Living Wage with back pay until May 2011, the staff shortage to be filled and confirmation of the trade union rights of workers. Further discussions are underway on a recognition agreement with the IWW.

As result the IWW Cleaners Branch and London Delegates Committee has cancelled the demonstration called for tonight {19.8.11} at the Heron Tower. We thank all trade unionists and fellow workers for their solidarity and support.

Once again the independent workers union the IWW has shown that direct action and solidarity of all union members in support of each other achieves results in the interests of our members.

The message to cleaners across London is clear – don’t live in fear – get organised!

Alberto Durango, Latin American Workers Association, IWW

2.Brian Higgins and the Anti-Blacklist Campaign Success at Brussels

Northampton grandfather Brian Higgins this week achieved a major breakthrough in his campaign against the illegal blacklisting of trade unionists. On Thurs 30th June 2011, Brian Higgins secretary of Northampton branch of UCATT (the building workers union), led a delegation of trade unionists from the Blacklist Support Group to Brussels to hold private talks with László Andor, European Union Commissioner with responsibility for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion to discuss potential EU wide legislation to outlaw blacklisting. (Photo attached – see Editors Notes)

During the 45 minute meeting, Commissioner Andor was presented with documentary evidence in the form secret blacklist files kept about trade unionists in the UK construction industry. The files were compiled by the Consulting Association and provide damning evidence that major multi-national building firms systematically dismissed and victimised workers who raised concerns about health & safety issues or unpaid wages (see Editors Notes). The largest blacklist file in the country relates to Brian Higgins (49 pages)

The secret files contain appalling levels of personal intrusion with sensitive information including; names, addresses, national insurance number, work history, medical history, press-cuttings, union meetings attended, speeches made, political affiliations. Many entries on the blacklist files are supplied by senior Industrial Relations managers from major construction firms relating to when an individual had spoken to their site managers about safety breaches such as asbestos or poor toilet facilities. The information in the blacklist files was circulated amongst multi-national building firms and used to deny workers employment on major construction projects. For many blacklisted workers this resulted in repeated sackings and long-term unemployment merely because they had raised concerns about  safety on building sites.

Ex-bricklayer, Brian Higgins said after the meeting:

The Blacklist is an economic , social and political prison in which I have served a life sentence and others continue to be imprsoned. My wife and family also suffered because of the terrible pressure which resulted from us only having my wife’s wages to hold things together. But my message for those who caused this is, it was difficult , extremely so at times, however we did hold it together and stayed together in spite of you and your Blacklist. We refused to let you grind us down and I’m still fighting.

Brian Higgins added

When Northampton Ucatt Branch initiated a campaign for an EU Law against industrial blacklisting to try to counter dreadful performances of Ucatt and Unite General Secretaries and lawyers after the discovery of the Consulting Association Blacklist and contacted Glenis Willmott MEP. They could never imagine their secretary would end up with other blacklisted trade unionists and the Blacklist Support Group, a law professor and Stephen Hughes MEP at a meeting with Lazlo Andor the EU Commissioner in Brussels and get his sympthy in return. The genuinely positive response from Commissioner Andor exceeded all our expectations – It is truly amazing.

The construction companies identified as participating in the blacklisting operation include household names based and operating across Europe including: Skanska (Sweden), Bam (Netherlands), Vinci (France), Laing O’Rourke (Ireland), Sir Robert McAlpine, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Costain, Carillion (UK) to name but a few. (See Editors Notes)

Also attending the meeting was Professor Keith Ewing from Kings College London (a leading academic in international law and human rights issues) who presented possible legislative options open to the European Union highlighting the fact that many of the companies involved in the blacklist were European based.  He also drew attention to the fact that blacklisting violates many provisions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and that the EU had the authority and responsibility to respond to this major violation of health and safety standards.

The meeting was arranged by Stephen Hughes MEP and Glenis Willmott MEP (Labour’s Leader in Europe Parliament) who are taking up the issue in the European Parliament.

Stephen Hughes MEP said:

Blacklisting is a genuine issue which affects all member states and I will work with colleagues to address this serious concern and apply parliamentary pressure to trigger action.

This meeting is the beginning, not the end, of a process. Once we have planted the seed with Commissioner Andors, we will follow up with action in the European Parliament’s Employment Committee and the full Parliament. It will take time but we don’t give up easily!

The right to join a trade union and not be be victimised because of it is enshrined in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights but lack of any specific EU wide legislation against blacklisting of individuals for safety reasons means that thousands of workers have suffered appalling financial and family hardship because of the covert actions of multi-national building firms.

Brian Higgins added:

We have been victimised by these firms just because we have stood up for safety issues; a cabin to dry wet clothes, asbestos, holiday pay. For many of us this conspiracy has meant years on the dole and family strains. But we are not just fighting for ourselves. This evil practice is almost certainly taking place in other industries and across Europe. I refuse to stop campaigning for the trade union rights on safety, working conditions and wages the blacklist is meant to prevent us doing. Now we’re taking the fight to Europe on behalf of workers here and the likes of Poland, Spain, Ireland and Greece. In fact anywhere blacklisting is going on.

Notes to Editors:

1. For individual interviews with the delegation about the talks with EU Commissioner Andor & their personal experience of blacklisting contact blacklistsg@gmail.com

2. Attached photo shows (Left to Right): Professor Keith Ewing, Brian Higgins, Stephen Hughes MEP, EU Commissioner László Andor, Steve Acheson

3. The blacklisting of trade unionists in the construction industry was only exposed after an investigation by the Information Commissioners Office (UK data-protection watchdog) in 2009. The companies identified by the Information Commissioners Office as using The Consulting Association secret blacklisting are all household names including:

Amec, Amey, B Sunley & Sons, Balfour Beatty, Balfour Kilpatrick, Ballast Wiltshire, Bam Construction (HBC Construction), Bam Nuttall (Edmund Nutall Ltd), C B & I, Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd, Costain UK Ltd, Crown House Technologies, Carillion, Tarmac Construction, Diamond M & E Services, Dudley Bower & Co Ltd, Emcor (Drake & Scull), Emcor Rail, G Wimpey Ltd, Haden Young, Kier Ltd, John Mowlem Ltd, Laing O’Rourke, Lovell Construction (UK) Ltd, Miller Construction Limited, Morgan Ashurst, Morgan Est, Morrison Construction Group, N G Bailey, Shepherd Engineering Services, Sias Building Services, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, Skanska (Kaverna / Trafalgar House Plc), SPIE (Matthew Hall), Taylor Woodrow Construction Ltd, Turriff Construction Ltd, Tysons Contractors, Walter Llewellyn & Sons Ltd, Whessoe Oil & Gas, Willmott Dixon, Vinci PLC (Norwest Holst Group)

4. Blacklist Support Group was set-up to act as a support network on behalf of the 3216 individuals on the Consulting Associationdatabase following a meeting held at the House of Commons in June 2009 organised by John McDonnell MP. The Blacklist Support Group has led the campiagn against blacklisting by organsing fringe meetings at union conferences, entered submissions to proposed legislation, organising direct action, produced campaign video’s and is currently involved with a variety of legal challenges.

also see:- Brian Higgins Anti Blacklist Campaign

and:- Campaign To Fight The Blacklist And To Support Brian Higgins;

3. London: Report of the fantastic ‘Rank & File’ construction workers meeting.

Gerry Hicks stood as the Rank and File candidate For UNITE.  Len McCluskey won as the ‘left’ bureaucrat. Gerry came second and has continued with the work of building a rank and file movement.  Below is a report of a recent rank and file meeting in London.

500 Electricians and pipefitters sent out a clear message to JIB/HVCA employers and Unite the union that they will not accept the de-skilling of their trade or the pay cuts to their national agreements. The meeting, on Saturday 13 August, was organised by Unite rank and file activists from London and the south coast. Conway Hall was packed, standing room only.

The main issues were the pay cuts 8 firms had said they would be implementing in March 2012. There would be 3 new grades for electricians – metalworker £10.50 per hour, £12 for wiring, £14 for terminating. At the moment electrician’s JIB rate is £16.25p per hour across the board.

The meeting opened and elected a Chairperson, who gave an excellent speech saying, it was time for everyone present to stand up and fight these attacks all the way, to spread the word on sites and in their workplaces. It was not about blaming overseas workers, it was our fight and we must be united, disciplined and determined. The battle begins right here right now. We must win this fight. Future generations are depending on us. He also stated the idea that forming a new union should not be considered. It had been tried and had failed miserably in the past with EPIU. Now we are back in the same union we are far stronger.

A blacklisted electrician was the first speaker and was given a standing ovation for his incredible work fighting the blacklist.

Jerry Hicks was up next and gave a thunderous speech, which was wildly applauded. “JERRY JERRY JERRY JERRY!” the crowd chanted. The mood was electric, the biggest meeting since 2000 – the days of the Jubilee Line.

There were then discussions from the floor and questions and answers to 2 London officials who were really put on the spot about Amicus/EETPU failings in the past. Even with the new union many of the old guard are still in control, the bad old days of Tom Hardacre are still hanging around with mistrust in new officers. Time will tell whether Bernard Mcauley and his new team are any different.

The rank and file made it very clear that Unite need to perform in this current dispute or the anger shown by many at the meeting will be vented at them. A motion was passed unanimously that ‘Unite must immediately ballot members who are working for JIB firms who have been told that the terms and conditions will be changing in March 2012, and a campaign must be set up by Unite, distributing leaflets to all sites around the country opposing these attacks on our industry and to have regular feedback to the members.’ It was agreed to call for unofficial action ASAP on large sites and that other sites should come out in solidarity, rather than wait for a ballot, as this would put the whole issue out in the open.

A national rank and file committee was elected by those in attendance: 2 electricians, 2 pipefitters, 1 for the civil and also Jerry Hicks.

Moving forward, there is a stewards meeting in Leeds 17th August. 2 from the elected committee will be going, armed with the motion and a mandate from 500 people. Further rank and file meetings will be held around the country in the coming months, one before Xmas maybe in Manchester or Liverpool and also other areas next year. This new movement is on a high and we can spread the mood around the country and throughout construction. There will be attacks on other trades too. We should try and build things involving UCATT and GMB members as well.

Finally from the Chair of the meeting, “I personally felt proud and extremely happy as I supped a cold pint of Fosters after the meeting. Thanks to everyone involved – booking of the hall, contact lists, leafleting, and a magnificent collection too, many thanks to one and all. Our time has come comrades, let’s not miss this opportunity. In solidarity”.

(Some names have been left out deliberately to guard against any employer retribution.)

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the commune free issue 2 can be downloaded at:-

http://thecommune.co.uk/page/3/

editorial

riot in the city – the editorial discusses the crisis in capitalism and our communities

no state bans – on self-defeating calls for a ban on EDL protests

struggles news in brief – an overview of different stuggles happening at present

news and local perspectives on the riots

liverpool: police on the offensive – James Roberts writes on the attacks on young people in Merseyside, and the community response to the riots.

peckham: the fury must not be forgotten – Sharon Borthwick reports on the riots in south-east London

ruling class justice system shows its true face – Taimour Lay explains the meaning of the post-riot show trials

riots analysis

Our website featured an extensive debate on the riots, and many more views than could be fit into the paper can be found there.

…or does it explode? – Joe Thorne introduces the debate

nothing to lose, nothing to win – David Broder explains what he sees as the political vacuum underlying the riots

when ‘normal’ behaviour is meaningless – Clifford Biddulph argues for an engagement with the chaotic and elemental nature of class struggle

economy

unhappy economies: greek debt, PIIGS and eurozone crisis – Oisin Mac Giollamoir explains the current european crisis and the relationship between debt and class struggle

giz a fightback – Terry Liddle reflects on his experience of the 1980s unemployed movement

education

200 day occupation delivers – Liam Turbett reports on Glasgow students’ victorious uni occupation

why is there class in the classroom? – Dave Spencer explores the reasons for working class under-achievement in the classroom

libya

any hope for libya? – Joe Thorne writes on NATO’s role in post-Gaddafi Libya

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DEBATE ON THE RIOTS

in the commune

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:-

When Normal Behaviour Is Meaningless

Javaad Alipoor continues our debate on the meaning of the UK’s riots:-

no justice no peace: the riot is the rhyme of the unheard, let us begin to listen.

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

or does it explode?

David broder explains what he sees as the political vacuum underlying the riots

nothing to lose, nothing to win 

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OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS ON THE RIOTS 

REFLECTIONS ON THE ENGLISH RIOTS
 
27 August 2011

A personal note by John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Ireland) . 

The French radical Voltaire, writing from England in the 18th century, spelt out in the “Philosophical Letters” his admiration for the civilization and tolerance of the English in contrast to French absolutism. However, in a throwaway comment, he remarked that, while London represented the civilized profile of English society, Ireland represented its ragged backside.

Today in London we see the ragged backside of British capitalism. The need for vengeance, for revenge, the need to inspire fear in the lower orders, has subsumed every other consideration, including the legal system’s own rules concerning the rights of children. Conveyor belt justice rushes thousands into jail. A facebook comment nets a four year sentence. Politicians vie with each other to suggest new punishments, new restrictions on civil rights, new weapons to apply the iron heel to the neck of the lower orders.

And then there is what the British capitalists do best – hypocrisy on a level so monumental as to beggar belief. 

For what we are told is that the issue is an issue of morality and that savage measures are needed to install moral responsibility into the nation’s youth.

We are told this by politicians mired in scandal, by governments that ruled in tandem with the Murdoch press, by a press accused of sickening corruption, and finally by a police force guilty of killing and brutality at the lower levels and corruption at nearly every level. 

In common with all other forms of social corruption goes almost total impunity.

“News of the World” editor Rebekah Brooks admits to a group of MPs, on camera, that the News International group bribes police and nothing happens. Murdoch gives evidence which is clearly untrue, crime after crime is listed against his group, but only the protestor who attacks him with a foam pie goes to jail. 

Many MPs fix their expenses but only the most blatant suffer. Meanwhile Blair cashing in to the tune of tens of millions goes unnoticed.

All the top cops, forced to resign because of their links to the Murdoch press, are cleared within days. Lower down the chain of command savage beatings and killings go unpunished, even many assaults caught on camera.

This impunity reaches its height when chief constables, who have presided over a total collapse of the force, exchange insults with equally incompetent politicians about an imaginary police independence – the debate led by Hugh Orde, whose ability to meet the political needs of his masters led him from investigating the RUC in the North of Ireland to being appointed their leader, and whose subsequent rise was fuelled by his political ability to represent the demands of unionism and the programme of the British government in relation to Ireland.

The savagery and hypocrisy of the capitalist counter-offensive has produced much analysis and comment from socialists. The problem is that much of this analysis accepts the narrative of social breakdown and riot. Real events were considerably more complex than this.

The initial event of the uprising was the killing of Mark Duggan, accompanied by a transparent cover-up – a cover-up that involved both the police and the supposed investigators of the IPCC – a cover-up that is ongoing and involves a press blackout on the issue. 

A political protest by the family of the dead man was treated with contempt by the police. This incident, following years of racial harassment, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Local youth came on to the streets determined to extract revenge.

The rapid spread of the riots saw white youth join their black compatriots. Again the focus of the uprising was revenge – three police stations and an undisclosed number of vehicles were burnt out. A widespread view among the youth was that they had nothing to lose. Mass unemployment (standing at 20%) was the rule and access to further education was being cut off.

The police understood very well that they were the target. They waited over a week before admitting that firearms had been used against them. Their withdrawal from riot zones was not due to mistaken tactics, but an attempt to avoid the casualties that the youth were so anxious to inflict. 

It was against this background that wholesale looting took place. It was the looting that was used by capitalism to avoid any examination of the widespread hatred of the police or any concern about the programme of savage austerity that they intend to deepen. 

However the looting can be seen as a consequence of the failure to build an opposition. The majority of the looters did not themselves have a determination to confront the police and their actions were opportunistic and random, involving attacks on other workers and small shopkeepers. Political movements, when they confront the state forces, have the ability to apply a discipline on bystanders and sweep them up in a common cause that militates against looting.

Media commentators have compared the youth to the mob of the past. The mob, the urban underclass, displayed a spontaneous undirected violence and a low level of politics. They were supplanted by the organised working class.

The English youth are not the mob. They do not come before the working class nor are they separate from them. What they face is exclusion from the working class or admission to dead-end jobs and a life of penury.

The working class haven’t gone away. They were present on the streets of London not so long ago in a march of 250,000. Unfortunately they marched in a cage constructed by the trade union leadership, designed to make violence impossible and restricted to calls to apply the cuts less harshly and over a longer time frame. New Labour not only endorses the austerity, but also is at the forefront in demanding the harsh punishment of those accused by the police.

The socialist movement can transform the anger and rage of youth into support for socialism. However it can only do so as part of a project for the self-organization of the working class around its own program. 

We should not become trapped in moralism  – that will leave us in a corner with the capitalists discussing the problem of the rioters. The reality is that the crisis of capitalism is mirrored by a collapse of the traditional organizations of the working class. The labour and trade union leaderships support an economic programme that will inevitably lead to mass poverty. They are unable even to stand against the wave of mass repression that is being unleashed following the riots. The small socialist movement tends to close its eyes to this reality and to seek unity with union bureaucrats on terms dictated by the bureaucrats – terms that make the construction of an independent working class movement impossible.

Class conflict happens of its own accord. It will take whatever form is available to it. The alternative to chaotic and apolitical upsurges is an effective opposition, able to confront capitalism and put manners on the police. Socialists can strain every sinew to build this movement or it can emerge on its own, with all the blood, false starts and blind alleys that this could entail.

‘NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE’ AND BLOOD AND FLAMES ON ENGLAND’S STREETS:
1981, 1985 and 2011

 12 Aug 2011


 By David Black – Hobgoblin

The “Tottenham Riots” of 1985 began with a protest outside Tottenham police station over the fatal collapse of Cynthia Jarret during an illegal police raid on her home on the Broadwater Farm housing estate, after the wrongful arrest of her son. The police station protest developed into a pitched all-night battle between police and the Caribbean youth of Broadwater Farm, ending with the killing of a police officer.

 Twenty-six years later, on Saturday 6 August 2011, another protest took place outside Tottenham police station, this time over the killing two days earlier of former Broadwater Farm resident, Mark Duggan, in a stake-out by armed police. The initial police statement claimed that an officer had been shot and wounded before other officers returned fire. But the family and numerous friends of Mr. Duggan challenged this version of events and organized a 200-strong vigil outside Tottenham police station. Stafford Scott, a community activist in the area, told Sky News,

 “We came to the station to have a peaceful demonstration, and it was largely peaceful. And what we explained to the police is that we wanted someone senior from the police service to come and explain to us what was happening. They kept on prevaricating. The most senior person they gave us was a chief inspector. We said that person wasn’t senior enough… Eventually they sent for a superintendent, but by then it was too late.”

It was too late because as night fell local gangs of youth – beyond the control of protestors – began to converge on the police station. Two empty police cars and a double-decker bus were set on fire and a full-scale riot ensued. Shops were looted and buildings torched – seriously endangering the lives of residents living above shops, whose homes were destroyed. By dawn looting had spread to nearby Wood Green, where the high street was freely looted by youth pushing trolleys full of phones, shoes and clothes before the police finally arrived at dawn.

The next day, Sunday, saw looting at shopping centres in more affluent areas such as Oxford Street in the West End, and the northern suburb of Enfield, where the youth involved were predominately white. The Metropolitan Police managed to quell these few “copy-cat” outbreaks, but the events of the following day, Monday 8 August, totally overwhelmed the 6000-strong force assigned to “keep the peace.” All across London, pulling in youth of all colours and ages, starting at 10 or 11 years-old, looting broke out on a mass scale at major chain stores, as did extensive fighting between youth and riot police in the thoroughfares. A spate of a dozen serious fires across the city engulfed large department stores, whole sections of high streets including small shops and residences, and a huge Sony warehouse. In Hackney, an East End  borough with a long history of radical and Black activism, barricades and burning cars blocked the movements of police as youth bounced missiles off riot shields and police vehicles, and looters invaded the shopping malls. Outside of London, there were over a hundred arrests in disturbances in Birmingham.

The next day, Tuesday, raging Right-wingers demanded that the police use water cannon and rubber bullets, and that the army –already severely stretched by overseas wars and facing cuts — be sent into the “trouble spots.” More reasonably, many shopkeepers and residents in the “disturbed” areas protested at the police’s poor response to their emergency calls. The Metropolitan Police, promising to get tough and take-the gloves-off, called in the reserves to boost the anti-riot force to 16,000 officers. This time, however, those who had defied or fought them the previous nights declined the return match and stayed at home. Perhaps, for the angry, the point had been made — and how painful it is for Londoners to see what were fine old buildings now conjuring up images of the Blitz and the doodlebug [V-1 rocket] raids. For the self-interested looters the overhanging fruit had already been picked – the best shopping targets had been emptied. And for the protestors there are – or should be — other ways to fight, that address the roots of the problem.

Further North however, the rage took hold in several cities. On Wednesday in Manchester and Salford large  numbers of youth  looted shops, started fires and fought the police.  In Nottingham a police station was firebombed. In Ealing, London Sikhs took the streets to protect their businesses from looters. There was a similar mobilization in Enfield, but the people there were angered when the police stupidly tried to kettle them as the “enemy.” Most tragically, when Muslim men in Birmingham began patrolling the streets to protect the local shops, three of them were killed by a murdering coward who deliberately ran into them at speed and then fled the scene.

Liberals and social democrats concede that the protest over the shooting of Mark Duggan was legitimate; especially as it is now emerging that Mark Duggan didn’t draw a gun or fire it at the police. At the same time liberals, rather than mourn their dead, failed neoliberal ideology, have moaned  constantly, with their dead, clichéd phrases, about “tiny minorities” of  “mindless thugs” tearing up the “community”. As the student  protests of last winter have already shown,  a huge proportion of youth feel that for them either there is no such “community”, or if there is, they have no stake in it and no say in how it is run.

Whilst the “ Uprisings” of 1981 and 1986 were marked by a conflict between youth and police that had been simmering for years, in 2011 the disaffection has gone a step further, with youth expropriating the commodities that “consumer society” denies them, and in some cases burning the big stores that stock them. The innovations in telecommunications now available to youths for organizing purposes are obviously important, but arguably balanced out by CCTV and other surveillance and tracking technologies now deployed by the police. Politically the key difference is that in the 1980s, although the “uprisings” obviously were not “led” in any political sense, rebellious youth did look to radicals for leadership on political campaigning and ideas, notably Linton Kwesi Johnson, Bernie Grant, Diane Abbot, Paul Gilroy and Darcus Howe. In 1985 Bernie Grant, as Tottenham’s Member of Parliament, sided with his constituents against police racism, despite the brutal killing of Police Constable Blakelock in the “Battle of Broadwater Farm.” His controversial stand was later vindicated when the convictions of four youths for the murder were overturned because it was proved that the police had faked the evidence against them. Today Tottenham has a Black New Labour MP, who has condemned the rioters as “mindless yobs” and Haringey has a New Labour business-friendly council, committed to “social cohesion.” But today Tottenham is an even more dismal area than it was in 1985; and relations between police and the youth of the area – as multicultural as can be found anywhere in the world – are as bad as ever. In equally poor and strife-ridden Hackney Diane Abbot is still the MP, but she is now a New Labour loyalist and no radical.

In contrast with the New Labour crowd, veteran activist and broadcaster Darcus Howe, interviewed  by the BBC on Tuesday, highlighted the police harassment  of Black youth such as his grandchildren, and said of the previous night’s events, “I don’t call it rioting. I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it is happening in Liverpool, it is happening in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature of the historical moment.” Completely ignoring what Darcus had just said, BBC’s Fiona Armstrong  jumped in with “Do you condone what happened in your community last night?” to which he responded “Of course not! What am I going to condone it for?” When she continued her hostile interrogation with “You aren’t a stranger to rioting, are you? You have taken part in them yourself” he responded, “I have never taken part in single riot. I have taken part in demonstrations that ended in conflict. Have some respect for an old West Indian Negro and stop accusing me of being a rioter… you just sound idiotic.”

Certainly, few – even BBC hacks — can be surprised that, with the Tories back in power, rioting has returned to the inner cities of Britain. As the Tories prepare to showcase London for the 2012 Olympics, the economy is faltering and the pain of public service cutbacks is now being felt. But the young dispossessed of Syria,  Clapham, Liverpool and Port-of-Spain, Trinidad have today NO political leadership — a fact as disturbing as the opportunist and thoughtless violence and destruction that has been inflicted on a lot of innocent home-owners and small  business owners. But what has been happening in Britain – call it the “rebellion,” the “uprising” or the “riots” – is a direct result of what successive Tory/New Labour/Liberal regimes have been doing for years: attacking civil liberties and free speech whilst living off a corrupt and criminal relationship with media barons like the Murdochs; waging illegal wars; and – worst of all — heightening economic inequality to the sort of level the working class Chartists of the Nineteenth Century would have been prepared to take up arms against.

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On Living in the Real World by Aaron Kelly

see Platform piece on Word Power Bookshop Website at:- http://www.word-power.co.uk/viewPlatform.php?id=590

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The following review of From Davitt to Connolly: ‘Internationalism from Below’ and the Challenge to the U.K. State and British Empire 1879 – 1895 appears in Issue 20 of Permanent Revolution

Allan Armstrong, From Davitt to Connolly: ‘Internationalism from Below’ and the Challenge to the U.K. State and British Empire 1879 – 1895 (Intfrobel Publications 2010). Paperback. 205pp. £7.99

This book is a valuable addition to the literature on the history of the labour movement in the UK in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. It focusses on the political career of Michael Davitt, sometime Fenian and subsequently independent radical, who, as the author explains, constitutes a bridge between that earlier Irish movement, which was, as Marx and Engels observed, a lower orders one, and James Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party, founded in 1896.

In passing the book has some interesting reflexions on Charles Stewart Parnell, Keir Hardie and David Lloyd George, among others. It also situates the whole march of events in the context of British imperialism’s politics moving from the advocacy of free trade to what the author calls high imperialism —Rudyard Kipling could be taken as a representative spokesman of the latter, but one could also instance Cecil Rhodes, Joseph Chamberlain and a number of other prominent personalities.

Allan Armstrong appears to be a member of the Scottish Socialist Party. This impression derives from his attacks on, inter alia, the Left unionist tradition. The comrade writes, In particular, the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the CPGB – Weekly Worker brought this tradition into the SSP. Those remaining in the CWI, forming the International Socialists, adopted a Left nationalist approach on paper towards Scotland, but remained essentially left unionists in practice. …Today, after a major internal crisis [l’Affaire Tommy Sheridan], both the SSP and the breakaway Solidarity face strong pulls in the form of Left nationalism and Left unionism, accompanied by tendencies to populism. Socialist Republicanism remains a significant force only in the SSP. (pp. 18-19).

Perhaps because the work is a historical one, we are not given a characterization of what Allan Armstrong understands by socialist republicanism. However, reading between the lines, it would appear to consist in a political project aiming at the destruction of the British state and its replacement by socialist republics in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.

Far more important than what the book doesn’t say, however, is what it says. Particularly valuable is the picture of Michael Davitt which emerges. It is easy to dismiss Davitt as a political operator active on the Irish stage only. Such an evaluation is miles away from the truth. The Irish Free State in its early years was keen to promote this travesty: it issued a commemorative stamp honouring Davitt as one of the national heroes but was silent about his radicalism.

Likewise the standard left-wing work in English on Irish nationalism, Erich Strauss’s Irish Nationalism and British Democracy, leads the reader to see Davitt as an Irish political figure pure and simple. What Armstrong documents in considerable detail is Davitt’s role as a radical operating not only in Ireland but also in England, Scotland and Wales, in pursuit of internationalism from below. In part this was forced on him by the pro-bourgeois influence exercised by Charles Stewart Parnell, who was anxious to distance himself from the aspirations of poorer tenant farmers, landless labourers and industrial workers in Ireland.

Parnell’s politics were tailored to the aims and objects of the strong farmers and the emergent Catholic Irish bourgeoisie (see pp. 31-2). Davitt’s strategy was, in principle, different, being a development from physical force Fenianism, expressed in the so-called New Departure, which took its inspiration from an earlier politician, James Fintan Lawlor (see p. 30 and Connolly’s Labour in Irish History). This involved militant action in support of tenant right in order to break the power of the landlords, a political campaign for Irish home rule and the clandestine importation of arms from America. Unfortunately Davitt was unable to bring this strategy to fruition—for an interesting criticism of his tactics see p. 42.

Parnell gained the upper hand, only to see his power destroyed by the revelations in the O’Shea divorce case (pp. 128-9). Davitt soldiered on, but he showed a propensity to ally with Lib-Lab politicians—e.g. by appearing on the same platform as the Welsh miners’ leader William Abraham (“Mabon”) (p. 82). The baton passed to James Connolly—see the final chapter of the book, which details the activities of the newly-formed Irish Socialist Republican Party.

This chapter, like the rest of the book, is excellent: it is marred only by an uncritical reference to Connolly outlining the role of primitive communism in Ireland up to the seventeenth century (p. 161). Alas, this view of Connolly’s finds no support at all in the Irish law tracts. The subject is ably discussed in Andy Johnston, James Larragy and Edward McWilliams, Connolly: A Marxist Analysis (Irish Workers’ Group, 1990).

The book contains a useful bibliography, an index and a fine selection of pictures, including one of the Liberal Irish Secretary William Buckshot Forster — so called because he advocated the use of buckshot rather than cartridges against those resisting eviction, on the grounds that it was more humanitarian (p. 50). There is even a picture of the notorious Captain Boycott—assuming one wants one.

This book is evidently part of a larger historical research project. The publishers advertise four volumes (available on line at http://www.internationalismfrombelow.com) for 2011:

1. The Historical Development of Nation-States and Nationalism up to 1848.
2. The World of Nation-States and Nationalism between the Communist League and the early Second International (1845 – 1895).
3. Revolutionary Social-Democracy, Nation-States and Nationalism in the Age of the Second International (1889 – 1916).
4. Communists, Nation-States and Nationalism during the International Revolutionary Wave of 1916-21.

If the quality of scholarship in these works turns out to be of the same high order as that in From Davitt to Connolly, then we are in for a treat.

Chris Gray

Part One – the Meaning of the May 5th Elections

A good kicking for the Lib-Dems disguises the wider impact of the National Question on May 5th

On May 5th, the Lib-Dem-initiated referendum proposal to introduce AV to Westminster elections was massively rejected in every nation and region of the UK, including Northern Ireland. In the English Local Council, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elections, all held on the same day, former Lib-Dem voters used the opportunity either to punish Clegg and his allies for entering into a coalition with the Tories, or to vote for the real thing. This took precedence over any vote ‘Yes’ recommendations on AV by the other parties. In the absence of meaningful resistance, voters turned to revenge instead.

In the English Local Council elections, Labour routed the Lib-Dems in the north, whilst the Tories routed them in the south. Elsewhere in the UK, though, the impact of the National Question pushed the Lib-Dems’ decline to being a secondary issue.

In the Welsh Assembly election, the Lib-Dems also lost out to both Labour and the Tories. However, the main loser was Plaid Cymru, recently in coalition with Labour. Plaid’s recent efforts, throwing all of its weight behind the  Coalition’s successful referendum campaign to devolve law-making powers to the Welsh Assembly, seemed to represent the culmination of its political ambitions.  Yet, all the mainstream unionist parties supported this liberal unionist measure too.  With Plaid less relevant, and the Tories very unpopular in working class South Wales, Welsh Labour advanced and has formed its own single-party government, thus making more posts available for its own careerists.

In the Northern Ireland, the Lib-Dems officially support the moderate unionist Alliance Party. However, the lack of any wider appreciation of this fact, along with Alliance’s different name, meant that, despite its Lib-Dem type politics, it was able to make limited gains in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, as the old UUP continues to sheds its more moderate voters (remembering that ‘moderate’ is a relative term in Unionist politics in Northern Ireland!)

But this too was a side issue when the DUP and Sinn Fein made small gains, despite their joint implementation of public sector cuts. They were able to take their first Stormont Coalition into a second term. Voters threw their weight behind competitive sectarian pleading for Westminster resources, in a Stormont that has a constitutionally recognised divide between Unionists and Nationalists. Voters rejected any return to possible armed conflict, or to a class based opposition to the Con-Dem cuts to the Northern Ireland budget.

On the Unionist side, the tentative move to the centre, marked by the growth of the Alliance Party, was matched by a move on the Right towards the rejectionist, Traditional Unionist Voice. However, the possibility of voting for either of these constitutional Unionist options was underpinned by the continued desire for stability. This was highlighted by the electoral demise of the Progressive Unionist Party, linked to the redundant (for the moment) Loyalist UVF death squads.

However, the most sensational result on May 5^th occurred in the Scottish Parliament election. Here the previous minority SNP government was able to increase its number of MSPs from 46 to 69, an absolute majority forecast by no one. Furthermore, the SNP’s votes came at the expense, not only of the Lib-Dems, but of the Tories, Labour and the small Socialist vote too. Only the Greens managed to hold on to their vote and their 2 MSPs. They made a calculated Left appeal, now that their moderate leader, Robin Harper, has retired. They hoped to woo former disillusioned Socialist voters. Labour only managed to increase its vote in two constituencies, Dumfries and Eastwood. Here they were the main challengers to the Tories, who by their own admission remain “toxic” in Scotland.  Very few people in Scotland held street parties to celebrate Will’s and Kate’s royal wedding on the 29^th April – many are saving these for Thatcher’s funeral!

How socialists fared throughout the UK

In the English Local Elections, three Socialist councillors, now standing under the CWI-initiated, Trade Union & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) banner, lost their previous seats (including both SWP councillors), despite these and a few other candidates still getting a credible vote. Elsewhere though, the TUSC vote was small. It will be interesting to see whether TUSC can survive as a wider Socialist unity project, or whether it will just follow that other CWI initiative, the National Shop Stewards Network and become a complete CWI-front.

In Wales, Socialists only stood on the List vote in the Assembly elections, under the banner of Scargill’s SLP, the Communist Party of Britain, or TUSC. They made little headway. Indeed it is an indication of the decline of the Left, that it was the moribund SLP that attracted most Socialist votes as a purely passive electoral gesture.

In Northern Ireland, those Socialists who contested the Stormont election, either under the banner of People Before Profit (SWP front), the Socialist Party (CWI), the Workers Party or Socialist Democracy (USFI), sometimes competed against each other. They were marginal outside Derry/Foyle, where the SWP’s well-known Eamonn McCann made a credible showing. Republican socialists and traditional pro-armed struggle republicans did not stand in the Stormont elections, but confined their activities to the Local Council elections held in Northern Ireland on the same day (unlike Wales or Scotland). A couple of breakaway former Sinn Fein councillors held their seats, whilst Patricia Campbell of the Independent Workers Union and the republican socialist, eirigi and the IRSP all made a credible showing, despite some mutual competition between these last two in West Belfast. The traditionalist republican, pro-armed struggle, 32 Counties Sovereignty Movement also made headway in Derry, a reflection of the lack of any meaningful ‘peace dividend’ in the most deprived Nationalist communities.

In Scotland, Socialists, who as recently as 2007, held 6 seats at Holyrood, were fatally crippled in the aftermath of the Sheridan affair. As in Wales, they only stood for the List seats and were split between Scargill’s SLP, the SSP and Solidarity. And, as in Wales, Scargill’s phantom SLP gained the most Socialist votes in the Left’s equivalent of ‘bald men fighting over a comb’. In the absence of Solidarity’s leader, the Left nationalist, Tommy Sheridan, they also decided to back another celebrity socialist, the left Unionist, George Galloway. He had parachuted into Glasgow as the George Galloway/Respect candidate after being rejected by electors in East London last year. Glasgow voters recognised an opportunist carpetbagger when they saw one, so knowing he was going to lose, he just picked up his bags and left before the count. The SSP vote continued to fall from its poor 2007 result, whilst Solidarity’s declining vote went into tailspin. This raises the question in both organisations about the prospects of future meaningful Socialist unity.

The meaning of the SNP electoral victory

So, what does the SNP victory in the Holyrood elections represent? Ever since the banking crash, which saw the SNP and its charismatic leader, Alex Salmond, too closely associated with the failed Royal Bank of Scotland, the party had been unable to win any Westminster or many council by-elections. During the 2010 Westminster general election, the Labour Party, amazingly and also unpredictably, increased its vote in Scotland, retaking a seat previously lost to the SNP in a pre-crash by-election. Labour’s electoral appeal was almost entirely based upon playing up to the fear of the Tories.

As recently as the beginning of the year, polls were anticipating the return of a Labour-led government to Holyrood, in the face of the SNP’s betrayal, after the economic crisis, of its 2007 electoral promises. Labour thought that they could just repeat their ‘No back to the 1980s’, anti-Tory appeal in the run-up to the May 5^th. However, that card had been played out in 2010.  Despite voting Labour, Scotland now faced the hated Tories once more, supported by the increasingly despised Lib-Dems. Yet Miliband’s Labour Party, consigned to ‘opposition’, was making absolutely no difference.

Salmond was able to repeat Gordon Brown’s 2010 pre-election trick, and postpone major Holyrood cuts until after the election. Although he lowered the electorate’s sights, abandoning many earlier SNP promises, those still remaining aimed higher than any made by Labour. The relentlessly negative Scottish Labour leader, Ian Gray, believed that Scottish voters would automatically return to their ‘natural’ fold, and that the Holyrood gravy train would once more be at Labour’s disposal. He slept-walked towards May 5^th. When Labour’s poll support started to ebb away, his response was once more to raise the separatist bogey (it had failed in 2007 with its effect neutralised by the SNP’s promised referendum on independence), and then, in panic, he adopted virtually every other SNP policy.

Meanwhile, Salmond had been assiduously building-up the backing of Scottish businessmen, including Brian Souter, the homophobic owner of Stagecoach, Sir Thomas Farmer, the Con-Dem cuts-approving owner of KwikFit, and Sir David Murray, the Unionist owner of Murray International Metals and recently of Rangers FC.  Donald Trump, the controversial American tycoon, given the go-ahead to build a luxury golf-course and gated housing project in Aberdeenshire, also enjoys the support of the SNP government. Both Murdoch’s Sun and Tommy Sheridan (http://tommysheridan.wordpress.com/ April 22^nd) backed the Scottish populist nationalist, SNP. The SNP obviously gained far more by way of support from the former, given the evidence of the latter’s failure to persuade many Glasgow voters to back his other recommended choice – the Left British unionist, George Galloway.

SNP success in inverse proportion to working class confidence and Socialist success

Underlying the large electoral drift to the SNP is the current lack of working class self-confidence. This reflects the lack of fightback against the Con-Dems’ austerity drive, following on workers’ earlier disillusioned acceptance of Brown’s and Darling’s proposed Westminster imposed cuts. The STUC is every bit as wedded to social partnership deals with the employers and the state as the TUC.  The effect of these has been to turn trade unions into a free personnel management service for the bosses. Added to this is the sorry demise of the Left in Scotland in the aftermath of the Sheridan fiasco. The attraction of Socialist unity in the face of massive cutbacks was demonstrated earlier this year in the Irish elections when the United Left Alliance was able to pick up 5 Dail seats.

However, much of the SNP’s electoral support is superficial – a clutching at straws. As long as workers remain acquiescent, the SNP government will openly pursue its real aim – making Scotland a haven for Scottish businesses and global corporations. Earlier this year, to show where the SNP’s loyalties lie, John Swinney, Finance Minister, allowed the lapse of Holyrood’s income tax raising powers, voted for in the 1997 Devolution Referendum. The SNP have extended their council tax freeze for another five years to force Local Councils into privatising services. The Lib-Dem/SNP coalition running Edinburgh Council has brought in consultants to prepare for such measures. This follows their attack on cleansing workers’ pay, preparatory to possible privatisation. The SNP government has even attacked the Con-Dem’s recent proposed levy on North Sea Oil. It’s not to be ‘Scotland’s Oil’, but will remain the petroleum corporations’ oil!

The SNP has entered negotiations with Cameron over Westminster’s proposed Scotland Bill. This is based on the miserable additional devolutionary powers recommended by the Calman Commission to dish the SNP, in advance of any possible Independence Referendum. The SNP’s over-riding concern is to get the political power to cut corporation tax. Up until 2008, the SNP’s very mild reforms were dependent on building up Scotland’s ‘buoyant’ finance sector – a trickle-down ‘social democracy’ courtesy of the Royal Bank of Scotland! Now, any such reforms are meant to be financed by a very limited tax on corporate profits – if their boards agree to play ball!

Constitutional crisis or a SNP negotiated ‘Devolution-Max’ cop out?

The media has made much of a possible constitutional crisis due to the SNP’s commitment to holding a referendum on Scottish independence in the last years of its office. The novelty of a Nationalist victory in one of the UK’s devolved assemblies should not prevent people looking to other comparable examples in Spain and Quebec. Here Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU), the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Parti Quebecois (PQ) have also formed majority administrations in devolved assemblies. Both the CiU and PNV have settled for greater measures of devolution within the Spanish state, whilst the PQ initiated referendum on Quebec independence was narrowly defeated and has not been attempted again.

Meanwhile, ‘over the water’, the former revolutionary nationalist Sinn Fein has settled very quickly into helping to run the UK’s devolved administration in Northern Ireland.  All the indications are that the very constitutional nationalist SNP is quite willing to settle for ‘Devolution-Max’. Salmond doesn’t have the excuse that he had in his last government of being in a minority, and hence being unable to put forward the SNP’s promised Independence Referendum Bill. In reality, however, significant forces in the SNP, including rightist Education Minister, Michael Russell, and former leftist, Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, never wanted a referendum, and nor do many of the SNP’s current business backers.

Salmond is publicly ditching more and more attributes of meaningful political independence. The SNP recognise the continued role of the monarchy (which fronts the British ruling class’s draconian anti-democratic Crown Powers), the City (which sets financial policy), and the UK’s armed forces (which would be able to use Scottish military facilities). The SNP supports UN-backed (i.e. US-dominated Security Council approved) imperial wars, and has campaigned vigorously to maintain Scottish regiments, and British and NATO bases in Scotland.  There may still be some commitment to abolishing the unpopular Trident bases and hence for Scotland to step down into NATO’s second tier, non-nuclear ‘Partnership for Peace’. However, there are also signs that the SNP would be prepared just to lease out military facilities here, creating, in effect,  ‘Guantanamac’ bases.

‘Independence-Lite’ represents the height of SNP leadership ambitions, although a considerable section would settle for ‘Devolution-Max’.  Most of the existing institutions of the British unionist and imperial state would remain in place but be given a lick of tartan paint in Scotland. The SNP is no more able to deliver meaningful political independence, than Labour was able to deliver political devolution in 1979. A considerable majority of the British ruling class was against Scottish devolution then, but the overwhelming majority of the British ruling class is against Scottish independence now.

The British ruling class opposes Scottish independence and backs ‘Devolution-all-round’

The British ruling class is currently prepared to go no further than a few more limited devolutionary concessions, based on Blair’s 1997 ‘Devolution-all-round’ and Peace (in reality, pacification) Process settlement. This settlement is designed both to buttress wider British imperial control over these islands (emphasised by the recent royal visit to Ireland) and to create the best political conditions for corporate profitability.

Furthermore, despite the SNP’s overtures to Americans of Scottish descent (many of whom are on the US Right), it is the UK government, which enjoys official US state backing. Indeed the UK is such a reliable junior partner (with military forces that can be deployed more widely than Israel’s) that successive US governments have granted the UK state the imperial franchise in the North East Atlantic. The UK also acts as a useful spoiler to contain any independent French-German Euro-imperial ambitions. The USA is unlikely to switch its backing to the SNP. Furthermore, EU leaders will not step on UK governments’ toes over this issue.

Realising the SNP is isolated in the UK and wider international arena, Salmond is likely to offer a second ‘Devolution-Max’ option in the SNP Government’s proposed Independence Referendum. This would satisfy his most ardent business supporters, as well as important sectors of his own party.  Those rank and file Scottish independence supporting SNP members could be left to get on with campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote for what is, in effect, ‘Independence-Lite’ under the Crown, the City, the British armed forces and NATO.

However, the SNP leadership would itself be riding two horses, with different members providing their personal support for whichever option they really backed (in a similar manner to Labour in the 1979 Devolution referendum). SNP ‘Devolution-Max’ supporters might hope to get influential backing from those amongst Labour (e.g. Henry MacLeish), the Lib-Dems (e.g. Charles Kennedy) and even the Conservatives (e.g. Murdo Fraser), who are committed to further liberal unionist measures.  The SNP’s worried rank and file independence supporters would be fobbed off with the promise that ‘Devolution-Max’ was but another stage on the road to independence – an argument that could have some purchase, given that some SNP supporters also see ‘Independence-Lite’ as but a stage towards ultimate Scottish political sovereignty.

Those actually campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote for Scottish ‘independence’ (i.e. ‘Independence-Lite’) will soon be subjected to all the dirty tricks available to the British ruling class and its political representatives under the UK Crown Powers, since they are currently implacably opposed to such a course of action. The membership of the impeccably constitutionalist SNP is no more prepared for these, than it was in 1979, when the British ruling class was at least split, not united as it is today, over how best to maintain the Union. Meanwhile, the SNP government will be forced to impose the cuts demanded by Westminster and its business backers. This will highlight just whose class interests the SNP’s advocacy of ‘independence’ are meant to serve.

Salmond has just had his own 2011 equivalent of New Labour’s ‘things can only get better’ 1997 election. This is likely to lead to a similar let down in the future. Socialists today appear to be in as much of a mess as they were after Thatcher defeated the miners and Liverpool Council in the mid-80’s. By 1987, the triumphant Tories had decided to introduce the poll tax and face down the growing ‘National Question’ in the UK. However, Thatcher was defeated by mass independent class action and continued Irish republican opposition. Independent class action and a socialist republican strategy based on the promotion of ‘internationalism from below’ is the precondition for our advance today.

Allan Armstrong. 7.6.11

Part  Two – the  SNP follows Labour 

Social democracy SNP-style and the lessons it has learned from Labour

The long-term decline of the Labour Party in Scotland has enabled the SNP to pose in social democratic colours, particularly in the Central Belt. The SNP’s social democratic commitments are not that great, and like New Labour compete inside the party with another distinctly neo-liberal economic agenda. However, the SNP has skilfully positioned itself, so that it appears to promise more reforms than New Labour  – not a very difficult task! However, as with New Labour, any social democratic reforms are only made as election promises when they are compatible with the interests of the major financial institutions, well represented in Edinburgh, and of other global corporations and Scottish businesses engaged in constant lobbying at Holyrood or Bute House.

The last SNP government (2007-11) soon abandoned its election promises of improved teacher/student ratios in schools, the cancellation of student debt, and the abolition of the regressive council tax, in order to prioritise meeting the costs of the bankers’ bailout. This highlights the limitations of the SNP’s social democratic reforms. The SNP pushes much more consistently for reduced corporate taxation and other pro-business measures, highlighted by its courting of prominent Scottish businessmen, e.g. Brian Souter, Sir George Matthewson and Sir Tom Farmer, as well as international tycoons figures, e.g. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.

Furthermore, the essence of any social democratic reforms today, whether under Labour or SNP, is that they only represent ‘sweeties’, selected and handed down by those liberal capitalist parties representing the ruling and middle classes, in order to win votes from what they hope will remain an otherwise passive working class. The conservative capitalist parties (the Conservative and UKIP) oppose state financed, social democratic reforms, and only accept their continued existence as a price to be paid to prevent greater social upheaval. Since the post-1975 ruling class offensive, any new reforms have rarely come about as a result of independent working class campaigning or action. This is why they have proved to be so ephemeral under the current conditions of capitalist crisis.

The notion of what constitutes social democracy has been successively diluted since the late nineteenth century. Then it meant the politics of those who organised the working class to fight for an alternative socialist society. Later it meant the politics of those who represented the economic and social interests of the working class within capitalism and who sought a welfare state  – termed Labourism in the UK. Nowadays it means the politics of those who argue for a vague commitment to some state regulation and social reforms, something that also appeal to sections of the middle class, especially those employed in the management of the public sector. However, today social democrats everywhere subordinate their proposed social democratic reforms to first meeting the ‘needs of the market’, i.e. global corporate capital.

The SNP has become, in effect, a ‘tartan’ social democrat party, in the current political sense of the term. This chimes in very well with the dominant cultural values found in Scotland. However, when workers take their own independent action you can see the real class face of the SNP. The SNP control West Dunbartonshire Council and have imposed cuts here upon some of the most deprived working class communities. They suspended Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) councillor, Jim Bollan for six months following his consistent backing for workers and service users resisting these cuts. In the City of Edinburgh Council, the SNP are in coalition with the Lib-Dems. Here they have spent more money on hiring private refuse collectors to break the industrial action of the council’s in-house refuse workers resisting a major pay cut, than it would have cost to settle the dispute. This is because the council is preparing for privatisation of services, as a way of making public sector cuts, and winning business support.

The SNP remains, in effect, a federally organised party, advocating different policies in different regions to appeal to different classes and sections of the Scottish population. It has a somewhat different face in the Western Isles, the north-east and the Central Belt. However, for a long time, a dominant Labour Party was able to limit the SNP’s growth in the major cities and the Central Belt, with its characterisation of the SNP as ‘Tartan Tories’. This was never an entirely accurate label, although the SNP undoubtedly has a right populist wing, amongst whom the majority of remaining ‘fundamentalists’ is still to be found.

However, under Jim Sillars and later, Alex Salmond (significantly both from the former Leftist 79 Group), the SNP has made huge efforts to win over the Labour Party’s working class electoral base. They have been mightily helped in this by New Labour’s drift to the Right, and by the current demise, after the Sheridan debacle, of the once promising Socialist alternative, which developed in Scotland in the aftermath of the successful anti-poll tax struggle.

The SNP and the Labour unionist precedent in abandoning a consistent secular approach to society

The SNP has learned more from the Labour Party, though, than the necessity to advocate social democratic reforms to win working class support. Because the Labour Party developed within, and increasingly adapted to the existing UK state and British Empire, with its constitutional monarchy and its established church, it departed from the earlier Radical, and continental Social Democrat tradition, which then championed a republican and secular society, as the best means to integrate people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds.

In the nineteenth century, as those rising middle class members, who owned industries and other businesses, joined and broadened the traditional British ruling class, their Liberal principles became increasingly compromised. This was because they began to fear more Radical challenges from the ‘lower orders’. They sought their own rapprochement with the existing British unionist and constitutional monarchist order with its established church.  This became especially clear in their attempts to deal with those challenges they faced in Ireland.

The majority of the British ruling class decided that, rather than push for a secular Ireland, which could bring together ‘lower order’ Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters  – the old republican ideal – they would look for influential allies who would help them maintain their overall control. The widening of the franchise, first to the middle class, then later to tenant farmers and workers, meant that they could no longer rely on the old ‘Anglo-Irish’ Protestant Ascendancy alone. They found a powerful ally in the Catholic hierarchy.

However, winning the hierarchy’s support also meant granting it significant concessions.  These included the recognition of the papacy’s right to appoint bishops in the UK, and giving the hierarchy control over educational and elementary social provision (hospitals, children’s homes, etc). This was consistent with earlier Liberal capitulation to Protestant denominations over the provision of education and social provision in Ireland (particularly the North), England, Scotland and Wales.

In Ireland, both Daniel O’Connell and later, Charles Parnell, went along with the Catholic hierarchy’s demands for a greater political say, in return for support for more political recognition of Ireland within the Union. The hierarchy also ensured that its full weight was thrown behind the suppression of the Radical alternatives represented by Young Ireland, the Fenian Brotherhood and the more Radical wing of the Irish Land League, and that loyalty to the Queen, UK and British Empire was upheld.

This ruling class attempt to broaden the base of ‘Britishness’ by making political concessions to the religious and ethnic leaders in particular communities has become the hallmark of a top-down state managerial approach to win the loyalty of people from different religious and ethnic groups in the UK. Today, this is officially promoted as ‘multiculturalism’, at the same time as the UK constitution and state retains a hierarchy of religious and ethnic privileges. This is highlighted by the continued existence of an established church (the Church of England, with semi-established status for the Church of Scotland too) and the state promotion of ‘British values’ (first developed in and heavily influenced by the context of systematic clearances, enclosures, various types of forced labour, brutal punishments and the worldwide imperial looting of the planet). State promoted multiculturalism is not based on the idea of universal equality of the members of those ethnic and religious groups living in the UK, but by the recognition of a hierarchy of privileges meted out to ‘their’ state-approved representatives [1].

In the nineteenth century, by departing from a consistent secular approach, the Liberal party, helped by the Catholic hierarchy, was able to win the vote of the majority of immigrant Irish. It was the passive votes, not the active participation of the ‘lower orders,’ that they  wanted. In the twentieth century, the Labour Party increasingly adopted this approach too, but took it much further. It was also able to gain the support of many Catholic members of Irish origin, once the Catholic hierarchy had been won over and offered their lead. Labour accepted the state funding of specifically Catholic schools, which were placed under the immediate control of the hierarchy.

Several things helped the Catholic hierarchy in their endeavours. First the ‘non-denominational’ state schools were, in effect, still dominated by the varying Protestant churches found in England, Scotland, Wales and what soon became Northern Ireland. The Conservative and Unionist Party and the Church of Scotland still had strong Orange Order connections, and publicly displayed strong anti-Irish prejudices.  Therefore, it was argued that separate schooling would shield Catholics from the entrenched discrimination, which was certainly still prevalent, particularly in Scotland, in 1918 (and until much later), at the time such schools were set up.

However, the other side of this was the acceptance that religious (or anti-Irish) divisions were a permanent feature of society and could not be overcome. This gave the Catholic hierarchy exclusive control, not just over religious education, but over most other aspects of education and pastoral care for children, in their crucial formative years. Unlike the Loyalists and Orange Order, particularly in Northern Ireland, the Catholic hierarchy did not push for further measures of segregation to cover employment and housing, to further increase their influence. Such measures would just confine those of Irish Catholic origin to the worst jobs and homes and not have been popular. Therefore, the hierarchy went along with the majority of Catholics who fought against discrimination by demanding proper access in these economic and social arenas.

The best way to promote wider social integration is to adopt a similar secular and non-discriminatory approach to education too. Few people (apart from Loyalist bigots in Northern Ireland) want separate provision of housing and jobs. A secular approach would mean ending the church establishment, and removing any remaining privileges by eliminating the existing Protestant aspects of ‘non-denominational’ schools. Of course, those Protestant bigots, who campaign for the ending of Catholic schools, don’t wish to end Protestant privilege. They want to reassert Protestant British supremacy. This why they also call for the promotion of royal events, by celebrating the British Protestant monarchy in schools.  In contrast, secular schools would provide education about religions and other world outlooks, rather than permitting any religious indoctrination. However, such an approach is also still vehemently opposed by the Catholic hierarchy, which would lose the privileges it currently enjoys. In upholding this stance they have the backing of the Labour Party, particularly in Scotland.

Labour attacked the SNP, for much of its history, for wanting to create a Presbyterian Scotland. Labour strongly suggested that Scottish independence could only lead to the creation of a new ‘Stormont’-type regime here. As recently as 1994, Labour accused the SNP of anti-Catholic sectarianism in the Monklands by-election. However, just as the SNP has been able to out-social democrat New Labour, so, under Salmond, it has become as adept as Labour in courting the support of religious leaders, including the late Cardinal Winning and the current Cardinal O’Brien.

To win their influential support, the SNP has carefully politically positioned itself to appear less tolerant of gays and abortion rights than Labour, without officially adopting anti-gay or anti-abortion stances, which could lose it liberal support. Furthermore, the SNP has managed this, whilst at the same time courting such prominent Protestant fundamentalists as the homophobic Brian Souter, owner of Stagecoach.

Labour too was long able to play to such seemingly contradictory galleries. Prominent anti-Catholic bigot, Sam Campbell, member of the Orange Order, was the one-time Provost of Dalkeith and prominent Midlothian Labour councillor. Furthermore, Labour also currently enjoys the electoral support of the Orange Order, since it is seen to be the largest and most effective pro-unionist party in Scotland. Labour certainly doesn’t loudly trumpet this, preferring, if challenged, to appear as a mediating influence between religious or ethnic ‘extremes’.

In the recent past, Labour has extended the approach, initially adopted towards the Catholic hierarchy, by seeking the support of Muslim religious leaders in order to win the electoral support of mainly Asian migrants (particularly from Pakistan and Bangla Desh). Following this particular precedent, Salmond has also developed close relations with such people as Osama Saeed of the Scottish Islamic Foundation (which went on to receive state funding under the post 2007 SNP Holyrood government). Saeed became an SNP Westminster candidate in 2010 and he advocates ‘faith schools’. Just as the earlier Labour/Catholic hierarchy rapprochement helped to long cover up persistent child abuse in Catholic institutions, so SNP/Muslim religious leader rapprochement, especially if it were to lead to the setting up of ‘faith schools’, would likely provide cover for the sexist treatment of girls and women.2

Only a secular approach to society can guarantee the right of individuals to practice the religion of their choice without imposing their values on others, and at the same time guarantee universal rights to women, children, gays and lesbians, often granted fewer ‘rights’ or facing actual discrimination under religious rulings. Following the earlier path adopted by the Liberal and Labour Parties before it, the SNP has not chosen a principled secular approach.

This is because the SNP, despite having a paper commitment to political independence, has also been very much moulded by the legacy of British unionism and imperialism. This can be seen in the party’s acceptance of the Crown (which fronts so many of the anti-democratic features of the UK state), the United Kingdom (the Queen would remain head of state), its support for Scottish regiments (serving US/British imperial interests) and of sterling (which means recognition of Scotland’s economic subordination to the City).

The SNP leadership does not really offer us a political road to effective Scottish self-determination. Instead it offers itself to both overseas and Scottish business leaders as the best potential management for declining British imperialism and the UK state, in the territory ‘north of the border’. It accepts the continued dominant role of US/British imperialism and corporate capital in the north-east Atlantic. It wishes to uphold this order, but preferably through a saltire-flagged, non-nuclear, military contribution to NATO.

The SNP leadership does hope though that there will still be enough small change left from government revenues to provide a few social democratic reforms, after meeting the continually increasing costs of maintaining a crisis-ridden capitalism. To win wider support for this strategy, it is trying to paint as much of the inherited machinery of the UK state with a good lick of ‘tartan paint’ as possible, beginning with the British Army’s Scottish regiments.

The SNP’s current confident stance is designed to offer a somewhat brighter future than the grim prospects offered by the present Scottish Labour leader, the well-named Iain Gray. However, committed first to meeting the needs of the banksters and other corporate spivs, the SNP’s illusion-mongering can only work as long as workers lack the self-confidence to organise and to take action to meet our own needs.

Real Scottish political self-determination can only be won through the consistent upholding of a democratic secular approach, which strives for the equality of all those currently living in Scotland, in an alliance with others in England, Wales and Ireland to break up the UK state and the US/British imperial alliance on the basis of an ‘internationalism from below’ strategy.

Such a strategy can not be separated from the need to develop a new socio-economic order to replace an increasingly crisis-ridden capitalism. To achieve this means breaking from all those who have become trapped in the web of institutions bequeathed by the successive phases of global capitalism both under the dominance of British and now US/British imperialism. In the nineteenth century, the Liberals succumbed to these pressures, as Labour did in the twentieth century, and as the SNP do  today. This is why it is so important that we begin to learn deeper lessons from the most recent failed attempt to do this – the Scottish Socialist Party. There is so much at stake.

Allan Armstrong, 10.8.11

1]           However, just as social democratic economic and social measures are being  scrapped to meet the needs of crisis-ridden capital, so too, have Cameron’s Conservatives decided to  undermine ‘multicultural’ state backing for selected  ethno-religious leaders (particularly Muslim), the better to promote old-style racist divide and rule policies amongst the working class.

2]             Of course, this is not to imply that such reactionary thinking and practice are confined to these particular religions or denominations. Neither the ‘liberal’ leadership of the Church of England nor the Church of Scotland is prepared to face down the homophobia of influential sections of their churches. The Church of England is committed to retaining its own denominational schools in England. The Church of Scotland has ostracised one of its own female ministers, Helen Percy, after she was raped by a church elder.

The article below was originally written for Red Banner, an Irish socialist magazine for discussion and debate.  In its conclusion this article draws some of the key lessons needed to conduct a successful struggle against the cuts  today.

It is twenty years since Thatcher’s Tory government tried to impose the Poll Tax. Officially termed the Community Charge, the Poll Tax amounted to a flat rate tax that individuals had to pay to their Local Councils regardless of their income. Previously, Local Councils raised much of their revenues to pay for the services they provided through the Domestic Rates. These related to the value of people’s property.  This meant Domestic Rates were a broadly redistributive tax. However, under the Poll Tax, a cleaner living in a one bedroom flat was to pay the same as the lord living in a stately home. The queen didn’t have to pay a penny!  King Richard II was the last person to try to introduce a Poll Tax in England, in 1381 – it led directly to the Peasants’ Revolt!

There were important political aspects of the Poll Tax.  It was designed to prevent Local Councils implementing progressive social policies through higher Domestic Rates on the better-off. Under the Poll Tax, the least well off would contribute proportionately far more of their incomes than the rich. The Tories wanted severe cut backs in those services that benefited the disadvantaged – the unemployed, pensioners, the disabled and single-parent families. The accompanying Register was designed to monitor the movements of all Poll Tax payers (not just property owners, as before), so it represented a major extension in state surveillance.

The Poll Tax was introduced a year earlier, in 1989, in Scotland as a test run for the abolition of Domestic Rates throughout Britain. (Even the Tories had more sense than to try to introduce the Poll Tax in Northern Ireland in the context of the ongoing Republican resistance there!) The Poll Tax brought well-off Tory supporters in the leafy suburbs of Scotland’s cities the financial rewards they craved, despite the government only enjoying a small and shrinking electoral base here. Thatcher also wanted to demonstrate the ‘benefits’ of the Union to those Scots with money and the impotence of the official Labour ‘opposition’.

What gave the Tories the confidence to test out the Poll Tax in Scotland, where they enjoyed so little support, and then to extend it to England and Wales? Over the previous few years, the ‘Iron Lady’ had been able to ride rough shod over once powerful left-wing institutions – Labour controlled Local Councils including those of Edinburgh District Council, Lothian Region and Greater London Council.

Industrial action, undertaken by trade unions to defend their members’ pay, conditions and jobs, culminated in the Great Miners’ Strike in 1984. Although this heroic struggle involved thousands of miners and tens of thousands of supporters, Arthur Scargill always looked to the Labour Party and the TUC to deliver the knock-out blow. The Miners waited in vain and the NUM went down to defeat in 1985.

The Tories now felt invincible. Seeing no further than the official bodies of the Labour Movement, they felt they could take on the whole of the working class without any fear of concerted opposition. The Tories had the measure of the official opposition.  To begin with, the Scottish Labour Party and the STUC promoted the ‘Axe the Tax’ campaign and organised the first marches. However, a Scottish Labour Party Special Conference, held in March 1988 in Glasgow, refused to back Non-Payment. This marked the end of official Labour opposition. However, what the Tories hadn’t calculated on, was the possibility of our class organising independently of the official movement. And this is exactly what happened.

By the beginning of 1988, Local Anti-Poll Tax groups were formed, and the very first regional organisation was set up, the Edinburgh (soon to become Lothians) Anti-Poll Tax Federation – or the ‘Fed’ as it became widely known. Very soon Federations were formed in Strathclyde (where Glasgow is located) and in every other region of Scotland. Glasgow became the heartland of the campaign and the centre for the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation.

Whilst the local groups always retained a high degree of autonomy, the overall strategy, tactics and coordinated actions were discussed and debated at the regional ‘Fed’ meetings and the national conference. These were attended by delegates from  local groups and usually met monthly. The ‘Feds’ certainly brought together many political activists and trade unionists, but meeting outside their usual official structures. However, they also brought together many more people, who were not involved in formal politics or in trade unions – housewives, pensioners, unemployed and non-unionised workers.

The initial tactics used by the ‘Fed’ were focussed upon two bodies which had already been tamed by the Tories. Labour councils were pressured by petitions, demonstrations and occupations of council chambers to adopt a policy of Non-Implementation. Trade unions, with members involved in the administration of the Poll Tax, were called upon to adopt a policy of Non-Collection. However, having already caved in before successive Tory attacks, neither the leaders of the Scottish Labour Party nor the STUC were prepared to move beyond token protests.

Fortunately, the Anti-Poll Tax groups anticipated the weakness of the official movement. They had another tactic that generated widespread support.  Non-Payment proved to be the real backbone of the campaign, and massively contributed to the undermining of the Poll Tax.  To be effective Non-Payment needed community organisation at an unprecedented level. Community Anti-Poll Tax groups came together on a regular basis (weekly or fortnightly).

An early tactic which was discussed was Non-Registration. This was to provide a focus for activity in the period before the Poll Tax was implemented. It proved to be controversial, because some activists thought that people would ‘disappear’ from the Electoral Register too. Nevertheless, with or without the advice of the ‘Fed’, many people did not register. This marked the beginning of a collection nightmare for the authorities. Their registers proved to be inaccurate, whilst registration officers soon found they were most unwelcome in many areas, anticipating the later reaction to sheriff officers.

Anti-Poll Tax groups organised stalls, flyposting, mass leafleting, public meetings and many other events. People put up ‘I’m not paying’ posters in their windows. This gave confidence for others to follow their lead. Phone trees were put in place to warn of the activities of the sheriff officers employed by local councils to enforce payment. Street demonstrations were mounted and houses were occupied to prevent any seizures of personal belongings (poindings).

Local groups produced hundreds of thousands of leaflets, posters and other imaginative material. Colourful local Anti-Poll-Tax banners were made for use on demonstrations.  In some areas such as the pit villages such action was able to draw upon long established community traditions, whereas in those previously largely anonymous areas in the cities new communities came together for the first time.

The ‘Feds’ organised region-wide demonstrations and occupations of Local Council Chambers, the sheriff officers, and a mock poinding at Tory Scottish Secretary of State, Malcolm Rifkind’s house.  The ‘Feds’ also produced the initial material for the new groups, and provided the link between the local groups and the Scottish (and later the All-Britain) Anti-Poll Tax Federation.

As well as organising Conferences with delegates from many constituent Anti-Poll Tax groups, the Scottish and all-Britain ‘Feds’ organised huge demonstrations. Over 10,000 people marched on the first Scottish demonstration in Glasgow on March 18^th 1989. Just over a year later, on March 31st, 1990, 200,000 marched in London, whilst a further 50,000 marched in Glasgow. Furthermore, non-payment levels had reached such massive proportions that the authorities no longer had any realistic prospect of collecting the hated tax.

The Scottish National Party leadership opportunistically took advantage of the mass movement to win a stunning by-election victory in Glasgow Govan on 10th November 1988 (with a 38% swing). Their vision was confined to making further electoral gains in Scotland.

The levels of non-registration and non-payment in Scotland, coupled to the ever-widening ‘no-go’ areas for sheriff officers (and Labour Party canvassers!) brought about levels of civil resistance not seen since the mass Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland. The regional and Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federations saw the necessity of spreading the action to England and Wales, on the basis of internationalism from below. Speakers were sent south.

It was the knock out blow, delivered in the very heartland of the UK state by the riot in Trafalgar Square on March 31^st, 1990, which prompted the ruling class to ditch both Thatcher and the Poll Tax. This was truly a stunning victory for independent class action. So what did the Left learn from this?

In many areas, the activities of the Anti-Poll Tax groups brought them into conflict with Labour Local Councils, which had become the Tories’ principal agent on the ground enforcing the hated tax. What soon became clear was that the local Anti-Poll Tax groups, with their regularly weekly or fortnightly meetings, and their usually monthly regional meetings, formed a far more extensive and better-supported network than the Labour Party with its ward, district and regional meetings. The political basis of a new independent political movement was there for any serious socialist who was prepared to see what was before their eyes.

The largest political grouping in the Anti-Poll Tax movement was Militant. After the bruising experience of trying to takeover the Labour Party in Liverpool, they began to question its previous strategy. It wasn’t easy for them. A Militant member-sponsored motion to the short-lived East of Scotland Anti-Poll Tax Federation called for it to be a condition of membership that you supported the Labour Party! Even the Militant leadership opposed this.

Nevertheless, when local groups agreed to put forward Keith Simpson, the recent Musselburgh Labour councillor and Militant member, as an independent Anti-Poll Tax candidate in 1990 Militant opposed them.  The local groups went ahead nevertheless, and Keith won over 20% of the vote. Scottish Militant eventually learned some lessons, and put forward candidates in Glasgow and Strathclyde in 1992, winning four District and one Regional Local Council seat.

Many of the political forces, including Militant, which came together to form the initial Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) in 1996, were from the Anti-Poll Tax Federations. The SSA went on to become the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in 1998, winning its first seat in the new devolved Holyrood in 1999.  The highpoint was the SSP’s winning six seats in 2003. Virtually the whole of the Left in Scotland (including even Militant and the SWP) were united in the one party, and the opposition to the Iraq war was at its peak. Since then the Left in Scotland and the UK has once again been in retreat – but that’s another story!

The success of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign highlights the necessity to build independent organisations for our class. Sometimes this will mean continued work in sections of the official movement – there were individual Labour Party and trade union branches, which supported the Anti-Poll Tax Federations. However, in such cases, the main job is still to try and win their memberships over to independent class politics.

Furthermore, there is another vital lesson for us today. Class struggle in the late 1980’s was at a low ebb after the defeat of Left Labour-led councils and, in particular, of the Miners. Nobody anticipated the success of the Anti-Poll Tax struggle. Today, in the face of massive attacks in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Credit Crunch’, many workers still feel cowed. However, they also feel very angry. The massive rejection of the Social Democratic/Left Green Alliance government’s banker bailout in the referendum in Iceland, and the major strikes and confrontations between workers and the Greek Socialist government and state forces, show how quickly the mood can change. Trade union leaders, however, only want to renegotiate the draconian cuts, not to oppose them on principle. Success means reviving independent class organisation and building internationalism from below on an even wider basis.

Allan Armstrong, SSP (former Chair of Lothians Anti-Poll Tax Federation and co-Chair of first Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation Conference)

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The following article was written by Allan Armstrong for the Edinburgh Peoples Festival website

20 YEARS AFTER THE POLL TAX EXHIBITION

The Edinburgh Peoples Festival launched its ‘20 Years after the Poll Tax’ Exhibition at the Radical Book Fair, in the Out of the Blue Centre in Leith, on the evening of Wednesday, 28^th of October.

The launch was presided over by Julie Smith, who had been active in the Sciennes/Marchmont Anti-Poll Tax group. Julie gave a brief background to the exhibition. The very first Anti-Poll Tax Groups in Scotland were formed in Edinburgh and this exhibition told their story. Julie drew attention to some of the exhibits. She thanked the EPF and the people who had put the display together. These included Marilyn Sangster, Craig Maclean, Sadie Rooney, Rob Hoon, Allan Armstrong and Mike Vallance. Julie then introduced the evening’s speakers and performers.

Allan Armstrong from the EPF, and former Chair of the Lothians Anti-Poll Tax Federation, outlined the situation in the 1980’s. Workers and their families had faced a whole series of defeats under the then Thatcher government. By 1987, Thatcher and the Tories thought they were invincible and they launched the poll tax to benefit her rich backers. This amounted to a swingeing attack on the majority of the people. Allan compared this with the situation we face today, and the failure to stop New Labour’s wars, and their current attacks on jobs, pay and conditions to bail out the banks.  Yet, the Anti-Poll Tax Movement had stopped the government in its tracks, after a similar earlier period of setbacks. This can inspire us today.

Mike Vallance of the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE), who had then been active in Stockbridge/New Town Anti-Poll Tax group, emphasised the importance of community resistance in the success of the campaign.  With no mainstream politicians or trade union leaders to back them, the local communities had to organise themselves. Mike went on to describe how the local groups operated and some of the imaginative actions taken, which challenged the local council and the sheriff officers. He pointed out that success also inspired later campaigns, and that ACE continued to help and organise people facing the sheriff officers to this day.

John Greig, and his son Robbie, followed with two anti-poll tax songs by the local writer, Stuart McHardy. Gary Joyce rounded off the evening. He performed a parody of  “I Did It My Way”, which he sang as one half of the Dangleberries, at many Anti-Poll Tax socials.

38 people attended the official launch, whilst over the next four days, over a 1000 people visited the Radical Book Fair, where the Exhibition was prominently displayed.

In Weekly Worker no 865 James Turley has attacked those who wrote an Open Letter urging no vote for George Galloway in the Holyrood elections on May 5th. The Open Letter was originally published on the Manchester-based blog, Infantile and disorderly (The Editorial Board of Emancipation & Liberation added its members’ names after the initial publication). So Turley’s response was not made with the Republican Communist Network in mind. However, since his letter addresses the situation in Scotland, and seems singularly misinformed about the situation, here is a reply.

Turley begins well enough, agreeing with many of the criticisms of Galloway already made by others. However, he soon reveals his ignorance of the situation in Scotland. He claims that Solidarity certainly did better under {Galloway’s} tutelage than Sheridan’s. In the recent 2011 Holyrood election, the Left unionist Galloway-fronted, Solidarity-backed slate received 6972 votes. However, in the 2007 election, the Left nationalist Sheridan-fronted, Solidarity slate received 8574 votes. On neither occasion were Galloway or Sheridan elected. Sheridan only managed to achieve this as part of the united socialist SSA and SSP slates in 1999 and 2003. Under their auspices he received 18,581 and 31,116 votes respectively.

Turley goes on to claim that the Open Letter signatories are misguided in basing their judgement on Galloway over Iran, because he is not standing for election in Tehran. One can find all manner of Labour Left or Morning Star-type candidates with extremely dodgy record of supporting dictatorial regimes abroad, but the CPGB’s intervention is about drawing a class line on the cuts issue.

This represents a fairly rapid retreat to a narrow British and economistic focus, especially in the context of the major ongoing democratic struggles being waged throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Galloway appears to have greater internationalist pretensions than the CPGB. He has very publicly extended his support to a Muslim revolution… because a very significant number of the population of Egypt support the Islamic Movement of Egypt and that Movement has no need to hide itself under a bushel. (Stop the War Coalition meeting in London on 2nd February). In the Guardian of the 12th March, Galloway wrote that, I welcome the imminent victory of the Islamic movements in Egypt and Tunisia, which I think will provide very good government on the Turkish model.

With the collapse of Mubarak, the US and UK states are looking to the Muslim Brotherhood to buttress their slipping imperial control in the area. The Erdogan regime in Turkey is an ardent promoter of global corporate interests including privatisation. It continues to oppress the Kurds. Faced with ongoing democratic revolutions, in which the most advanced participants currently desire not Muslim but secular republics, and oppose ‘their’ state’s wholesale handing over of resources to the global corporations, Galloway’s genuine anti-imperialist credentials begin to look rather thin.

However, the crux of Turley’s argument focuses on Scotland and the CPGB’s  class line on the cuts issue {which} involves  a vote for a) candidates of the workers’ movement who b) oppose, and (at least say they) will vote against all cuts to public services. We also argue that voters should prefer Labour candidates who meet the conditions to non-Labour, though this is irrelevant in the Galloway case.

Funnily enough, Weekly Worker has not been able to name a single Labour MSP candidate in Scotland who meets their anti-cuts criteria, despite their own turn to the Labour Party. Furthermore, this is not so irrelevant in the Galloway case. Anybody reading his Daily Record column over the last few years would soon realise that, not only is Galloway pro-Labour, but he has been selling himself as, in effect, another possible future Labour MSP. This was based on his (misguided) assumption that Labour would gain most of the FPTP seats in Glasgow in the 2011 Holyrood election, leaving less space for further Labour MSPs on the top-up List seats. So he pointed out that a vote for Galloway was, in effect, a vote for an extra Labour MSP.

It looks very like Galloway was trying to work his way back into the Labour Party in a similar manner to Ken Livingstone. First, however, he would have to show that he enjoyed enough electoral support. However, when Blair expelled Galloway from the Labour Party in 2003, he took very few people with him, unlike Livingstone. This is why he has had to seek the backing of those Trotskyist groups – in turn, the SWP, Socialist Resistance (they later abandoned him) and now the CWI and the SWP again (!) along with their Scottish breakaway, the International Socialist Group – all of whom he despises. Their role is to act as his unquestioning footsoldiers on the ground.

However, if we look to Galloway’s own stance over fighting the cuts he has no principled record in this regard either. He may verbally claim to be against all cuts to win the support of the gullible CWI and SWP. However Galloway is a member of Respect, which in East London is now little more than an Islamic communalist organisation. Respect councillors have voted through cuts in Tower Hamlets without a word of public criticism from Galloway.

Perhaps realising that a call to support Galloway as a principled anti-cuts candidate lacks a certain credibility, Turley points instead to his support from the Sheridan splinter group Solidarity {with} its two main activist bases, and later to the fact that Galloway remains reliant on support from willing left groups  – he means the SWP and CWI. Here Turley is retreating to another dubious aspect of CPGB politics – its belief that a principled Marxist Party can be built by uniting all the self-declared Marxist organisations in Great Britain into a single party. The ignominious break-up of the CPGB-initiated Campaign for a New Marxist Party highlights the futility of this approach. This collapse was more rapid than that of any other recent socialist unity initiative (the SLP, SSA/SSP, SA, Respect, CNWP), despite the much more limited range of Marxists involved.

If you are serious in opposing the cuts, you certainly have to confront Labour complicity in their implementation, along with their MPs’, MSPs’, councillors’, Party officials’ and Labour-supporting trade union officials’ opposition to any effective independent class action. But you also have to confront those Marxist sects, such as the SWP and CWI, which act as outriders for the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy when it comes to demobilising independent class action. They promote their own front organisations to derail and split any independent movement. This is strikingly obvious in the fight against the cuts. Here we have to confront the wrecking tactics of the SP-controlled National Shop Stewards Movement and the SWP-controlled Right to Work Campaign (whose very names demonstrate they were both created with a different Party-recruiting project in mind).

Turley’s resort to the SWP’s and CWI’s declared support for Galloway only demonstrates the dead-end nature of this particular course of action. With the impending demise of Solidarity, the parting of the SWP and CWI in Scotland can not be far away. Look to Ireland, where despite their coming together in the United Left Alliance (essentially an electoral non-aggression pact), south of the border, they still managed to stand candidates against each other north of the border in the Stormont election on May 5th. And we are often lectured about the superiority of all-Britain or all-UK organisations because of their ability to unite socialists and the working class!

However, Galloway has gone one step further in his attempts to promote disunity. Much of his campaigning has been on his own terms, with little regard to his CWI and SWP allies of convenience. Publicly he has placed a lot of emphasis on cultivating the sectional support of Catholics and Muslims. However, where Galloway has attended joint meetings he has played to the CWI and SWP gallery in his thinly disguised attempts to whip up verbal and physical abuse directed against prominent SSP members in the aftermath of the Sheridan debacle. Sadly, given the number of emotionally damaged, attention-seeking individuals to be found in our society, there are some people who have stooped to such attacks. However, the prime purpose, of resorting to the misplaced use of ‘scab’ accusations to encourage such behaviour, is to deflect attention from the CWI’s and SWP’s own roles in promoting socialist disunity.

They seem to forget that Sheridan was once prepared to hand over the names of Trafalgar Square anti-poll tax protesters to the Metropolitan Police. The CWI didn’t raise any criticisms then. Meanwhile some SWP members in Scotland had started to pay the poll tax, because they argued that once the STUC and Scottish Labour Party had withdrawn their backing from a campaign of defiance the struggle was over! They both have short memories!

So, if you claim that you support candidates of the workers’ movement who oppose and vote against all cuts to public services, who should you have been supporting in Scotland?

Turley mentions the fact that Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Party has regularly out stripped the SSP which has even less reason to exist than the SLP. Now certainly, the SLP did win considerably more votes in this Holyrood election than either the SSP or Solidarity. However, the mere accumulation of passive votes at an election count is of little more significance than the vote for similarly 9th placed Georgia in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The number of new active SLP members resulting from their vote in Scotland, will probably be outstripped by the sales here of Georgia’s Eurovision entry, One More Day!

In addressing the anti-cuts struggle we have to look to the roles of Solidarity and the SSP, which Turley grudgingly concedes still has activists. In the last Local Council elections, held in Scotland in May 2007, both Solidarity and the SSP gained a councillor each. Solidarity managed to get Ruth Black elected in Glasgow. So how has she performed in relation to the anti-cuts struggle? Well first she defected to the Labour Party and soon became embroiled in accusations of financial irregularity – a prominent anti-cuts spokesperson on the Glasgow Council she certainly is not.

In contrast, Jim Bollan was elected SSP councillor in West Dunbartonshire on the same day. Here he has been to the forefront of the struggle against the cuts, putting forward a ‘No Cuts’ budget, opposed by all the controlling SNP and the ‘opposition’ Labour councillors. Jim has backed trade unionists and supported direct action by council service users. As a result of his staunch opposition to cuts, the SNP ruling group suspended him for six months in 2009. In the person of Jim, we have somebody who has gone considerably beyond Turley’s second voting criterion for giving electoral support – i.e. saying they oppose the cuts. If you add Turley’s first criterion -  support for someone from the Labour movement – Jim had the support of Clydebank Trades Council in the face of his earlier suspension from office.  Jim headed the SSP slate for the West of Scotland on May 5th.

In Glasgow, the most significant anti-cuts struggle at present is the continued Free Hetherington occupation at Glasgow University.  Once again the SSP has been prominent in this, particularly Scottish Socialist Youth.

Now, of course, it is easy for Turley to make a smug dismissal of the current voting support for the SSP. There is much that the SSP can be criticised for in this and other regards. However, when it comes to assessing the anti-cuts opposition on Turley’s criteria, then it Is Galloway, not the SSP, that is found wanting.

This was issued by the Manchester-based blogger, ‘Infantile and disorderly‘, on May 2.

On May 5, George Galloway will be standing for election to Holyrood. The former Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin is heading the George Galloway (Respect) – Coalition Against Cuts list. He has the backing of Solidarity, the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party in Scotland. On his election website, Galloway pledges to “oppose every cut to schools, hospitals and public services” and “fight for a parliament with the powers to tax the rich bankers and big business to help pay for jobs and decent public services”. It sounds fine, but there is no way those on the left can extend any level of support for George Galloway.

Galloway is a supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran. When questioned at a recent public meeting, Galloway denied ever supporting president Ahmadinejad and even offered £1,000 to anyone who could prove his support. However, while interviewing the Iranian president on his Press TV show, The real deal, last August, Galloway stated that he requires “police protection in London from the Iranian opposition because of my support for your election campaign. I mention this so you know where I’m coming from.” In fact, while Iran’s 2009 election is widely accepted to have been rigged, Galloway has stated in his Daily Record blog that the electoral count “was awesome” and the million-plus protesters took to the streets because “too many people were allowed to vote” (his emphasis).

The Iranian regime incarcerates, tortures and executes political opponents, including leftists, trades unionists and leaders of the radical students’ movement. It does the same to those found guilty of “war against god”, a charge levelled at political dissidents.

Confessions are extracted under torture and duress and at times broadcast on state TV channels, including Press TV. Those found guilty of adultery and homosexuality can face the death penalty. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (called “the so-called stoning case” by Galloway on Press TV) was sentenced to death by stoning in a court speaking a language she didn’t speak herself. George Galloway denies that homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran. On The Wright show, Galloway stated that “the papers seem to imply that you get executed in Iran for being gay. That’s not true.” He then inferred that the boyfriend of gay Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi had been executed for “sex crimes” against young boys and not for being gay.

It’s unsurprising that Galloway publicly supports the Islamic Republic. He is an employee of Press TV, the Iranian state propaganda channel. While serving as a MP, Galloway was forced to declare his earnings from Press TV, which ranged from between £5,000 and £20,000 for his various shows.

As pro-democracy protests engulf Syria, it’s worth remembering that Galloway has previously heaped praise upon the Syrian regime and authoritarian ruler, Bashar al-Assad. Addressing Damascus University in late 2005, Galloway said: “For me he is the last Arab ruler, and Syria is the last Arab country. It is the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs.” Galloway has expressed approval for other dictators too, once describing Pakistan’s general Musharraf as an “upright sort”. Far from a consistent democrat, after the 1999 coup brought Musharraf to power Galloway told The Mail on Sunday that “Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together … Democracy is a means, not an end in itself and it has a bad name on the streets of Karachi and Lahore.”

Galloway’s Christian beliefs have influenced his views on abortion and stem cell research. He doesn’t believe in evolution. In The Independent on Sunday in 2004 Galloway said: “I’m strongly against abortion. I believe life begins at conception, and therefore unborn babies have rights. I think abortion is immoral.” He was absent from all votes on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (which included attempts to reduce the abortion time limit in the UK). His notable absenteeism extends to many LGBT issues and euthanasia. Then again, Galloway always had fairly lamentable levels of parliamentary participation. As a Respect MP, Galloway only participated in 98 out of 1,288 votes. In 2006, he claimed more expenses than any other backbench MP in parliament.

Galloway’s egoism has always been astounding. While most socialists consider it standard for workers’ representatives to be elected on a workers’ wage (not an impoverishing amount, but the salary of a skilled worker), Galloway has declared he couldn’t possibly live on “three workers’ wages”. And what else other than pure vanity can have driven an appearance on Big brother, which discredited whole sections of the left?

Finally, it’s worth remembering that Respect’s own councillors in Tower Hamlets have voted through cuts to public services.

We call on socialists to offer no support for Galloway’s election campaign.

Moshé Machover (Israeli socialist)
Torab Saleth (Workers Left Unity Iran)
Mehdi Kia (co-editor Middle East Left Forum)
Charlie Pottins (Unite and Hands Off the People of Iran steering committee)
Rosie Kane (Scottish Socialist Party)
Nima Kisomi (Iranian socialist)
Sahar G (Iranian socialist)
Suran Badfar (Iranian Socialist)
Vicky Thompson (Hopi)
Tami Peterson (National Union of Students LGBT committee)
David Broder (The Commune)
Steve Ryan (The Commune)
Barry Biddulph (The Commune)
Sinead Rylance (Communist Students)
Ustun Yazar (Communist Students)
Reyhaneh Sadegzadeh (Communist Students)
Alex Allan (Communist Students)
James O’Leary (Communist Students)
Sebastian Osthoff (Communist Students)
Komsan Duke (Anarchist Federation)
William J Martin (Batley and Spen CLP)
Elsie Wraight (Manchester Labour Students)
Rachael Howe (Love Levenshulme Hate Cuts campaign)
Karen Broady (Unison)
Ste Monaghan (GMB)
Edd Mustill (NUJ)
Dan Read (NUJ)
Pete Cookson (NUT)
Joe Broady (Bectu)
Raphie De Santos (‘The left banker’)
Andrew Coates (socialist blogger)
Michael Leversha (student activist)
Beth Marshall (student activist)
Nima Barazandeh (student activist)
Democratic Socialist Alliance (organisation).

Allan Armstrong, Nick Clarke, and Bob Goupillot, editors of Emancipation & Liberation would like to add their names to this Open Letter, but with the following reservation regarding phrase the He doesn’t believe in evolution.

Galloway does support evolution as scientific fact – see article below from ‘Daily Record‘.

http://blogs.dailyrecord.co.uk/georgegalloway/2009/02/student-critic-creates-a-fuss.html

The one thing that does not appear in the letter of protest is Galloway’s public incitement to violence against those who failed to support Sheridan in court in his attempt to use his political position for purely personal gain. We are pleased to see that Rosie Kane, who has been the subject of particularly foul abuse and attention from this quarter, has signed this letter.

After years in which its wars have become more and more unpopular, the U.S. political and military establishment finally has a “success” to celebrate.

3 May 2011

The following article first appeared in Socialist Worker (US)

THE ASSASSINATION of Osama bin Laden is being celebrated as rough justice by U.S. politicians across the spectrum and a mainstream media that is glorying in every grisly detail.

It is nothing of the sort. Bin Laden’s death did not make the world “safer” and “a better place,” as Barack Obama claimed in his televised speech Sunday night. On the contrary, this political killing will be used to make the world less safe–by building support for more violence committed by the U.S. government in the name of the “war on terror.”

The hunt for bin Laden while he was alive was never about justice, but justification. Revenge for al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks was the most effective selling point for U.S. wars and occupations that weren’t designed to make the world safe from terrorism, but to safeguard the flow of Middle East oil and ensure the continued domination of the U.S. empire.

Now that bin Laden is dead, this former U.S. ally-turned-public enemy number one will be exploited again–his killing proclaimed as a vindication of 10 years of bloodshed on a scale far more horrible than anything al-Qaeda was ever capable of.

News of bin Laden’s death produced an outburst of jingoism and anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. The New York Daily News printed “Rot in hell!” across its front cover. In Portland, Maine, the words “Osama Today Islam tomorow (sic)” were found spray-painted on a mosque. As Obama was announcing the killing on television, crowds of people gathered outside the White House to chant “USA, USA, USA”–the very image of callous arrogance that stokes bitter anger toward the U.S. around the world.

Anyone who cares about peace and justice needs to raise their voice against these celebrations, because they only pave the way for more war. “Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed,” wrote Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald.

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THE OPERATION to kill bin Laden–carried out by Navy SEAL commandos inside Pakistan with no notification to a supposed ally, apparently ending with bin Laden being summarily put to death–was typical of the “war on terror.” The U.S. government claimed the right to be judge, jury and executioner far beyond its borders–a calculated message to the world that the U.S. recognizes no limits on its actions, either from international law or the norms of civilized behavior.

But this is nothing new. For 10 years, America’s military machine has been judge, jury and executioner for tens of thousands of Afghans who did nothing more than go to a wedding or travel in the wrong area–and that’s not to mention the victims of the U.S. who are labeled “rebel fighters,” and whose only crime was to resist an occupation of their country.

The toll of the “war on terror” has been compounded many times over with invasions and assaults carried out or backed by the U.S. in Iraq–the greatest killing field for the American empire in recent years–in Palestine, in Pakistan and Yemen and Sudan, and now in Libya.

No reader of SocialistWorker.org will mourn bin Laden’s death in and of itself. He was a political reactionary whose ideology and actions set back the cause of democracy and freedom.

The victims of al-Qaeda’s attacks against U.S. targets have almost always been ordinary people who bore no responsibility for the crimes of imperialism. In the Middle East and elsewhere, bin Laden and his followers have been equally vicious, if not more so, toward fellow Arabs and Muslims who oppose their hard-line version of Islam. The U.S. and its allies around the world have not been weakened by September 11 and other such attacks–on the contrary, al-Qaeda’s violence has been used as a pretext to advance the imperial project.

But bin Laden’s assassination is already being used to renovate the “war on terror.”

According to the Bush administration’s plan following September 11, the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq would be the springboard for a transformation of the Arab and Muslim world–at the point of U.S. guns. But the resistance in Iraq made a mockery of Bush’s claim of “Mission Accomplished”–just as the continuing opposition to the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan has frustrated Obama’s troop “surge” there.

For the last five years, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown steadily more unpopular. But now, at last, the U.S. war machine and its cheerleaders have a “success” to celebrate. That is the importance of bin Laden’s killing to the U.S. political establishment–and the reason the fawning media relishes the grotesque stories of his corpse being dragged away from the murder scene and dumped in the sea.

Obama’s speech announcing the killing included not a single word about the lies used to justify invading and occupying countries halfway around the world–nor the least recognition of the terrible toll on the region. On the contrary, as antiwar activist Phyllis Bennis pointed out, Obama equated the operation to kill bin Laden and the ongoing “war on terror” with, among other things, the “struggle for equality for all our citizens.” As Bennis wrote, “In President Obama’s iteration, the global war on terror apparently equals the anti-slavery and civil rights movements.”

This twisted hypocrisy must be exposed and opposed–along with future operations of the U.S. military machine undertaken in the name of stopping terrorism.

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ONE INCONVENIENT truth you won’t hear much about in the media’s celebration of bin Laden’s death is the fact that the U.S. government helped him form al-Qaeda.

When the former USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. saw an opportunity to turn the country into a battlefield in the Cold War. The Democratic Carter administration and then the Republican Reagan administration supported fundamentalist rebel groups, known as the mujahideen, against the USSR’s occupation. According to James Ingalls and Sonali Kolhatkar’s book Bleeding Afghanistan, “The amount of U.S. and Saudi assistance to these groups started at around $30 million in 1980, and increased to over $1 billion per year in 1986–89.”

The U.S. ignored progressive and secular forces in Afghanistan, instead funneling support to fundamentalist groups that were not only anticommunist, but notorious for their brutality–warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for example, was known for throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women. These were the rebels who Ronald Reagan praised as “freedom fighters.”

The Taliban emerged in 1994 and took power in the war-ravaged country a few years later. Its members were trained in religious schools set up by the Pakistani government–with U.S. support–along the border. The Taliban’s ultra-fundamentalist view of Islam–including denying women the right to work or even show their faces in public–wasn’t condemned by the U.S. government at the time.

As for Bin Laden, he was a businessman from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia and one of the first non-Afghan volunteers to join the mujahideen. He recruited some 4,000 of the 35,000 non-Afghan Muslims who fought in Afghanistan, and developed close relations with the most radical rebel leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, raising money from private Saudi citizens.

“In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries,” wrote Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi. “Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the U.S.”

Now that bin Laden has been executed, there will be no trial to examine the U.S. government’s connections to the man whose murder allegedly makes the world “safer.” Nor will there be any difficult questions about the Taliban’s offers in 2001 to turn over bin Laden to the U.S. for trial if Washington provided evidence of his crimes.

The Bush administration wasn’t interested in a peaceful solution. It wanted the “war on terror” to project U.S. power around the globe. September 11 wasn’t a tragedy to the leaders of the U.S. government, but an opening. Thus, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice urged aides to speculate about “how you capitalize on these opportunities” from September 11, as she told New Yorker magazine writer Nicholas Lehmann.

During the Cold War era, the U.S. had justified its stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet, its war on national liberation movements, and its support for repressive regimes as a means of combating “communism.” But after the collapse of the USSR, the U.S. struggled to find an enemy that could justify its efforts to expand its empire.

September 11 was the “catastrophic and catalyzing event–like a new Pearl Harbor”–that neoconservative supporters of the Bush administration had openly longed for one year previously to make Islam the new enemy, with their old ally Osama bin Laden front and center.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

THUS, WHILE most people were still dealing with the enormity of what happened on September 11, the U.S. political and military establishment was demanding blood. But as Socialist Worker wrote in an editorial that night:

In their rush to assign blame and demand revenge, no politicians or journalists bothered to ask a simple question: Why would someone target the U.S.?

The answer is the devastation and misery wreaked around the world by the U.S. in its role as the world’s biggest superpower. In the last two decades alone, the U.S. has launched military attacks on Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia–and this is not even to count wars where the U.S. backed a proxy force.

In the Middle East, U.S. policy has left millions embittered and angry. America’s support for Israeli repression of Palestinians is one part of the picture. So is the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. The war killed as many as 200,000 Iraqis–most of them civilians–and left the country in a “pre-industrial state,” according to the United Nation. Since then, UN sanctions against Iraq–backed most strongly by the U.S.–have killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children.

In a chilling 1995 interview, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright justified these deaths, saying, “We think the price is worth it.” We should remember Albright’s words when we hear the drumbeat about “terrorists” who “have no regard for human life.” To the Bushes and Albrights of this world, such rhetoric is only an excuse to justify atrocities far worse than the ones committed in New York and Washington, D.C.

The nearly 10 years of the “war on terror” have taken an even greater toll–at least 1 million people are dead as a result of the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq alone. U.S. military action has spread from Afghanistan to Iraq, and now to Pakistan, Libya and many more countries. The “devastation and misery wreaked around the world” by the American empire is greater today than 2001.

The “war on terror,” justified as the only way to stamp out bin Laden and al-Qaeda, has made the world a more violent and dangerous place. With every bomb that falls on an Afghan wedding party or every carload of Iraqis slaughtered at a checkpoint, the world’s only superpower created more despair and bitterness toward the U.S. and its allies–creating the circumstances in which terrorism can thrive.

Since the beginning of this year, the Middle East has become a focal point for the world for very different reasons. From Tunisia and Egypt in northern Africa to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf and many countries in between, masses of people have risen up against dictators and regimes that uphold the imperialist order–some of them backed wholeheartedly by the U.S. and others more tentatively.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were made irrelevant by the actions of millions of people who rebelled on the basis of mass action and solidarity, not the violence of a small minority seeking to impose its religious views.

The assassination of bin Laden will help Washington in its attempts to retake the initiative with a revitalized “war on terror.” We need to stand up against the grisly celebrations of bin Laden’s killing–and insist, as Martin Luther King did more than 40 years ago, that the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world” is the U.S. government.

So, the ‘No’ campaign managed to win decisively in every nation and region of the UK. Even in Scotland, where on paper a ‘Yes’ vote was supported by a confident SNP, sections of the Labour Party, and the Lib-Dems and Greens, the ‘No’ vote won handsomely everywhere, apart from Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvinside (with their large liberal middle class). Yet, this ‘No’ vote provided no succour to the Tory Party in Scotland, whose last city redoubt in Edinburgh Pentlands fell before the SNP steamroller.

So, what does this ‘No’ vote represent? Of course, it had the swaggering support of the Tory bullies, who like to keep a big stick (FPTP) handy to cow the smaller boys in the playground. And many of these boys are afraid, which is not surprising when you consider the nasty things that the Tories have in store. So instead of taking on the bully himself, they have hit out at his hapless little Lib-Dem brother.

Unable to touch the main object of their hatred, what has been the effect of that swipe (the large ‘No’ vote) directed at little brother? He has decided not to go out on any more unaccompanied outings. He has quickly rushed back into the arms of big brother, but puffed out his chest saying, Yes, but I’ll stick up for myself next time, you know! Big brother tries to hide his contempt and says, There, there -  just stay close to me, and you’ll be all right. Don’t be so stupid in the future. Meanwhile, big brother is secretly planning on how to ditch this embarrassment of a little brother as soon as possible.

So, having successfully kicked little brother in the shins, what do the other little boys in the playground think will happen next? Those that said, Give him a good kicking, and that will make him see sense, have not surprisingly been somewhat taken aback by the results. The Labour ‘Nos’ led by that bravado-prone, but essentially cowardly Johnny Reid (always eager for a battle, but quick to fall-in behind his own favoured US bully), have found that little brother hasn’t come running to their corner of the yard.

In the south, Lib-Dem votes have haemorrhaged mainly to the Tories. In Wales, some votes have gone to Labour, but others to the Tories. There is a slightly better showing for Labour in the North; but on Johnny’s own patch in Scotland, where Labour managed to increase its share of the General Election vote in 2010, virtually all the Lib-Dem votes passed right past  Labour (and the Tories, known locally as the Dodos) and went straight over to the new kids on the block in the SNP!

In other words, kicking the Lib-Dems by voting ‘No’ may make you feel good for a very short time, but it does nothing challenge Tory big brother bully. Indeed he feels more confident now. Furthermore, it certainly did very little to win over badly shaken Lib-Dem little brother.

And what about those few who said, “How about being nice to little brother’ and forget all our own needs for the moment, and try to help him by voting ‘Yes’?  Unfortunately, little brother didn’t show much fight. He constantly apologised for the lead he was providing (Clegg). He then cried when big brother turned nasty and tugged him sharply by the arm.

OK – let me end this particular analogy and turn to another more direct one. When you start off by calling for PR, and end up asking for people to vote for AV, you are in a very similar position to those who would start off by arguing for the abolition of the House of Lords, but end up saying that you should vote for the direct election of one third of the Lords instead as a way to undermine them. Far from undermining the rotten underlying principle, you merely end up reinforcing it (and AV is just FPTP in a situation where there are more than two main parties. It provides an extra shove past the post).

Furthermore, saying that, Well we know the Lib-Dems are pathetic, but this clears the way for Labour to bring forward PR in the future, overlooks the fact that under Gordon Brown, Labour had their chance too, but fluffed it. Every constitutional innovation New Labour has introduced (Devolution-all-round, reform of the House of Lords) has been designed buttress the ruling class not to challenge it. They actually support AV on paper.

The case for abstention rests on the clear understanding that building the forces needed for real change, will mean building independently of Labour (and ignoring those, for the meantime, who have advocated tailing either Labour’s ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ campaigns.) In the lousy situation we currently face, that may seem like a tall order, but it was out of the political wreckage  of the 1980’s that a new political challenge arose from the independent Anti-Poll Tax Campaign.

That longer term political campaign was largely sabotaged by the sectarian Left, with the SWP and CWI playing particularly ignominious roles. Politically side lining these two organisations will be essential for any effective new challenge. There are hopeful signs that they are beginning to fall apart due to their own contradictions. I would still like to rescue some of their hard put-upon rank and file. However, that still means having no truck with party-front organisations; having a real commitment to open democratic methods of organising; and using tactics based not on opportunistic membership recruiting but on following a principled long term strategy. The one thing self-declared Marxists should be able to hold on to in lean times is a clear and sharp analysis and understanding of the situation we face today and shedding any remaining false illusions.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the AV referendum on May 4^th will very much play second fiddle to the elections to Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont. Ironically though, it is precisely in these three areas that the outcome of the referendum could be determined. People going to vote in the devolved assembly elections will also find themselves presented with the AV referendum ballot paper. Therefore, although, the vast majority of people are indifferent to it, the likely higher voting turnout for other reasons in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could possibly swing the outcome of the AV referendum to a ‘Yes’ vote, if the turnout in England is much smaller.

It is interesting to compare the political line-up over AV with the last major constitutional referenda. These were held in 1997 to decide whether devolved assemblies should be introduced to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Once again, the principal division was between the conservative unionist opponents (Tories, UKIP, BNP and DUP) and the liberal unionist supporters (Labour and Lib-Dems), drawing enthusiastically upon constitutional nationalist support in Scotland (SNP), Wales (Plaid Cymru) and Northern Ireland (SDLP and Sinn Fein, which following the Good Friday Agreement had become a constitutional nationalist party too), as well as former official and dissident (i.e. Trotskyist) communist support, e.g. CPB, SWP, CWI.

In 1997 the liberal wing of the British ruling class, represented politically by Tony Blair and New Labour, was in the ascendancy. They dictated the pace and outcome of the three referenda, despite strong conservative unionist challenges in Wales and Northern Ireland. However, in the latter the liberal unionist pull (which was successfully linked to the widespread demand for ‘peace’) was even able to pull the traditionally very conservative unionist Ulster Unionist Party in behind it.

Today, the conservative unionists are in the ascendancy (see appendix for political line-up over the AV referendum). However, they face a problem overcoming a justified voter disinterest, since neither side offers any democratic advance. AV can lead to even less proportional representation than FPTP.  AV is not PR, merely a modified form of the FPTP, which can be used to buttress the status quo in situations where two-party politics are no longer dominant. Those continued supporters of the status quo believe that the distortion factor introduced by the Lib-Dems emerging as a third party will be eliminated by the squeeze on this party. This could lead either to the Lib-Dems’ retreat back to minor party status, or its split and the merger of the National Liberal wing into the Tories and the anti-Clegg Liberal wing into New Labour.

Unlike the 1979 referenda on devolved assemblies, which the liberal unionists initiated, the current AV referendum has come about as a reluctant Tory concession, grudgingly enacted through Westminster, to keep Clegg’s Lib-Dems on board. However, the Lib-Dems are only there to be used, abused, and if and when necessary, spat out. Cameron may entertain some thoughts of a Tory/National Liberal merger, but his longer term strategy on behalf of British corporate capital does not depend on it. (Mandelson and Miliband are probably more committed to a merger of New Labour and the anti-Clegg Liberals).

The Tories have put relatively little thought into the mechanics of getting a ‘No’ vote. The conservatives’ difficulties are compounded by the inbuilt advantage given to the ‘Yes’ camp through holding the referendum on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections, where ‘Yes’ support is likely to be stronger.  If a ‘Yes’ vote is obtained on May 4^th by means of higher turnouts in Scotland and Wales, this could well raise an indignant British chauvinist, anti-Scottish, anti-Welsh clamour. It will be used to ramp up the conservative opposition to namby-pamby liberalism. Any majority ‘Yes’ vote won on May 4^th can not be guaranteed to lead to the successful implementation of AV, especially if the percentage support is well short of 50% of the total electorate. This will provide the Cameron’s Conservatives with an excuse to renege, and Clegg will most likely back down, whilst Miliband will just move on.

Therefore Cameron is not overly concerned about a ‘Yes’ victory in the referendum. The Tories have another and more central strategy to win wider support to provide cover for their continued Cuts Offensive and the ongoing imperial wars in Afghanistan and Libya. This centres around Cameron’s two year ‘Royalist Britfest’ – two royal weddings, a golden jubilee and a declaration of UK (Trafalgar) Day on October 21^st to replace May Day (mightily helped by Labour and trade union officials’ attempts to depoliticise May Day and offer it as a family day instead – soon we’ll all be dancing round maypoles!) Labour criticisms over the timing of cuts notwithstanding (and there is no official Labour criticism of the latest war in Libya), both Labour and the Lib-Dems have signed up for the ‘Royalist Britfest’, so any wider ‘opposition’ emanating from them is going to be very half-hearted.

However, to counter the liberal constitutional supporters’ listless AV campaign in the run-up to the May 4^th referendum, the conservative wing of the ruling class has easily won back support from the UUP (which gave its reluctant support to the 1997 liberal unionist Good Friday Agreement), and it has also been able to split the Labour Party (as it did in the 1979 Scottish and Welsh referenda, and to a certain extent, albeit unsuccessfully, in the recent Welsh Assembly referendum). After the CPB’s longstanding populist alliance with the anti-Euro Right, and the CWI’s capitulation to British chauvinism in the No2EU campaign, it is perhaps not surprising to see them in the ‘No’ camp too. Apparently the SWP (not mentioned in the Wikipedia list) recommend a ‘No’ vote too. This is entirely consistent with their frontist Right to Work campaign’s wooing of traditionalist Labour councillors opposed to the cuts in word but not deeds.

There are two mavericks in the new line-up.  UKIP appear to have abandoned their traditional ultra-conservative defence of the British constitution for what they hope will be short term electoral gains through by supporting a ‘Yes’ vote  (good to see that Left opportunism is matched on the Right too!) Respect supports abstention. With George Galloway in complete control, Respect might have committed itself to the ‘No’ camp favoured by the traditional Labour and former official Communists. Possibly Galloway considers AV insignificant.

In 1997 the two political alternatives on offer both arose from divisions amongst the ruling class over the best way to maintain their political control – constitutional conservatism with Westminster direct rule in Britain, plus a devolved sectarian Stormont or constitutional liberalism with ‘devolution-all-round’ for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (also in the form of a devolved sectarian Stormont). Comrades who went on to join the RCN pointed out that the British ruling class had thrown its weight behind the Peace (in reality the pacification) Process and ‘devolution-all-round’ as the best means of creating the political conditions necessary to maximize corporate profitability throughout  these islands. The British ruling class also gained the support of the Irish, key EU and US ruling classes for this stance.

However, we didn’t recommend a vote ‘No’ in opposition to this, since the conservative unionists represented some pretty ugly forces, which could still exercise their malign influence, whatever the majority decision in any referenda.  Any ‘No’ vote would merely strengthen them. The subsequent blocking tactics of the DUP at Stormont, supplemented by the continued murderous activities of the Loyalists, were just two indicators of this continuing influence. Conservative unionists are more prepared to ignore liberal democratic niceties on a day-to-day basis and to seek support from extra-constitutional reactionary forces. Liberal unionists like to keep such forces at arms-length distance, and tend only to resort to them in times of great crisis.

Today’s AV referendum represents nothing more than an intra-ruling class tiff , to provide political cover for Nick Clegg and his Orange Book Lib-Dem careerists in the Con-Dem Coalition. Support for the conservative constitutional option (‘No’ to AV) is probably in the majority in England and Northern Ireland, whilst support for the liberal constitutionalist option (‘Yes’ to AV), which includes its constitutional nationalist supporters, is probably in the majority in Scotland and maybe Wales. Socialists should not be giving their support to either side.

Last November the Scottish Socialist Party had a debate and decided, at its National Council in Perth, that AV did not represent any advance towards PR, which we strongly support.  Therefore we opposed AV although making no recommendation to vote ‘No’ in the ballot, which amounts to abstention in practice.  In reality the subsequent lack of interest in the party over the issue merely reflects the huge yawn factor amongst the wider electorate. This can’t be written off as jaded apoliticism. Much of this feeling represents an accurate class response to the issues at stake over AV.

Those workers, who think that giving Clegg a kick in the teeth by voting ‘No’, are mainly to be found amongst people who have illusions in traditional Labour. Those workers who want to give Cameron a kick in the teeth by voting ‘Yes’ have illusions in New Labour (whatever spurious qualifications we get from some Leftist apologists like the CPGB). You can not build an effective anti-cuts or anti-war movement around these people.

Socialist republicans in Scotland, Wales and ‘the Six Counties’ are more aware of the conservative unionists’ current wider project – the two year ‘Royal Britfest’. Rehabilitating the union jack in Scotland provides the Conservatives and Loyalists with much needed succour and is not something we would want to see. The recent death threats to prominent Catholics (in reality targeted for their perceived Irish connections) and Rangers football supporters’ bigotry (witnessed and condemned by UEFA) shows that no help, even if unintentional, should be given to conservative and reactionary unionism. Conservative unionism provides reaction with legitimacy, just as laws discriminating against migrants encourages the neo-fascist forces of the BNP, EDL, SDL, WDL, UVA and UFF. Thus, instead of getting worked up about AV, the SSP has concentrated instead on the Holyrood elections and republican campaigning against the royal wedding to supplement its anti-cuts and anti-war work.

Genuine socialists in Scotland will not be happy in joining with the conservative unionism of the Tories, BNP and John Reid by voting ‘No’ in the AV referendum. The key strategy in getting a fight against the public sector cuts (initiated by New Labour, stepped up by the Con-Dems, and administered by SNP, Labour/Plaid Cymru, DUP/Sinn Fein devolved assemblies, and local councils led by all these parties) should not centre around whether we are better off with or without a supposedly damaged Con-Dem Coalition. The ruling class has plenty of other parties lining up to deliver the cuts, especially New Labour , and the constitutional nationalist parties too.

When those who went on to become members of the RCN recommended abstention in the 1997 Scottish referendum ballot we had stickers to apply to the ballot papers saying ‘For a Scottish Republic’. Ideally, if we had had enough time, socialists throughout the UK should have prepared stickers to apply to the AV referendum ballot papers saying, ‘No to FPTP, No to AV, Yes to PR’.

Developing an independent working class opposition – independent of both wings (conservative and liberal) of the ruling class and particularly of those trade union officials tied into partnership with the bosses and the state – is the key issue. We began this process in the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, which defeated the Tories on the basis of an independent class action and ‘internationalism from below’. Furthermore, it proved possible to begin the process of developing independent political representation for our class – first the Militant anti-poll tax councillors in Glasgow, later the SSP MSPs at Holyrood.

The ruling class managed to contain and reverse this challenge, helped in Scotland by a populist Left nationalist Tommy Sheridan, backed by the British Left sectarians of the CWI and SWP, who also sabotaged the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales. These two organisations have now switched their support to the populist Left British nationalist, George Galloway in the Holyrood election, at the same time as trying to split the anti-cuts movement behind their own front organisations.

The liberal wing of the ruling class and its political supporters can not protect us from the conservative offensive, so let’s not build any false illusions in them by recommending a ‘Yes’ vote.  Furthermore, these liberals and their supporters have no strategy for developing AV into PR; just as they have no strategy for developing the current Devolution settlement into their stated objective of Federalism. They represent a complete political deadend.

The conservatives have a much more coherent strategy, in which AV is a mere sideshow. Either a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ vote will be used by Tories to step up their attack on our class. We have no place in either the ‘Yes’ or the ‘No’ camps. Therefore, it is to the lessons of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign that we need to look, both to counter the current ruling class Cuts Offensive and their ‘Royal Britfest’. This way we can seriously tackle the cuts , which also means opposing their latest imperial war in Libya, which Cameron wants to be his ‘Falklands War ’ just like that which fronted Thatcher’s 1980’s Cuts Offensive.

Allan Armstrong, 2 May 2011

Appendix

AV Referendum May 4^th

1. Voting ‘Yes’

Parties represented in Westminster

Liberal Democrats

Scottish National Party

Sinn Féin

Plaid Cymru

SDLP

Green Party of England and Wales

Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Parties elected to the European Parliament or devolved  assemblies

UKIP

Scottish Green

Minor parties

Mebyon Kernow

English Democrats

Christian Party

Christian Peoples Alliance

Pirate Party UK

United Kingdom Libertarian Party

2. Vote ‘No’

Parties represented at Westminster

Conservative Party

Democratic Unionist Party

Parties elected to the European Parliament or devolved  assemblies

BNP

Ulster Unionist Party

Irish Green Party (Northern Ireland region)

Minor parties

Traditional Unionist Voice

Communist Party of Britain

Socialist Party of England and Wales

3. Split ‘Yes’ and ‘No’

Parties represented at Westminster

Labour

4. Abstention

Minor Parties

Respect Party

Scottish Socialist Party

Socialist Party of Great Britain