Papers: Weekly Worker: AWL and GeorgePapers: Weekly Worker: AWL and George
Click above to turn pageThe AWL didn't buy my unity appeal (see the previous article here). Instead, Pete Radcliff, who's (genuinely) a lovely guy, wrote a terribly polite reply explaining that, unfortunately, the kind of rapprochement I was seeking was impossible because (a) they were right and (b) we were wrong, and we really needed to address (b) before they'd play with us. Essentially, the AWL never really got their head around the idea that if we all agreed with them, we'd all join them anyway, and there would be no need for unity between groups: so raising agreement as a precondition was a bit silly. But then, no-one on the left gets this. I went through the motions of a reply, but should you read it, you'll probably notice the edge of desperation in my voice.
Click here to download Weekly Worker issue 486.
I am grateful to comrade Pete Radcliff of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty for his reply to my 'open letter' (Weekly Worker June 12).
First, a small point: Pete notes "many inaccuracies in [my] account of the relations between the AWL and the CPGB", but doesn't actually specify them (Letters, June 19). If I've made any factual errors, I apologise, but what actually were they? Pete clearly disagrees with my description of the AWL's course as "isolationist", and this may be all he means. In any event, isolationism, or rather its opposite, unity, lies at the heart of the debate, so this point I can take up.
Pete wrote: "The tack of the CPGB is to portray the AWL as being on an isolationist course. Why? Because we use the term 'fake socialists' for those who are not embarrassed by Galloway's politics. But, using Manny's own phrases, Galloway's politics are the 'the politics of supporting Arab dictatorships'. What else can one be, other than 'embarrassed' about being associated with such politics. So that can't be the issue, can it?
"Despite the untruths printed in the pages of the Weekly Worker by the more factional of its contributors, we have never supported or advocated Galloway's expulsion from the Labour Party. But ... [he] is not and should not be our spokesperson at trade union conferences or elsewhere."
Now, either I've made a terrible job of explaining my view or (and I hope Pete will forgive the suspicion) the AWL just cannot take 'yes' for an answer! Assuming the former, let me try again:
I agree: George Galloway's politics are essentially Arab nationalist. His anti-US imperialism takes the form of supporting a dictatorship (and not the working class it oppresses) as the primary force against the unfolding 'new American century' project.
I agree: these are not the politics I wish to see supported by a new workers' party, or presented to the British working class. I would oppose the rumoured Socialist Workers Party attempts to create a popular front with Galloway, Arab nationalists, islamists and the Communist Party of Britain. We are communists and class fighters, not nationalists or religionists of any kind.
I agree: I do not think Galloway should be expelled from the Labour Party. As for The Telegraph, if I said the AWL had allied themselves with this reactionary bourgeois rag they would doubtless consider this a slander. They understand, as I do, that The Telegraph's attacks are not motivated by concern over the lack of a class base to his politics: the idea is ridiculous. The Telegraph hates the anti-war movement, and despises Galloway for supporting it and for calling on soldiers to disobey orders.
Neither the war criminals leading the Labour Party nor their apologists in the bourgeois press should find any allies amongst revolutionaries. Our criticisms of Galloway are (naturally) aimed at that part of his politics we oppose; their criticisms are based on that part we support. We defend him against the latter, and criticise the former. This is what we mean by critical defence.
Now, I have strenuously defended the AWL against the charge that they have allied themselves with our class enemy in attacking Galloway. Surely I was not wrong to do so? But if the AWL's attack is not that of the bourgeoisie, and they defend him against moves to expel him from Labour, then is that not critical defence? Has not the difference been one of emphasis? And are we really going to refuse to cooperate in the campaign our class desperately needs for independent representation on such grounds?
Pete refers to the AWL alternative, the 'Network for Working Class Political Representation'. After the packed Socialist Alliance pro-party fringe meeting, the 'launch' attracted only 15 AWL members and four others. I can do little better than quote one of those four, the Revolutionary Democratic Group's Peter Morton:
"Comrade Thomas concluded his remarks by stating that the AWL should map out a positive political platform around which people can organise to retrieve what the SA was originally about: eg, to put up 'independent working class socialist candidates'. This opened the way for the first motion to be put, by comrade Matgamna - which is where I became confused. Was I in a meeting to decide AWL policy, or was I unwittingly being inducted into an AWL front, to rival any CWP [Campaign for a Workers' Party] initiatives currently being worked out?
"Steve Freeman argued for unity between the pro-party groups (AWL, CPGB, RDG), but comrade Matgamna replied that these are propaganda groups who cannot unite if they are putting out radically different propaganda.
"The meeting took a short break and when we returned voting took place. The RDG elected not to vote (including not abstaining), as we did not want to endorse the process that it may now be claimed was taking place in that room."
At a time when Labour has abandoned the class which created it, and the SWP is dragging the SA into popular frontism, those of us who share the CPGB's and AWL's belief in independent working class politics wish to act, rather than leaving working class communities to the tender mercies of the British National Party.
If the SA is being hijacked, let us fight back! There are class fighters in the SWP: let us take the campaign to them too. And of course, we must take the argument out beyond the SA - to the union branches, the workplaces and the streets. But to do this we need a campaign to fight for and a paper to cohere that campaign, and the AWL and the CPGB could be producing it now. I repeat my call to every AWL member: question whether the reasons you are being offered justify our continued paralysis. Let us act.
Manny Neira
Surrey