The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty: Britain’s Revolutionary Imperialists

Tony Greenstein

T MAY seem to be a contradiction, a rev- of the African and Malaysian colonies, in order to I olutionary imperialist, and of course it is, but fund the dollar deficit. that is in essence the contradiction that lies at the I first came across the AWL when I was a heart of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Not of young member, about 18 at the time, of the course that the AWL is alone in wrestling with International Socialists (now the SWP). I was in this dilemma. On the contrary, the AWL stands in the Liverpool branch when a proposal came from the finest traditions of labour imperialism. It was the leadership that the organisation should expel Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation that pio- the Trotskyist Tendency as they were called. A neered the belief that socialism and imperialism speaker was invited from this group and Andrew could be reconciled. Coming from a rich Ulster Hornung, their most effective speaker and some- family, Hyndman was antagonistic to the strugg- one with whom I worked closely over Palestine les of the Irish, supported the Boers and eventually in future years, spoke to the branch. Nonetheless the British in world war one. Another prominent the branch split 2-1 in favour of the expulsion and British socialist of the period, Clarion editor Robert delegates were elected proportionately. Blatchford, later to join the Tory Party, was equally One member of the Liverpool branch who came a supporter of British imperialism and its foreign to play a prominent part in Socialist Organiser/ ventures. AWL was John Bloxham, then a young teacher. Marxism is to be distinguished from Fabianism When I was expelled a few months later, for and the different varieties of reformism in that it publicly disagreeing with and voting against the is wedded to a class analysis of society and in its decision of IS to close down the Anti-Internment historical materialist approach. New Labour is League, Bloxham repaid my support by abstain- forever talking about its values (even if they end ing. He explained that it was all a question of up in imprisonment without trial at Belmarsh) but democratic centralism! socialists deal with concrete actualities. What is it By way of an aside, I should mention that the that has led generations of socialists and their Liverpool branch was somewhat reluctant to expel organisations into supporting the wars and ad- me. It was felt necessary to bring up to Liverpool ventures of the ruling class? What material base their Industrial Organiser, Roger Rosewell. do these politics have? Although it is fashionable Rosewell managed to complete his task admirably. to deride the thesis of Lenin, it is unarguable that It was no doubt a good preparation for his future his thesis, that the conservatism of the British career, which included sitting on the SDP’s working class was due to their being the recipients Industrial Committee, working for the free-market of the crumbs from the fruits of imperialism, Aims of Industry and being a leader-writer on the explains both the racism and the lack of revol- Daily Mail. Currently he is bag-carrier-in-chief for utionary fervour of this class. Lady Shirley Porter! British racism, at its heart, has material I digress however. The Trotskyist Tendency foundations. It does not exist solely in the realm was expelled at an Extraordinary Conference of of ideas. The relative privileges of the British IS and soon became Workers’ Fight. It was a working class, compared with their Argentinian typically Trotskyist organisation with standard or South African counterparts, lies in the oper- views in support of the Irish and other liberation ation of British capital abroad, the returns from movements. their investments in the form of a social wage – I first caught up with what was by now the NHS, Social Security etc. Repression abroad Socialist Organiser when I went, after the invasion paid for reformism at home. The greatest reforming of Lebanon, to a Bradford Labour Movement Labour Government, under Attlee, was also the Conference on Palestine in or around 1982. There government which most intensified the robbery I met up with Andrew Hornung, with whom I

25 was to work for the next four or so years on Pal- adopted this position I argued with them, in estine. The Labour Party had traditionally been a debates and articles, that what they are doing is bastion of support for the Zionists. Indeed the only supporting an imperialist solution to the problem support the Palestinians had ever received came – a Palestinian Bantustan which would merely from the right of the Party – people like Andrew replace the face of the Israeli soldier with that of Faulds MP and David Watkins MP. Ian Mikardo, the Palestinian. Jo Richardson, Tony Benn, Eric Heffer – all were However AWL’s position is actually far worse stalwarts of the Labour Friends of Israel, though than this. the latter two left shortly after the invasion of There are many good supporters of the Pal- Lebanon. estinians and genuine anti-Zionists who support Andrew and myself set up, at a meeting in the a Two States position, not because they wouldn’t GLC’s County Hall, the Labour Committee on wish to see one, unitary, democratic and secular Palestine, which led directly to the passing of an state but because they don’t think it’s practical emergency motion at the 1982 Conference support- politics or feasible. People such as Noam Chomsky ing a democratic, secular State of Palestine. At this and the late Israel Shahak. No one could doubt time SO had a policy, common on the far left, of that these people are genuine and sincere oppon- support for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. ents of Zionism and the racism of the Israeli State. However SO had already begun moving in the It’s just that they don’t see an alternative to Two direction of imperialism, when it began to criticise States. Now I would argue they are wrong in Sinn Féin from the right. It began to warm to the thinking that a stable and organic Palestinian Ulster Loyalists, arguing that they were merely State, with its own sovereignty and free from Is- articulating the sub-national feelings of the raeli domination, is possible. Today the presence Protestants, rather than seeing them as a political of some 400,000 settlers and the cantonisation of representatives of a form of settler colonialism and the West Bank would, I suggest, make this im- an appendage and extension of British imper- possible. However this is a debate within the ialism. This resulted in SO supporting some sort Palestine solidarity movement. of federation in Ireland to accommodate Loyalist AWL’s position is however entirely different. desires and for their guru, Sean Matgamna/John They don’t support a Two States position because O’Mahoney to argue for the repartitioning of it is the only thing that is attainable. They see the Ireland so as to excise from the current Northern existence of the Israeli State, a State of its Jewish Ireland statelet the Catholic counties of Fermanagh citizens, for whom its Arab citizens are at best a and Tyrone! tolerated minority, as a good thing in its own right. The LCP became transformed into the Labour AWL, beyond the occasional reference to Israeli Movement Campaign on Palestine after the racism, have absolutely nothing to say about the Workers Revolutionary Party, at the instigation inherent racism in the Zionist State. Nothing of Ted Knight, then leader of Lambeth Council, about the fact that 93% of the land is reserved for took over the organisation. SO were traditional Jews, or that welfare benefits are higher for Jews enemies of the WRP, having been taken to court than Palestinians in order to encourage a higher by the latter for libel. So at this time the main battle birthrate. AWL even support the Israeli Law of was with the WRP’s LCP, but within a couple of Return which allows people like myself to go and years Matgamna was becoming restless as he live in Israel and become citizens but denies the sought to take his organisation down what is same right to Palestinians who have been born known, in the Trotskyist jargon, as the road of and brought up there. the “”. It is little wonder then that both Sean Mat- AWL has now become a full “Third Campist” gamna and his faithful lapdog, Martin Thomas, organisation. This term was used to describe the both describe themselves in Thomas’s words as “a position of , one of the leaders of little bit Zionist”. This is the ideology that the American Trotskyism, which was in essence a fore- founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, runner of the SWP’s “Neither Moscow nor described as “an antidote to socialism”. The Washington”. Shachtman himself ended up as a nationalism of Zionism was seen as the only way cold war warrior, supporting the CIA invasion of to wean the Jews off socialist politics. It was no Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Matgamna has now suc- accident that the Balfour Declaration was issued ceeded in taking AWL down exactly the same road. five days before the Bolshevik Revolution in a AWL have since the mid-1980s adopted a “Two forlorn attempt to win the allegiance of Russia’s States” position on Palestine. Both “nations” Jews. Balfour himself, as the author of the Aliens according to them are entitled to their own state. Act 1905, was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite who Leaving aside the question of whether or not the seriously believed that the Russian revolution was Israeli Jews are a nation, what the AWL position a Jewish affair! It was also the reason why the ignores is the fundamental difference between Zionist movement was the only legal political Israeli Jews and Palestinians – one is the oppressor movement in Czarist Russia. Zionism was vehem- and the other is the oppressed. When AWL first ently opposed to Jewish revolutionary activities.

26 Emigration to Palestine, escape from the anti- way, given the power and support of the settlers Semites, this was the only “good” Zionist activity. and far-right in Israel, to obtain a Palestinian State It was no surprise therefore that when the was precisely to put as much pressure on the Israeli Association of University Teachers passed a motion State as possible. This indeed was the position of supporting the boycott of Israeli universities, Haifa one of the main speakers for the original AUT and Bar Ilan, both hotbeds of anti-Arab racism, motion supporting the boycott. But AWL are the AWL moved into action in support of these racist opposed to any pressure on the Israeli State and universities. certainly any effective pressure on them. The real Haifa, on 17 May, hosted a conference, org- reason is that AWL’s Two States position is really anised by its own Professor Arnon Sofer, into the a totem. In practice they support the Zionist State “demographic problem and Israeli policies”. The and nothing else. In the event that the Zionist “problem” being too many Arabs in the Jewish State “solves” its demographic problems by expel- State. Sofer’s preferred solution being “transfer” ling the Palestinians into Jordan, which must i.e. expulsion. Nor is Sofer just an academic crank. remain a distinct possibility, you can be sure that He heads the Department of Geo-Strategy and is as time goes on, AWL will label all those seeking deputy-chair of its Institute of Security Studies. the return of the Palestinians as “anti-Semitic”. The guest of honour at the conference, from which It is no accident therefore that AWL have Arabs were excluded, was the Rector of Haifa become the main left group in support of the war University, Professor Yossi Artzi. Haifa bans the in Iraq. For sure they didn’t support the original Arabic language from being used on signposts on invasion, but today they are full square behind campus, its website is in Hebrew and English the occupation. Matgamna even muses on AWL’s (despite Arabic being an official language in Israel) website that it might lead to the establishment of and despite there being 20% Arab students at Haifa a bourgeois democracy with the elections in Jan- – the highest of any Israeli university. Bar Ilan uary (if only one forgets about the tiresome bomb- University is a hotbed of the religious right. It ing!). validates the degrees at the College of Judea & There was a full debate over the AWL’s position Samaria in the Ariel settlement on the West Bank. on the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform’s Bar Ilan used to bar Arab students from even living e-mail list earlier this year. Pete Radcliff’s “defence” on campus. Israeli academics are complicit in all of their position was to call their opponents, aspects of Israeli military life and have never spo- primarily myself, “liars”. However this defence ken up, except for a minority like Haifa’s Professor didn’t go down particularly well, and when I Ilan Pappe (whom the Rector has tried to get subsequently moved a motion at the January expelled from the university), for the Palestinians SADP calling for the immediate and unconditional and against the racism that their universities withdrawal of imperialist troops from Iraq, AWL tolerate. first tried to amend it, arguing that “calls for AWL has nothing to say about any of the troops out should be consequential to an overall above. Racism against Arabs is not its concern. It orientation towards working-class solidarity”. doesn’t exist. You will not find in the reams of When this was defeated, AWL opposed the main articles they have produced even a single one motion. AWL’s other main difference over Iraq was attacking or even analysing racism in the Jewish its support for the scab leadership of the Iraqi State and how it has come about. AWL have no Federation of Trade Unions, whose Iraqi Com- analysis of Zionism, with its aim of creating an munist Party leadership were also part of the US ethnically pure Jewish State. Like all good col- puppet government under Allawi. The IFTU have onialists and imperialists, for AWL, the natives are operated with the blessing of the US occupation invisible. They simply don’t exist other than as authorities, utilising the same decrees (Order 31) supporting actors in a play. And anyone who that Saddam Hussein issued, effectively banning criticises Zionism is labelled an anti-Semite or a any other trade union organisation such as the “left anti-Semite”. AWL therefore had no difficulty Federation of Workers Councils or the Iraqi Union in taking part, with Jon Pike and other Zionists, of Unemployed. Despite this AWL continues to in the Engage site, which libelled Sue Blackwell support the IFTU and their strike-breaking act- and other lecturers who had supported the Boy- ivities. cott of Apartheid Israel. AWL is at home with these Despite having joined with other comrades in reactionaries, many of whom argue that it is no forming the SADP, after the SWP had effectively business of trade unions to meddle in the politics closed the Socialist Alliance down, AWL found that of other countries. Bread and butter issues are their they could no longer co-exist within the same sole concern. organisation with those who were genuine anti- The AWL position on the Academic Boycott is imperialists. AWL members have now stopped a good example of their hypocrisy. If they were posting to all left e-mail lists such as UK Left sincere in their Two States position, they would Network. Instead members such as the rabid of course understand that Israel is a military giant Zionist Jim Denham post to the pro-war Harry’s compared with the Palestinians. That the only Place, where they are in congenial company with

27 even more ardent Zionists than themselves. The basis of their religious affiliation. In particular reality is that AWL are now uncomfortable with when the appeal is a cross-class appeal. However all sections of the left in Britain. I would venture to suggest that most socialists, Why is AWL pro-war? Because if you refuse to even some inside the Labour Party, welcomed the call for the withdrawal of troops, you must, by defeat of the warmonger Oona King in the General necessity, be in favour of the troops remaining, Election. We were even more thrilled by Gallo- i.e. the occupation. It is little wonder that satellite way’s brilliant performance at the Senate hearings members of AWL, such as Kate Ahrens (recently when he tore into the hapless Senator Coleman. defeated in the UNISON elections), have signed Not so AWL. AWL supported both Roger Godsiff joint letters with the openly pro-imperialist Labour against Respect’s Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham Friends of Iraq, attacking comrades on the left. and Oona King in Bethnal Green. It beggars belief LFI, incidentally, has been formed by ex-AWLers that a so-called socialist organisation, which itself like Jane Ashworth, Simon Pottinger and Alan supported the Socialist Green Unity Coalition stan- Johnson who have taken AWL’s politics to their ding candidates against New Labour, nonetheless logical conclusion and openly abandoned any opposed Galloway’s successful challenge to King. pretence that they oppose imperialism. Johnson Yes Galloway became very close to elements of himself has written in Red Star defending the US the Ba’athist regime. But this has always been the war crimes in Falluja. case with Labour MPs, not least Tony Benn. Yes Even when AWL was a formal part of the anti- he was an Arabist (and also a supporter of Two war movement, it spent most of its time attacking States!). But he was a consistently anti-war MP the fact that the Muslim Association of Britain was and deserved on that account, if no other, to part of the anti-war coalition. Working with Zion- receive the critical support of socialists. ist fundamentalist groups was fine, but working The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which stood with an Islamic group was not. The fact that MAB just one candidate in the General Election (Pete has, under the pressure of events, been moving Radcliff in Nottingham), is a tiny ex-Trotskyist leftwards for some time, was irrelevant. A hostility sect, numbering maybe 100 people. Its main to Muslims because of their perceived Middle East strength is still in the National Union of Students connections and anti-Zionism has been a part of where it has worked with the Zionist Union of the fare at the AWL table. Jewish Students on and off for years. The AWL is Concomitant with this has been an obsession fast moving to the right as it abandons any pre- with the figure of George Galloway and Respect. tence at internationalism and support for the Now I am not a supporter of Respect. I am opposed oppressed of the world. As Karl Marx wrote, a to communalist politics and seeking to win over a nation that oppresses another will not itself be small minority (5%) of the working class on the free. It’s a lesson that the AWL has forgotten. ! Housmans Marxmail.org Bookshop The Marxism Mailing List

The best place in London for What is the Marxism mailing list? radical books and magazines The Marxism list is a worldwide moderated 5 Caledonian Road, Kings forum for activists and scholars in the Marxist Cross, London N1 9DX tradition who favor a non-sectarian and non- dogmatic approach. It puts a premium on Just round the corner from independent thought and rigorous but civil Kings Cross station debate. While it is a high-volume list, it has a very good “signal to noise” ratio. It is also Phone: 020 7837 4473 Email: globally representative, with subscribers from over 15 different countries. [email protected] www.housmans.com www.marxmail.org

28