& Workers’ Liberty

SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 476 8 August 2018 50p/£1 Inside: How the left can sort itself out: Yes, see pages 5-7 Pakistan: Khan is no alternative Sacha Ismail examines the results of antisemitism the Pakistan elections. The decision of Momentum to remove their endorsement of Campaign for See page 2 Labour Party Democracy secretary, Pete Willsman from the #JC9 slate for Labour National Executive Committee has escalated the ongoing row in Labour over antisemitism in its ranks. The problem of antisemitism in Labour is a real and on the wider left is real, it is just that many Labour members do not recognise it. Germany’s new Primarily the left needs a deeper un - derstanding what is involved in anti - left populism semitism on the left. The Willsman affair illustrates some of the problems of lack Dale Street examines the politics of recognition and the obstacles involved behind the new Aufstehen movement problem in dealing with those. in Germany. See pages 8-9

Analysing the left’s anti- imperialism Paul Hampton reviews Indefensible: democracy, counterrevolution, and the rhetoric of anti-imperialism by Rohini Hensman. See page 10 Join Labour! Labour members push for conference vote on Brexit See page 14 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Pakistan: Khan is no alternative Pakistani-background activists in tempt to get a bailout from the IMF, seems to be evi - By Sacha Ismail the Labour Party, including some with all the obvious economic and dence of low-level Pakistan can be added to the list on the left. Khan has compared social consequences. but significant of countries whose politics have himself to Jeremy Corbyn, citing a Moreover, Khan, though he still election-tamper - been dramatically shaken up in desire for “economic justice” and trades off a liberal and cosmopoli - ing in his favour. the aftermath of the global finan - opposition to US foreign policy, tan image in the West, has over the Khan and the cial crisis. particularly in Afghanistan and the years moved further and further PTI may help the The Movement for Justice party bordering areas of Pakistan. (The down the road of religious conser - Pakistani ruling — PTI from the initials of its Urdu Counterfire group has published vatism, working with Islamists, de - class and political an article virtually hailing Khan – fending the country’s blasphemy elite to establish greater indepen - to. Despite the religious conserva - name – led by former cricketer and tive nature of Khan’s politics, many multi-millionaire Imran Khan, got see bit.ly/2vMhplU.) But the PTI is laws and displaying indifference to dence from the US and revamp not a left-wing party in any sense. the persecution of religious minori - their economy on the backs of the seem to have voted PTI for essen - 0.8 percent of the vote in 2002, boy - tially liberal and anti-sectarian rea - cotted the elections in 2008 and rose It is a tightly controlled top-down ties. country’s workers, peasants and organisation, almost a personality poor, getting out of the impasse in sons, particularly young people. to 16.9% in 2013. This time it got ISLAMISM Pakistan also has a left and labour 31.9% and a near majority in the na - cult; a neo-liberal force; and in Alarmingly, though the traditional a way the more evidently corrupt many respects something worse. far-right Islamist alliance MMA old parties could not. movement, though weak and be - tional assembly, with Khan looking leaguered. As far as I can tell one set to become prime minister. Having used rhetoric about an didn’t do that well in the election, Despite the rise of political Islam, “Islamic welfare state” to gain sup - a new even more extreme group and the mainstream’s accommoda - socialist was elected to the national The traditional parties of the Pak - assembly, Ali Wazir, a member of istani ruling class, the openly con - port, Khan’s spokespeople are now raising the slogan “Death to the tion to it, there are also secularising floating the privatisation of most of Unbelievers”, Tehreek e-Labbaik, and progressive trends in Pakistani the Struggle group who leads a servative Pakistan Muslim League Pashtun movement fighting for the and the supposedly left-wing Pak - Pakistan’s remaining state-owned leapt to 2.2 million votes, over society. This was the first time three companies — for instance, Pakistan four percent. non-Muslim national assembly rights of victims of the ‘war on ter - istan People’s Party, are in crisis. ror’. Wazir has had numerous fam - International Airlines, previously Last but not least, Khan is the members, Hindus representing the The extreme corruption associated ily members killed by the Taliban. saved by from being sold off after a preferred prime minister candidate Pakistan People’s Party, were with both is part of what has given There are plenty of people in struggle by its workers and whose of Pakistan’s powerful army and elected. Women voted in large the PTI its appeal. Pakistan we can support, and privatisation the PTI opposed a few security services, who also cooper - numbers, including in areas where There is enthusiasm for Khan they need solidarity. and his movement among some months ago! This is part of an at - ate with some Islamists, and there they have previously been afraid Wildcat strike against racist boss Mick Woods 1954-2018 cans don’t really like [the safety co - cutting, welding — this mother - By Gemma Short ordinator]. He asked one of the fucker is dead-ass quiet. The Mexi - On Tuesday 31 July Indianapolis Mexicans to come up and translate. cans shut this motherfucker welder Antoine Dangerfield He didn’t wanna do it. [The coordi - down.” filmed what became a viral nator] got mad, real red-faced. Next The safety coordinator has ap - video, watched over 2 million thing you know, he dismissed the parently been sacked. times in two days, of a wildcat meeting. So he’s walking around Dangerfield was also sacked strike by Latino construction just sending them home, trying to for posting the video. He also workers building a new UPS hub. fire them. So he sent like five or six says the company offered him $250 to take the video down, but In the video and in a subsequent of them home.″ by that point it had been shared interview with Jacobin magazine ″So the Hispanics got together beyond it′s original posting. A Dangerfield explains that some and were like, ′Nah. We got fami - GoFundMe has been set up to Latino workers, working for a dif - lies and kids. We’re not about to let support Dangerfield, who has a ferent contractor but in the same these dudes just do whatever.′ So they took a stand.″ son. hub were ordered to go home (ef - and Mick moved to Denmark, fectively sacked) by a white boss he The video shows the workers • Original video: By Martin Thomas walking out, Dangerfield estimates https://youtu.be/Ykb6Nk9_PjI where he was a member until his calls racist. death of the small “Mandelite” Dangerfield explained to Jacobin more than 100 walked off the job. • GoFundMe: Mick Woods died on 19 July at The sight of the workers all walk - https://www.gofundme.com/z9h group SAP, part of the Red Green that workers had disobeyed an the age of 63. He was an activist Alliance in that country. order from this boss: ″We have ing off site affects Dangerfield 8cc-support-antoine-fired-4-strike- of the tendency which is now whose commentary describes the vid I made contact with him again safety meetings, and we usually Workers’ Liberty from the mid only in 2016, when another ex-ac - have a translator [for Spanish sense of power. After the Latino •Jacobin interview: 70s to 1984, and remained a workers have walked out Danger - https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08 tivist from his time told me that speakers] because there are so committed socialist until his Mick was very ill, and indicated many. On Tuesday, we had a safety field′s video tours the empty con - /wildcat-strike-indianapolis-shut- death. struction site — “Ain’t no grinding, down how I might be able to contact him. meeting, and like I said, the Mexi - As all the tributes since his death I traced an address and sent Mick have testified, Mick combined a get-well card and, later, a copy commitment with wit, critical of one of our books. thinking, and unpretentiousness. Early this year I heard back from The tribute from Roger Welch, an Mick, sounding more hopeful: “a Ryanair Must Change ex-activist of the same vintage, very belated note to thank you and says it well: “a genuine revolution - Sean [Matgamna] for the get-well By Charlotte Zalens be joined by pilots based in Ger - ary but also one with an irreverent cards you sent me about a year many and the Netherlands after a sense of humour and healthy cyn - ago. I was very sick with endo - Ryanair pilots in Ireland, Swe - poll by the Association of Dutch icism regarding the sort of lefties carditis and then reacted very den and Belgium will strike for Pilots saw 99.5% of members in who reek of self importance”. badly to the antibiotics... forgot 24-hours on Friday 10 August. favour of strikes. Mick went with the group about the cards until I dug them The strike is part of an ongoing Ryanair only recognised unions around Alan Thornett in the split out of a pile of papers... dispute as pilots are demanding a in December 2017, in what was a we had in early 1984. Although he “I have moved to a reasonably fair and transparent approach to huge victory for workers at the air - largely agreed with the majority handicap-friendly pensioner flat transfers between different bases. line, and workers are taking the on the big-picture political issues last October and have my house On 25 July Ryanair escalated the opportunity to push back. Since then, he took sides because he dis - up for sale. Hope all is good with dispute by threatening to sack 100 then workers have struck several agreed with our organisational you. Pass this on to Sean...” pilots and 200 cabin crew, or trans - times in various countries across variety of concessions on em - measures to resolve the “cold Even at the worst, Mick did fer them to Poland. Europe. ployment practices, including split” which had developed. not give up. He fought for so - Pilots based in Ireland, and On 25-26 July cabin crew in Bel - the right to be paid into bank ac - That parting of the ways was cialism, according to his best members of FORSA union, have gium, Portugal and Spain struck, counts in their own countries definitive. The group with which understanding, with all the en - already struck for four periods of and cabin crew in Italy on 25 July. rather than being forced to open he had split scattered — a remnant ergy he had and all the years he Cabin crew are demanding a 24 hours since 12 July. They may an Irish bank account. is now in Socialist Resistance — was allowed. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty NEWS 3 Far right Danger posed by Robinson retrial targets By Keith Road News who unsurprisingly pro - vided no challenge to any of his socialist Far-right leader Tommy Robin - statements, wished him luck and son has been released prison warned US viewers that wrongful after he had his conviction for arrests, such as that of Robinson, bookshop contempt of court quashed. The could happen in the US, if they Court of Appeal has ordered a were not vigilant. By Ollie Moore new trial. Robinson thanked Republican This will be a major boost for Congressman as well as the US am - The socialist bookshop Book - Robinson’s supporters and his own bassador to the UK for speaking marks was invaded by far-right profile. He now awaits a new hear - out on his behalf. As well as having activists on Saturday 4 August. ing on the charge of contempt of the support of figures like Steve The activists threw books, tore court. Bannon and UKIP, Robinson can up placards and posters, and Always prepared to offend, now count on the backing of an threatened staff and cus - Robinson compared his time in ultra-conservative think-tank the tomers. Fortunately no-one prison to being in Guantanamo Middle East Forum which has was injured. Bay, claimed he was moved from ploughed money into the demon - being smaller than previously they beyond shouting “Nazi scum”. At The bookshop, which is run by Hull to Onley, a prison with a 30% strations in his support. easily outnumbered the anti-fas - the same time we have to counter the Socialist Workers Party Muslim population and put in a While he was in prison Robin - cists. Without the police presence the idea among some on the left (SWP), is located in Bloomsbury, cell opposite the “Prison Mosque.” son’s supporters — who for the the left and labour movement con - that the working-class people who central London. No such “mosque” exists. time being count as most of the or - tingents would have been driven attend demonstrations in support The attack appears to be an op - As his complaint letter to the ganised far right — had promised from the streets. of Robison, are just politically dis - portunistic action carried out by prison states, what Robinson was to organise a rally every month. It It is incumbent on the entire enfranchised or only racist by mis - protesters returning from a really suffering from was the lack is not clear what they will do now, labour movement particularly the take. protest against alleged “censor - of a TV, which, he claimed, was or if Robinson will himself appear trade unions and Labour Party to Unions and the Labour Party ship” of Alex Jones’s far-right “mental torture.” at further demonstrations. do all they can to mobilise their must politically educate their conspiracy-theory platform “In - The most worrying thing about Whether Robinson is ultimately members onto the street. members on the significance of foWars”. One of those involved these latest developments is how re-imprisoned or not the threat of This means being disciplined the rise of the far right and unite was wearing a Donald Trump they embolden not just his support - his supporters and the growing in - about how we organise and having around political demands for mask. A video taken by the as - ers in the UK but the growing pop - fluence of the far right both online properly stewarded mobilisations jobs, homes, freedom of move - sailants appears to show them ulist far-right network across and in the streets cannot be ig - that are able to protect and defend ment and an end to austerity. passing the shop and noticing Europe and North America. nored. our demonstrations. That is the only way to undercut placards in its window condemn - Following his release, Robinson Despite the turnout on the last Anti-fascism also means educat - the social malaise on which the ing Tommy Robison; they then spoke to Tucker Carlson from Fox pro-Robinson protest in Whitehall ing our movement; we have to go far right build support. march into shop chanting “we love Trump”, and shouting vari - ous insults — including “pae - dophile lover” — at staff. Like the attack on anti-fascist Protests against Serco attacks on Asylum seekers’ housing activists following an anti- racist counter-counter-demon - stration in Westminster on 14 By Ann Field Serco’s announcement triggered July, this event indicates a new a wave of protests. Some 500 at - far-right movement, growing in On the last Friday in July Serco tended a city-centre rally on 31 July. confidence. The event marks a emailed less than a dozen public And on 3 and 4 August hundreds new development, whereby far- authorities and NGOs in Glas - attended further protests outside right activists emboldened by gow to inform them that as of the the Immigration Service offices in what they feel to be the burgeon - following Monday it would be im - Govan. ing of their movement have the plementing a policy of changing A loose campaigning network confidence to openly invade left- the locks on the accommodation emerged in response to Serco’s an - wing spaces. of asylum-seekers who had been nouncement, bringing together the The assailants appear to be refused asylum. Living Rent campaign, which is linked to the “Make Britain Great It is unlikely that the timing of best placed for organising physical Again” campaign, a group at - the announcement was coinciden - opposition to evictions, refugee or - tempting to transplant Donald tal. The Scottish and UK Parlia - ganisations, and political parties Trump and Steve Bannon’s and activists. ments were both in recess, as too Protest in George Square against Serco ethno-nationalist “America first” was Glasgow City Council. With the exception of the Tories, rhetoric to the UK. Their plac - At a rate of up to ten a week, 300 all political parties have con - stituency Labour Parties (CLPs) hostile media coverage, and two ards, carried from their earlier asylum-seekers – many of whom demned Serco’s announcement. and their members. But years of legal challenges, Serco was forced protest, denounced the BBC as would be in the process of appeal - Glasgow Labour and SNP MPs right-wing domination have hol - to retreat. the “British Bolshevik Cult”, a ing but still awaiting written confir - have pledged to turn up at the lowed out many Glasgow CLPs, Last weekend Serco announced classic motif of contemporary fas - mation of this, or, alternatively, homes of asylum-seekers facing leaving behind only handfuls of ac - that it was ‘pausing’ its new policy cism which sees all of main - might be in the process of lodging eviction and help to physically pre - tivists. and that no lock changes would be stream socio-political and a fresh claim – would be given vent the evictions from going And the success of right-wingers implemented, nor seven-day no - cultural life as being dominated seven days notice of the lock ahead. in being selected as Prospective tices of lock chang es issued, over by what it calls “cultural Marx - change. Around 10 Glasgow Housing As - Parliamentary Candidates has cre - the following three weeks. ism”, a Jewish plot to impose Asylum-seekers at risk of being sociations rent out accommodation ated ‘conflicting priorities’: relate to Serco’s probable calculation is multicultural values on society. put out onto the streets include at - to Serco so that the latter can use it real conflicts and real campaigns in that the wave of anger will dissi - Bookmarks is holding a soli - tempted suicides, asylum-seekers for asylum-seekers. A number of the real world; or spend Saturday pate over those three weeks, allow - darity event on Saturday 11 Au - with suicidal ideations, pregnant them have told Serco that they will mornings shoving #SNPbad pieces ing them to implement their policy gust from 2pm. Workers’ Liberty women, and couples or lone par - not allow any changes to the “fix - of paper through people’s letter - – subject to the outcome of the will be present and encourages ents with children. tures and fittings” in the flats they boxes. pending legal challenges – rela - others to attend. The left and the The Serco statement claimed that are renting out. This covers lock The former, apart from being cor - tively unhindered. labour movement must urgently the new policy – which is not en - changes. rect in and of itself, is a way to re - The next three weeks may or discuss the question of self-de - tirely new, given that it has previ - The Scottish Labour Party is build Labour’s base in local may not provide a breathing fence for our spaces and demon - ously carried out some lock backing the anti-evictions cam - communities and among younger space. Serco should not be strations. changes – had been discussed with paign as well. Its Glasgow office people. The latter, so the right wing taken at its word. It is therefore Understanding the political Glasgow City Council in the pre - has sent out emails urging mem - believes, is a ticket for careerists to vital to maintain the momentum nature of this growing move - ceding months. The Council denies bers to turn up to the protests a £75,000 a year job in London. And of the campaigning against ment, and confronting its this. which have been held, and to reg - that is not just their priority but Serco in order to ensure that ethno-nationalism with an un - Confronted with a choice of be - ister online in order to be told of their sole concern. they do not attempt to imple - apologetic working-class in - lieving Serco or Glasgow City mobilisations to stop attempted Confronted with a wave of ment their lock change policy in ternationalism and advocacy Council, it is difficult to decide evictions. protests, opposition from politi - three weeks. of free movement, equality, which is the less credible. This should be ABC for Con - cians and Housing Associations, and solidarity is also essential. 4 LETTERS Email your letters to [email protected] What Labour’s code of conduct omits

leadership itself has taken it as a point of ref - LETTERS erence, and so its deliberate exclusions and departures should be scrutinised. Bill con - Antisemitism, in Europe anyway, is thou - cedes that one “substantive point” in the sands of years old, and has taken many IHRA text is not covered in the Labour Party different forms. text: Since the 19th century, it has a “left-wing” “Applying double standards by requiring variant, in which anticapitalist feeling is di - of [Israel] a behaviour not expected or de - rected against Jews as easily-targeted scape - manded of any other democratic nation”. goats for capitalism rather than, or as well as, In practice this refers to the commonplace against the impersonal and relatively-compli - demand on Israel that it accept a “right of re - cated real mechanisms of capitalist exploita - turn” of some six million Palestinians who tion and oppression. have ancestral connections to territory now The Stalin regime in the USSR coined (in part of Israel. 1949-53), and a range of groups self-defined This demand is not a democratic one for as left-wing have promoted (especially since freedom of movement. It is a demand for the the 1970s), a new sub-variant, in which Israel territory in which an Israeli Jewish nation has is demonised as the world’s great font of im - grown up since 1948 to be given over to some perialism and racism. “Zionists” are equated (necessarily non-Israeli) agency which will with fascists and Nazis. organise mass resettlement of the Palestinian Older variants of antisemitism still circu - Arab diaspora. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh late. But most antisemitism today, on the explicated it, during the recent Gaza border right and the would-be left, is framed by the protests, as the demand that the Israeli Jews idea is that the Israeli Jewish nation is a retain “not an inch” of the land of pre-1948 uniquely racist and imperialistic nation Palestine. which should be conquered and suppressed. The Labour Party text does include the The left-wingers who believe that would words: “the Jewish people have the same reject with horror any “racial” antipathy to right to self-determination as any other peo - This is a campaign from the right of the Party, but their concerns are real Jews, and yet their mental constructs make ple”. But this is unclear, both because the The words in the Labour Party which Bill without resorting to antisemitism or calling them hostile to that huge majority of Jews issue is the rights of the existing Hebrew na - describes as “addressing” double standards for the destruction of Israel. In any event an - who have some reflex identification with Is - tion in Israel, not of a worldwide “Jewish “in a different way” is: tisemitism hardly aids the cause of the Pales - rael. people” which is not in fact a political unit, “It is not racist to assess the conduct of Is - tinians”. The row over the Labour Party National and because “self-determination” is a term rael — or indeed of any other particular state Likewise David Hirsh’s: Executive’s new code of conduct on anti - with clear meanings in some traditions (in - or government — against the requirements “The kind of antisemitism which is now le - semitism (bit.ly/as/c-lp) has to be assessed cluding the Marxist tradition) but not neces - of international law or the standards of be - gitimate in the Labour Party is pushed and in this political context. sarily in general usage. haviour expected of democratic states (bear - defended by people who think of themselves Bill Davies ( Solidarity 475) argues that crit - The Labour Party text excludes the IHRA ing in mind that these requirements and as opponents of antisemitism. They have no icism of the code is misplaced because wording which condemns “claim[s] that the standards may themselves be contentious)”. antisemitic intent and so would not be found “Labour’s new guidelines are clearly based existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeav - These platitudinous words do not “ad - antisemitic by a tribunal using the home - on the IHRA guidelines and include all the our”. To criticise Israel for racist policies is dress” the double standard at all. made definition. Yet they still ostracise those substantive points (except maybe one)”. I right and proper: implicitly licensed here, who oppose antisemitism and they are re - think Bill is wrong. There is justice to the crit - however, are claims that the very existence, sponsible for a culture which nurtures and li - icism. in whatever form, with whatever policy CRITICISM OF ISRAEL John Strawson, a former Marxist activist, censes antisemitic ways of thinking”. The IHRA text (bit.ly/ihra-d) is by no changes, of any Israeli state, is in and of itself Of course, much of the denunciation by means ideally precise, but the Labour Party “racist”. is now broadly right-wing Labour, and an - nounces that he has quit the Labour Party Jewish community leaders and Labour right- rather than continue the political fight on wingers is informed by prior hostility to the this issue. Yet his criticisms are telling: recent leftish direction of the Labour Party. “Despite the pleadings of the Jewish com - They have been spoken out much less against munity, the Labour Party... created a test of antisemitism in the Blair-Brown Labour Party antisemitic ‘intent’, not in the IHRA defini - (bit.ly/060309-dc), or against antisemitism in A terrain of struggle the Tory Party (a Campaign Against Anti - tion... semitism survey shows antisemitic attitudes I agreed with much of Omar Raii’s article “The Labour party leadership claims that the reason for not adopting the full IHRA def - markedly stronger among Tory than among about the political content of football. I’d Labour supporters: bit.ly/as-svy) like to suggest some friendly amend - inition and examples is because it wants to ensure free speech on Israel and Palestine. They hype it up with talk about “the exis - ments to his argument. tential’ — existential, no less — “threat to Firstly, while he is clearly right that na - “Yet the IHRA definition explicitly says that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled Jewish life in this country that would be tionalism plays into and feeds off tourna - posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government” ments like the World Cup, I’m not against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’.” (bit.lu/jc-et). They demand “thousands” of convinced that this is as mechanical a rela - expulsions from the Labour Party, a rate in - tionship as is sometimes suggested. Eng - The lawyer Stephen Sedley — in an article denouncing Jeremy Corbyn, back in 2016, for compatible with any proper hearings, and land’s unexpectedly brilliant performance seem largely uninterested in promoting the doesn’t seem to have given any kind of elec - backing the IHRA text: bit.ly/s-sed — has claimed that the IHRA text tags “everything educational discussion which should be the toral filip for Brexit or the government. core of the remedy. Similarly, despite Emanuel Macron’s em - other than anodyne criticism of Israel as an - tisemitic”. But that can be true only if no Yet the Labour Party Leader’s Office can - barrassing theatrics at the final, France’s not be given the benefit of the doubt as “in - World Cup win has done nothing to bolster other country in the world is liable to more- than-anodyne criticism. nocents” trying to improve the IHRA’s his ratings, despite the French press predict - wording. Powerful in that Leader’s Office are ing it would do so. This is because fans are Strawson continues: “As a staunch sup - porter of Palestinian self-determination and Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray. not, in the main, so moronic as to draw their These are long-time Stalinists and promi - political conclusions from a scoresheet. an opponent of the Israeli occupation of rubbish, and have ideas about how culture nent people in the Stop The War Coalition. Secondly, I think the way the article closes Palestinian territory after the 1967 war, I reg - can be made free, democratic and accessi - STW chose to tack onto the mass protests is too passive. He says football is “neither ularly criticise Israeli policy. ble. Socialist football fans should take a sim - against the US invasion of Iraq the sponsor - progressive nor reactionary” and that peo - “For a period of eleven years I was... a vis - ilarly activist approach. ship of the British offshoot of the Muslim ple should “just enjoy it. Or don’t”. iting professor teaching at [Birzeit University Some priorities might be campaigning Brotherhood and the slogan “Free Palestine”, I think this phrasing blurs the fact that in the West Bank]... I was there during the against bigotry, for the inclusion of women deliberately vague but given bite by placards sport is a terrain of struggle, like any other worst of the second intifada and I know and LGBT people, and for democratic con - on the marches adapting the “Keep Britain cultural activity. Cinema or literature don’t something about how dreadful the humilia - trol of our clubs against the oligarchs and Tidy” graphic to show a Star of David being have an inherent political character either tions and oppression of occupation are. gangsters. binned. — it depends on the particular film or writ - “I agree with the International Court of Jus - I’m sure Omar heartily agrees, but it’s tice that the wall that has been built on Pales - There is good reason to be suspicious ing and its social context. Socialists are in worth spelling these things out. about their omissions and additions. favour of art that isn’t bigoted or just plain tinian territory is illegal. Tom Harris, south London “However, I can make all these criticisms Martin Thomas, north London Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM 5 Yes, antisemitism is a real problem in Labour

Revolution in Iran. Like much of the left they By Simon Nelson have sought to downplay or not recognise The decision of Momentum to remove the antisemitism that exists in our movement. their endorsement of Campaign for Not voting for Pete Willsman in this circum - Labour Party Democracy secretary, Pete stance makes little sense. He has just made Willsman, from the #JC9 slate for Labour widely held views more aggressively and National Executive Committee has esca - with less concern for the image of the slate. lated the ongoing row in Labour over an - The Momentum NCG decision to remove tisemitism in its ranks. Willsman is acknowledged by a social media Labour’s right-wing have gone on the of - post; no record of a vote exists and no min - fensive over the issue, attacking Corbyn even utes of any previous meetings of the new after he made significant attempts, and in NCG are available. But the #JC9 slate was not good faith, to acknowledge the problem. In decided democratically so perhaps they are an interview in the Observer on 5 August Tom just being consistent! Watson said Labour faced a “vortex of eternal We should not accept the lack of demo - shame” unless it tackled the antisemitism cratic process. Future slates should be de - row. In response some Labour left members cided through open discussion and created a Twitterstorm campaign to get Wat - participation rather than backroom stitch son to resign. ups. But the problem of antisemitism in Labour Willsman’s apology for offence and his and on the left is real, it is just that many commitment to refer himself to equalities Labour members do not recognise it. Primar - training is a start but it’s a long way from ily the left needs a deeper understanding him, or others understanding the root of the what is involved in antisemitism on the left. Pete Willsman was dropped, but how did the left slate get decided in the first place? problem. For example, Momentum wel - The Willsman affair illustrates some of the comes Willsman’s apology but make no fur - problems of lack of recognition and the ob - That Willsman’s comments were made in tice of secret recordings almost immediately. ther comment. stacles involved in dealing with those. mid-July and were reflected almost verbatim It is galling that the comments Willsman The problem is here is rooted in a lack of Willsman was dropped because of his rant in a written report Willsman himself circu - made, and documented in his report, only common understanding of the specifities of at a National Executive Committee (NEC) in lated immediately after the NEC meeting. garners a response from Momentum and oth - left antisemitism. This is not generally a which he said he had seen no evidence of an - Then a conveniently leaked recording came ers when it hits the mainstream media. We racialised hostility to Jews as Jews, although tisemitism in the Labour Party, despite sitting out just after NEC ballot papers. That is now don’t know for sure because there is no that can be an element. It sees sees Jews or on the Disputes Panel for many years, and is standard operating procedure by the Labour record of attendance at the NEC meeting in Zionism or Zionists or Israel as more power - currently dealing with multiple complaints right. Ever since Corbyn was elected as question, but five other members of the cur - ful than other groups, nationalisms or states, of antisemitism. leader segments of NEC meetings have been rent Momentum-backed slate may have been as organised conspiratorially or with the po - His false assertion that the issue is being leaked, the press have been briefed during there, and heard Willsman speak. tential to exert a hidden power. driven by Trump supporters in the Jewish meetings and no doubt many audio record - What did they say to Willsman at the time? Stephen Bush in the New Statesman argues community is therefore ludicrous — was he ings have been made. The right-wing in So there are divisions within the slate, as that the tension on the Labour left has the asleep in all these meetings? It was also Labour continues to fight for control. on the left, on the issue of antisemitism. Leader’s Office on one side believing this to bound to be seen as implying that almost all NEC members should not accept being se - Rather than explore these politically Momen - be a discussion of how you can acceptably of these complaints, if they have come from cretly recorded but nonetheless it has become tum, or rather the Officers of Momentum’s criticise Israel, and those on the other side Jews, were just factional weapons rather than a fact of life. In addition, we the want the con - National Coordinating Group, sought to deal who think there is a genuine problem with well-founded, evidenced, or perceived con - tent of these meetings to be publicly avail - with the issue bureaucratically. The outcry antisemitism, (and the latter group, to be fair, cerns. able. Ironically, Willsman is one of only two appears to be linked to the tone of Willsmans include Momentum’s founder Jon Lansman). The incident exposed fractures on the left constituency NEC members who writes reg - remarks while the substance of the comments A lot of Momentum supporters now be - between Momentum, its supporters, other ular reports of the meetings thus providing appear not have bothered them. lieve dropping Willsman is not just a move to parts of the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance some information of their proceedings. Pub - Darren Williams and Claudia Webbe have save face in response to bad PR but a capitu - and the Labour Leader’s office. licly accessible minutes with clear records of backed Ken Livingstone, Yasmin Dar has ap - lation to Zionism and that the media are decisions made would undermine the prac - peared at commemorations of the Islamic pushing a narrative that antisemitism is a major problem in order to stop all criticism of Israel. But this charge could lead into anti - semitism — that there is a conspiracy to stop criticism of Israel. There is a serious need for education and debate to entangle all the issues. Knee-jerk re - actions to bad publicity, including Twitter - storms and the like, are not good enough responses to underlying problems. The left does have a problem with anti - semitism — defined as we have above, as a particular form of political hostility which draws on ideas of conspiracy. Leaving education on this matter to one group — either Jewish Labour Movement of Jewish Voice for Labour or even the Labour Party itself — is not enough. This isn’t about getting people to shut up or attending equalities training. It’s essential, in fact, that open argument and differing views about Israel, Zionism, Palestinian soli - darity and antisemitism, are shared. Only then can we come to any sort of common un - derstanding of the problems we face and how we can tackle it. Censorship, expulsions or simple de - nunciation, whether from Momentum higher ups or from the Labour Party legal department, will not resolve these prob - lems.

The next issue of Solidarity, number 477 will be published on Wednesday 29 August. 6 LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM Email your letters to [email protected] Don’t leave fighting antisemitism to the right

tinction between racism and nationalism is By Sean Matgamna habitually blurred. There is a false definition There is something dreamlike in the tur - of Israel as constitutionally racist (there is an moil in and around the Labour Party about identification of Israel with South Africa). antisemitism. Episodes occur — Pete This is one of the main roots of “left” anti - Willsman on the seventy rabbis are pulled semitism. out of the memory hole; the meeting The truth, I think, is that Corbyn really Jeremy Corbyn hosted back in 2010... does not “get it”, or “get” enough of it. In the There are demands for confession, retrac - thirty-five years he has been an MP, and ear - tion and contrition. Corbyn goes through the lier, he has lived in a world in which what motions of responding to the latest revela - other people defined as antisemitism was tions, disinterred memory of old events. For commonplace among much of the ostensible sure, his opponents in the party and the Tory left. Labour Party antisemitism is in large press are out to get him. part an infection from the ostensible left. One of two things then: either they’re Corbyn and the people around him and telling the truth on this matter or they aren’t. much of the left have been desensitised to an - a nearly plain statement that antisemitism, against Israel and those who support it. They Either there is a problem of antisemitism in tisemitism because it has long been the norm and the specially “left” antisemitism, is justi - are not fools. They know that the “Corbyn the party or there isn’t. Either his critics are on the ostensible left. He says he is for two fied. That is what many of the “left” anti- surge” has put into power in the Labour lying or exaggerating, and should then be states in Israel-Palestine. Some of his political semites think. Under criticism the paper Party people who are “absolute anti-Zion - stood up to and faced down. Or they are friends do not support a two-state solution. apologised for printing it and retracted, for ists”, people who are radical anti-Israel telling the truth; in which case Corbyn The intense rhetoric against Israel, its demon - what that was worth. zealots and supporters of Arab or Islamic should energetically set about digging out isation, the comments on events, is always at The Morning Star of course, as the Daily conquest of Israel and the forcible abolition Labour Party antisemitism by the roots. a higher volume, is more intense, more all- Worker during the full scale anti-semitic cam - of the Jewish state. Corbyn agrees there is a problem. He re - encompassing, more hysterical, more “hate paign of Stalin in the years before 1953, fed And that there are people, including sponds under pressure, moves in the direc - Israel” than is compatible with a two-state so - into the labour movement much that has Jeremy Corbyn, who have peacefully co-ex - tion his critics are pointing to, but it is as if he lution. now become the commonplace wisdom of isted with such people, and shared platforms cannot understand what the fuss is about. He That of course means recognising not only the ostensible left. For instance the equation and publications with them, instead of de - apologises, retracts, insists that he meant no that the Palestinians have a right to their own of Zionism and Nazism. nouncing and stigmatising them for the anti- antisemitism or to be offensive; was not re - state, but also that Israel is a legitimate state semites they are. That for this left, though its sponsible for and did not agree with what and has a right to defend itself. The full scale sympathy and solidarity is the “good rea - implications of the continual stream of hatred POLITICAL SIFTING other people said, uncontradicted, in his The Labour left, the Corbyn surge, will in - son”, hostility to Israel — any Israel, with any spewed out does not match with the belief presence. evitably undergo a political process of policy on the Palestinians — is a great deal that Israel has a right to exist and defend it - But everything is low energy, insufficient, sifting, differentiating its political posi - more powerful than support for the Palestini - self. It matches the view that Israel is not a le - ineffectual, can be seen or portrayed as eva - tions. The process of sifting and sorting ans. That it is autonomous, self-justifying, gitimate state and that it has no right of sive, as lacking conviction. John McDonnell out on this question is long, long overdue. self-sustaining. That it finds or merges in has gently distanced himself from Corbyn. self-defence. The kitsch revolutionary left is with earlier strains of antisemitism, of which saturated with it and it is infectious. It is seriously to be doubted that there are Corbyn can’t get a grip on the situation. many supporters of the left among the lead - there are many. His article in the Guardian (3 August) is the This crisis about antisemitism in the The horrible truth that has to be faced is Labour Party was a long time germinating. ers of the Jewish community or the editors of latest case in point. Much good sentiment the three newspapers that cater to the Jewish that large parts of the ostensible— for all and promises. A principled stand on the right Take the Morning Star , the paper with which practical purposes — is anti-semitic, hostile Corbyn seems to agree — he hasn’t said oth - community. On a certain level their general to criticise Israel. politics will feed into the anti-Corbyn agita - to Israel’s very existence, denying any Israeli And then he defines the situation as one in erwise — and for which he used to write a right to self-defence. That it endorses and cir - column until 2015. Recently it published an tion. But they are not in this being right-wing which the Palestinians have been victims of zealots or hypocrites. And there will be some culates malice-ridden accounts of the history racism. Losers in a prolonged national con - article loudly proclaiming that antisemitism of Zionism and Israel and that from that in places like Britain will stop if and only if amongst them who play close attention to the flict, yes. Victims of wrong, yes. But the dis - left, and its incipient pogromist agitation comes emotion-ridden hostility to Jews who Israel stops ill-treating the Palestinians. It is defend Israel and refuse to see it as racism Corbyn’s confusion on anti-Zionism This is, at best, confusing on a number of round antisemitic worldview in which Zion - By Dale Street levels. ists/Jews are blamed for all the world’s There are lots of positives in Jeremy Cor - It is true that in the 1970s some on the left evils. But it is an “anti-Zionism” which in - byn’s article “I will root antisemites out of argued that Zionism was a form of racism. It volves — to use an expression of Dave Hirsh Labour (the Guardian 3 August). was a canard propagated internationally by — antisemitic ways of thinking. Corbyn condemns attempts to belittle con - the Soviet Union, then in the midst of the Instead of confronting that particular form cerns expressed by the Jewish community. most virulently antisemitic state-organised of antisemitism — the actually existing one He acknowledges that Labour has “a real campaign the world had seen since Nazi in the Labour Party (and in the trade union problem” in that trust between the Party and Germany. movement as well) — Corbyn’s article re - the Jewish community is at a “low ebb”. He But some on the left have continued to treats into the comfort zone of incontrovert - pledges that Labour will take steps to re - argue that Zionism is a form or racism (or ible examples of antisemitism: solve that problem. fascism) ever since, and still do so. If it was “Labour staff have seen examples of Holo - A Labour government will defend all as - “mistaken” (a rather charitable expression) caust denial, crude stereotypes of Jewish pects of Jewish life. Antisemitism will be to hold that view in the 1970s, it is surely bankers, conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 driven out of the Labour Party for good. Ed - equally “mistaken” to do so today. on Israel, and even one individual who ap - So why, so to speak, kick that issue back thor of Contemporary Left Antisemitism ) peared to belive that Hitler had been misun - ucation and training will provide party which makes exactly that point: members with a “deeper understanding” of into the 1970s? derstood.” Then there is the statement: “To assert that “(Those who equate) Zionism = Nazism = Corbyn gives a commitment in his article antisemitism. racism = apartheid license people to relate to Further consultation will take place with ‘anti-Zionism is racism’ now is wrong too.” to “root out antisemitism in our party” and True, anti-Zionism is not necessarily Jews who do not identify themselves as anti- to “drive antisemitism out of the party for Jewish community groups about Labour’s Zionists as racists, Nazis, or defenders of Code of Conduct on Antisemitism, widely racism, just as criticism of Israel is not nec - good.” apartheid. To relate to Jews in this way is But the first stage in achieving that criticised for not have included all Interna - essarily antisemitic. But the form in which dangerous. The danger is that it will lead to doubtlessly genuine held goal involves, to tional Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ex - antisemitism expresses itself today is pri - the emergence of an antisemitic movement.” use Corbyn’s own words, “fostering a amples of antisemitism word-for-word. marily in the guise and language of anti- Most contemporary forms of “anti-Zion - deeper understanding” of (the) anti - But then Corbyn writes: “In the 1970s Zionism and hostility to the realisation of the ism” also incorporate, albeit to differing de - semitism” contained in certain forms of some on the left mistakenly argued that Zionist project, i.e. the existence of the state grees, traditional antisemitic tropes — rich “anti-Zionism”, as opposed to giving anti- ‘Zionism is racism’. That was wrong, but to of Israel. Jews/Zionists, powerful Jews/Zionists, ma - Zionism an unqualified clean bill of assert that ‘anti-Zionism is racism’ now is Ironically, Corbyn’s own article contains a hyperlink to an article by Dave Hirsh (au - nipulative Jews/Zionists, etc., etc. health. wrong too.” This brand of “anti-Zionism” is not an all- Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM 7 and imperialism incarnate. That is, most Jews alive. That it is a left that allies with Palestinian (Hamas) and other clerical fascists and with A reply to some confused critics groups of people in Arab and Muslim-major - ity countries who circulate old Nazi anti- semitic filth. That itself circulates the old Our alternative to BDS is direct links be - Stalinist anti-semitic filth. That it consists of By Dan Katz tween the British labour movement and people who are not abashed, shamed or in - Five Labour Party members have written Palestinian and Israeli working class and hibited to find themselves running in a pack an article ‘The AWL, Zionism and the peace organisations. In other words we have in full cry after the very people on which the struggle for equal rights in Israel/Pales - a positive, constructive alternative to worst racist atrocity in recorded history was tine’ (bit.ly/2OmaOWX) in which they ac - BDS: don’t break links, make links for soli - inflicted. cuse the AWL of being a “Zionist front darity. In their perception of the left here, Jewish organisation” outside the Palestinian sol - It is also to the point that our critics have people — whether they are of the left or the idarity movement (defined as being the no interest in the labour movement – Pales - right in their general politics — are not mis - PSC, BDS campaigns, Jewish Voice for tinian, Israeli or British. They do not write taken to distrust and be fearful of that group Labour etc). about the unions or labour movements. The that now leads the Labour Party. They know They accuse us of “justifying settler colo - AWL is Marxist and this is to the centre of our that the tendency of the ostensible left to use concerns. Nazi images and comparisons — preposter - nialism” and justifying “apartheid”. They ac - cuse “powerful” organisations such as Jeremy Corbyn has a position on boycotts ous in themselves — to express opposition of Israel which is similar to ours. Corbyn is and criticism to Israel is specifically and Labour Friends of Israel as organising a witch-hunt in the Labour Party. also against a blanket boycott of Israel (with - pointedly anti-Jewish, a form of jeering and out getting the idiotic abuse we receive). thick-skinned baiting of all Jewish people in These writers oppose a two-state settle - ment and seem to be for a single, democratic their recent tragic history. Antisemitism on the left state — but the authors are coy, or confused, On one level episodes like the scandal– In a particularly idiotic statement the critics mongering around the Willsman affair blows and don’t use this phrase, directly, to express their own views. They use these words: “uni - condemn us for giving ourselves the right “to it out of all proportion. He is an irascible old determine what and who is antisemitic, versal exercise of full civil and political rights, Hamas rocket attacks simply help the Israeli man. His remarks at the Labour Party Na - based on their own ideological criteria.” Yes, as the basis for the freely expressed, demo - right to persuade Israeli workers that there is tional Executive, are the words of someone indeed, we are guilty of having our own cratic self-determination of both Jewish Is - no chance of a peace settlement with the stung in his Labour Party patriotism and sim - ideas and using them systematically. raeli and Palestinian communities.” Palestinians. ple-mindedly blustering and harrumphing. The AWL has a very long record of oppos - Their document is a demagogic, self-righ - Our critics object to describing Hamas as But what he said illustrates the scale and ing antisemitism on the left. And, yes, we teous mess. clerical fascist. They have not been paying at - depth of the problem of left antisemitism in think we understand contemporary anti - tention. Or perhaps our radical critics think the party. He hasn’t noticed! But is inability semitism. Where we stand it impolite to define the nature of an “organ - to recognise left antisemitism or give it The current — justified — furore in and The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) is isation of the oppressed” — something that proper weight in itself antisemitism? against the Labour Party against critics of Is - a revolutionary Marxist organisation. We say really shouldn’t be mentioned at a South The serious question is can Corbyn deal rael who deny the right of the Israeli Jews to the Palestinian people are oppressed and that London dinner party. with antisemitism in the Labour Party? Is not self-determination must be utterly mystify - oppression must be opposed and ended. Hamas toppled the PLO in Gaza using asking him to strike at his long-time friends ing for our radical critics. and associates — including his right-hand The AWL is for a two states settlement be - their own militias, a movement on the streets tween the Israeli and Palestinian peoples as man Seamus Milne — too much like asking similar to a fascist movement. When Hamas How many states? the best possible, most democratic solution to came to power they purged Fatah and secu - him to lift himself up by his bootstraps? Our critics argue that Israel, the West Bank the conflict. The Palestinian people have the lar activists, killing some and driving others Corbyn is for two states. If he takes that se - and Gaza have been governed as a single unit right to a state alongside Israel, with the same out of Gaza. They purged teachers, for exam - riously he should want to sort out the “de - since 1967. That must be news to the people rights as Israel. We have the same position as ple, and now to be a teacher in Gaza means stroy Israel” people in the Labour Party. He of Gaza who have been cut off and hemmed the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, the being vetted by a Hamas mosque. At the should insist that advocates of the destruc - in by the Israeli state. PLO/Fatah and the Israeli peace movement. same time they introduced stricter dress tion of Israel have no place in the Labour And finally, to deal with our critics’ version Amongst the international trade unions and codes for school girls in a segregated educa - Party; that comparisons of Israel when it does of a single, democratic (but not secular, ap - parties of the Second International the big tion system. things we don’t like, to the Nazis is not ac - parently) state: “universal exercise of full civil majority are for Two States. Hamas also attacked the trade unions — ceptable; that it is pointedly, and deliberately, and political rights, as the basis for the freely The AWL wants the Israeli and Palestinian the journalists’ and heath workers’ unions, offensively anti-semitic. It is necessary to pre - expressed, democratic self-determination of workers to unite in the struggle for socialism for example — in Gaza. And Hamas used vi - serve the right to criticise Israel as severely as both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian commu - and democracy, and considers mutual recog - olence against opposition protests — for ex - events dictate. But denial of Israel’s right to nities.” nition of national rights to be the only basis ample, shooting at a demonstration held in exist and defend itself is not criticising Israeli If this means anything they expect “good for such unity. memory of Yasser Arafat, killing several actions. It is possible to make specific criti - sense” will prevail, delivered by some mech - Despite the right-wing governments in Is - marchers. cisms or condemn Israeli actions without re - anism as yet unknown to history. Let us as - rael and the US — hostile to the Palestinians The police, judiciary and other repressive sorting to obscene and preposterous sume magic is involved. Some unknown — and the demoralisation created by the lack institutions are entirely creations of Hamas, equations. fairy will descend and, waving the fairy of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, the responsible to Hamas alone. Hamas have cre - Corbyn should sort out the anti-semites. wand will persuade the Israeli Jews to do latest poll of West Bank public opinion (PSR, ated a single-party, clerical, police state. And by the way: isn’t it time someone what no other people have done before. De - April 2018) still shows support for the Two Hamas are clerical fascists. So in Gaza we started a “Labour’s Critical Labour spite the Holocaust, the experience of living State settlement at 48% (the One State solu - not only oppose Israeli policy, but Hamas Friends of Israel” campaign to deal with among hostile states which would destroy tion has 28% support). too. We defend the trade unions and workers left antisemitism — to assert and exercise them given half a chance, they would dis - The Two States position is the popular, in Gaza against Hamas. We defend secular - the right of those who are not anti- mantle their state and blend into a society semites, and who do not advocate the de - mainstream position, including among the ism. We don’t forget we are Marxists. Palestinian people. with an Arab majority. struction of Israel to criticise Israel where Ta-da! Problem solved! It is not the AWL who is on the fringe of BDS and when necessary? It would nice to be able to believe that the this debate in the international labour move - We are not, in principle, against all boycott Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews – hostile ment, it is our Single State critics. campaigns and we have been in favour of enemies for decades — could fold themselves some targeted sanction campaigns against Is - peacefully into a single state, without borders All “solidarity” is good solidarity? rael. There is good reason, for example, to separating each side from the other. But, of It is true, of course, that amongst the support a future Labour government intro - Further reading on course, the notion is a fantasy. Nonsense. “Smash Israel” far left, the Morning Star Stal - ducing an arms boycott to pressure Israel to Given the scope, intensity and scale of the inists, and that broad swathe of left public negotiate with the Palestinians. left antisemitism Arab-Israeli conflict no other solution is pos - opinion that these groups have mis-edu - BDS, as an overall strategy for Palestinian A collection of over 50 articles sible other than formal separation. Living in cated, Workers’ Liberty is often in a minority. liberation, though, is counterproductive. The separate states for a long period of peace and pamphlets: We favour solidarity with the Palestinians, academic boycott, for example, is particularly could ease the tensions and hostilities be - of course. But that solidarity must be compat - stupid. Why should left wing British aca - www.workersliberty.org/left-as tween the two peoples and lay the basis for ible with — not contradict — our overall demics not travel to conferences Israel, when reducing barriers and borders in the future. Includes: aims. And, for the same reasons, we will not their presence might well be useful, politi - And nowhere else is such a thing pro - support any and all forms of Palestinian re - cally? And why shouldn’t an Israeli microbi - • The current debate on posed. Would our critics suggest removing sistance. ologist write for a European science journal? the border between, say, France and Ger - left antisemitism For example, we oppose Hamas rocket at - This apolitical (without even any consider - many, who have been at peace since 1945? tacks and Islamist suicide bombings. Such at - ation of an Israeli academics politics, and • The anatomy of left No, the borders remain and peaceful cooper - tacks are carried out by groups who want to without recognising that many in Israeli ation within the framework of the EU has antisemitism destroy Israel and who have no interest in academia favour peace with the Palestinians) helped to bring the peoples closer together. • How to tackle Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and reconcilia - picking out of Israeli Jewish academics high - tion. lights how easy it is for BDS initiatives to slip • Further reading, AWL pamphlet Two Na - antisemitism We, however, want workers’ unity and into hunts for Jews. tions, Two States bit.ly/2M75r0c More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty The dangers of Germany’s new left populism

By Dale Street A founding statement and name (#fair - land) for the new movement were leaked to Sahra Wagenknecht, co-chair of the par - the press in May, which was also the month liamentary fraction of the German left- in which the movement was to have been wing Die Linke party, has announced the launched. launch-date and name for a new extra- But the statement was only an initial draft, parliamentary “broad movement”. Wagenknecht explained, and the name had It will be launched on 4 September, and it been deemed unsuitable. And in any case, by will be called #StandUp. May only a small circle of names had been as - On one level #StandUp — targeted at sociated with the call for a new movement: members of Die Linke, the SPD (German A 77-year-old ex-SDP-politician; a 75-year- Labour Party), the Greens and those not old ex-Green-politician; a songwriter; a nov - members of any party — is a response to last elist; and Bernd Stegemann, author of “The year’s general election results. Ghost of Populism”, in which he had argued The CDU (German Conservative Party) for a left populism to counter right-wing and and the CSU (regional Conservative Party, in neo-liberal populism. Bavaria) saw their vote fall by eight percent but still won the highest percentage of votes POPULISM (33%). The FDP (German Lib-Dems) in - By this time the proposed new “broad left movement” had become… a new “broad creased its share of the vote by six percent movement”! and scored 11%. In early June an article by Wagenknecht The far-right Alternative for Germany and Stegemann cited Podemos, “La France (AfD) won over 12% and emerged as the insoumise” and Jeremy Corbyn (“with him third-largest party in the Parliament, with 94 the Labour Party has undergone a genuine seats. In the 2013 general election it had not renewal”) as examples of “successful left won a single seat. movements”. But what the article advocated The SPD, coalition partner of the was: CDU/CSU in the 2013-17 government, suf - Across Europe the populist right has been on the rise “A broad movement which stands above fered its worst result since the Second World parties, a mixture of an unconventional style War: 20%. The SPD’s decision to re-enter a and Stegemann, globalisation is the mecha - there is above all one instance in which gen - of politics, modern digital infrastructure, coalition government with the CDU/CSU nism through which multinational concerns uine democracy can exist and the re- classic social demands, and faces which are condemns it to further decline. “circumvent democratic rights, avoid taxes democratisation of which we must not household names and who are not pri - The Greens secured a slight increase in and put pressure on indigenous labour mar - champion: the state with its various levels (of marily politicians themselves.” their share of the vote (0.5%) as too did Die kets.” government) as it has developed histori - A fortnight later, in another newspaper ar - Linke (0.6%, an increase of half a million cally.” ticle, Wagenknecht argued: votes). This was the second-best result ever GLOBALISATION The Eurozone is also incapable of reform. “We need a new broad movement: to win for Die Linke in parliamentary elections. But Globalisation, writes Wagenknecht, has Instead, “a better idea would be to restore to back democracy, for fairness in how we relate benefited the few and disadvantaged the the headline figures concealed a more com - the democratic states their own currency and to each other, for distribution (of wealth) many: plex story. to introduce controls on the movement of based on work, and for a politics of good- “Globalisation benefits above all the elites. Its vote increased in cities across former capital in currency exchanges.” neighbourly relations with other countries.” The overwhelming majority is the loser. … West Germany. But in former East Germany Wagenknecht’s writings are peppered with A succession of newsletters from “Team There is a small layer of the population which it lost 400,000 votes to the AfD. In Germany references to “the finance lobby”, “the elite”, Sahra” (“Politics for the Majority, Not the benefits from unbridled global capitalism. as a whole, only 11% of the unemployed and “the establishment”, “the money aristoc - Millionaires.”) in the following weeks like - And there is a majority which would live bet - 10% of industrial workers voted for them — racy”, “the top ten thousand”, “economic wise referred to a “broad movement”, as too ter in a strong social state with job security.” less than half the percentages in both cate - feudalism”, “international finance capital”, does the movement’s now live website: Wagenknecht’s hostility to globalisation gories who voted SPD, CDU/CSU or AfD. “predatory investors”, and “monopolists “#StandUp — The Broad Movement — The feeds into hostility to the European Union, Two months after the elections Oskar La - who produce nothing” but have “unearned Citizens Must Be Listened To.” with an added xenophobic twist: fontaine responded to the result by calling for incomes of millions”. (“No-one listens to us” is also the theme of “The larger, the more complex, and the less “a new broad movement of the political left”: Bankers, speculators, casino-economy the video clips on the website: homogenous a political unit is, the less it is “I’m thinking of Corbyn in Great Britain – spivs — for Wagenknecht these are, so to “I ask myself if there aren’t certain groups capable of functioning. If there are also dif - a credible person and a programme for the speak, the real enemy, not capitalism per se. in Germany which we have been neglecting ferences in language and culture, then it is a many. Or Podemos and “La France in - Economic wealth and political power are for a long time. … Workers feel that no-one hopeless undertaking.” soumise” in Spain and France. The political both concentrated in the hands of this one has been listening to them for years. They But Wagenknecht does not propose an EU- left is increasingly losing influence. The SPD percent. don’t have a voice any more. … The only way wide campaign for democratisation of EU and Die Linke did not even pick up 30% (of In support of this argument Wagenknecht it can function is: listen to people, take it in, structures, nor EU-wide co-ordination by the votes) together.” repeats a quote popularly but not necessarily work on it.”) trade unions to defend and level up workers’ Lafontaine was a former leading figure in accurately attributed to “the legendary Although the launch of #StandUp has been rights and rates of pay. the SPD and a left-wing breakaway (WASG). founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty”, hooked onto last year’s election results, the Instead, she proposes a return to sovereign In 2007 the WASG merged with the PDS Mayer Amschel Rothschild: “Give me control initiative is rooted in the much longer-term national states — as if they had ceased to (post-German-unification successor to the over the money of a nation, and I don’t care political evolution of Lafontaine and Wa - exist within the framework of the EU. ruling East German Communist Party) to cre - who makes its laws.” genknecht. Ironically, while British Lexiters argue that ate Die Linke, in which Lafontaine now plays Wagenknecht’s solution is not class strug - Both were once seen as icons of the hard the EU is a front for the dictates of Germany, a role akin to that of elder statesman. gle against the power of (all forms of) capital left. Lafontaine even had the honour of being Wagenknecht portrays Germany as a victim Lafontaine repeated the call the following but the creation of a functioning competitive denounced by the Sun as “the most danger - of the EU. (But that’s the thing about pop - month: “We need a left broad movement, a market economy, freed from the predations ous man in Europe”. But in more recent years ulists the world over: it’s always the fault of kind of left-wing people’s party, in which of finance capital, coupled with support for both have struck out in a much more right- someone else somewhere else.) left-wingers and sections of the Greens and small and medium enterprises: wing and distinctly populist direction. Wagenknecht writes: “If we want to live the SPD come together.” “In left-wing discourse, just as much as in The core of their politics (which has been again in genuinely democratic communities, In January Wagenknecht took up the pro - right-wing discourse, capitalism is readily articulated more by Wagenknecht than by there is there only the opposite road (away posal. She cited Corbyn and Melanchon (fig - equated with a market economy. This is fun - Lafontaine) is the contradiction between from globalisation). It is not production urehead of “La France insoumise”) as damentally wrong. … Markets are not to be (bad) globalisation and finance capital and which must be internationalised, but the eco - examples to be followed and described the abolished. On the contrary, they must be (good) national states and small-scale private nomic structures which must be decen - new movement as one which would be “an - saved from capitalism [by which Wa - enterprise. tralised and reduced in size.” chored in the internet.” genknecht means: finance capital].” According to the article by Wagenknecht And again: “For the foreseeable future “An entrepreneur is someone who leads FEATURE 8-9 “Back to the peace politics of Willy Brandt (German Chancellor, 1969-74). For a renewed strong social state. Lift the tax burden on small and medium incomes, and increase taxes on big fortunes and big concerns. Secu - rity in everyday life: more police and better- equipped police.” “A European Germany in a united Europe of sovereign democracies, while maintaining cultural independence and with respect for tradition and identity.” According to Die Tageszeitung, a more re - cent draft of the broad movement’s founding statement amends or removes a lot of such excesses and has “a more left-social-demo - cratic tone”. But even if the tone has changed – the newspaper has not published the latest draft — there is no reason to suppose a change in the underlying politics. In fact, there would be no point in launching #StandUp if there had been any substantial change in the un - derlying politics. The fact that #StandUp has a website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account but not yet a founding political statement is also symptomatic of the kind of movement Wa - genknecht is trying to build. As Die Tageszeitung puts it: “Similar movements — Momentum in Britain, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece — were successful only because Sahra Wagenknecht addresses a Die Linke rally they had active and energetic young peo - ple at their core. That will not work with and builds up a business with their own Even if it is not her intention, her emphasis of refugees and immigrants is linked to sub - elderly academics and ex-politicians. ideas, power and creativity. Any reasonable on defence of German national sovereignty stantial problems. … The state must now do #StandUp is a paradox – a movement economy needs good entrepreneurs. But it against encroachments by the “EU gang of everything to make sure that people in our which is being founded from above.” does not need capitalists [by which Wa - technocrats” likewise chimes in with far-right country can again feel safe. That presupposes genknecht means: finance capitalists].” demagogy about Germany’s lack of ‘real’ in - that we know who is in our country.” (Wa - “If we overcome today’s economic feudal - dependence. genknecht) ism … then the ground would be taken away (The far-right “Engaged Democrats “Whoever misuses their rights as a guest In Defence of The from under the feet of capitalism [read: fi - Against the Americanisation of Europe”, for has also lost those rights.” (Wagenknecht, nance capital], but genuine entrepreneurs example, call for: “… a sovereign and neutral speaking after an outbreak of criminal activ - would encounter far better conditions. … To Germany, peace treaties and withdrawal of ities in Cologne’s 2016 New Year celebra - Bolsheviks: new put it particularly sharply: We must save not occupation forces; direct democracy, referen - tions.) just democracy but basically also the market dum, and regionalisation; adherence to the “Behind the supposed government there book coming soon economy from capitalism.” German Basic Law and a genuine German stands an invisible government. Then as now In a thriving market economy, “the goals constitution.”) we have an invisible government which, in Max Shachtman’s response to Ernest would no longer be maximising short-term reality, determines the fate of this world.” Erber in 1949, deserves to be consid - profits but: long-term business growth, solid THIRD WAY (Lafontaine) ered one of the classic polemics of the profits in order to finance investments, and Wagenknecht also claims that her promo - “(Chancellor Merkel) shares responsibility Marxist movement. no increase in profits by means of precarious tion of a market economy amounts to a (for a terrorist attack in Ansbach in July 2016). It summarises and vindicates the Bolshe - jobs or relocation to low-wage countries.” “Third Way” between capitalism and the Alongside of the uncontrolled opening of viks’ work to build a revolutionary party Stalinism of which she was once a fervent and lead a revolution. Wagenknecht “marries up” her arguments borders, spending on the police has been cut It makes the case for continuing so - in support of sovereign national states and a admirer. She admits to feeling uncomfort - to breaking point.” (Wagenknecht) able with the term, and with good reason. cialist efforts in times both of high and market economy, and also gives a particu - “Cosmopolitanism, anti-racism and the of low political temperature. larly German twist to them, by portraying the The genealogy of the notion of a market protection of minorities are the feel-good economy being a “Third Way” between cap - economically dynamic but socially conserva - label which conceals a brutal redistribution • See www.workersliberty.org/books for tive post-war Germany as a veritable Golden italism and communism can be traced back (of wealth) from the bottom to the top.” (Wa - more information about our books. Age: to antisemites in Imperial Germany through genknecht) “For the first time in industrial states per - the Nazis to contemporary fascism. In essence, the politics of Wagenknecht and sonal standards of living for all sections of the Although presented as a way to challenge Lafontaine amount to a jumble of various population increased. Inequality declined, as the rise of the AfD, the core political ideas es - forms of economic and political regression. did poverty, and a broad middle class poused by Wagenknecht (and Lafontaine) are Back to national currencies. Back to the na - emerged.” positively dangerous. They incorporate and tional borders lowered by European integra - “Between 1945 and 1971 there was not a express right-populist ways of thinking and tion. Back to the ‘social market economy’ of single serious banking crisis. No-one missed legitimise the politics of the AfD. Ludwig Erhardt (CDU Minister of the Econ - all those derivatives, securities and other fi - Applied to day-to-day political issues they omy and then Chancellor, 1949-66). And back nancial innovations, the existential economic become even more dangerous, in that they to an economy based on small-scale capitalist importance of which is now the topic of dis - shift the ground of political debate onto that production. honest fairy tales by the finance lobby.” occupied by the AfD as well as opening the The populism of that political and eco - It would be ridiculous to accuse Wa - door to conspiracy theories: nomic regression was reflected in the #fair - genknecht, as some German commentators “People have a right to expect that the state land statement leaked to the press in May: have, of peddling classic 1930s National So - protects them from competition in the form “We stand up for fairness and social cohe - cialism. of dumping. The right to asylum for the po - sion, for peace and disarmament. For not a But it would be equally ridiculous to deny litically persecuted must remain. But labour few, internal European freedom of movement that her distinction between (good) produc - migration is a problem, especially in the low- and immigration mean above all: more com - tive entrepreneurship and (bad) finance cap - pay sector.” (Wagenknecht) petition and badly paid jobs.” ital smacks uncomfortably of the Nazi “Whoever crosses the border illegally “If politics looks on as hate-preachers of a distinction between schaffendes Kapital (pro - should be offered the chance to return volun - radicalised Islam inculcate on five-year-olds ductive capital) and raffendes Kapital (preda - tarily. If he refuses this offer, the only option a worldview which makes integration almost tory capital), with its inbuilt antisemitic left is deportation.” (Lafontaine) impossible, then the social climate is poi - component. “Taking in and integrating a large number soned.” 10 FEATURE More online at www.workersliberty.org An honest opponent of “pseudo-anti-imperialism”

Paul Hampton reviews “Indefensible: was in alliance with ISIS for much of the war. today’s actual conditions, with a different Democracy, Counterrevolution, and the The book shows the extent of outside mili - correlation of national states, multinational Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism” by Rohini tary intervention in support of Assad. corporations and finance bodies. She is right Hensman (Haymarket, 2018) Hezbollah backed the regime from the begin - to acknowledge Lenin’s contribution to na - ning, while Iran’s IRGC Quds Force was in - tional liberation across the globe his stance of volved from the first year, training fighters supporting all the oppressed and opposing Rohini Hensman’s book is a welcome in - inside Iran, Syria and Lebanon. The Assad all oppressors. Lenin was clear that in his day tervention into debates on the interna - regime was close to falling in July 2015 when (as in ours) “the real anti-imperialist force” tional socialist left. Russia actively increased its support with was “the socialist proletariat” and that Marx - Above all it is a damning indictment of the airstrikes. ists “will not support a struggle of the reac - state of those broad sections of the left, espe - Hensman is politically sharp on the Kur - tionary classes against imperialism”. cially in Britain, who have embraced a nega - dish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its Hensman appears to hold an anarchist-in - tive, anti-Western, anti-US, “pseudo-anti-im - armed wing, the People’s Protection Units fluenced interpretation of the early Russian perialism” — a politics that is also effectively (YPG). The PYD’s model of democratic self- revolution, making highly critical remarks of pro-imperialist (of Russia, China, Iran), anti- government in Rojava may have gained the Lenin-Trotsky regime, implying that it democratic, anti-liberatory and ultimately widespread acclaim, but these experiments paved the way for Stalin. Worse, she seems anti-working class. took place within the context of a deal bro - to subscribe to the characterisation of Stalin - The central locus of the book is the conflict kered by Putin between Assad and the PYD ist societies as state capitalist, following the in Syria, where much of the left has been ut - to attack ISIS and the FSA. The author Rohini Hensman position of the British SWP’s founder, Tony terly wretched. But Hensman probes deeper, Hensman is equally critical of the US, Cliff. criticising the Russian and Iranian states that France, Germany and Britain, from their journalists such as Seamus Milne, John Pilger, This is unconvincing. Cliff described Rus - oppress their own peoples as well as stand - token call for Assad to go and their luke - Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and others. sia, China, Cuba etc as societies with different ing behind Assad. She spares no blows warm backing of the FSA. She rightly de - Henman highlights where the organised left dynamics to Western capitalism, but he against the Serb imperialists (and Croatian nounces the role of the UN for complicity has embraced reactionaries in modern con - called them “state capitalism” only as a nationalists) who oppressed Bosnian and with Assad’s war crimes. The book champi - flicts. Including: badge of convenience. Like other state capi - Kosovar Muslims, nor the Islamist forces that ons the resilience of civil society organisa - • The support of Stalinists and some Trot - talist theories he failed to get to grips with have divided Iraq. She makes some useful tions in Syria last year, backed by others in skyists for Khomeini’s regime in Iran and his how these states originated, developed and asides on the conflict with Gaddafi in Libya exile such as the Alliance of Middle-East So - subsequent war with Iraq (such as the British (mostly) disappeared. Hensman’s embrace of (where she backs Gilbert Achcar’s position of cialists. SWP in 1987). Cliff is doubly incoherent because some of not opposing NATO intervention) as well as • Support for Saddam Hussein against the the worst perpetrators of “pseudo-anti-impe - critical comments on Brexit and in favour of US-led coalition after his invasion of Kuwait rialism”, notably the SWP and its spin-offs free movement. This is all refreshingly honest EARLIER CONFLICTS in 1990. such as Counterfire that run the Stop the War and consistent. Hensman explains well the roots of the re - actionary, imperialist role of various other • The SWP’s evenhanded treatment of na - Coalition, still maintain Cliff’s state capitalist protagonists who intervened in Syria. tionalities in the former Yugoslavia, failing to analysis. SYRIA For example how Putin’s brutal wars in recognise the oppression faced by Bosnians But these are differences within a shared The first virtue of Hensman’s book is its Chechnya and later in Ukraine set the copy - and Kosovars and their right to seek arms to framework of consistent democracy and straightforward retelling of the course of book for Russia’s support for Assad. The fight back in the 1990s. working class internationalism. Hensman recent wars, its humane sympathy for the book outlines the terrible role of Serb impe - • The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) re - rightly roots her analysis in the reality of the oppressed affected while damning the rialism in the genocide in Bosnia and later in fusal to criticise Saddam Hussein in the 2003 contemporary world order: “Capitalism is in - governments and forces involved in those the attempted ethnic-cleansing of Kosovo. war and its subsequent backing for Sunni herently global, and it has become even more conflicts. Hensman shows how the Dayton accords and Shia militias (particularly al-Sadr), even so over the past half-century; unless the op - In the long penultimate chapter on Syria, froze ethnic sectarianism, while UN forces fa - when they were repressing workers, women position to it is equally global, capitalism will Hensman outlines the seven-year civil war in cilitated the killing of Muslims by Serb and and students. always win. Globalising the opposition even Syria, as one of the most devastating conflicts Croat militias. • STWC’s veto on any protests against the to neoliberalism, in the first place, requires in recent history. Over 10 million people (half The book describes the reactionary role Tehran regime in 2009, even when there was organising across national borders, which is the population) have been displaced, with played by Khomeini’s regime in Iran draw - a popular movement inside Iran requiring facilitated by freedom of movement across perhaps four million refugees. Probably half ing out its reactionary stance against women, solidarity. those borders. Closing borders, as the far a million people have been killed and two including legal dress codes, forced marriage, • STWC and CND’s “Hands Off Libya” right wants to do, only sabotages the struggle million others wounded, including through stoning, rape, torture and harassment. Hens - campaign to oppose Western intervention against neoliberalism.” gas attacks, barrel bombs, extra-judicial man attacks the brutal Baathist regime of against Gaddafi in 2011. In the last section, Hensman suggests five shootings, beheadings and other bestial acts Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and highlights the • STWC’s invitation to Assad apologist ways to fight the reactionary tendencies of cruelty. emergence of workers’ and women’s organi - Mother Superior Agnes Mariam de la Croix, among the “pseudo-anti-imperialist” left: 1. At the centre of this civil war is the Baathist sations in Iraq after he was toppled by US- November 2013. pursuing the truth and telling the truth; 2. totalitarian rule of Bashar al-Assad, who in - UK forces in 2003. There are many more. bringing morality and humanity back into herited the presidency in 2000. A military- Hensman also never loses sight of the US, Hensman sharply identifies the assump - politics; 3. fighting for democracy; 4. bringing Bonapartist state, bound by family and UK, German, French and other big powers as tions behind these stances: “a West-centrism internationalism centre stage; and 5. pushing sectarian ties, broaches no political freedoms, enemies of the working class in their own which makes them oblivious to the fact that for global institutions to promote human no free trade unions and savage repression. countries and everywhere. But she rejects the people in other parts of the world have rights and democracy. As part of the Arab Spring, on 17 February widely held left view that the reactionary na - agency too, and that they can exercise it both She is right to right to support the concep - 2011 demonstrations rallied in Damascus and ture of the big powers, mandates silence on to oppress others and to fight against oppres - tion of international law (particularly when elsewhere. The regime responded by releas - other enemies of workers and the oppressed, sion; an Orientalism which refuses to ac - enforced from below by civil society), but is ing key Salafist leaders from prison, then con - notably the governments of Russia, Serbia, knowledge that Third World peoples can rather too soft on some existing global bodies spiring with those forces to suppress the Iran, Iraq and Syria. desire and fight for democratic rights and for my taste. Similarly the demand for moral - democratic opposition. Hensman tackles the issue of Muslim po - freedoms taken for granted in the West; and ity is fine if it means class lines, but rather less This set the stage for a bitter civil war be - litical activity sensitively — she cannot be ac - a complete lack of solidarity with people who so if is abstract appeals for justice. The best tween Assad’s state (backed by its allies in cused of Islamophobia. She helpfully do undertake such struggles.” answer to “pseudo-anti-imperialism” is con - Russia, Iran and Hezbollah), against various distinguishes four categories of Muslim pol - sistent working class politics. As such, we can stripes of Islamist armies (such as ISIS and al- itics: Muslim religious believers who are for wholeheartedly agree with her emphasis on Nusra) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA, CRITIQUES AND CONCLUSIONS secular states; Muslim fundamentalists (‘Sal - I have some criticisms of Hensman’s internationalism, democracy and telling backed by the US). ifists’) who want to live in a secular state; po - book. For example, her treatment of truth. Hensman makes a strong case for the sym - litical Islamists who want to establish an Lenin’s book “Imperialism: The Highest To say what is: that is the collective wis - biotic relationship between the Assad regime Islamic state through elections; and political Stage of Capitalism” (1916) is superficial. dom of the classical Marxist tradition. It is the and ISIS, including open collaboration be - Islamists who want to establish an Islamic She claims that Lenin conflated two dis - common conception from Marx and Engels, tween their forces both against the FSA and state through violence. This seems to be a tinct phases of imperialism: an older striving to Luxemburg to Zetkin, and from Lenin and in economic matters such as the Tuweinan useful framework for analysing similarities by the big powers for colonial territory; with Trotsky. Assessing reality and drawing polit - gas facility, Deir Ezzor airport and in Aleppo. and differences of a range of forces, including a later phase of finance capital, which domi - ical conclusions from this analysis, not from ISIS funding came mostly from within Syria Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, nates through loans, credit, trade rules etc. In preconceived formulas or recipes. (not from outside). The juxtaposition of Hensman does a great service not only Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and ISIS. fact Lenin’s book has deeper flaws. It was “Assad or the terrorists” is false on two in opting for the right methodology, but The really powerful element in this book is more of a popular summary with sharp po - counts: Assad’s regime terrorises the Syrian carrying it through in her analyses of Syria the way Hensman skewers the pretentious litical conclusions on the war than it was a co - people with atrocities on a par with ISIS and other conflicts. This is the only way to “pseudo-anti-imperialism” that so damages herent theoretical work. (such as chemical weapons attacks in August face down the “pseudo-anti-imperialism” much of the global left. Readers of Solidarity However Hensman is right that Lenin’s 2013 and November 2016); and the regime on the left today. will enjoy her take-down of so-called left book is not an adequate assessment of Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 11 Latin America, violence, and capitalism

tion. These laws would be regulated by By Pablo Velasco armed forces, the police and judiciary re-es - Marielle Franco, the Brazilian socialist tablished on a consistently democratic basis. feminist and LGBT activist, was brutally After the Russian revolution, some activists gunned down in Rio de Janeiro in March argued for the abolition of bourgeois law and this year. for “proletarian” law. The Bolshevik legal Franco was a member of the Socialism and thinker Evgeni Pashukanis argued that work - Liberty Party (PSOL), a revolutionary split ers’ states in transition to socialism would re - from the Workers’ Party (PT). She was an out - tain and indeed strengthen aspects of spoken critic of police brutality and the bourgeois law, both by legislating for real Brazilian president’s use of the army to inter - thoroughgoing equality and by decriminalis - vene in the favelas of the city. ing certain previously illegal activities. The Franco’s death has been attributed to Paris Commune’s workers’ government gangs, but many suspect it was an extra-ju - managed to rapidly reduce crime during its dicial killing by militias closely linked to the short existence. state. How does this affect the situation in Latin Some 17 of the world’s 50 most violent America today? First, it means recognising cities are in Brazil, while Rio has 10 times as that criminality is endemic to modern capi - many murders as London. Franco argued talism and that real, sustainable solutions re - that working class action, in communities quire socialism. Working class self-emanci - and workplaces, was the answer to both the Protesters hold a banner reading “who killed Marielle?” at protests after Marielle Franco’s death pation will cut the roots of a whole range of state and the gangs. For many workers across social barbarism brought about by bourgeois the globe, socialist answers cannot come mains have been found. earn their means of subsistence through rule. Therefore the labour movement needs quickly enough. The Mexican federal state’s response has waged labour. An irreplaceable social relation to fight for socialism, rather than tinkering Violent deaths are a fact of everyday life in undoubtedly worsened an already dire situ - within capitalism are bourgeois states, with with reforms under capitalism. Socialism is many parts of the world and nowhere is the ation. In 2011, the president sent the army on their desired monopoly of violence over a possible in Latin American conditions, given situation worse than in Latin America. Every to the streets to wage war on the drug cartels, given territory and which attempts to define the size and weight of the working class, year over half a million people are estimated resulting in the murder rate shooting up. The the terms of law (and criminality) within a along with its tremendous militancy over to die as a result of violence across the conti - current president tried the same tactic last given space. decades, including in the teeth of military nent, with more than two-thirds (68%) of year with the same result: some 32 murders Marx understood law as a fundamental rule. those deaths counted as murders alone. This per 100,000 people. condition for the reproduction of capitalism. is more deaths than in wars and worse than The ruling classes of the world have a The wage labour-capital relationship de - TRANSITIONAL DEMANDS some of the worst hotspots of global conflict. whole literature with their “explanations” for pends upon an apparently equal contract be - However the majority of the working class Latin America has the worst rates of mur - murder. Whole departments of universities tween the worker and the capitalist, while in Latin America is not currently organised der. It has eight percent of the world’s popu - and a phalanx of academics pontificate about relations between capitals depend on a struc - for socialism, so what should socialists lation, but 38% of the world’s murders. Just the causes of violent death. Very few point to tured framework of contracts to underpin agitate for in immediate terms? seven states in Latin America (El Salvador, the underlying systemic causes, but prefer to profit, investment, credit and other business First, collective working class self-defence Venezuela, Honduras, Brazil, Guatemala, take refuge behind truism and speculation. activity. Therefore law takes on a particular in the form of workers’ own militias to pro - Mexico and Colombia) account for a quarter The Economist , house-journal of the cos - form under capitalism that is distinctive from tect working class communities from attacks of annual global murders. And those deaths mopolitan, globalising bourgeoisie recently other class societies: effectively a form of by both the state and criminal gangs is the are highly concentrated in the sprawling bar - assessed the situation of violent death in “legal fetishism” that parallels commodity most immediate practical answer. This would rios of Latin American cities: four out of five Latin America, providing a host of quantita - fetishism — the veneer of equality that masks be allied to demands for democratic control violent killings occur on two percent of the tive indices along with a long list of possible exploitation and oppression underneath. over the police and the armed forces, over the same streets. reasons for this continental predicament. Therefore an explanation for violence in judiciary and all aspects of central and local They blame fragile governments, along with Latin America would have to examine the government. family breakdown. They point to the avail - specific, concrete class relations in these soci - Socialists in Latin America should argue EL SALVADOR AND MEXICO ability of weaponry as well as seasoned fight - eties, including the particular strata and di - El Salvador has the highest murder rate in for democratic freedoms and changes to the ers left over from civil wars, alongside visions within the two main classes. Marxists law in a wide spheres of life. The legalisation the world at present, with 81 violent organised crime based around the drugs point to the criminality of sections of the cap - deaths per 100,000 of the population — and regulation of the drugs trade on a conti - trade. Socio-economic causes such as urban - italist class, including the manner in which nental basis would go a long way towards ten times the global average. isation, unemployment as well as poor public the ruling factions flout their own imposed In January 2017, it was widely reported tackling one of the drivers of violence in services get a mention. Even drunken brawls laws, alongside the activity of capitalist busi - Latin America. Laws criminalising abortion, that El Salvador had just had a single day turn out to be a major cause. nesses that own and control illegal activities without a murder, compared to the norm of LGBT relationships and other forms of op - If the diagnoses are superficial, then many such as the drugs trade. pression should be scrapped immediately, 12 a day and at worst of over 30 a day. How - of the proposed “solutions” are facile. Re - Marxists highlight the partial absence of ever it was a false dawn: it turned out a few while laws against domestic violence, hate pression is blithely discussed, including mass monopolised armed force in many Latin crime and related matters should be strength - weeks later that a murder had taken place incarceration, harsher prisons, together with American states, so that many bourgeois and the “record” was scratched. ened. more police. This is married to “smarter” states do not even control much of the activ - Socialists should also agitate for the guar - The situation in El Salvador has been dire policing: “violence observatories” to generate ity of their own armed forces and police, who for decades. Civil war throughout the 1980s anteed means of life for millions in Latin more accurate statistics, to enable targeted kill with impunity, while also facing direct America who currently do not have it. That between the military junta and the state measures. In the long term they say eco - challenges from armed gangs involved in Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front means secure and paid employment, decent nomic growth will reduce poverty — some - criminal business activity. public services including housing, education (FMLN) saw probably a hundred thousand how, slowly, trickling down from the rich Finally, Marxists also point to the precarity killings, the use of death squads by the state and healthcare. It would involve the state na - while everything is left in private hands. of wide sections of the exploited classes in se - tionalising private industry, even on a capi - and the decimation of civil society. At the These promises of a brighter future are the curing their own means of subsistence, giv - turn of the century, its president sent troops talist basis, as a means to build proper cities succour for a lamentable present. ing rise to a large informal sector in which in place of barrios and provide work for all into the streets to tackle gangs, which sent the legal relations are weak and coercion rife. murder rate soaring again. After a truce bro - who need it. Lifting millions out of desperate kered in 2012 and some respite, in 2015 an - SOCIALISTS AND CRIME poverty would also undercut the roots of vi - Marxists have a distinctive explanation for other president sent the army back to the SOCIALISM NEEDED olence between and within working-class crime in general and violence deaths in Marxists want a socialist society organ - streets with predictable results: a spike of communities. particular. The analysis starts from our un - ised on a completely different basis. more than 100 deaths per 100,000. A programme of demands like this, derstanding of all social phenomenon as Mexico is a much larger and more indus - Working class rule would abolish private worked out by socialist workers across Latin rooted in the particular social relations of trially developed state than El Salvador, but ownership of the means of production, while America and adapted to their own circum - production in a given society, or more it has been beset by growing violent deaths reorganising industry under democratic and stances, would revive the labour movement concretely the class relations specific to in recent decades. Mexican feminists estimate workers’ control. Instead of the venal pursuit through the fight for immediate reforms a particular epoch and to particular that more than 400 women have been mur - of private profit, production for need would while pointing in the direction of socialism. places. dered in Cuidad Juarez in the past 25 years. guarantee the means of life to billions who This was the political project of Marielle In September 2014, 43 students from the Ay - Latin America like most of the rest of the currently live for their next pay packet, and Franco and other socialist activists across the otzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were world is dominated by the capitalist mode of certainty that they could live without the fear region. It is an urgent and burning necessity for forcibly kidnapped and then disappeared in production, in which the means of produc - of homelessness, hunger and poverty. millions of workers across Latin America. Iguala, Guerrero state. Barely any of their re - tion are mostly held as private property by Democratic workers’ states would remould capitalist owners, while the majority have to law around new social relations of produc - 12 DEBATE More online at www.workersliberty.org National rights and the decolonial gaze

Ashok Kumar replies to Sean and epistemic racisms took proper account of order to create an artificial white majority in terrorism and its policing. Or, perhaps, this racism’smanifold violences. that very land. Arming the aboriginal peo - counter-insurgency? Matgamna’s article “Changing the Historiographies of the Alliance for Work - ples of Australia, Canada, Chile, New Unabashed in defence of the AWL’s posi - culture of the left” ( Solidarity 469 ). ers’ Liberty (AWL) will surely account for the Zealand and such like is, in this sense, noth - tions, Sean suggests that “pro-Palestinians of quality and quantity of this debate, progress - ing but a prerequisite for an equality of na - Kumar’s sort” are themselves the racists. So Sean Matgamna attracts our gaze as he ing across the letters pages of recent issues. tional freedoms. much for deeming the word “racism” itself a conjectures on “the whole truth, the As Sean himself generously notes, this “dis - Nobody will be more aware of this than a mere piece of “ideological terrorism”. Are we whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. cussion [has been] good”. Self-care aside, I future historian looking back on the states to accept the terrorism of the colonisers even Alice in Wonderland, a fabled figure of fic - more than anyone feel the responsibility to founded by the British Empire in the eigh - when the terrorism of the colonised is tion, is a subject of his piece ( Solidarity 469) the readers of Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty teenth century but which look increasingly painted as a genocidal threat to the national and as we know, when luncheoning with the to sink my teeth into the meat of the issue untenable in the twenty-first. Doubtless some minorities composed of settler colonialists? Mad Hatter, she divined that what we call and discern whether it is, indeed, halal, or will raise qualms, but today’s historian does Never is this more confused when he at - truth might not be all that it seems. Conman kosher. not suggest that the labour movement’s sup - tributes to the Soviet Union the aim of Bolshevism is indubitably one amidst a mul - Devouring these flesh-like meats is, of port for the struggle to end white South mounting a “colonial war of conquest” in titude of truth subjects. course, only part of the Mad Hatter’s lun - Africa, or the historical dead-end that was Afghanistan, even when the world’s first so - “Hostility to the Palestinians and see the cheon. Our beef in this epistolary exchange Rhodesia, was mistakenly based on contrast - cialist state supported a legitimate and truly Hebrew nation as superior and its rights as is, here as on so many other occasions, truly ing “good” and “bad” peoples. So, too, can national government. more important”, Sean avers, is the target of a question of determining the Self. National temporary totems to regimes of whiteness in Denying the decolonial gaze thus brings our dispute. Alice would perhaps retort that liberation is, as one Trier-born friend of ours Australia, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand Sean to equate oppressed with oppressor, “in the kingdom of the blind, the looking- might have had cause to remark, the sigh of be seen in this same perspective. painting a situation in which an Arab-Islamic glass is useless”. In the kingdom of today’s the oppressed, the desire in a heartless world, “conquest” is about to be imposed on the modern Labour Party, Matgamna’s neo-Zion - the soul of soulless conditions. Each subject- LOGIC Zionist settlers who have conquered Pales - ist varifocals lead down the blind alley that position in this exchange must be rooted in, Under Sean’s logic Canada is nothing but tine. So much for “backing” the Palestinians, “the second most terrible “racist” crime of the and founded on, this foundational reality. an eternal fact, a state of stasis. Pity who - when he deploys crude stereotypes and 20th century was the vengeful driving-west The unmissable conclusion of all of Sean’s ever would suggest that the mighty, the Zionist talking points to defame the very of 13 million Germans at the end of the war, oeuvre when it comes to apportioning self- powerful, the so-self-assured behemoths forces who are fighting against the ongoing with the death of perhaps half a million of determination is quite simply that “there are of today are not, in fact, destined to main - colonisation project. Our future historian will them.” no good and bad peoples”. Hitler-led Ger - tain their rule forever! surely need a materialist account of the colo - Settlized bodies negotiate betwixt and be - man settlers in Poland, white South Africans, Of course, not every national situation, nial project itself, rather than a mere ex - tween the interstitial, spatial, temporally and Northern Irish Protestants, Australians, and every relationship between colonised and change of moral absolutes on the violences of indeed tempurally subjectivated affects be - Zionists in the West Bank are not mere bogey - coloniser, is doomed to be resolved in the the conflict. queathed by colonial narrata. Mad Hatter- men: for my correspondent all of these, too, same brutal means that asserted themselves For Lewis Carroll’s Alice, the truth was not like looking glasses distort and distend these are peoples with national rights. Occupation so dramatically in the twentieth century, not simple and absolute. Prescribing some fixed narrata through the colonial gaze. As one does not, he insists, produce eternal legacies least in my own homeland. idea of nationhood and self-determination as proverb in my own ancestral homeland of guilt: the UIster Scot like the Catholic, the Never in Sean’s article does he arrive at transhistorical, as if there were to be one state teaches us: “the poor man looks at his reflec - Israeli like the Palestinian, has through tor - what we could meaningfully call a definition per self-defining national community, does tion in the water; the average man looks at ments and tragedies also carved out his of colonialism. There is more a “colourblind” not allow us to grasp the particularities of his reflection in the glass; the wise man looks claim, his right, his place in the world. effort to set all peoples on an equal footing, colonialism, built precisely on the denial of at his reflection in the eyes of his sons”. Uncompromising though these claims may not least in a discussion of accusations of the Other. Of course, it is racist to demonise Islam and its view of desires, the body – the be, the fact that there are not good and bad racism on the Left which are supposedly “lit - the colonised as backward and violent. Of subject, and her sons – have long held sway peoples does not deny the difference between tle more than an expletive, a political swear- course, it is racist to suggest that settlers have in the land I call home. Long into humanity’s self-determination for a people and stolen word, a species of ideological terrorism”. He a national right that can usurp the rights of future, the historian of racialized (and con - booty. Self-determination could hardly be here confuses cause for effect, in suggesting those they replace. versely, racializing) bodies will wonder if his, said to apply to, say, Canada and its so-called that even our words in rebellion against colo - Sean’s narrative sets one set of bodies her or, indeed, their contemplation of the peoples, after they themselves physically nialism are to be painted in the language of at the expense of smothering the decolo - phenomenology of systemic, institutional eliminated the First Nations precisely in nial gaze. Should we reverse history?

Sean Matgamna replies to Ashok those heroic Russian women workers and Kumar (above). crawl through it. Kumar has been boasting on social media, I understand, that his involvement in this dis - Sometimes a person will have to do odd cussion is a “piss-take”. If he is satirising the things for socialism. language of pretentious academe, that would Trotsky recorded that when women in - explain quite a lot. If he is taking the piss it is duced the soldiers not to fire at the crowds at by way of heroic self-mockery. But whatever the outset of the February Revolution, they he thinks he’s doing he is showing himself up had to get at them by first crawling under the as incredibly confused and, it needs to be belly of Cossack horses. What Trotsky re - said, disablingly ignorant. His language is as ferred to so summarily loses much of its precise as candy floss or cotton wool, and it meaning in the minds of modern people who is often difficult to know what he thinks he have no experience of horses. means. His piece is scarcely even an attempt Your horse has a very small brain — the to reply to what I wrote. size of a chestnut, perhaps. A horse is sensi - We call on Israel to get out of the West Bank truly national government.” They did more Kumar outlines a full philosophy of mod - and say that this is territory for a Palestinian than “aim to mount” a war of colonial con - tive and that makes horses appear intelligent ern history. sometimes. But they aren’t. Perhaps because state. I said nothing about Hitler-led German quest. They mounted it and sustained it in a Apparently I think: “there are no good and settlers in Poland (that is, invaders of 1939). decade-long war of colonial conquest, whose of this nobody has ever succeeded in potty- bad peoples.” And “Hitler-led German set - training a horse. And of course a horse is far The 13 million Germans driven out of Rus - methods were identical to those of the French tlers in Poland, white South Africans, North - sian held territory (with the prior agreement in Indo-China and Algeria. The idea that the too big for nappies. He just puts his tail to one ern Irish Protestants, Australians, and side and discharges a volley of lumps of solid of Britain and America) were people whose Stalinist government after 1978 and the Rus - Zionists in the West Bank… For my corre - ancestors had lived there for centuries — sian puppet government after Christmas 79 waste matter; he will just stand there and dis - spondent all of these, too, are peoples with charge a large volume of liquid waste matter. these were the three million Sudeten Ger - was a “legitimate” and “truly national gov - national rights. Occupation does not, he in - mans and the people of the East Prussian part ernment” is pure Stalinist ideologising. And Anywhere. So when a troop of horses is sists, produce eternal legacies of guilt: the Ul - milling around, the ground tends to becomes of the German state and others. pure Stalinist lying. There is quite a lot of ster Scot like the Catholic, Israeli like the Apparently never am I “more confused” AWL literature on Afghanistan on our web - messy. The women, good Russian proletari - Palestinian, has … also carved out his claim, ans, braved it. They did what they had to do. than when “(I) attribute to the Soviet Union site, which I suggest Kumar looks at. his right to his place in the world.” the aim of mounting a colonial war of con - Kumar writes: So too with Kumar. It’s messy work and Striking here is Kurmar’s lack of grip on I’m a timid old Irish prole; but I’ll think of quest in Afghanistan even when the world’s “…The labour movement’s support for the both 20th century history and on AWL policy. first Socialist state supported a legitimate and struggle to end white South Africa, or the his - Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 13 torical dead-end that was Rhodesia, was (not) mistakenly based on contrasting “good and bad peoples.” But we supported the peo - ples of South Africa and Zimbabwe against “It’s good to follow a polemic in real time” the minority white ruling caste! From here on in I have difficult in under - standing what Kumar is saying. It will be Rob Marsden runs the websites Red enough to highlight it. “So, too can tempo - Mole Rising and Splits and Fusions , rary totems to regimes of whiteness in Aus - which make available historical archive tralia, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand be material from various Trotskyist seen in the same perspective.” They are like currents (in the broadest sense) South Africa? In light of his errors on the publishing in Britain. He spoke to most basic of facts, I can’t be sure he doesn’t Solidarity . think that Australia, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand are ruled by white minorities. Now if I were writing a satire on what Q. Tell us a bit about your websites, Splits Kumar and people like him say of Israel- and Fusions and Red Mole Rising. Palestine, reducto ad absurdum stuff, I would write something like what he writes A. Red Mole Rising came first, and it is here, have him propose that these and other now a nearly complete archive of the press of such countries be turned over to the descen - the Fourth International in Britain, that is, of dants of the displaced peoples. What is he the group best known as the IMG, from 1950s saying, or proposing? For Canada and “its into the 2000s. It has complete runs of Inter - so-called peoples”? He wants to drive out national , Black Dwarf, Red Mole, Socialist Chal - the descendants of British and French lenge, Socialist Action , etc., and lots of colonists? If he doesn’t, what is he on about? magazines and pamphlets. And Australia, Chile, New Zealand? “Arm - I’ve worked with loads of people on that. ing the Aboriginal peoples, of these countries Some of The Week is up there, and I’m intend - is in this sense, nothing but a prerequisite for ing to do the rest of The Week some time soon. an equality of national freedoms.” Splits and Fusions is a much broader and more ambitious project, including archives SENSE from many different Trotskyist currents, in What in the name of sense is he talking the broadest definition, and some other re - about? We should want an uprising of the lated currents. It now has material from most Aboriginals of Australia? We want the of the major traditions from the very early Amerindians to assert themselves in days through to today. arms? In Chile? In New Zealand we want I tend to present the material in a fairly the Māori people to rise up? In the colo - neutral manner, not to offer commentary or nial settler state of Argentina, which he judgements but just to make it available. neglects to mention, we want the surviv - The coverage so far, and the future devel - ing two percent or so of the original pop - opment, largely depends on what comes in, ulation to rise in arms? To do what? Drive on what comes my way from various sources. out the rest? I repeat what on earth is the Rob Marsden scanned in the full archive of AWL predecessor organisation Worker Fight and man talking about? Socialist Organiser newspapers Does he want a great movement across the Q. Doing these websites has been a lot of world to reverse the ethnic transfers of the work. How did you get into it? last five hundred years? Socialists are con - charted territory, looking at material which of Red Mole from the scans on the website. If cerned with vengeance for the displaced, A. I’ve always been a collector of odds and has not seen the sight of day for decades. you watch the TV mini-series Guerrilla, you massacred, vastly-depleted peoples of his - ends, and always interested in the history of That is always interesting. will see copies of Red Mole on the floor in tory? the Trotskyist movement, ever since I was a For example, I came across a ten-page bul - some of the scenes, and those were printed The displacements and massacres of the student in the 1980s. The impulse for these letin entitled Revolution , from 1939-40, pub - off my scans. earlier peoples in these countries is of course projects came about eight years ago, when an lished in the name of the Socialist Workers’ a terrible story. It happens that I am rereading old comrade was getting rid of a lot of pa - League, a group which does not appear in Q. Marty Goodman and others have done Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, an account pers. any of the standard published histories. a lot of work on US Trotskyist archives, of the Nazi-like massacres of the Amerindi - I realised that very little of that material From my inquiries, most likely it was a and made the results available on ans. These stories arouse anger, indignation, was available online — especially back then publication of the Revolutionary Socialist www.marxists.org. What do you know of pity, regret. But history — terrible, savage, — and thought I could and should fix that. League [a group formed by a 1938 fusion, comparable work on the archives of Trot - merciless — is what this is. So I bought a scanner and started. From that which was the official British section of the skyist publications in other countries? We can only alleviate some of the conse - point, the work feeds itself, as people bring Fourth International until 1944], under a false quences of what has been and what was me more and more material. name. A. I know of nothing quite so comprehen - done. In the present, socialists advocate With World War Two beginning, the RSL sive. I’m in regular communication with working-class unity across the divides that Q. Piecing together these archives, you expected that it would be banned, and tried Marty Goodman and David Walters at the still exist, for the creation of a socialist society will have found different political tenden - to deal with that by publishing under a false Marxist Internet Archive, and I guess they on the basis of what history has so far cre - cies changing their political positions name and without giving an address or con - will also have contact with other groups ated. quite markedly over the years. We take tact details. round the world, but as far as I know the I said that the charge of racism was fre - some pride in the Workers’ Liberty ten - Then again, a few years ago a friend of main archives elsewhere are in various li - quently employed as a form of ideological dency that our changes of position — and mine said he had at home the tape recording braries, and fragmentary. terrorism to forbid thought and proper dis - they’ve been important — have been done of the 1971 Red Mole interview of John That is one of the things that drives me to cussion of difficult questions. He responds through open and explicit rethinking, are Lennon by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn. do the work. The libraries do an excellent job that I make “a ‘colour-blind’ effort to see all conscientiously recorded, and are linked No-one had heard the interview for 30-odd in keeping archives, but the material there is peoples on an equal footing; [he] confuses back in to the traditions of Trotskyist pol - years. Here we had 80 minutes of audio from not freely and easily available. I want the his - cause for effect, in suggesting that even our itics. Is that a fair judgement, or are we an interview which previously existed only tory of the movement to be available to ac - words in rebellion against colonialism are to deluding ourselves? in a heavily-edited transcript. tivists as well as to academics. be painted in the language of terrorism and There is the Radar archive of French Trot - its policing. Or perhaps counter-insur - A. It’s a fair judgement. You do see shifts Q. Do you get any sense of what readers skyist material, but, as I understand it, the gency?” Again, what is he talking about? as you go through the archives. There’s stuff are paying most attention to on your web - person who set that up has moved on, and Where colonialism exists Marxists support from the Workers’ Liberty tendency from the sites, and what they’re getting from them? no-one is now working on it. It’s not really an uprisings of the colonised against the impe - 1970s on Palestine and Ireland, for example, ongoing project. There is also the online rial power. But colonialism is more or less a which is very different from today. But all the A. I get some idea from the comments on archive of Cermtri , which is being developed, historical category. What do we advocate polemics are there, in black and white. the linked Facebook pages. The people look - but it is only a partial archive and only of the after it has ceased to exist? Marxists advocate It’s good to be able to follow a polemic in ing at the sites are a mix of older people who Lambertist current. a workers’ revolution against capitalism — real time, in the press, and on the letters page were around on the left in the early or mid- However, maybe someone will come back the unity of all workers against capitalism, as well as in the big set-piece articles. 70s, and those younger people who are more to Radar, for example. Sometimes I’ve paused native and foreign. We advocate “black and interested in the history of the movement. on my project, even for up to a year, then white unite”. I also hear from people researching books something happens to get me going again. There isn’t space for me to reprise what Q. What has most surprised you when un - and other studies. There is a lot of interest in If anyone has any interesting material, I wrote on Israel-Palestine. Against earthing publications from long-unexam - the late-1960s material, such as Black Dwarf , they can get in touch at Kumar’s effort it, surely, isn’t necessary ei - ined archives? and the women’s publications. [email protected]. In particular, ther. Last year a TV company got in touch be - I’m interested in locally produced pam - A. With this work, I’m often in almost un - cause they wanted to reporduce some issues phlet or bulletins from any tendency. Where we stand More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to another, the capitalist class, which owns Nottingham shows the campaign the means of production. The capitalists’ control over the economy and their relentless drive to increase their wealth causes poverty, unemployment, against Brexit can only be left wing the blighting of lives by overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the environment and much else. Against the accumulated wealth and power of the capitalists, undoubtedly large anti-Brexit ma - the working class must unite to struggle against capitalist LABOUR jorities amongst their membership power in the workplace and in wider society. have so far refused to support a By Will Sefton final referendum on the deal with The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty wants socialist revolution: the option to remain in the EU. collective ownership of industry and services, workers’ control, On Monday 30 July, 130 people Some have gone so far as to try and and a democracy much fuller than the present system, with gathered in Nottingham to hear stop any further debate before con - elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to left wing anti-Brexit speakers ference. A Huffington Post article bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. make the case for Labour to op - quotes a “senior Momentum pose Brexit. source” as saying there is “abso - We fight for trade unions and the Labour Party to break with lutely no way”that the organisation “social partnership” with the bosses and to militantly assert Speakers included Manuel Cortes, General Secretary of the can ignore calls for a members’ vote Nottingham Left Against Brexit working-class interests. TSSA rail union as well as local mi - on its position before Labour con - grant workers and anti-racist cam - ference. they exist in working-class areas. In workplaces, trade unions, and Labour organisations; paigners. At this stage we do not know Labour must have sufficiently rad - among students; in local campaigns; on the left and in The organisers had held stalls in whether we will get a debate on ical policies to overcome those. wider political alliances we stand for: the town, advertised at the local Brexit at Labour conference. On the Saturday following the ¥ Independent working-class representation in politics. Pride and other festivals and cov - We must find ways of asserting meeting, Left Against Brexit sup - Labour members’ views, through ¥ A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the ered social media. The meeting sur - porters in Derbyshire Dales con - prised even them. It was five times meetings open to the wider mem - stituency who had come to the labour movement. larger than a similar event that was berships in constituencies.. We also meeting held a successful stall at an ¥ A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to had held only three months earlier. need to demonstrate that the Party agricultural market. strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. This shows that there has a been is increasingly out-of-step with The response will no doubt en - ¥ Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, significant increase in anti-Brexit Labour voters and that there is no courage us to do similar stalls in logic in conceding to nationalist education and jobs for all. feeling amongst Labour members various locations throughout ideas and demoralisation where Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. ¥ and supporters. This in constituen - A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. cies that had large Leave majorities Full equality for women, and social provision to free women in the referendum and up to now from domestic labour. For reproductive justice: free abortion on have been defeatist and demor - Taking the fight to Corbyn’s backyard demand; the right to choose when and whether to have alised about the prospects of op - children. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and posing Brexit. Around 100 people attended the cluding passing contemporary Progress had held a public anti- transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity against North London Left Against motions, preparing arguments for Brexit meeting only a few days be - winning over more sceptical Cor - racism. Brexit meeting to discuss and fore with Liz Kendall speaking. plan anti-Brexit activity in the byn supporters as well as plan - ¥ Open borders. They had less than twenty in atten - run up to Labour Party confer - ning street stalls and other ¥ Global solidarity against global capital — workers dance. A comparison of the sizes of ence and beyond. public-facing activity. everywhere have more in common with each other than with the meetings is proof that only a The meeting involved lively dis - Several people expressed their campaign from the left can win the their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. cussion and Manuel Cortes, concerns that there is an almost Party to harden its stance against bunker-like mentality around ¥ Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest Catherine West MP, Joseph Healy Brexit — so poisoned is Progress’s and Anna Oppenheim all laid out some parts of the Labour left, that workplace or community to global social intervention in the Party now seen different perspectives on a left- any criticism or even discussion organisation. to be. wing strategy to stop Brexit. on Corbyn’s policy is part of an at - ¥ Equal rights for all nations, against There were inevitable attempts Cortes and Oppenheim in partic - tack. from the floor by right wing Labour imperialists and predators big and small. ular made the case for strong The LAB is important because activists to personalise and faction - it will help to open up the space ¥ Maximum left unity in action, and unions and a combative labour ally exploit the issue against Cor - movement that unites workers for necessary discussion and openness in debate. byn. But they were met with silence across borders and seeks to level debate not just on Brexit but whilst the left wing speakers re - up wages and terms and condi - how the grassroots of the If you agree with us, please take some ceived loud applause. tions. The meeting broke up into Labour Party relate to the cur - A campaign has been set up in groups to discuss local activity, in - rent leadership. copies of Solidarity to sell — and join us! the locality and we know we have a lot to do. Some local CLPs with Events Student activist weekender

9-12 August Sunday 26 August 8-9 September // UCL // All welcome! Workers’ Liberty Summer Camp The future of socialism: South Height Gate Farm, Stoodley Glen London summer event Register for free at: bit.ly/2OOXXgI bit.ly/2zNCWjh The Pullens Centre, 184 Crampton Student activists from across the country are coming together before the first term for a weekend of practi - Street, Kennington, London SE17 cal activist training, discussions on organising, and planning our movement’s next steps for campaigning on 3AE Monday 13 August various national issues highlighted in the student left unity statement — sign up here if you agree! — South London organising bit.ly/2AV04N4 goo.gl/1Qvquk meeting — the Left Against Brexit 8-9 September 7pm, Global Justice Now, 66 Of - Student Activist Weekender Hosted by: fley Road, London SW9 0LS 10am, UCL, Gower Street, Lon - The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts; People & Planet; RENT STRIKE; NUS Trans Campaign; Young bit.ly/2nmkoxf don, WC1E 6BT Greens; Aberdeen Student Left; Stop the Elephant Development; UCL: Fund Our Mental Health Services; Surrey bit.ly/2mm6BpY Labour Students; Free University of Sheffield; LSE Radical Politics Collective; Surrey Cut the Rent; UCL Cut the Sunday 19 August Rent; Bristol Student-Staff Solidarity Peterloo massacre 2018 commemorative rally and picnic Manchester City Centre Free accommodation will be provided in local activists’ houses if you’re coming from out - bit.ly/2LeBrir side of London. Have an event you want listing? Email: [email protected] REPORTS 10-11 PCS pay ballot falls short

not just to mobilise By PCS Independent Left the next time a Civil Service union PCS’s na - campaign requires tional ballot for strike action over it but to actively pay failed to meet the 50 percent rebuild the union turnout threshold imposed by from the ground the Trade Union Act. This despite up. the most intensive period of ac - There was also a tivity in the union’s recent his - lull in activity be - tory. What do we learn from this? tween the close of Cleaners organise And what comes next? the consultative Despite the tangible sense of dis - ballot and the deci - appointment felt by all activists, we sion at Conference to run a statutory and strike can be proud. The result wasn’t ballot. what we wanted, but the commit - By Gemma Short fair pay, we need basic vaccina - ment and effort of everyone who The monthly tions, including Hepatitis B and pay protests con - leafleted, who canvassed members Cleaners at the Ministry of Jus - Tetanus, which are being denied tinued, but little in the workplace and who gave up with a draft document presented to tice and Royal Borough of to us even though we regularly else from a national perspective. their own time is not in doubt. the NEC in September which Kensington and Chelsea coun - come in direct contact with bodily There should have been no doubt The activist training schools that would include a plan to prepare for cil (RBKC) will strike on 7, 8 and fluids including blood. These are that the consultative ballot turnout ran ahead of the launch of the bal - a 2019 civil service-wide ballot, and 9 August over pay and unfair luxury hospitals, why can’t we get would lead to a statutory ballot. In lot, the first of their kind in PCS, that an extraordinary pay confer - working conditions. what we need?” the intervening seven months, we were an extremely welcome devel - ence/event be held at the end of Cleaners and supporters will had ample time to lay the organisa - The cleaners at the Ministry of opment. We need more of this, and 2018/beginning of 2019. picket at a variety of Ministry of tional groundwork for a decisive Justice are contracted by out - a wider effort to teach all reps how The Socialist Party, who now Justice and RBKC locations result: More activist schools and sourced cleaning company OCS, to organise and build campaigns in have 3 members on the NEC since during the three strike days, earlier, covering not just what was and those at RBKC are employed the workplace. the President Janice Godrich either and will be joined by Labour′s needed during the ballot period but by Amey. Likewise, it was heartening to see left or was expelled for standing Kensington MP Emma Dent how we made the most of the lead Cleaning workers at Health the amount of support given to against their preferred candidate Coad at their picket at RBKC on up; using the workplace mapping Care America (HCA) locations in branches by the union apparatus. for Assistant General Secretary, Tuesday 7 August. and organising skills those schools London will also strike later in The cooperation between branches, asked that the pay conference be could teach activist to take a more August. HCA is the biggest pri - through town committees and sim - agreed for October. This appeared • Donate to the strike fund: deliberate and painstaking ap - vate healthcare company in the ilar, as well as the deployment of to be a way of artificially distin - https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/cu proach to getting ballot addresses, world and has sites in London in - full time staff to enable local organ - guishing their candidate from Go - rrent-campaigns grade information. This would cluding at the Shard, Guy′s Cancer ising efforts both represent devel - drich, especially as this is the first have given us a solid foundation Centre, and Harley Street Clinic. opments that PCS needs to time they have broken ranks in a for building and maintaining the It′s cleaning is outsourced to Com - maintain now that we have left the NEC meeting for 15 years. momentum of the campaign. pass. Goldsmiths ballot period. We need to understand the vot - All of the workers at organised These efforts paid off in the level ing figures and any outcome of the by the United Voices of the World of engagement of members with ORGANISERS delegated pay bargaining, includ - (UVW) union and share three cleaners’ strike the campaign, in the recruitment of Where this was already being ing whether there will be any common demands: new members (some 2,000 accord - done it is because amongst our group-based strike action before • An occupational sick pay By a Goldsmiths student ing to the General Secretary’s re - lay activist base PCS has a num - any national conference is held. scheme: Amey, OCS and Compass cent YouTube message) and ber of skilled and experienced The vote was easily carried with do not have an occupational sick Cleaners at Goldsmiths Col - activists, and in helping many organisers who have been as - the Independent Left supporting pay scheme. This means workers lege, University of London, are branches improve their density and sets to the pay campaign. the original motion, but making the rely on Statutory Sick Pay. SSP is campaigning with their union organisation levels. We need to en - Co-opting such activists full time point that any group action needs unpaid for the first three days of Unison, and the broader cam - sure that the improved organisa - to the ballot effort would have un - to be co-ordinated and that in fu - illness, and just £18 per day from paign Justice for Cleaners tion is maintained, and the new doubtedly made them even more ture we should consider separate the fourth day of sickness on - Goldsmiths, for their jobs to be activists are encouraged and sup - effective, and it is something that bargaining unit ballots instead of a wards. brought in-house. Currently ported in getting more involved. PCS needs to seriously consider. single civil service wide one. • Parity of terms and conditions cleaning is outsourced to ISS The consultative ballot last year The union needs to be honest and We can win this fight, and we with directly employed staff: The but the contract is due to end in gave PCS a breakdown of the transparent i n its analysis of what can smash ballot thresholds in second common grievance and November. turnout by office and branch which happened. the future. Key to that is rebuild - demand of the strike is equality In advance of that deadline the showed where our areas of strength The NEC met the day after the ing the union and re-orienting it between subcontracted and di - company has imposed a new con - and our shortfalls were. This was ballot to discuss the next steps. The towards organising the work - rectly employed staff in terms of tract on staff, worsening already used this time, with more full-time final agreed recommendations force from the ground up. holiday entitlements, hours and poor conditions, cutting hours and staff and senior lay reps encour - were that the union would support overtime pay. A two-tier work - wages. Complaints include lack of aged to leaflet in those areas. There action that groups decided on a • Abridged from: force leads to undercutting, a race sick pay, holiday pay, pension en - now needs to be a forensic exami - delegated (departmental) level. pcsindependentleft.com to the bottom and exploitation titlement and late payment of nation of where the union is com - That the building for the 2019 pay says the UVW. wages. None of the workers were ing up short and a concerted effort campaign would start immediately • Payment of the London Liv - consulted about the changes to ing Wage with guaranteed annual their contract. It will involve increments: The London Living changes in work patterns which Wage is currently £10.20 per hour will force many staff to leave. –- a stark contrast to the National One cleaner said: “I feel very de - Minimum Wage, bizarrely re-la - moralised as is my only source of Strike ballots due on Tube belled the National Living Wage income. This change will drasti - by the Conservative Government cally affect my wages as I will lose in 2016, which is just £7.83 per 15 hours per week. Having an By Ollie Moore of drivers on the Metropolitan Line pute with cleaning contractor ABM hour. overall effect on my expenditure to oppose the closure of the staff over the ongoing victimisation of As Solidarity went to press on 7 for my home. I have a daughter Tube union RMT is balloting its canteen at the Harrow-on-the-Hill staff, after two union members August RBKC had just announced that I support and family over - members at the Leytonstone depot. A timetable for the ballot has were dismissed on trumped up they would be ending contracts seas.” train depot on the Central Line yet to be announced. charges. with Amey and taking cleaning Hundreds of staff, academic for strikes to oppose the removal Elsewhere on London Under - Meanwhile, drivers’ union Aslef contracts back in house. and other, as well as students, of platform staff on the Waterloo ground, fleet maintenance staff at has said it will ballot its entire Tube As with a lot of other strikes in - have pledged support for the and City Line. the Ruislip depot struck again on 3 membership, after a driver was at - volving low paid, and precari - cleaners, but so far Goldsmiths The union says the removal of August, in an ongoing dispute tacked when passengers broke into ously employed workers, these have made no commitments. these staff could lead to serious aimed at winning pay parity with her cab. strikes are about safety and dig - Both Aslef and RMT have been safety issues. The ballot closes on other grades of workers in the nity at work as well as pay. Mer - • More cleaners’ testimony: raising the issue of cab security 14 August. depot. cedes, a striking cleaner at HCA http://bit.ly/2AOBzBv for some time. RMT has also announced a ballot RMT has also announced a dis - said: “We are not just demanding SolidaFor a workers’ giovertnment y No 476 8 August 2018 50p/£1 Thousands march against National State Law

Israel’s historic self-presentation By Ira Berkovic as a progressive, cosmopolitan, lib - eral democracy — always under - Tens of thousands of people, mined by its occupation of the perhaps as many as 100,000, Palestinians — is now also under - demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Sat - mined by its own social policies. urday 4 August to protest Shortly before passing the Nation against the new “Nation State State Law, Netanyahu’s govern - Law”, which opens the door to ment passed a bill preventing gay legally-sanctioned racism men from accessing state funds to against non-Jews. have children via a surrogate The law relegates Arabic from mother. the status of official language, and Netanyahu, who previously asserts that “the right to exercise pledged to support gay surrogacy, national self-determination in the is widely seen to have caved in to State of Israel is unique to the Jew - the religious right, with which he ish people”. Israel’s Arab minority, now increasingly collaborates. which makes up around 20% of This law also provoked mass the population, has formal legal demonstrations, with tens of thou - equality, but faces frequent dis - sands rallying in Tel Aviv on 22 crimination, which many fear the July. On 2 August, 20,000 marched new law will intensify. Huge protests have taken place in Tel Aviv against the Nation State Bill in the Jerusalem Pride parade, the The Tel Aviv demonstration was highest number ever. led by Israel’s Druze community, the cross-party “Standing To - Some Israeli leftists, such as are part of the Jewish people. Writing in the Israeli socialist often referred to as Israel’s “model gether” group, led by activists Gush Shalom’s Uri Avnery, who “It is crucial that we recognize magazine Challenge , Yacov Ben- minority” for their frequent patri - from left-wing parties such as calls the Nation State Law “semi- this. It decides our outlook. Quite Efrat wrote that the demands of otism and loyal military service Meretz and Hadash. One partici - fascist”, situate it in the context of literally. Are we looking towards the LGBT movement “target the (Arabs are exempt from conscrip - pant, a 16-year old Jewish student, a wider lurch to the right, and Jewish centres like New York, Lon - hearts and minds of Israeli society. tion into the Israeli Defence told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz : against secularism. don, Paris and Berlin, or are we They demand an egalitarian and Forces), who feel betrayed and let “Personally, I feel you can’t have a looking towards our neighbours, democratic society when, in fact, down by the law. democratic nation-state that does - POLICY Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo? Are their country favours the Jewish The passage of the law has pro - n’t treat minorities as fully equal”. Avnery writes: “[There is] a rig - we part of a region inhabited by nation over the Arab nation, reli - voked widespread opposition, in - Samah Salaime, an Arab activist orous government policy of Ju - Arabs? Do we realise that making gious over secular.” cluding from many Jewish who helped organise the event, daization of everything. peace with these Arabs, and espe - However, he highlighted that community organisations interna - said: “The law is symbolic, but this “The present government has cially the Palestinians, is the main “like the massive social protest of tionally. The Israeli establishment struggle is about building a shared reached new heights. Active — task of this generation?” 2011, the [22 July] protest opposes is itself divided over the question: country and a shared future in this even frantic — government actions It is true, Netanyahu has made a a discriminatory society while speakers at the rally included a land […] try to Judaize education, culture, conscious effort to align Israel with omitting to oppose the discrimina - former head of Mossad, the Israeli “We are the binationalists, the even sports. Orthodox Jews, a the growing ethno-nationalist far- tory state. The omission seems secret service, and attendees in - bilinguists, we are the dream of the small minority in Israel, exert im - right internationally, via close rela - contrived, especially considering cluded many former senior mili - future […] we have room for the mense influence. Their votes in the tions with Putin’s Russia, Trump’s that the Surrogacy Law excluding tary figures. Even the current Palestinian next to the Jews, for the Knesset [the Israeli parliament] are USA, and Viktor Orban’s Hungary. gay men passed in the Knesset on Israeli president Reuven Rivlin is - Arab and the Israeli, and for any - essential to the Netanyahu govern - He is aligning the world’s only the same night as two strongly na - sued what appeared to be a subtle one who defines themself as part ment. […] majority-Jewish state with govern - tionalistic laws, one against [left- objection to the law, when he of this country […] We are proud “Jews are members of an ethnic- ments led by, containing, or pan - wing NGO] ‘Breaking the Silence’ promised to sign it in Arabic. and are well aware of the price we religious people, dispersed dering to antisemites. Within his and the other, called the Nation- The mass rally came days after pay for joining together. We do not throughout the world and belong - own government, figures like State Law, prioritising Jewishness thousands also attended another stand behind a destructive coali - ing to many nations, with a strong Avigdor Lieberman are virulent over democracy. protest, billed as “the world’s tion in the Knesset that takes our feeling of affinity with Israel. We, racists against the Palestinians, “On one fateful night, the fun - biggest Arabic lesson” in Tel Aviv, money for its institutions, its settle - in this country, belong to the Israeli sometimes calling openly for eth - damentalist right realized its organised by a coalition of liberal ments, and its messianism.” nation, whose Hebrew members nic cleansing. darkest desires.” and leftist organisations, including Or subscribe with a standing order Contact us Subscribe to Solidarity Pay £5 a month to subscribe to Solidarity or pay us more to make an ongoing contribution to our work 020 7394 8923 Trial sub (6 issues) £7 o To: ...... 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