Banning an Anti-Racist & Anti-Fascist Film is the Last Straw - Our Branch SE/6246 Has Just Passed a Motion of No Confidence in Unite’s Racist General Secretary Sharon Graham

 It’s time for the SWP, Socialist Party & Counterfire to break with Graham’s Social Imperialism & Stop Apologising for Her

ON RESISTANCE STREET (2023) Trailer

Unite 4 Palestine Activists Meeting

Wednesday 17 April 6.30 p.m.

Please register here

https://tinyurl.com/mpc6h77t

 

On Monday I learnt that Sharon Graham had banned On Resistance Street an anti-fascist and anti-racist  film that looks at the role music has played in the fight against fascism and racism.

The reasons for the ban were explained by Graham’s sycophantic bag carrier, Sarah Carpenter, who, as Regional Secretary for the South-East, banned another film, Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie. Carpenter quoted an Executive Committee resolution of September 2023 that:

‘Unite should not use its premises or resources to show or promote any external films or other content that does not relate to our industrial agenda to support the pay, terms and conditions of our members and/or support existing Unite policies.

Leave aside the ‘explanation’ of Carpenter, a bureaucrat without an original idea in her head, or the tunnel vision of Sharon Graham whose ‘industrial agenda’ poses no threat to British capitalism. Graham is either so politically illiterate that she does not understand that historically racism and fascism have been used to divide and weaken, if not destroy the trade union and socialist movement. Or else she does not care.

Carpenter’s suggestion that anti-racism and anti-fascism is not part of ‘existing Unite policies’ testifies to her stupidity. Even more worrying, Carpenter also wrote that:

In this context the Union should be especially careful to avoid appearing to endorse any material which causes unnecessary offence to members.’

Is she really saying that Unite should not offend racists and fascists? This is very similar to the ‘reason’ that Gail Cartmail gave for the banning of Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie when she said that:

The General Secretary... is also clear that the Unite position must be that we do not stoke division through anti-semitism and anti-Muslim racism

On Resistance Street was shot on location in England, Belfast and New York.  It carries an original soundtrack of 20 songs.

The film revisits the ‘Rock Against Racism’ movement of the late 70s, noting its influence on future waves of radical artists and political activists.  It also shines a light – for the very first time in a film – on a 1950s organisation, ‘The Stars Campaign For Inter-Racial Friendship’ which was founded by a group of famous British jazz musicians and entertainers in the wake of the 1958 Notting Hill riots. It provided venues in West London for black and white youth to socialise together.  The film also highlights the crucial role played by punk rock in uniting young people in 1970s’ sectarian Belfast.

On Resistance Street tracks contemporary drifts to the right in the West, the weaponization of Black grammatical history, right wing musical cultural appropriation and the role of anti-racist social media groups today.  It looks at grime music and the historic role played by Black musicians in British music.

This decision is nothing less than shocking. For a trade union to ban an anti-fascist and anti-racist film is a sign of how the Sharon Graham leadership has degenerated politically.

I therefore moved a resolution at my own branch last night ‘noting with dismay’ all the lies of Graham and her flunkeys. For the first time that I can remember I was criticised for my moderation! Another member promptly moved an amendment that said the branch had no confidence in Graham. Just 2 out of 11 members abstained, the rest voted in favour.

Graham is the most right-wing boss of Unite and its predecessor unions since Arthur Deakin in the 50s. Graham stood on a platform that rejected Len McCluskey’s support for the Corbyn Project. She passed herself off as apolitical but in reality she is firmly on the right. Her objection to anti-racist education is matched by her support for Zionism and the Israeli state.

It is no accident that Graham has done nothing to support Palestinians in Gaza besides writing a solitary letter to the PGFTU, nearly 3 weeks after its headquarters in Gaza were bombed. The very next day she made it clear that she favoured continuing to send arms to Israel to continue the bombing, the more the merrier since to her all that matters is British jobs.

Yet despite her appalling record when it comes to international solidarity, anti-racism and anti-imperialism, the ‘revolutionary’ sects of the British left, have supported her through thick and thin. Both the SWP and the Socialist Party supported Graham in the election for General Secretary and Counterfire welcomed her victory.

Richard Allday's rant on WhatsApp in defence of Graham

Richard Allday, a Counterfire supporter and member of Unite’s Executive only last Friday chose to attack me on the Unite 4 Palestine WhatsApp group for my ‘obsession with Sharon Graham’ and my ‘unsubstantiated abuse.’ i.e. criticism of Graham.

To support strikes whilst rejecting their political implications, as Graham does, is to reject class politics. It is to treat the state as neutral and capitalism as a fair and equitable system rather than one based on exploitation. This is called economism.

Unfortunately the ruling class is not so stupid as Graham. It knows that even if Unite wins a few individual strikes, they still have all the cards. The rich and powerful can easily adjust the rules of the game through their tame puppets in parliament. They have the Police to reign in workers who get unruly and of course, if the worst comes to the worst, they can make going on strike itself harder and harder.

The Establishment is more than capable of winning back through legislation that which they lose industrially. Being ‘apolitical’ means accepting privatisation of public services and austerity in order to fund increased expenditure on the military. Graham supports increasing ‘defence’ expenditure even though it means cutting the NHS, education and social services where Unite also has members.

Concentrating solely on strikes means abandoning the fight against racism, global warming, war and imperialism. It is to define class oppression as solely economic without seeing that capitalism doesn’t just oppress people in the workplace but during their lives outside the workplace. There is little advantage in gaining higher wages if the Welfare State is under attack, the NHS is in decline, schools are privatised as academies and housing becomes harder to get.

Graham is fighting for a larger share of the imperialist pie not its abolition. Graham is an avid supporter of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and supported dockers refusing to handle Russian oil. There is some solidarity action that Graham does support, the problem is that it doesn’t involve genocide against the Palestinians.

When it came to Ukraine Graham didn’t mince her words:

“There is overwhelming support being expressed throughout Unite to support the people of Ukraine. It is not only the struggle for democracy that concerns us but also the struggle for people’s rights to work and build their future in peace.”

Yet when it comes to Gaza, getting Graham to condemn anything Israel does is like drawing teeth. In her letter condemning the bombing of the PGFTU headquarters in Gaza City Graham fails even to mention the word ‘Israel’. It is as if the bombing of the Trade union HQ happened by itself. Likewise Graham did not once let the word ‘genocide’ slip from her lips.

These things have not gone unnoticed by the Zionists. Writing in the anti-Palestinian Jewish News ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin described how,

In a further put down on far-left foreign policy dogma Graham also wrote “Similarly, we cannot be expected to affiliate to organisations that actively work against our members and their jobs.

“Examples include groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS.”

Under Graham’s leadership Unite has also taken great strides in attempting to combat antisemitism within the movement. Despite early claims that the left-wing leader would seek to move the union away from Labour and disaffiliate, Unite now appears to be opting to become a “critical friend” of the Starmer led Labour Party.

Unfortunately Britain’s far-left sects are unable to see beyond their own noses. They are so pleased that a union leader supports strikes that they are unable to understand that you can support strikes and still be a racist, warmongering reactionary like Sharon Graham.

In an effusive pro-Graham article in Dissent Olly Haynes observed that Unite refused to support the Enough is Enough coalition with the RMT and CWU because

two of the coalition’s five demands—building affordable housing and imposing heavier taxes on the rich—could only be enacted directly through state power. ...

The first indication that Sharon Graham was a Zionist cuckoo in the trade union nest was when Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie was banned.

On 23 July 2023 the far-right Campaign Against Antisemitism claimed credit for the ban on Corbyn The Big Lie. They wrote:

Following correspondence with Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Unite union has cancelled the screening of a propaganda film about the antisemitic former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn....

However, following contact from Campaign Against Antisemitism in which we pointed out that the scheduling of the event appeared to be contradictory to the reports that the film has been banned in all of Unite’s buildings, it was cancelled....

Campaign Against Antisemitism commends Unite for its swift and decisive action to cancel the screening as soon as we brought it to its attention.

Graham’s apolitical election stance was a cover for very right-wing politics. To her capitalism and imperialism are perfectly normal and therefore not political. Is it any surprise that she refused to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide? But if Britain’s far-left organisations displayed their typically blinkered approach, engaging in a bout of wishful thinking, then the Zionist organisations were not fooled. Indeed it is highly likely that Graham signalled to them that Len McCluskey’s support for the Palestinians would be jettisoned.

Euan Philips (David Gordstein) of Labour Against Antisemitism, welcomed the election of Graham as General Secretary.

The SWP, SP and Countefire simply refused to accept that the Skwawkbox’s allegations of Graham’s nepotism, turning a blind eye to racism and despotism amounted to anything. Despite Skawkbox being vilified at no time has Graham disputed their allegations.

At her first Executive Committee meeting as General Secretary (September 2021) Graham ‘Pledged to make our Union the most democratic and transparent it has ever been.’ Actions however speak louder than words as her banning of films demonstrates.

Graham promised to ‘Take the lead or provide practical support to other groups tackling wider societal issues such as; climate change, the housing crisis and racism.’ Under Len McCluskey Unite’s Community branches were established. It is no secret that Graham is hostile to them as she sees them as naturally political.

Graham pledged ‘there will be no blank cheques’ for the Labour Party. The cutting of affiliation fees by McLuskey, has been reversed without protest. Graham also promised to

·               Introduce a Member Hotline in my Office.

·               Make sure that my expenses are accessible to members online.

·               Introduce ‘General Secretary Live’ online Q&A

Below is a time line of Graham’s record as General Secretary:

i.              On the 8 June Sarah Carpenter banned Corbyn – The Big Lie from being shown at Unite’s premises in Portsmouth on Graham’s ‘advice’.

ii.            From 7 October to 3 November, Graham delayed calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

iii.         In her statement of 26 June to staff and officers Graham claimed that Unite ‘was the first major union to publicly and unambiguously call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.’ This was a lie. UNISON called for an immediate ceasefire on October 26 and it also condemned Israel for its attacks on civilians unlike the even handed Unite statement a week later.

iv.         Graham has not only refused to attend the national Palestinian demonstrations but she has refused to allow Unite’s national banner to be present.

v.            Graham tried to pressurise Unite official Simon Dubbins to calling off a Unite Palestinian event at Labour Party conference. She has now suspended him.

vi.         Graham also tried to persuade Pete Kavanagh, Regional Secretary for London & Eastern Region, from speaking at the Palestinian demonstration in London on January 13.

vii.       Graham’s Chief of Staff, Sarah Carpenter, appointed without any reference to the Executive, threatened Kavanagh with loss of a pension bonus if he continued to support the Palestinians.

viii.    Graham said nothing about genocide in Gaza until March 25,over two weeks after, when she wrote a letter of ‘solidarity’ to the Palestinian trade union PGFTU after the bombing of their HQ in Gaza City.

ix.         One day later, March 26, Graham issued a letter condemning attempts to stop the manufacture of arms for Israel. Graham attacked ‘groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS’.

In her letter Graham said ‘there is no contradiction for a trade union to hold a position of solidarity with Palestinian workers’ whilst making arms intended to murder those same workers. She held that ‘it is a core principle of Unite that as a trade union the 'first claim' on our priorities’ is to support the right of Unite members to produce arms to kill other workers.

Clearly the words ‘international solidarity’ are alien to Graham. It is shameful that the left sects have failed to call her so far. There are indications, judging by a letter critical of Graham in Socialist Worker that the SWP is revising its attitude. Let us hope that Counterfire and the Socialist Party do likewise.

Graham could have told Unite workers that she would support them refusing to handle arms destined for Israel’s murder machine in Gaza in the same way as happened with Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride in 1973 when they refused to service engines destined for Pinochet’s airforce.

According to Graham’s logic the right of workers at IG Farben to produce Zyklon B for the gas chambers trumped the rights of Jews not to be murdered.

x.           On 11 April the Officers National Committee submitted a collective grievance concerning the flouting of grievance procedures and the victimisation of workers who challenged Graham’s repressive regime. They wrote:

The length of time that grievances and investigations are taking to reach a conclusion is not acceptable in a modern workplace... employees are waiting months after submitting a grievance due to a refusal of some to participate in the process, being banned from your workplace when not even suspended, and an application of “special measures

Using legal privilege to justify enforcing a refusal to allow an employee to present their grievance is disgraceful and anti-trade union... part of our role is to challenge power in the workplace where that power is used to suppress workers seeking transparency, expressing their genuinely held views or seeking protection from abuse.

Threats of legal action for raising a grievance... is... a denial of natural justice.... In seeking to declare a grievance invalid the employer has cited the issues of trust and confidence.... Loss of trust and confidence is a legitimate reason for dismissal by an employer so to reference it is to further intimidate the worker.’

The time has come for the left to stop making excuses for Graham. Richard Allday told me that ‘she has not spoken out on the current atrocity in Palestine’ but he failed to ask why this is. The time has come for the left groups to put clear red water between them and Graham.

Tony Greenstein

UK Far-Right Surges to 23%

 As the British National Party Lose their Final Seats  - UKIP - a party of 'fruit-cakes' and 'closet racists' [Cameron] rises

Nigel Farage, the 'hail fellow well met' bloke at home with South Coast prejudices about how they should scrap benefits

Historically Britain hasn’t had an equivalent of far-right European parties such as the Front Nationale or Italy’s Northern Leagues.  One of the things that made it easier for the Left to operate and to defend the gains made after the  2nd world war, was the strength of the working class coupled with a post-war consensus that full-employment and the NHS were articles of faith, not to be touched.  Pensions and welfare benefits were part of the civilising of capitalism.

No more.  Thursday’s local election results produced a situation where, if it had been a General Election, Labour would have gained 29% under Millionaire Milliband, the Tories 25%, UKIP  23% and the Lib-Dems, who have acted as the government’s faithful nodding poodle, a mere 14%.  The figures, compiled for the BBC by Professor John Curtice, suggest that on the basis of Thursday's voting, Labour might have won 29 per cent in a general election, the Conservatives 25 per cent, Ukip 23 per cent, the Liberal Democrats 14 per cent, and "others" 9 per cent

Contrary to some of the cheaper jibes coming from Cameron and Clarke, UKIP isn’t a fundamentally racist as opposed to a chauvinist party.  It hates’ ‘Johny Foreigner’ no matter who s/e might be.  Although there will no doubt be found plenty of ckoset fascists and ex-fascists in the party, it isn’t like the  BNP  or National Front, derived from the bowels of British fascism but the country villages of  the home countries.

Ed Milliband - not an ounce of socialist politics or personality.  Political programme identical to that of the Tories.  His main claim to fame is that 'blue Labour' is just another establishment party

Laughing all the way to the voting bank - does anyone remember the rise of Robert Kilroy Silk, ex-Labour MP, BBC broadcaster and ex-UKIP MEP?

Although many people believe that UKIP is just an anti-Europe party, beneath its rhetoric lies a belief that has never gone away.  In the words of US Secretary under Truman, Dean Acheson, 'Britain has lost an empire but not yet found a role.'  It was an attempt to solve that quandary that led to the  so-called 'special relationship'.  In other words UKIP envisage an independent Britain carving out its own foreign policy.  They should take a good look at Sir Anthony Eden and Suez and where that led.

The  primary blame for the  ascendancy is the socialist left, who have continued to insist that they are the main enemy rather than those who run capitalism.  They fea ture on the bankers as if Chief Executives and Directors, with their massive 20%+ annual salary increases aren’t also a symptom of capitalism.

I was listening to one woman in the South-Shields by-election, where the Tories were knowced intto 3rd place by UKIP.  ‘I’m voting UKIP’ she said.  ‘I’m fed up with  cuts and closures’.

The problem is that Farage, both himself and his party, are to the right of the Conservative Party.  If that woman seriously believes a coutnry toff, whose trade-mark is a pin-striped suit, is going to come and reverse the iniquities of capitalism when she and others need to seriously think again.

But who can blame such people, the atomised working class of the North, when the manifestos of all 3 main parties, the Green Party being  pretty irrelevant, is almost identical.  All 3 agree the welfare state should be shrunk.  All believe in the privatisation of public services (mainly the Post Office is left) and NHS – indeed New Labour under its previous war-criminal Prime Ministers  Blair and Brown, pioneered such ‘reform’.  All believe in cutting benefits to the unemployed and disabled.  All believe in the holy grail of housing left to the market without any meaningful addition to the public housing stock.  New Labour had 13 years to take Rail back into public ownership.  Instead it squandered the money on Bush’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Below is an article I wrote late last year for Weekly Worker, in which I laid out the rod that the Left had made for its own back.  That was before the SWP had imploded in a rape controversy concerning the ‘rights and privileges’ of members of the SWP Central Committee.

There’s No Success Like Failure

The Never Ending Retreat of the Far Left

Alex Callinicos SWP Chief defended party hacks against accusations  of rape

It is somewhat ironic that the different socialist groups, having predicted the capitalist crisis for years, are now too weak to take advantage of  it.  We have the greatest financial crisis for over a century, if not ever.  Banks that would be bankrupt in an instant but for government bailouts of financial lame ducks, real unemployment at over 3.5 million, a wholesale reversal of the post-war settlement as embodied in the welfare state, to say nothing of an environmental catastrophe around the corner.  All this coupled with three major political parties between whom you would be hardpressed to slip a piece of paper.  It is difficult to imagine a more favourable climate for Marxist and socialist groups, yet the truth is that at no time in the post-war era has the left been so weak.

Nearly a decade ago the SWP successfully destroyed  the Socialist Alliance when their attention span, never great at the best of times, became distracted by the allure of Respect and George Galloway.  Today the electoral embodiment of the far-Left is the misnamed Trade Union & Socialist Coalition, which manages to achieves fewer votes each time it stands for election.  But despite their abject failure to sink roots, Marxist groups and self-declared parties run a mile rather than confront their own failures.  There is no debate about the reasons for the Left’s failure in Britain or how such a failure can be reversed.  The only option left to members is to leave, disenchanted or burnt-out or both.  Both the principal groups on the left – the SWP and Socialist Party – take it as a personal affront when it is suggested that perhaps their strategy needs revising.  Suggest to them that perhaps a balance sheet could be drawn on the successes and failures of the far left and they will look at you blankly as if you were an economist from outer space.

Whereas the secret state and MI5 have long ago transferred their attentions to anarchist and environmental groups, the sects and groups of Britain’s far-left see failure as success and survival as an achievement of its own.  Recruiting in ones or twos is more important than effecting an overall change in the balance of class forces.  The most important battles of all are with each other.  The SWP in particular is an unstable, stalinoid group whose modus operandi is that of a revolving door.  The secret is to ensure that recruits-in are more than recruits-out and any statistical sleight of land is employed to ensure that the first is greater than the second.  What none of the larger groups on the Left will do however, and this includes the Communist Party of Britain, is to draw up any kind of honest assessment of where they have gone wrong as well as what they’ve got right. 

Perhaps I can declare my own interest.  I joined the International Socialists (later SWP) when I was still at school aged 16, having just led a school strike.  Within 3 years I was expelled for breaking the rules of ‘democratic (i.e. bureaucratic) centralism’ when I voted publicly against IS’s attempt to wind up the Anti-Internment League.  I considered the interests of the anti-imperialist struggle and the fight of the nationalist minority in the North of Ireland as more important than the sectarian interests of the IS leadership.  After the branch had twice hesitated to do the deed, Roger Rosewall – IS’s Industrial Organiser at the time – was brought up to Liverpool to effect my expulsion, which he did.  Amongst those abstaining was John Bloxham, pillar of Socialist Organiser/Alliance for Workers Liberty.  Rosewell himself later became Shirley Porter’s bag carrier, an employee of Aims of Industry, leader writer for the Daily Mail and a member of the Industrial Committee of the Social Democratic Party!  Clearly he had been a state asset but to this day I never received an apology from the SWP for the role that Rosewell played and the membership received no explanation either.  After all he too has long disappeared down an Orwelllian memory hole.

Although he later recanted and changed his views in Days of the Locust, at the time it was National Secretary Jim Higgins who effected my expulsion.  I mention this not because my case was in any way exceptional but because it is precisely such behaviour that has alienated thousands of potential revolutionaries over the years.  Although IS(SWP) has a formal system of appeal against expulsions, I doubt if any of the hundreds of expelled SWP members has ever successfully appealed.  By way of comparison, the bourgeois courts are a model of democracy!  Indeed most employers have disciplinary appeal structures in which people are successful.  Yet socialist, Marxist even, groups treat democratic rights and debate as a luxury .

That there are objective reasons for the weakness of the socialist left cannot be doubted.  Prime amongst them is the restructuring of the working class itself as symbolised in the defeat of the Miners’ strike in 1984-5.  Long gone are the big trade union battalions – the miners, dockers, shipyard workers and car workers, to name but a few.  Of course the working class hasn’t disappeared as such, people still need to sell their labour, but it has been fragmented, atomised and depoliticised.  There has been a catastrophic decline in union membership, the abolition of the closed shop and a massive decrease in union militancy.  One of the few blue-collar unions remaining, the RMT, despite moving to the left, is weak and fragmented as a result of rail privatisation.

What is the point of an organised Left that goes through the motions whilst accepting defeat?  If we are really the creatures of forces beyond our control then the only conclusion is that we may as well go home or confine ourselves to the letters page of the Guardian or academic discussion groups.
Internationally capitalism is not only undergoing a massive economic crisis, the worst of which is probably to come, but it has also become more savage and war-like.  Where once the US only tiptoed around the Middle East, preferring to rely on its surrogates, today the region bristles with warships, drones,  missiles and marines.  We are in a state of permanent war yet the Left, apart from the million + march in 2003, has had virtually no impact.  Whereas the international left played a major part in the withdrawal from Vietnam, it has had little impact on the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.  That has been the prerogative of the armed resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One question that left groups have never faced up to is whether it is indeed possible to replace capitalism given the weakness of our own side.  The emphasis by Marx and socialist theoreticians on the organised working class as an agent for change in society was predicated upon the fact that industrial capitalism had thrown together, in factories, large numbers of workers, whose consciousness would, as a result of the battles they were forced to undergo, generalise from the economic to political.  It wasn’t that the working class was any more oppressed or exploited, in the commonly understood sense of the word, than the peasantry and villeins of the feudal era, but that unlike their predecessors they had the possibility and ability to do something about it and further, that capitalism laid the basis for a society where humanity was free of want.

In Britain, as Lenin recognised, the working class’s conservatism was a direct product of the fact that it dined off the crumbs of British imperialism.  In fact they did better than that.  The Attlee government in 1945 came into office with a crisis whose dimensions were not dissimilar to those of today, although the nature of the crisis was very different, since although Europe had virtually been bankrupted by war, the USA was barely affected economically and further had surplus capital aplenty.  The UK was bankrupt and only a £3 billion loan from the United States kept it afloat.  Yet the Labour government not only nationalised the mines and rail and utilities but it created the NHS and introduced a National Assistance Act that guaranteed everyone a minimum standard of living.  How was it able to do so?  Because the Labour government super-exploited its African and Asian colonies (whilst being forced to concede independence to India, Sri Lanka and Burma).  The rubber plantations of Malaya and the cocoa crops of Ghana, in addition to the forced loans that constituted the sterling area, financed Labour’s reforms.  Today the City of London continues that tradition in a different guise.

The Queen is alleged to have asked a group of economists why they didn’t predict the economic crisis.  Perhaps the same question should be asked of the socialist gurus who preside over the different groups and their pet economists?  Marxism is supposed to be scientific socialism, yet it operates in code with an understanding of dialectics being reserved for the high priests of the order.  The fact is that socialist groups have no greater understanding of the crisis of world capitalism than any bourgeois economist.  I make no claims to an understanding of the dismal science that is economics but it seems to me that we have witnessed the transferrance of production to the third world and Asia whilst Western societies have lived off credit as consumers, having defined the rules of the game via the Dollar and Euro.  If this is true then it raises questions about whether revolutionary change is even possible in the West any longer, even as a theoretical possibility.

The Left Groups

 I stood at the last local elections in Brighton for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition alongside a supporters of the Socialist Party and Socialist Resistance.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered, mid-campaign, that the SP had produced an extra leaflet, which I had been unaware of, naming only their candidate.  In essence two campaigns were being fought – the electoral campaign and a recruitment campaign for the SP.  As long as TUSC continues as a Heath-Robinson contraption, a coalition of convenience between sections of the RMT bureaucracy and Bob Crowe and the SP, with the SWP, although formally a part, in practice having little to do with it except as a flag of convenience, it has no future.  How can you have a credible electoral group unless it is a party with individual membership? 

The argument that the SP puts forward is that one person one vote was responsible for the Labour Party moving to the right.  In fact it was a symptom of the Left’s lack of a base, even at the height of the Benn campaign for Deputy Leadership.  But to imagine you can create a viable group which refuses to have members, which won’t allow a vote at its national conference in order not to offend trade union leaders who wish to exercise control whilst their own membership remains uninvolved, is an absurdity. 

It is of course welcome that the RMT is involved in supporting TUSC.  However to try and exercise control, not via a block vote even but through a complete absence of democracy, where all decisions are taken by a small handpicked group, is self-defeating.  Political currents will of course exist within such a party but loyalty has to be to the party not the current.  Why?  Because the priority is building for socialism and no political sect or current is capable of doing this.

We have the situation whereby the different sects believe that the only route to socialism lies in their retaining control of what are effectively front groups.  The SP believes a party can only be created by the trade unions, i.e. by the left trade union bureaucracies.  Since that is not going to happen without extreme pressure to break from the Labour Party from below, it effectively means that there will be no other party other than themselves.  A mass party based primarily on individual membership would of course exert its own attractions on the membership of trade unions, but that isn’t a road that even the furthest left of union executives is prepared to contemplate.  The SP’s position is a reflection of their own economism, which is based on an adaptation to the existing economic and trade union consciousness.  For example one of the unions that they put forward as an example to follow is the Prison Officers Association – barely a trade union and one whose membership has never shown the slightest degree of sympathy or support for political prisoners.  The SP’s economism helps explain why it is not involved in international solidarity work or indeed virtually any other campaign outside those with direct economic demands.

I must confess that the SWP’s trajectory is even more difficult to fathom.  It is a long time since they had a ‘turn to industry’ and their politics are eclectic.  Although they are more likely to be involved in international, environmental and anti-war campaigns, at the end of the day they are in complete agreement with the SP that the main purpose of political activity is to recruit to their own sect.
It never ceases to amaze me that groups led, as in the SWP’s case, by distinguished professors aren’t able to see that building one’s own group at the expense of the class is a recipe for never achieving socialism.  Is it any wonder that the British left is by far and away the weakest in western Europe?
Long gone are the days when IS organised a 6 week strike in a Manchester engineering company because of the victimisation of a shop steward (John Deason).  The decline of engineering has seen to that.  But the lack of any base in the working class (the SWP in particular) has meant that their politics have lacked any firm grounding or principle.  The anti-war struggle developed into a love-in with Islamic mullahs and small businessmen.  Respect was founded, not on any class basis, but out of the most opportunistic electoralist reasons.  And likewise, when they woke up to the fact that SWP members were unlikely to benefit from an Islamic vote (unless they were Muslims) they broke for the most opportunistic reasons from Respect.

The Socialist Party has been more immune to this and it does have a base within some unions, in particular PCS.  However it is noticeable that this is at the expense of raising any political demands.  The savage attacks on DWP members are a direct consequence of New Labour’s abolition of the divide between the Employment and Benefits service.  Yet the two are quite different and many people receive benefits whilst at work (less common now that universal benefits are being scrapped) and many looking for work won’t receive income-based benefits at all.  This was symbolised by the creation of Job Centre Plus offices yet PCS  failed to oppose what was a naked ideological attack by New Labour on the very concept of benefits (which is why the successor to Family Credit was termed a Tax Credit – literally the same people swapped department from the DWP to  HMRC).

The failure of the SP to even raise political demands to do with the structure of employment which affected their own members reflected a wider problem.  They didn’t question the political right of management to manage and the government to dictate how the department was organised.  And if they failed to oppose Job Centre Plus they also failed to oppose the use of sanctions against benefit claimants or the use of privatised companies to provide ‘training’ and now the Work Programme.  Yet the logical culmination of the use of Atos, Maximus, A4E and all the other crooked companies that the Tories and New Labour have employed, has been savage cuts to jobs with the prospect that the entire DWP labour force will be contracted out.

In short a failure of politics has led to a failure in the economic battle too.  Yet the major political groups on the Left have their own peculiar definition of sectarianism which goes something like:  ‘if you criticise us then you are being sectarian’.  In other words people are expected to work alongside them, put up with party building at the expense of joint work but if you raise your doubts as to what they are doing then you are the sectarian!

The strength of the Communist Party of Britain lies in its control of the Morning Star, despite its failure to learn any lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union.   I understand they sent a delegation to ‘socialist’ China recently.  I can only assume they weren’t put up in the same hotel as the IMF!  The CPB operates at the fringes of the TUC and trade union bureaucracy and because it is vastly weakened compared with the halycon days of Harry Pollitt, it or some of its members have been forced into co-operation with their hated rivals in the ‘Trotskyist’ groups.  I refer to Andrew Murray in particular, but also Robert Griffiths.

The Alliance for Workers Liberty is barely worth mentioning.  Led by its own guru, Sean Matgamna, it distinguished itself during the Iraq War by refusing to oppose the occupation and it has adopted much the same attitude to Afghanistan.  Only US troops can guarantee the ability to organise of the Iraqi working class!  What began as support for federalism in Ireland and then support for Zionism in the guise of 2 States for 2 Peoples has become naked support for US imperialism.

What is left of the old International Marxist Group are two groups and a couple of splinters.  Socialist Action operates in a semi-submerged state, its politics combining neo-stalinism and a third worldist approach to national liberation movements.  Alone among the groups it has no paper, albeit issuing a political bulletin fairly regularly by e-mail.  It is active in various solidarity groups, notably Palestine and Venezuela Solidarity Campaigns.  Having tied its fortunes to Ken Livingstone via his Chief of Staff, the late Redmond O’Neill, it has seen its fortunes decline alongside him.

The other group is Socialist Resistance.  On an individual basis I have a high regard for many of its members  but as a group it leaves a lot to be desired.  Marginalised in TUSC it is led by Alan Thornett, who first earned his spurs in the WRP.  Although more principled than most groups it has barely a hundred members.

The reality of the far left today is that the various groups and sects are little more than propaganda groups.  Their intervention in either class or related social struggles is next to zero.  One of the more remarkable features today is that it is the anarchists and direct action activists and groups who are more vibrant.  UK Uncut, Occupy – these are the targets of police repression.  In Brighton we have a vibrant anarchist social centre, the Cowley Club.  When the EDL came to town it wasn’t the SP or the SWP (UAF) who took the lead but the anarchists together with old unattached far-left socialists.  The result was a mass campaign which led to Sussex Police being unable to force a path through Brighton for the fascists.  After just 1/3 of the way along their route they were diverted down the backstreets.  It was as magnificent a victory as anything we saw in the 1970s and 1980’s when the SWP was committed to direct action against the fascists and physical opposition to their marches and activities.  The anarchists had learnt the lessons of the Trotskyists and Red Action of 30 years ago.  In the lead up to the march I was one of those who spoke to a packed meeting of students at Sussex University.  During the demonstration against the EDL one young woman at the meeting came up to me and asked pointedly whether their achievements matched those I had talked about a few days previously.  These are young people for whom the current grouplets of the far left hold no attraction

One group I haven’t mentioned is the Communist Party of Great Britain!   The CPGB is committed to building a Marxist Party.  However this is a purely theoretical position since it abandoned pretty quickly the Campaign for a Marxist Party!  It was part of the Socialist Alliance and even joined, half-heartedly, Respect.  Despite this it proudly proclaims that there are no half-way houses.  Either a Marxist Party nor nothing at all.  The problem is that a Marxist party consisting of all the sects would resemble nothing so much as rats in a bag.  It wouldn’t be the capitalists I had to fear but my own comrades!  The one thing the CPGB has going for it is the most open paper on the Left.  The SP’s ‘The Socialist’ is as dull as ditchwater.  Socialist Worker has never recovered since Paul Foot and is as predictable as ever.  Neither publication boasts an open letters page because debate is frowned upon.  It is ironic that one of the  smallest groups on the left boasts a paper with perhaps the largest readership.  It is an asset that they would be foolish to dispense with.

The one silver cloud in an otherwise bleak sky was the Scottish Socialist Party.  Of course circumstances were more favourable, with PR elections to the Assembly and the recent experience of a successful fight against the Poll Tax.  But nonetheless it pointed the way and that was why the RMT, which was expelled by Labour for supporting it has ended up supporting TUSC ironically. The SP which opposed the direction that Scottish Militant Labour took was nonetheless forced to follow in their footsteps.

That the SSP ultimately collapsed in the wake of Tommy Sheridan’s disastrous libel and perjury trials should not blind us to its successes.  Whether you call it a Labour Party Mark 2 or a half-way house, the fact is that half way is better than not even setting out on the journey.  To broaden the base of socialist ideas and support can never be a bad idea.

What of the Labour Party to which the CPGB is increasingly drawn?  Having been active at the time of the Benn deputy leadership campaign I have no doubt whatever that the position of the SP is essentially correct.  Whether you call it a bourgeois workers party or an openly pro-capitalist party along the lines of the Democrats, the fact is that socialists no longer have any purchase on it.
There was a time when the Labour Party proclaimed its belief in the reform of capitalism.  As Alan Bullock wrote in his biography of Labour’s post-war Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, the ghost of  the 1930’s stalked the Labour cabinet.  And by that he meant mass unemployment.  Does anyone seriously believe that of today’s party?  When Aneurin Bevan, John Freeman and  Harold Wilson resigned from the Labour Cabinet in 1951, over the introduction of prescription charges, to form the Keep Left (later Tribune) group, their support lay in the constituencies.  Their opponents were in the trade unions – people like Arthur Deakin of the TGWU and Lord Carron of the AUEW.  When New Labour gained office and Gordon Brown refused to reestablish the link between pensions and earnings, it was the union block vote that passed the successful motion.  The CLPs voted by nearly 2-1 against.  When the individual membership of a party swings in such a dramatic fashion from left to right – a swing that is as much in evidence today as it was 15 years ago – then it is time to draw conclusions, one of which is that the Labour Party can only be the graveyard of socialism.

Tony Greenstein