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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2001Real solidarity eludes British Left
London - Against predictions that the fall of Kabul had taken the wind from the
sails of the anti-war movement, Sunday Nov. 18 saw a massive demonstration here
with estimates ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 participants. Called by the Stop
The War Coalition, it brought together a wide range of support from the
traditional Left, anti-racists, trade unionists, Asian youth and Islamic
organizations. Significantly many coaches came from outside London, with 40 from
Birmingham alone.Sections of the bourgeois media have not adopted the warmongering tone that
government spin doctors desire; instead there has been a split. The traditional
ally of Blair, The Guardian, has been less than lukewarm, whilst the tabloid
pro-New Labour Daily Mirror went so far as to declare, "This war is a
fraud." Attempts by more loyal sections of the media, like Rupert Murdoch's
The Sun, to denounce critics of the war as "traitors" has failed to
squeeze out the dissenting voices. Marvellous though the November protest was, it could have been even larger if
we had a movement that was founded on principled opposition to both the
Anglo-American warmongers and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. But the Stop The
War Coalition was formed top-down in an undemocratic stitch-up predominantly
under the influence of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, equivalent of the U.S.
ISO), who have used their influence to ally with Islamic fundamentalism and sink
to even newer depths of retrogression. The British Left overwhelmingly adheres to a tunnel vision concept of
anti-imperialism that amounts to no more than being anti-American. In SWP
theory, Islamic fundamentalism is an anti-imperialist force alongside whom
socialists should stand shoulder to shoulder. At the foundation of the Stop The
War Coalition they refused to condemn Islamic fundamentalism or the atrocity in
New York, preventing its inclusion within the campaigns principles. Despite all
the words of "sympathy" this remains their practice. What is in fact
British chauvinism wrapped in the red flag is revealed in the attitude to
socialists from Islamic countries. The British left can afford itself the luxury
of defending fundamentalism whilst living in an imperialist country; those
Iranian and Iraqi revolutionaries in the UK are in no position to ally with
their murderers. The SWP and company refused to listen to such voices,
preferring the voice of fundamentalist bigots on the anti-war platform. The consequences of this opportunist accommodation to reactionary ideas is
exemplified in events at an anti-war meeting in Birmingham where the organisers
stood back as fundamentalists forcibly excluded an Iranian Marxist for
distributing anti-fundamentalist leaflets and segregated Asian women from men in
the hall. At a subsequent meeting of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance a motion
condemning the events was opposed by the SWP. This practice by self-styled Marxists stands in contrast to leading theorists
of our movement such as Lenin who argued "the need to combat Pan-Islamism
and similar trends, which seek to combine the liberation movements against
European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the position of
the khans, landowners and mullahs, etc." The war is not over and there is a necessity of an anti-war movement to
exist, but to truly become an influence on events it must project principles of
universal freedom from war, oppression and terrorism. On its present basis, the
movement may mobilise significant numbers but relative to even the seven and
half million trade union members in the UK, never mind the working class as a
whole, it will not shape events. Christopher Ford |
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