Northern Communist Forum: Iran: War, Sanctions and Resistance 10/03/2012

The ever increasing tension towards a military action against Iran has caused the misery of millions of Iranian workers. As millions struggle to cope with increasing inflation, unemployment and the withdrawal of subsidies the West has sought to increase the pain through sanctions which hit the masses not the state. The threat of war and sanctions undermines the ability of the masses to fight against the theocratic regime.

The Northern Communist Forum on March 10 is hosting a meeting with the Chair of the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign, Yassamine Mather. We will explore and discuss how we can organise resistance to sanctions and war whilst building links with working class forces in Iran.

Date: 10 March 2012

Time: 3.30 pm

Place: Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, Central Manchester

They ain’t seen nothing yet: November 30th in Manchester

Liam Conway reports on public sector workers making their voices heard

As with most strikes, the day started early when I and a fellow student joined our lecturers on pickets outside our University building, where we spoke with various staff members about the current struggle. The overwhelming feeling is one of complete frustration at the current governments plans but optimism at the prospect of being victorious. While the pension dispute is clearly the priority for many of those striking, conversations wandered onto all aspects of the current economic crisis. Among many staff there was a clear hostility toward the government’s plans for education in general; there were scathing remarks about market oriented Universities, and the attacks on the Arts and Humanities. In many ways this shows the far reaching importance of the current strikes and that they are encouraging not only resistance to the attack on public sector pensions, but also against cuts that affect society as a whole.

The mood on the pickets was certainly encouraging, with much support and solidarity being shown. Of course there were a few lecturers who broke ranks and scabbed, much to the annoyance of those I spoke with. ‘It seems crazy, I just don’t understand how someone can willingly accept such proposals as the one were being offered’ one lecturer told me. We agreed that such passivity must stem from either sheer ideological conviction, or simply personal wealth which made the loss of such a substantial amount of their pension unimportant. It could be neither, but it is hard to understand such a stance. The same can be said of those students who shrug their shoulders and keep their heads down as they quickly scuttle past. Some claimed ignorance of what was going on, and others clearly had no sympathy with the strikers. We assisted the lecturers in saying how important it was to not cross the picket lines and to show solidarity with our staff, and some students refused to cross after being informed of the situation. Having been on the pickets at the same building during the last strike by university staff, I was far more encouraged by the turnout and response we got from students this time, though it could still be better. On the whole the pickets were extremely encouraging. I was informed later that Hospitals around Manchester had over 200 people picketing them which again shows a strong commitment to resisting the government’s plans.

The march and rally were very well attended, figures have varied with some sources suggesting around 30,000 and others 20,000. Either way it is an encouraging sign, and the largest march in Manchester for several years. It was a great mix of people from numerous unions and extremely lively, with all manner of instruments being used to create noise. As the demo proceeded through the city centre it was greeted with enthusiastic applause by onlookers. Chants ranged from hating Tories to advocating revolution (if only). When I and another comrade got ahead of the crowd to find a good spot to leaflet as the people emerged on Whitworth Park, our leaflets were all but gone in the space of five minutes. The speeches began and were of the usual flavour. Though at times there were mentions of capitalism and the alternative, they were on the whole the usual trade union speeches one becomes accustomed to hearing on such demonstrations. Of course they were enthusiastically met by the crowds, who seemed committed to the idea of breaking the current government and taxing the bankers.

This at least shows a bare level of contempt for those ruling us and the manifest unjustness of the system, which sees bankers well rewarded while the working class suffer the cost of the crisis. However a clear revolutionary alternative is not coming to fruition, with most of the radical left retreating into the reformist abyss and coming across as less radical than those on the pickets. Surely those on the left must see that a radical alternative is needed now more than ever? Despite this obvious problem we must take a large amount of encouragement from the strikes and the support they received, certainly here in Manchester it was a very positive day. We can only hope that the resistance is kept up which will involve a large amount of workers placing pressure on their Union tops to not compromise at their expense while consistent solidarity must be shown from students and other sectors of society. There is no doubt this is going to be a long and hard fought struggle but there remains much optimism. As one striker put it to me ‘the government hasn’t seen nothing yet!’.

Show of strength: Sheffield on strike

Michael Copestake reports on the November 30^th strike and rally in Sheffield

Outside Sheffield city hall on November 30th

As in all major cities around the country Sheffield saw a mass day of strike action by the public sector unions, with picketing taking place all around the city in the morning, followed by a march and rallies, with the crowd numbering about 4,000 at its peak. In the morning CPGB comrades joined a picket line outside a Department for Work and Pensions building which co-housed the notorious ATOS Origin firm – hand picked by the Conservative led government to force as many people as possible off incapacity benefit, often with little regard for their actual capacity for work. Speaking to a leading PCS union member revealed low levels of scabbing outside of the higher and managerial pay tiers, with around 300 of 350 staff staying away from work. Many other pickets were dotted around the city, with several highly visible ones in the city centre.

The main event of the day organised by Sheffield Trades Council consisted in two marches around the city centre, followed by rallies. Needless to say the exhausted crowd, up early picketing, had thinned quite a bit by the end of the second round of marching and speeches. Amongst the protest were many children, who would otherwise have been attending school, infants in prams, pensioners, and many younger trade unionists in all likelihood on strike for the first time, lending a real community feel to the day. The speeches from the platform were the usual fayre but generally less militant than we have come to expect at these events- as was the atmosphere of the march in general, possibly a reflection of the increased number of first time strikers and the desire to give a purely economic coloration to the day’s action. Tellingly for the current state of the trade unions, a sticker produced for the day read ‘Hands off my pension!’- a somewhat individualistic slogan.

The whole multitude of competing far-left sects were out in force – all seeking their audience with ‘the masses’ – along with many jaded ex-leftists who nonetheless felt obliged to turn out and support the action. Attempting to hand out our leaflet to the left got mixed results. Some comrades from the Socialist Party did a swap of material and also took the time for a comradely discussion. If only such behaviour was the norm amongst fellow Marxists! The Socialist Workers Party were most numerous, manning two or three stalls. Younger SWP comrades will be comradely and even take a leaflet, so long as party full timers and more sectarian ‘veterans’ aren’t watching over them beady-eyed. One such veteran did not at all appreciate my attempt to give him our leaflet and strike up a conversation about politics. Despite his strong hints that I was not welcome, I politely bought a copy of the Socialist Worker from the comrade anyway and wished him well, confusing and angering him still further.

Also present were Socialist Appeal, the Communist Workers Organisation and Communist Party of Britain, the Commune group, anarchists and various greens. Interestingly the Counterfire group, born out of the most recent split in the SWP, now have a small presence in Sheffield. One comrade who had attended some of their meetings was very new to the left and admitted that he thought the proliferation of groups and their hostility to each other was ‘crazy’. The bulk of trade unionists present were politely accepting the leaflets thrust into their palms (or claiming to already have a copy!). Most are bound for the recycle bin of course. But there was some genuine interest in the CPGB’s leaflet (‘The left must step up: For a day of action across Europe’ ) and the Weekly Worker (headline: ‘Socialism or barbarism’), which both featured Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream to illustrate the potentially disastrous fate which awaits the working class if we cannot pose an alternative to austerity and capitalism itself. Many people came up to us to take a leaflet or buy a paper, and our badges proved popular too at our stall.

Alliance for Workers Liberty comrades were also happy enough to chat and tell us about the meeting they were publicising for shortly after the march, ostensibly for ‘grass roots union activists’ to discuss an ‘industrial strategy’, post-November 30^th. Of course the attendees were mostly the usual suspects- members of the AWL and other left groups, but there was a fair number of newer comrades too. It was welcome that someone on the left was putting on a relevant meeting after the final speeches of the day, the AWL’s meeting filling the gap following the failure of the efforts of both AWL and CPGB comrades to get SACA (Sheffield Anti-Cuts Alliance) to hold one under its own name with a range of speakers from different political backgrounds to be followed by free debate: an idea shot down by the SWP whom control it. The AWL meeting was opened to discussion straight away, though this meant the pretence that it was not just the far left plus a few others – probably lefties of some description themselves – lasted all of five minutes. Communist PCS member Lee Rock made the first contribution to the meeting, calling for greater honesty over our politics (which is, after all, the only way we will win anyone to them) and highlighted the crying need for the unity of Marxists as Marxists, counter-posing such a vision to the prevailing sectarian madness.

Other comrades gave us tales of how the union bureaucrats made taking action very hard indeed, with some speculating that we might need greater unofficial organisation in the unions to get round this. Others also condemned the lack of interest shown by the trade unions – and the left – in organising and representing the unemployed, a vital task for the future as cuts and crisis hit harder. One comrade rejected the need for political struggle and said that if the left focuses on ‘bread and butter’ issues it will be more successful. The SWP slogan of ‘All out, stay out’ was found wrong-headed and utterly unrealistic by most present. AWL members present advocated rolling strikes taken by local unions, though this was later found to be problematic, as such decisions are often no longer in the hands of local branches. The AWL also struggled to articulate what is meant by their slogan of a ‘workers government’- though, if reading Solidarity is anything to go by, it means a Labour government.

In relation to local matters AWL and CPGB comrades criticised the Sheffield Anti Cuts Alliance for its lack of democracy and the reverse Midas effect of the SWP, which has determinedly choked the life out of SACA in case it escapes their control. In relation to the unity of Marxists, one comrade gave his opinion that the idea was ‘fanciful’ in the extreme. It was left to CPGB and AWL comrades to bring up the Socialist Alliance as a positive, if insufficient example that was still around barely ten years ago. Of course going further back, many of history’s most successful workers parties have come out of the unification of smaller groups.

Overall the day was a positive show of strength of working class power after decades of slumber. But unfortunately the left, so hampered by sectarian divisions that there is not even a single anti-cuts campaign on the national level, is still not being taken that seriously. Local groups like SACA can help to change that by becoming forums for open political discussion, education and clarification. The opportunity to come together and actually discuss our strategy for defeating austerity would be far more useful to working and unemployed people in Sheffield than an alliance of convenience which organises the odd meeting or rally but constricts political debate.

November 30th leaflet (PDF)

Click here to read the leaflet (PDF)

Women & Revolution: forum success

Michael Copestake reports on the continuing success of the CPGB’s Northern Communist Forums

On Sunday the 19th of November an audience of 20 people came to Friends Meeting House in Manchester for a talk on ‘Women and the Russian revolution’ given by comrade Anne McShane, a talk which also crossed over into the historical attitude taken by the Marxist left and the workers movement on women’s issues, and the position of women in society and on the left today.

Comrade McShane began  her talk with Marx and Engels themselves, and noted that their body of work actually says little on the subject of women’s oppression, and what kind of specific political response there should be from the workers movement. Of this work, Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is the most substantial contribution to the subject, being a materialist re-interpretation and critique of the work of anthropologist Henry Morgan. She emphasised the impact that reading the book can have, particularly on female readers, in de-naturalising patriarchal society. It is thus a powerful antidote to the ideological and social ‘norms’ around sex and the position of men and women that exist in the present, as well as showing that alternative ways of organising society and the relations between the sexes are possible.

Comrade McShane noted that the lefts’ commitment to female emancipation has more often than not remained on paper and not become an important part of its actual political activity. The Second International continued this trend and had a very poor record in fighting for women’s rights, which were seen as secondary to the ‘pure’ class struggle. It was down to particularly tenacious female comrades such as Clara Zetkin in the German SPD to organise ‘women’s committees’ to force the issue into the limelight. Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda ‘Nadya’ Krupskaya was also critical of the SPD’s neglect of women’s issues.

Part of the problem was the stubbornness of contemporary attitudes to women themselves by men on the political left. Many men saw women as untrustworthy when it came to politics, prone to the influence of conservatism and reaction and a distraction from ‘politics’ as viewed from the social position of many men, i.e. the workplace, the factory etc.

In wider society throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries women, often middle class, would form informal discussion or reading groups and engage in ‘un ladylike’ behaviour such as smoking, dressing plainly and discussing politics. In Russia this sometimes took the form of Women’s Education committees which were based around breaking the male monopoly on the information and qualifications required to enter the professions, and ideas around ‘free love’, which meant the freedom as a woman to choose your own partner.

Some of these women, like Alexandra Kollontai and Nadya Krupskaya, were active in the RSDLP and contributed to the programmatic stance the party took on women’s issues, some of which were taken from ‘The Woman Worker’ written in the 1890s by Krupskaya.
Krupskaya served as Lenin’s secretary, allowing herself to play ‘second fiddle’ in comrade McShane’s view.

Kollontai herself was from a wealthy background, but like many from her social class, she was prompted by the visible decay of the Tsarist system to go over to radical politics and the workers movement. She struggled to overcome her own shyness in a male-dominated environment to become one of the movement’s major contributors in her own right. She was the only woman ever to be a Central Committee member of the RSDLP and then the Communist Party, a position from which she was removed  in 1921 following her role in the Workers Opposition faction. Despite the best efforts of such comrades, and the sympathy of Lenin to women’s issues in the party, comrade McShane judged that, like the Second International, the Bolshevik commitment to women’s emancipation remained more of a theoretical than a practical one. This was particularly the case in the pre-revolutionary period and then again during the degeneration of the Bolshevik party, and turning of the revolutionary tide across Europe, Stalin himself throwing back almost completely the reforms gained during the first years of the revolution.

It had been women, comrade McShane noted, who led the strikes of February 1917 as the country groaned under the strain and misery induced by the war effort. Drawn into the factories in order to work and fuel the war economy, women were at the leading edge of the class struggle and their militancy took their male comrades utterly by surprise. Despite the growth of the women’s movement as a whole throughout the period of the provisional government, their role in the events of October 1917 appears much reduced compared to the action of February, and more research on why this is so would be welcomed.

Nevertheless during the revolutionary period the Bolsheviks did introduce significant reforms, if often underfunded and under-resourced. Kollontai, as Commissar for Welfare was responsible for the introduction and expansion of healthcare for women, the establishment of 24 hour crèche facilities and collectively run canteens amongst other things. The 1919 constitution also established the legal equality of men and woman.

Despite all this Kollontai still had to lobby hard within the party for the establishment of a government department for women. Which she achieved in September 1919, after a conference for women that attracted far more attendees than could be fitted into the small room into which it had been booked by party officials- who had anticipated it being something of a washout. The refusal of women to sink into passivity had caught them off guard.

This refusal to disengage from politics extended to the military and in the factories, and led to the establishment of women’s ‘agit-prop’ tours around the country. The years 1919-1923 marked the high point of the women’s movement within the revolution, when it was at its most radical and dynamic- and obtained backing, even if insufficient, from the Bolshevik government.

This is not to say that there were not different and conflicting attitudes amongst women with the party regarding women’s issues. Many female comrades felt that having a ‘Women’s Section’ dealing with issues of women’s oppression was attributing to them a special importance which was a distraction in a period of civil war and social dislocation. The ban on factions was a major hindrance to the activities of the Women’s Section of the Bolshevik party, removing Kollontai from the Central Committee for daring to criticise the government in a foreign publication. In 1930 Stalin closed the Women’s Section down altogether stating that the ‘Women’s Question’ had been settled entirely, all the while rolling back the gains of women from the revolutionary period.

The failure to further advance, or even maintain, the gains made for women during the revolutionary period was by no means all down to the half-heartedness of the Bolshevik party or the strains of the civil war, its aftermath and Stalin. Many women found that even with legal equality and extended social provision designed to help liberate women from significant parts of domestic labour, they often found themselves coming home from work and still having to do domestic labour in spite of the new collective provisions. The attitudes of men themselves failed to keep pace with the reforms introduced.

Comrade McShane said that the condition of life for women in countries like Britain has no doubt improved significantly, but there are still major issues around sex and emancipation. This is even truer in those parts of the world where the oppression and exploitation of women is more brutal and more commonplace, in Afghanistan, in Iran and elsewhere. As for the left and the workers movement today, a ‘macho’ culture seems to prevail and women are not supported enough in building up their confidence in such an environment; something that would best take place within proper women’s organisations within the left itself.

A wide ranging debate followed the initial talk. One comrade present suggested that a bureaucratic-centralist form of organisation, as is common on the present day left, itself inhibits the involvement and emancipation of women, opposed as it is to the articulation of different points of views, and that this maintains the ‘boys club’ atmosphere. Another comrade quibbled with Anne’s definition of Krupskaya as playing ‘second fiddle’ to Lenin, stating that if not for her efforts as secretary, the Bolshevik leadership in exile would not have functioned ; this was no waste of her own talent or energies and was a fine contribution itself. One comrade related her own experience that the ‘double oppression’ of economic and domestic work was exported in the particular soviet form to East Germany, where the crèche facilities were used more like dumping grounds for babies in order to squeeze more work from their mothers, functioning as the opposite of an emancipatory facility. Again, without the wider change in social attitudes, particularly of individual males in the home enthronement, the burden remained.

Some comrades pondered that the ongoing economic crisis may bring a general increase in reaction in society, including around women and the family. Used as an example was the renewed German nationalism directed against the bailed out countries such as Greece – whose people are supposed to be lazy and ill disciplined – and the corresponding anti-German attitudes appearing in the countries dependent on the principally German cash. Another comrade explained that we must try to understand the cause and function of sexism in the present, given that he viewed capital as essentially sex-blind in its approach to whomever it can exploit for profit. A comrade from the CWO (Communist Workers Organisation) opined that the reforms advocated by the left to improve the conditions of women in the present are fundamentally unachievable because of the lack of political and economic room for manoeuvre under the European bourgeoisie. The comrade also worried that articulating ‘women’s interests’ specifically  risked the ghettoisation of politicos and a separating off of inter-related political issues.

Following the session comrades made haste to a nearby pub and continued the debate over food and drink. The next Northern Communist Forum is on the 4th of December at the same location and will be a political seminar based around a talk to be given by a CPGB comrade on Victor Serge’s book  From Lenin to Stalin.

Non-political politics

Michael Copestake has been talking to the occupiers at Sheffield Cathedral

99%: not quite

Remarkably there are now 21 ‘Occupy’ camps dotted across the urban landscapes of Britain’s cities. The largest and most prominent is, of course, the one in London outside St Paul’s Cathedral, and one could be forgiven for not being aware of most of the others, which have not attracted or been given the same attention in the media. On Saturday November 5 – a date perhaps chosen deliberately – the Sheffield incarnation of the Occupy movement appeared and pitched its tents on the open yard of Sheffield Cathedral.

The camp itself was set up following, I was told, “discussions online”, which then led to a meeting outside the town hall and a discussion and vote on which location to occupy. The council and police were apparently least unhappy with the choice of the cathedral and neither church nor state has attempted to shift them since. The dean has officially denied them permission to use the yard – partly for insurance purposes, I was told – but nevertheless has taken the line that the church feels the protestors raise “genuine grievances”, now the standard church response, it seems.

The camp itself presently consists of some 30 or so individual or two-person tents, a portaloo, a medium-sized tent with cooking facilities, a small one at the entrance covered in political and campaign literature of one sort or another, and a larger marquee filled with all sorts, from books to chairs, to musical instruments. The outside wall of this larger marquee is covered with large text versions of the official statements that the occupation has so far produced, various slogans against corruption and inequality, and entreaties to the people of Sheffield to join in/express solidarity.

The occupiers hold a variety of politics and are unlikely to produce a concrete programme or much in the way of proposals for action for that reason. The preponderance of single-issue leaflets and my own conversations with the occupiers indicate strongly that these are mostly unaffiliated people or those who support single-issue campaigns of one type or another. The organised left makes sporadic appearances, particularly the Socialist Workers Party, whose comrades have occasionally set up a stall just outside the main tented area.

When I asked people what they thought of the far left they did not really have much to say. The fact that I was a member of a communist organisation did not mean much to most present either – as far as they are concerned, all ‘parties’ have failed and the far left is just as much a part of this failure as the mainstream. All this is very much ‘anti-politics’ and, in common with most of the occupations in the developed world, is against structure and leadership, whether elected or not. I was even told that it was considered bad camp etiquette to “preach” your own political views to other people. Capitalist politics is so obviously corrupt and malfunctioning that it seems many view the creation of a space without politics as the answer. This is a testament to the failure of the Marxist left to provide an alternative, democratic politics, programme and organisational form in a period crying out for all three. The unity of Marxists remains the urgent responsibility of the left, one it continues to unrepentantly shun.

Insofar as political views are expressed by the occupiers, they take the general form of a scream of outrage and disgust at capitalist society and its problems, but without anything in the way of solutions. There is an instinctive understanding that the majority suffers at the hands of the minority, opposition to the government’s cuts programme, support for the upcoming November 30 strikes and certainty that the mainstream parties are committed to and dependent on the existing system. But politics to these people means only bourgeois politics and they cannot contemplate the construction of any political organisation that functions in a different way from the mainstream parties. Corruption and incorporation into the system is seen as inevitable, so why bother?

The attitude they take towards capitalism (or rather corrupt “corporatism”, as they refer to in their official statement – a phrase that is taken, unconsciously or not, from libertarian groups in America, who are usually for a ‘small state’ and a free market) is moralistic and uncertain. One man was at pains to explain to me that the Occupy movement is not against capitalism as such, but rather greed, and that what they wanted was “capitalism with a conscience”. When I expressed my doubts about this possibility, he remarked that we could all do without using money at all and that he himself had not had a bank account in nearly 30 years. Upon my questioning the feasibility of this approach for the masses, he then suggested credit unions – if people must remain part of “the system”, that is. A sort of abstentionist economics to accompany the abstentionist politics – we all just opt out as individuals.

Others, however, have very clear ideas of the reforms they would like to see implemented (by some, as yet unknown, agency). A levy on financial transactions, or Robin Hood tax, has support, and others believed that the regulators of the City of London and the banks should be appointed from outside that particular sphere. The official statement says that, in order that it may remain free from “the system”, the Occupy movement does not call on the existing powers to do anything. So the demands are addressed to nobody and no agency is identified which can bring about change – except “the 99%” – and it is not understood how they can do so. I put it to more than one of the occupiers that, if anything, the camp was more of a discussion forum than a political project, to which I received expressions of general agreement.

It is, of course, welcome that many well-intentioned individuals, some of whom are involved in their first activity that could be called political, are thinking and talking about an alternative social and economic arrangement (‘order’ or ‘system’ do not seem appropriate words), just as it is positive that there is agreement around the deficiencies of capitalism, even if it goes by another name. Certainly the camps reflect a much wider social discontent, but they are unable to define and focus these feelings, or translate them into proposals for action with definite aims. Even in countries where the situation has been much more dire, as in Egypt, or where Occupy has been of a much larger and more militant character, as in Spain, the movement has not been able to articulate anything approaching a substitute for a revolutionary, democratic-centralist party, armed with an emancipatory programme.

Keeping it small

Tina Becker argues that we urgently need to start the process of building a real political alternative

Think big

Around 20 people attended the monthly meeting of the Sheffield Anti-Cuts Alliance (Saca) on November 1. This was the second time I have attended the “extended Saca steering committee meeting” and I am starting to understand the dynamics behind it – and they are not pleasant.

We are in what seems to be a major crisis of the capitalist system. We are facing the potential break-up of the European Union. The bourgeoisie is shitting itself, because they have no answers to the crisis. On November 30, millions of people will be on the streets of Britain, demonstrating against the pension ‘reforms’ – and so much more. Around the globe, thousands of people are taking part in the ‘Occupy’ movements, looking for alternatives to this decaying system. What kind of answers do we give them?

Well, Saca for one will not be providing any. It is tightly controlled by the Socialist Workers Party, which has organised the affiliation of various union branches and front organisations, so that as many of its local members as possible have a vote. Because the Socialist Party in England and Wales does not have enough members on the ground to challenge the SWP’s hegemony, it only ever sends a couple of people, who do not intervene much, if at all. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty normally sends two or three members, who put up a slightly more energetic fight (though on November 1 only one AWL member made it). The couple of reps from the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain are playing foot soldier to the SWP.

SWP comrades are using the outrageously undemocratic method of ‘consensus’ to keep a tight grip on proceedings and block anything they do not like. Take November 30. Tens of thousands of people from all over South Yorkshire will come to Sheffield to attend a rally organised by the regional trades union council. Ridiculously, this rally at noon is going to last all of 30 minutes. Quite rightly then, Saca comrades discussed organising something else for that day. At our October meeting, the AWL’s Camila Bassi made the very sensible suggestion that we hold a Saca meeting in the afternoon, where we could discuss the way forward for strikers and the anti-cuts movement. Although there was a lot of nodding when she spoke, nothing ever came of it – so I picked up on it again at the latest meeting.

SWP member after SWP member tried to rubbish the idea. “Every group will be doing their own thing on the day,” said the chair (judging by the amount of ‘advice’ she got from leading local SWPer Maxine Bowler, I would guess she is also a member). Comrade Bowler thought that “people will have these discussions at the picket lines” and her comrade, Ben Morris, said that “people will mill about too much – you won’t get them into a meeting”.

He then suggested that Saca should instead help organise a demo through the city centre back to the rally point, to be followed by a second rally – this time called not by the regional TUC, but “local trade union branches”. Oh, and by the way, there had already been a (non-advertised) meeting where this was agreed, he announced. In other words, SWP members with any sort of union position had got together a few days earlier and made their own plans, looking for Saca to rubber-stamp it.

Still, there was a big minority present who thought that we could surely do both: “We should try to politically engage the tens of thousands of people who will come to Sheffield by putting on an interesting debate in the afternoon,” said Lee Rock, acting PCS branch organiser in the local department for work and pensions. “For example, we could discuss if ‘All out, stay out’ – for a week or however long – is really such a good slogan.”

The SWP chair only reluctantly allowed a show of hands: Eight people were in favour of putting on a meeting, about the same number were against. In any normal meeting, the chair would have at least counted the votes. But not so in Saca: “There is no consensus on this, so there will be no Saca meeting,” she announced and went on to the next agenda point.

A similar method was used to prevent an item entitled ‘The way forward for Saca’ from reaching any concrete or coherent conclusions. A young anarchist and former SWP member had tabled a discussion paper that correctly outlined many of Saca’s problems: chiefly, it is incredibly small and has no actual profile of its own. His answer – to link up with various local disputes and actively invite them to Saca – is a step in the right direction.

In fact I think we should go further: we urgently need to start the process of building a real political alternative. We could begin by uniting the various national and local anti-cuts groups into a single, much more powerful organisation (a motion along those lines fell off the agenda last time and was not re-tabled for discussion – no wonder the independent mover has not been keen to attend Saca meetings again).

Also, we must start to actually talk about politics at these meetings. Myself, comrade Bassi and a handful of other comrades supported a modest proposal to start the monthly 90-minute meetings with a political opening of a maximum of 30 minutes. But again, the chair simply moved on when SWPers (and one CPB member) argued against it. You see, Saca “has only one purpose and this was identified at our first public meeting: it is an umbrella that brings together different campaigns,” as Dick Pitt put it.

If this really was the main purpose of Saca, clearly it is failing badly. Otherwise, it would surely attract more than 20 people to its regular organising meetings – and surely its hardly ever updated website might have registered more than 9,995 visits (embarrassingly, there is a counter). Clearly, as things move on and change, we have to do the same. At a time when the level of attacks increases and the European bourgeoisie is in turmoil, we have to raise our game. Who cares what decision was made at the “first public meeting”? Is it set in stone?

In reality, Saca is merely a tool that the ‘organised’ left (chiefly the SWP) can utilise in order to advertise and push forward their own meetings – or worse.

For example, at the October meeting, SWPers said that Mark Serwotka would be available to speak at a Saca meeting on November 10. Much time was allocated to discussing who will book the room, who would approach more speakers, etc. At the November 1 meeting, SWP member Ben Morris then dished out the leaflet for the event: Miraculously, it is no longer a Saca meeting, but is now organised by the SWP’s latest front campaign, Unite the Resistance.

The leaflet lists a long line of trade union branches supporting the event and comrade Morris breathlessly informed us that he was just about to “send the invoice for the printing costs to Saca when it turned out that union branches had already donated enough money”. But, funnily enough, the leaflet does not even mention Saca. When I asked about this, I was told by a clearly embarrassed comrade Morris that “Saca hadn’t agreed a firm donation yet”. But they were supposed to pay for the printing …

Call me cynical, but it seems to me that the SWP is not interested at all in building Saca or any other anti-cuts campaign. The smaller these groups around the country stay, the larger the SWP and their various front organisations can loom.

tina.becker@weeklyworker.org.uk

First published here.

Anti-politics

SACA: masses not interested in sectarian bickering, surprisingly

Having recently moved to Sheffield, I attended my first meeting of the Sheffield Anti-Cuts Alliance (SACA) on October 11. I was left somewhat underwhelmed, to put it mildly.

Only 22 people made the monthly ‘open’ meeting of the steering committee – almost exclusively members of the revolutionary left. There were half a dozen or so members of the SWP, with a couple each from the Socialist Party in England and Wales, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain (funnily enough, it is listed as “The Communist Party” on the SACA website). Chair Martin Mayer is a member of the Labour Representation Committee and sits on the national executive of Unite and there were also a couple of other members of the local trades union council present.

Anybody can attend and speak at these monthly meetings, but only delegates of affiliated organisations have a vote. This is the only SACA forum where ‘normal’ people can actively get involved. There have been a number of irregular public meetings, but at these contributions from the floor are normally restricted to two or three minutes. In addition, there are separate meetings of the officers group.

So you would expect that these monthly open meetings are not bogged down with organisational issues (which surely should be discussed amongst the officers), but debate where the alliance is going, what policies it should develop in order to defeat the cuts, how it should engage with Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, etc.

But not so. In effect, I felt like I landed in the middle of a zoo, where male gorillas are engaged in some chest-beating stand-off. Or peacocks shoving their fans into each other’s faces. You get the flawed picture, I hope. SPEW was gushing about their Jarrow march. The SWP was gushing about the ‘Unite The Resistance’ rally on November 19. The AWL was gushing about a meeting of union activists involved in the November 30 strike.

There were some bizarre wars of words over rather trivial issues: the AWL’s Rosie Huzzard got told off by a number of SWP members for calling the activists meeting a “strike committee” – it can only be a “strike support committee”, because the individual unions themselves organise the committees. This took about five minutes. The SWP and a couple of members of the trades council then fought over who had organised more buses to bring people from Sheffield to the demonstration against the Tory conference on October 2. Another 10 minutes of my life wasted. Then there was a lengthy debate around stalls, which concluded in a decision that we should have them when enough people are available to run them. Fifteen minutes down the toilet.

This behaviour was even more puzzling, as there weren’t actually any ‘normal’ (ie, non-affiliated) people around to ‘impress’ by this behaviour. But it probably explains why there weren’t any. I am told that when SACA was set up, these meetings were at least twice as big and actually quite vibrant.

Now, however, they are quite a sad reflection of the state of the left. There is a lot of hostility and almost no cooperation between the different organisations involved. It seems they’re mainly using SACA to promote their own campaigns.

Because so much time was wasted on hearing these so-called “reports”, the meeting did not actually get to what could have been slightly more interesting agenda points: there was supposed to be a discussion item on the ‘way forward’ for SACA and a supportable proposal to call for a national anti-cuts conference “bringing together all anti-cuts organisations, trade unions and other interested and affected parties to discuss the way forward”.

In hindsight, it seems quite possible that SWP members in the room wasted time on purpose to avoid such discussion. At the end of the 90-minute meeting, I voiced my frustration with proceedings and suggested that the next meeting should discuss strategy as its first item. Also, I proposed that future meetings of SACA should actually start with a political opening and a discussion (maybe restricted to 45 minutes) as a way to draw in more people. The SWP members in the room got very agitated about this and started to shout “No way!”, but there was no time to discuss this further.

I was approached by AWL members afterwards who told me they had previously tried to make the meetings more political, but were blocked by the SWP. Clearly, this is a discussion that needs to be had again. We are in the middle of the biggest crisis of capitalism and yet the left wastes its time with this incredible sectarianism.

I wonder if other comrades in different cities have better experiences to report? Surely, it can’t be this bad everywhere?

Tina Becker

Building for November 30

Chris Strafford reports from protests at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester

On Sunday October 2 over 35,000 workers, students, pensioners and anti-cuts campaigners marched outside the Conservative Party conference. This is a sizeable increase from the 7,000 demonstrators at last year’s conference, underlining the growing, yet still sluggish, moves to resist the austerity measures. The conference itself was ringed by steel walls, barricades and hundreds of police. Despite this, the demonstration was peaceful and no arrests took place. At the start the Liverpool Socialist Singers led the demonstrators in ‘The Internationale’, with many left activists and trade unionists joining in.

Earlier in the day hundreds of students gathered at the University of Manchester before joining the demonstration. They marched behind a banner which read, ‘Students and workers, unite’, pointing to the fact that some students at least are making the necessary connection between the austerity attacks and the importance of unity in organising the resistance. Another feeder march brought hundreds of activists and trade unionists from Salford. There were calls for a general strike from the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party in England and Wales, and other small Trotskyist groups – though when this chant went up it was largely confined to the student contingent led by the SWP.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, speaking at the rally, said that mass strike action will be taking place on November 30 and “If you never fight, you lose every time”. His view was: “Now’s the time to fight, now’s the time to defeat the government.” The majority of speakers not only condemned the attacks on their members, but went on to call for an alternative plan for growth. Notably Association of Teachers and Lecturers general secretary Mary Bousted pledged further support for strike action and warned Ed Miliband’s Labour Party that if it “doesn’t support us Labour will be a disgrace as well”. Which got one of the loudest cheers at the rally. Len McCluskey from Unite declared that coordinated action could be considered a general strike and asserted: “We need civil disobedience – the oldest form of democracy. We should take the lead from the students.” Tony Lloyd MP was heckled by some local trade union activists, as he failed to oppose Miliband’s anti-strike rhetoric and the vicious cuts being brought in by Manchester’s Labour-run council.

A couple of conclusions can be drawn from the demonstration. Firstly, it has been clear for some time that the baton of leading the struggle has well and truly passed from the students to the organised working class. Secondly, there is growing support for a strike – a change in mood across the working class is taking place, as the reality of the Conservative-led government’s assault begins to bite. Thirdly, the movement is still relatively weak compared to those in Europe.

As we move towards November 30, the revolutionary left needs to strain every sinew to help organise workers to ensure that as much pressure as possible is placed on those union leaders who have not yet organised to join the action to do so without delay; and on those who have to stand firm – if they pull out, we must fight for strike action to go ahead without them.

First published in the Weekly Worker

Northern Communist Forums starting soon

Members and supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the North of England have got together to host open forums twice a month in Manchester. These forums will not be drill sessions where people are told what to think; they are intended to foster much-needed debate about the past, present and future of Marxism, as a step towards greater understanding and meaningful unity on the Marxist left.

All Forums start at 3pm at Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester

23 October: Can we beat the cuts? With John Bridge (CPGB)

6 November: Political seminar and a discussion based on readings from Victor Serge’s ‘From Lenin to Stalin’ (1937)

20 November: [NOTE: NEW TOPIC] Women’s liberation: Did the Russian Revolution really change much for women? Speaker: Anne McShane

11 December: Political seminar and a discussion based on readings from Victor Serge’s ‘From Lenin to Stalin’ (1937)

8 January:  Communists in the workplace and unions