SOCIALIST UNITY

31st October 2007
Linda Smith, National Chair RESPECT
Salma Yaqoob, National Vice Chair RESPECT

If the Respect annual conference goes ahead, it won’t be the members who decide, but the SWP leadership.

There have been two meetings between SWP leaders and non-SWP Respect National Council members including the National Chair and Vice-chair - last Thursday and last Sunday. At both these meetings there was an agreement that the relationship between leading SWP and non-SWP members in Respect had fundamentally and irretrievably broken down and that there had to be a rapid but amicable separation if we were to avoid a profoundly destructive continuation of the divisions which now exist inside Respect. The principal issue was what names the two successor organisations would have. Non-SWP representatives wanted to issue a joint statement on Sunday but the SWP leadership wanted to keep the discussions secret.

Unfortunately, the SWP leadership were clearly negotiating in bad faith. On Monday a press conference of the four breakaway councillors was held in a venue booked by the one of the SWP’s members who works in the Respect National Office, presumably at the behest of the National Secretary and at a cost of £329. The venue was chosen by the SWP leadership to try to maximise national publicity for the four breakaway councillors. There has been a dispute about what was said at the press conference but what is not in dispute is that the National Secretary attended the press conference in support of the four breakaway councillors, spoke in their support and neither they nor he disavowed the possibility of them standing against Respect candidates in elections.

No-one should underestimate the significance of the actions of the four breakaway councillors. This is profoundly damaging to Respect in Tower Hamlets, has deprived Respect of its position as the official opposition on Tower Hamlets council and has been celebrated by New Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. Resigning the whip is a profound betrayal of the trust of the members and voters who elected these councillors. We can only conclude that the SWP leadership’s support for this action makes clear that they are not interested in limiting the damage already done to Respect’s reputation, but in fact are keen to maximise that damage for their own narrow interests.

Moreover, a further meeting to negotiate a way out of the current crisis was scheduled for this morning, Wednesday 31st October, but was unilaterally cancelled by the SWP. They have raised instead the clarion call - “let the members decide at the annual conference”. However, we believe the basis of the annual conference of Respect, due to be held on 17/18 November, has been corrupted and that it cannot go ahead. If it does, it will not be the members who decide but a rigged SWP majority.

This is our evidence.

1) Student representation. We now have documentary evidence that Student Respect officers locally have been encouraged to send in to the Respect National Office lists of names of students who have put their names down as “interested” in Respect at Freshers’ Fair, but who have not paid over a penny to the student organisation locally, much less to the Respect national office, in order to become members of Respect. On this basis, delegates are being allocated to “student branches”. The election of student delegates is being co-ordinated by SWP Central Committee member Colin Smith in order to boost the SWP’s representation at the conference.

2) Delegate entitlement. In Tower Hamlets the delegate entitlement was suddenly raised from 57 delegates to 77 delegates. This was based on including in the entitlement people who had previously registered but who had failed to renew their membership by the due date. This is without any constitutional legitimacy or support from the Standing Orders (the rules for the conduct of conference). We can only conclude that those who decided to change the basis of delegate entitlement believe that this will again give them an advantage in the process of delegation to conference.

3) The Conference Arrangements Committee. This has been dominated by the SWP. The Executive Committee (National Officers’ Group) refused to increase the representation on this committee of those independent of the SWP. We can only assume this is because control of the CAC is a matter of importance to the SWP in order to give them control of the process of delegation and of the conference itself. The CAC has not been endorsed by the National Council contrary to the requirements of the constitution.

4) The Respect National Office. This is clearly being used for factional purposes, a matter which will be of grave concern to the Respect membership who pay the wages of the office staff. We note that two of the full time staff are both members of the SWP, originally appointed to their jobs without open advertisement of the job, an independent appointments panel or any proper job description or contract. One of them has appeared on circulars sent out by the SWP Central Committee to all SWP members urging them to convene “Stop the Witch Hunt” Respect meetings and citing this staff member as someone to contact for speakers on behalf of the SWP. And the reply which was sent to at least one Respect member who accidentally signed up to the SWP’s statement was signed off as coming from the Respect National Office. We therefore have no confidence in the integrity of the national office in the administration of arrangements in the run up to conference.

5) Access to database and communication with Respect members. Access codes to both the membership database and the national office email which provides email access to the Respect membership were unilaterally and without warning changed almost two weeks ago. A request from the National Chair and Vice-Chair to be given these access codes was then ignored. The access codes seemed to be in the sole possession of the National Secretary, the National Treasurer and two office staff. Three of these people are members of the SWP and the fourth is extremely closely identified with the SWP leadership. We have no confidence that the Respect National Office has not registered SWP members or members sympathetic to the SWP after conference deadlines and/or without the requisite payment of subs. When a national officer went to the National Office and asked the National Treasurer for access to the members list to email out a statement signed by the National Chair etc, access was denied and the statement was only sent out after a further call to the National Secretary. Access codes were only finally made available on Monday 29th October after a meeting with the SWP leadership on Sunday to discuss the crisis in Respect and the terms of a separation.

6) Packing the conference. The SWP has sent out numerous circulars to its members about the so-called witch-hunt in Respect. It has used its communication networks to communicate its point of view to Respect members nationwide. Worse than this, the SWP sent out a circular demanding that its members join Respect and get themselves delegated to conference shortly before the closing date for delegate entitlement. This is a blatant attempt to “pack” the Annual Conference by getting SWP members to register as members at the last minute and to get themselves elected as delegates from effectively non-existent Respect branches, rotten boroughs with delegate election meetings not properly convened. There is certainly no process enabling delegate election to be properly monitored, given the instruction from the SWP to its members to pack the conference and the evidence that the SWP is only electing SWP delegates from branches where they have a majority at a meeting.

We believe the evidence presented above is a formidable indictment of the legitimacy of the annual conference. We believe that if the conference goes ahead, the conference will carry no validity and is likely to degenerate into chaos and disorder. We also believe that the conference is now vulnerable to legal challenge and injunction.

The SWP have split Respect. If the annual conference were to go ahead in these circumstances, it would be a travesty.

Linda Smith, National Chair
Salma Yaqoob, National Vice Chair

A letter to all members of the SWP (Britain)

Dear comrades,

Your comrades in the International Socialist Tendency in Socialist Worker – New Zealand, have watched what appears to be the unfolding disengagement of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) from RESPECT – the Unity Coalition with gradually mounting concern, anxiety and frustration.

SW-NZ’s perspective since 2002 has been that building new broad forces to the left of the social liberal (formerly social democratic) parties is an essential step towards the rebirth of a serious anti-capitalist worker’s movement. The work carried out by the SWP and its allies to build a broad coalition of the left which could compete with Blairite/Brownite New Labour on equal terms has been an inspiration to us, and, we believe, to all serious socialists throughout the world.

In the last two months, to our distress, all the good work that has been carried out in England and Wales seems on the verge of going down the tubes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the specific organizational proposals put to the Respect National Council by George Galloway MP in August, an outright civil war has broken out between the SWP leadership and other forces in Respect. This, as far as we can see, could – and should – have been avoided.

It seems to us that your party’s leadership has decided to draw “battle lines” between itself and the rest of Respect – a stance, we believe, guaranteed to destroy the trust and working relationships on which any broad political coalition stands. Of particular concern to us is the expulsion of three respected cadre from the SWP – Kevin Ovenden, Rob Hoveman and Nick Wrack – for refusing to cut working relationships with those seen as being opposed to the SWP. To draw hard lines against other forces within a united front (even of a “special type”) and to expel members who refuse to accept those hard lines is behaviour you would usually see from a sectarian organization, not a party of serious socialists looking to build a new left alternative. It is perhaps in this context that Galloway’s reported comments about “Leninists” should be understood, rather than as an attempt to exclude revolutionary politics from Respect.

What distresses us particularly is that the abovementioned comrades were expelled after submitting what seem to us to be thoughtful and critical contributions to your pre-conference Internal Bulletin. If these three comrades are not being victimized for raising a political alternative to the line of the Central Committee, it certainly gives the appearance of such victimization – or even, to use a word which has become common currency recently, witch-hunting.

The opening contribution of the SWP CC to the Internal Bulletin makes a couple of points which seem to us to be particularly problematic in this context. Firstly, the CC state that:

The critics of the SWP’s position have organised themselves under the slogan “firm in principles, flexible in tactics”. But separating principles and tactics in this way is completely un-Marxist. Tactics derive from principles. Indeed the only way that principles can become effective is if they are embodied in day-to-day tactics.

It seems to us an uncontroversial statement that tactics must be based on much more than principles – a lesson which Lenin himself explained clearly in his famous “Left-Wing” Communism. Revolutionary tactics must be based on the objective realities of the time – the level of class consciousness, the balance of forces in society at any given moment, the resources and cadre available to a revolutionary organization. To derive tactics from principles is not the method of scientific socialism, but of a dogmatic or even sectarian approach, that the party is “schoolteacher to the class”.

As we see it, the disaster overtaking Respect has been exacerbated by the SWP deriving tactics from principles. The principle is that “the revolutionary party” embodies the correct programme, that it must work as a disciplined unit to win its position, and that there is nothing to learn from reformist or other forces. This feeds into a tactical approach that any threat to the organizational leadership of “the revolutionary party” must be fought using all means at the party’s disposal, and those forces who oppose the strategy of the party must be eliminated if they do not accept defeat.

According to the information we have, your party chose not to debate Galloway’s proposals openly within Respect first, and tease out the politics behind them. Rather, the SWP leadership first moved to neutralize internal dissent, before coming out fighting in Respect with accusations of “witch-hunting”. Instead of leading with the political arguments and winning leadership among the broad left forces in Respect, your leadership seems to have mobilized the party for a civil war waged primarily by organizational or administrative means. Inherent in this drive to defeat Galloway and his allies appears a “for us or against us” approach which seems to leave no room for any possible reconciliation – in effect, ensuring the death of Respect in its current form as a coalition of the broad left and a nascent transitional formation of working-class politics.

An attempt by the SWP to establish dominance by sheer force of numbers at the upcoming Respect conference would, it seems to us, result in a Pyrrhic victory at best. Such a course of action, even if successful, would simply drive out those forces who are opposed to your party’s current line and leadership, and reconstitute Respect as a front for SWP electoral activities. We can not see this as encouraging class consciousness or political consciousness, among the SWP, Respect or broader left forces. On the contrary, it seems almost designed to harden the boundaries of organizational loyalty and the divisions between “the revolutionary party” and other forces – almost the definition of sectarianism. Again, if these stories are true, then Galloway’s comments about “Russian dolls” would seem to us – as revolutionary Leninists ourselves – to be fair comment.

Another quotation from your Central Committee’s IB contribution which struck us runs as follows:

Of all the claims made against the SWP’s position the argument that Respect must be our “over-arching strategic priority” must be the most ill considered. Firstly, it ignores the fact that the building of a revolutionary party is the over-arching priority for any revolutionary Marxist. All other strategic decisions are subordinate to this goal.

Six years ago, the American International Socialist Organisation was criticized by the SWP (Britain) for a sectarian refusal to engage with the anti-capitalist movement. Alex Callinicos’ own article on the split with the ISO-US includes the following statement:

In an extraordinary speech at the ISO’s convention in December 2000, the group’s National Organizer, Sharon Smith, attacked the idea that the ISO could, by systematically focusing on this minority, “leapfrog” over the rest of the left, and insisted that methods of party-building forged in the downturn were necessary irrespective of the changing objective conditions. “Branches are now and will always be the measure of the size of the organization,” she said.

The ISO-US was criticized for failing to see to that the gains from a revolutionary organization engaging properly in a broad movement, for both the organization and the class struggle, could not be simply quantified by how many members the organization gained. A sect with many members is of far less consequence in the class struggle than a smaller group of revolutionaries playing an organic leadership role in promoting political consciousness among the working classes and oppressed layers. We feel that the SWP may repeat the ISO-US’s mistakes – with the much greater consequences, this time, of the wreck of the biggest advance for the British left-of-Labour since the Second World War – if it lets Respect, as “only or primarily an electoral project” crumble at this point.

In contrast, Socialist Worker – New Zealand sees Respect – and other “broad left” formations, such as Die Linke in Germany, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the PSUV in Venezuela and RAM in New Zealand – as transitional formations, in the sense that Trotsky would have understood. In programme and organization, they must “meet the class half-way” – to provide a dialectical unity between revolutionary principle and reformist mass consciousness. If they have an electoral orientation, we must face the fact that this cannot be avoided at this historical point. Lenin said in “Left-Wing” Communism that parliamentary politics are not yet obsolete as far as the mass of the class are concerned – this is not less true in 2007 than it was in 1921. The question is not whether Respect should go in a “socialist” or “electoralist” direction, but in how Respect’s electoral programme and strategy can embody a set of transitional demands which intersect with the existing electoralist consciousness of the working class.

The personality of George Galloway MP and the links with Muslim communities in London and Birmingham, seen in this light, are surely assets to be worked with, not embarrassments to be minimized. When Galloway came to New Zealand in July to support our campaign against Islamophobia, he electrified audiences with frankly some of the best political oratory that we have ever heard. No-one is claiming that he is a saint, or that he has not made some questionable political choices, but we refuse to believe that somehow over the space of a few months he has become a “communalist, electoralist” devil.

The latest news that comes to us is that John Rees, a SWP CC member and the National Secretary of Respect, has publicly supported the four Respect councilors in Tower Hamlets who have resigned the Respect whip. If this is true, then the “civil war” in Respect has escalated to the point where the two factions are virtually functioning as separate parties – a “de facto” split much more harmful in practice than a clean divorce. This course of action is not only causing a serious haemorraging of cadre, but destroying the credibility which your party has built up as the most consistent and hard-working advocate of a new broad left in England and Wales. If the SWP appears to be attempting to permanently factionalise Respect, then it will be no wonder that other forces are trying to exclude them – not because of a “witch-hunt against socialists” (are you seriously claiming that Alan Thornett and Jerry Hicks are witch-hunting socialists?) but for reasons of simple self-preservation.

Socialist Worker – New Zealand comrades see this course of action from our IST comrades in the SWP as potentially suicidal. We see uncomfortable parallels with the self-destruction of the Alliance in New Zealand in 2001-2, where one faction deliberately escalated an inner-party conflict to the point where a peaceable resolution became impossible. Both sides of that struggle were permanently crippled in the aftermath. If you comrades are serious about trying to salvage the potential of Respect, I would urge your party to adopt the following measures:

Lower the temperature of the internal struggle in Respect, by agreeing to a postponement of the Respect conference until at least after the SWP conference in January;

recommit to building Respect as an active, campaigning organization in the unions and the movements, rather than a formation solely concerned with fighting elections, and to combining the SWP’s work as an independent revolutionary organization with this goal;

put up proposals for more comprehensive institutions of democratic debate and political education within Respect;

retreat from the current course of factionalist brinkmanship in the current debate, and take whatever steps are necessary to repair the working relationship between yourselves and other leaders and tendencies within Respect; and

retract the expulsions of Kevin Ovenden, Nick Wrack and Rob Hoveman, at least pending debate at your party conference.

If, on the other hand, Respect is finished as a united political force, it would surely be better for the two sides in this debate to approach the question of “divorce” amicably and calmly, rather than forcing the issue to a final conflict in the next few weeks and destroying the trust between the SWP and other forces on the left for perhaps a long time.

I would also encourage your party to, as a matter of urgency, write a report for the information of your fellow members of the International Socialist Tendency, giving your analysis of the crisis within Respect and your long-term strategy for building a broad-left political alternative in Britain.

In solidarity,

Daphne Lawless

Editor, UNITY magazine

Socialist Worker – New Zealand

The video from the BBC shown on Newsnight yesterday of children in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan working in the fields picking cotton was incredibly shocking. You can watch it here.

Secretly filming, the BBC reporters showed the schools closed for the duration of the harvest, and the police herding children as young as nine years old onto buses. The video shows Lorry loads of mattresses being taken to the farms, as the children are expected to sleep in the fields after  working for hours in the baking sun. The cotton picked by forced child labour then appears in clothes sold in ASDA and Primark in the UK.

The film also showed film of the mechanised cotton harvest in the days when Uzbekistan used to be part of the USSR. Contrast the picture here from the Uzbek cotton harvest in 1977 with the BBC film of children picking the cotton by hand today.

Tony Cliff always used to criticise those who fell for the lie that the Soviet economy was intrinsically more backwards than the West by pointing out the implicit chauvinism of those who compared Russia with Germany in terms of living standards, but did not compare Uzbekistan with Pakistan.

In the days of the USSR, Soviet republics of Central Asia had higher living standards than other countries in the region.

Many socialists in the West still do not appreciate what a disaster the collapse of the Soviet Union has been.

Using as sources those well known apologists for Stalinism, Unicef, the World Bank and the BBC, we find that the world bank reported in 2000 that in the USSR overall incomes have dropped by 50%. In some regions, such as the Caucasus and central Asia, over half the population now live in absolute poverty - defined as living on an income of $2 per day or less.

Unicef report 18 million children on less than $2 per day, 60 million children in poverty.

Unicef reports; “In Central Asian countries less than half of 15-to-18-year-olds now attend secondary school. Ten years ago more than two-thirds attended. ” There were also at least one million displaced as refugess by war within the borders of the former USSR.

World bank: “Since the poverty levels peaked in 1999 at 41.5%, poverty was cut in half by 2002 to 19.6%. About 30 million people have improved their financial standing, however the number of people in poverty is still high - every fifth Russian lives well below the official poverty line. According to the World Bank, the most vulnerable group was the rural population. About 30.4% of the rural population lives in poverty, while 15.7% of the urban population is poor. Children under 16 have a higher incidence of poverty, about 25%. According to the report, the North Caucasus, South Siberia and parts of Central Russia are the poorest regions in Russia.”

Alexandra Ochirova, the chairperson of the Chamber’s committee (A Kremlin initiated committee) on social development said 20 million Russians live below the subsistence level, and this accounts for 15 or more percent the population. More specifically, one Russian in seven cannot meet even his or her basic demands for food and clothing.

“Poverty in Russia is very special for the fact it embraces not only separate sections of the able-bodied population, but more importantly, the ones who have employment,” Ochirova said. “These are mostly workers on government payroll, as well as children aged younger than 16 years old, the disabled and pensioners,” she said. But the most dangerous type of impoverishment is poverty among single mothers. “It’s neediness reproducing neediness,” Ochirova said. A gap in population’s earnings remains huge, too, as the incomes of 80% population decrease all the time while those of the remaining 20% continue growing”

“Russia is a unique country where poverty strikes the working population,” says Mikhail Shmakov, the president of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions. “Poverty is multiplying since the government, the country’s biggest employer, curbs a growth of wages,”

In a report to US Congress on economic state of Russia; “In January 2005, the Russian government monetized many previously in-kind social benefits for retirees, military personnel, and state employees. The cash payments, however, only partly compensated for the lost benefits. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced widespread economic dislocation and a drop of close to 50% in GDP. Conditions worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States impoverished much of the population, some 15% of which is still living below the government’s official (very low) poverty level. Russia is also plagued by environmental degradation and ecological catastrophes of staggering proportions; the near-collapse of the health system; sharp declines in life expectancy and the birth rate; and widespread organized crime and corruption. The population has fallen by over 5 million in the past decade, despite net in-migration of 5 million from other former Soviet republics.”

Another interesting source is the U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration: “Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, that country’s economic and social system worked in a practical sense — meaning most people had a place to live and food to eat. Although standards of living were below those in the West, particularly in housing, daily life was predictable. The Soviet leadership was legitimately able to say that their form of socialism had succeeded in virtually eliminating the kind of poverty that existed in Czarist Russia. Russian citizens now live in different times. The country’s transformation to a more open economic system has created, temporarily at least, a large, new group of people in poverty.”

A recent TV series followed 21 year olds from the former USSR (you know one of those progs that follow people every 7 years) and it was heartbreaking. Whole towns that previously had viable industries now at a subsistence level. There was an interesting report recently on the BBC about how there has been a disastrous collapse of bio-diversity in Siberia, as in eastern Russia people have had to return to hunting for basic subsistence.

In the former DDR, comprehenisve education lost, rent controlled apartments lost, full employment lost. abortion rights reduced, full employment lost. Former citizens of the DDR discriminated against as their academic qualifications not recognised, paid lower wages than Wessies, etc. Yugoslavia has been consumed by ethnic conflict.

Even if we take one of the economic success stories, Lithuania, we find that country is the biggest source of women traded as slaves into prostitution, according to the International labour organisation. Hungary has become a centre for exploitation sex tourism.

When some comrades talk about the restoration of capitalism in the former Comecon countries as just a “step sideways”, perhaps they should look at the real consequences?

A guest post from Louise:

There was a hellva lot of pomp and circumstance today in London as the Saudi royal family came to town. There was a procession along the Mall and the Campiagn Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) had organised a protest to give the Saudi royal family a welcome they deserve. Unfortunately, the security was tighter than Joan Rivers’ face and everything around The Mall was blocked. Snipers galore along with helicopters and squaddies wearing bear skins and more guns.

I came via St James’s Park only to be confronted with barriers that stopped me crossing the road to the protesters. The organiser later told me that Her Majesty’s Finest had promised to open up this public right of way but they chose not to. So, instead of being stuck in the middle I was stuck on the other side of the road with no way of crossing (this was an hour and 15 mins BEFORE the procession). Other protesters had turned up as well on the other side of the road as well.

I asked a cop clutching a Heckler and Koch whether they would let people across the road to be informed, “No, madam”… I proceeded to say that they were protecting a murderous, barbaric and oppressive bunch of individuals yet the general public aren’t allowed to exercise their right to cross the road. I kinda said no more as cop started to look twitchy holding a Heckler and Koch (hope the safety catch was on….) and we know all about trigger happy cops pumping bullets into unsuspecting innocent members of the public!

Anyway, they came, they saw and rode past. The House of Saud and the House of Windsor side by side. Happy as pigs in excrement. Unfortunately, as I was literally standing opposite the 100 + CAAT protesters who shouted, “Shame” etc.  I felt a demonstrator of one. And monarchists and tourists eyed me with suspicion as I too yelled, “Shame”….

As fellow blogger, Marsha Jane, commented to me today, “You haven’t had much luck with demos in the past week have you love”? Tis true…..

Off I went to Portcullis House where around 15-20 protesters turned up and again Our Majesty’s Finest had given us our own pen to protest in. Bless ‘em and the word “cattle” didn’t enter my head once….

Channel 4 turned up to interview people and I have an awful suspicion that my mug will be on the 7pm news. Oh cripes! If you see a woman trying to juggle with a digital camera and a placard wearing demin and looking pissed off. That’s me…As a camera shy comrade I just hope they get my best side.

There’s another protest tomorrow outside the embassy.

Yesterday’s press conference of the four rebel Respect councillors who have resigned the party whip in Tower Hamlets was organised through the official Respect national office, which is run by the SWP. Here is the proof.

 The totally inappropriate behaviour of John Rees, national secretary of Respect, in organising a press conference for councillors to criticise their own party to the mainstream press is clear. Their resignation, and formation of a distinct political group of councillor in Tower Hamlets in opposition to Respect has practical, political and financial implications, and is a serious blow to trust and cooperation.

 It seems the SWP are publicly talking up their desire to stay in Respect, while at the same time privately actively conspiring to split from Respect in the most damaging way.

The following invoice for the room used for the Rebel councillors’ press conference is addressed to the Respect national office, which is currenty being run by the SWP. It proves that the Respect national office, and the SWP, have been cooperating with the four rebel councillors in splitting from Respect. Respect’s press contact list was also used to send out the press release from the rebel councillors.

The CWU Postal Executive voted by 9-5 to recommend acceptance of the deal with Royal Mail. As well as the five votes against, including the union President Jane Loftus, three National Officers (those responsible for mail centres, delivery and logistics) also refused to endorse it. SOLIDARITY- THE TRADE UNION MAGAZINE interviewed Dave Warren, one of the five, who is calling for a broad based No campaign and for the members to reject the deal.

You can download this interview as a leaflet in PDF form Reject the deal

Why did you vote against the deal?

I voted against the deal because it is a capitulation to management’s agenda. They have got the majority of what they wanted in exchange for a meagre increase in pay. The union has conceded the employers’ position almost completely on flexibility. Local reps are going to be forced into agreeing “efficiency deals” with managers – that will mean the same amount of work being done in fewer hours as well as the loss of jobs.

The trials of new working practices are to be linked to pay. So if the changes are not implemented, 1.5 percent of the agreed pay rise will not be paid.

In addition there could be scheduling of long and short days. Workers will have to work shorter hours on days when it suits the company, and longer hours when mail volumes are higher – something up to now the union has always opposed.

Management will be able to vary the day by 30 minutes. They will be able to extend workers’ shifts when it suits them.

The aim of these changes is to get everyone to work harder, and to cut overtime payments.

So far as the pension is concerned, after 2010, you will only be able to retire on full benefits at age 65. For manual workers who do a physically demanding job this is a big issue. Changing our pension scheme from a final salary scheme to one that is based on career average earnings will almost certainly have the effect of reducing benefits for many.

The wage increase quoted as 6.9% over 18 months is just not true. The real figure is 5.4% over 2 years – well below inflation.

We have also lost our ESOS (efficiency) bonus scheme, and many opportunities to earn overtime.

Embracing liberalisation

The framework of the agreement seems to be acceptance of the management’s agenda for ‘winning in the market place’.

Yes, the Leaders of our union have decided to embrace liberalisation and agree the company’s agenda rather than fighting it.

What do you think will be the consequences for the members of the CWU if the deal is voted through?

Well, it won’t be the end, but it will be the beginning of the end for the union as an independent force. Reps will be forced to implement the management’s agenda, and many will resign rather than do so. We already have a shortage of reps in many areas.

Management want a tame house union, like the old EEPTU (Electrical Union), whose job is to discipline the workforce in line with the management’s aims. The idea that management will be nice to us if we sign an agreement is ridiculous. We have just recently had a lot of requests for local industrial action where management is simply trying to impose changes.

Our members have been magnificent and have been absolutely solid throughout the strikes. We cannot let them down now. There needs to be a broad based campaign to reject the deal. The key is fighting to get the branches to recommend rejection.

We are astonished that the Respect National Secretary John Rees has spoken publicly in support of four councillors who have split from Respect in Tower Hamlets.

Today, Monday 29 October, there was a press conference called by four former Respect councillors in Tower Hamlets. They announced that they had resigned the Respect whip on the council and were forming a Respect (Independent) party. This is a clear split from Respect.

John Rees answered questions at the press conference. He expressed his support for the four breakaway councillors. In answer to questions from journalists he said that Respect (Independent) candidates could be standing against Respect candidates in elections. Cllr Oliur Rahman, who was a member of the National Council and a national officer, did not rule out standing against George Galloway, who is Respect’s only nominee to be the Respect parliamentary candidate in Poplar and Limehouse.

No party could be expected to tolerate its purported National Secretary colluding with those who have split from the organisation and discussing standing candidates against it.

By this action he has betrayed the members of Respect and the party he is supposed to advocate, defend and build. He has forfeited his position as National Secretary and as a member of the National Council. He has clearly indicated that he and the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party are splitting from Respect.

Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the duplicitous behaviour of the SWP leadership, which has been asking for support for its petition against “witch-hunts” whilst preparing its forces for a split from Respect.

Yours in solidarity,

Linda Smith, National Chair
Salma Yaqoob, National Vice Chair
Ayesha Bajwa, National Council
Victoria Brittain, National Council
Rita Carter, National Council
Ger Francis, National Council
George Galloway MP, National Council
Jerry Hicks, National Council
Abdul Khaliq Mian, National Council
John Lister, National Council
Ken Loach, National Council
Abjol Miah, National Council, Leader of Tower Hamlets Respect Councillors Group
Bernie Parkes, National Council
Yvonne Ridley, National Council
Clive Searle, National Council
Alan Thornett, National Council
Nick Wrack, National Council

STOP PRESS - THE SWP RESPONDS:

SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
PO BOX 42184 LONDON SW8 2WD
NATIONAL OFFICE 020 7819 1170 FAX 020 7819 1179 CIRCULATION 020 7819 1171 INDUSTRIAL 020 7819 1175 EMAIL enquiries@swp.org.uk

THE SWP LEADERSHIP IS NOT SPLITTING FROM RESPECT

Dear comrades,

You may have just received a shocking E-Mail sent from the Respect’s National Office without consultation with the headline “SWP Leadership splitting from Respect.”

I want to make it absolutely clear, as I have on a number of other previous occasions the SWP is not and has no intention of splitting from Respect.

I have just spoken to John Rees and he categorically denies making any of the statements attributed to him in the latest E-Mail.

Four Respect Councillors have withdrawn from the whip. But they have made it clear that they still belong to the organisation and stand by its original aims. They have withdrawn from the whip because they are opposed to the direction Respect seems to be heading in and they are disgusted with the bullying and intimidation they have been facing inside the Respect Tower Hamlets councillors’ group.

George Galloway and his supporters have made it clear that they do not want to have a Respect conference in less than three weeks time. Instead of allowing the Respect membership to decide the way forward, they are trying to ratchet up the pressure and make it appear that it is the SWP that wants to split from Respect.

I repeat the SWP has not split from Respect. I want to make it 100% clear that the SWP will not be bullied or blackmailed out of the coalition and nor will we just walk away from Respect. We were part of its foundation and have put as much work into the project as anyone or any other group.

The recent statements being sent out by Linda Smith and George Galloway are increasingly hysterical and are designed to confuse and disorientate Respect members and supporters who are opposed to the witch-hunt.

There should be a big health waning from any statement coming out from Linda Smith and George Galloway.

Comrades should feel free to forward this E-Mail onto their local groups – so our position is clear.

In solidarity,

Martin Smith SWP National Secretary

Dear Respect Member,

Our answer to the alleged “witch hunt” in Respect

Last Friday 26 October a letter titled “Respect Appeal against the witch hunt” went out to all members from the Respect National Office.

We deplore the fact that the letter, which has been circulating through non-Respect channels for a week by the SWP, is titled “Respect appeal against witch-hunting” as though it had some kind of official sanction. It has never been agreed at either the National Executive or the National Council. It is not a “Respect Appeal”.

We, as members of the Respect National Council who are not members of the Socialist Workers Party, wish to answer this petition.

There is no witch-hunt against “socialists including the SWP” in Respect.

The letter claims there “is now overwhelming evidence that the democratic structures of Respect are being circumvented and marginalized” and that “some national officers are attempting to unilaterally by-pass the existing democratic structures of Respect and to witch-hunt socialists including the SWP.”

No evidence is provided to substantiate these or any of the other claims in the letter.

Unfortunately, it is the SWP leadership which is orchestrating a campaign of misinformation against George Galloway and others of us who disagree with them.

The SWP leadership carried an editorial in last week’s edition of their paper Socialist Worker, publicly attacking George Galloway.

At no time has George Galloway or any one of us attacked the SWP in the national media. Regrettably, as a result of the SW editorial an article about divisions within Respect appeared in yesterday’s Observer.

We reject the other accusations made in the letter:

The SWP leadership is attempting to delegate students to the Respect conference where there is no entitlement to these delegates. We have no objection at all to student delegates properly elected according to the constitution.

We completely disagree with the interpretation of events in Tower Hamlets. SWP members there prevented a members’ meeting from electing delegates and then purported to elect an unrepresentative list of delegates at an unconstitutional meeting held when the overwhelming majority of members had left.

We no longer have confidence that the conference called for 17/18 November will be validly constituted.

We are shocked that access to the Respect database and therefore communication to Respect members was denied to the chair, Linda Smith, and the vice-chair, Salma Yacoob, when the access codes were changed unilaterally by the SWP leadership. Only under pressure has that information been released.

We further deplore the fact that four councillors in Tower Hamlets split from Respect on Thursday evening, a fact they announced in a widely circulated press release. The four include two members of the SWP and two close allies. They are, in fact, the first four signatories to the SWP’s ‘Respect Appeal against the witch hunt”.

Instead of deploring the split by these councillors and asking them to rejoin Respect, SWP members in Tower Hamlets and elsewhere are supporting this step.

We, however, remain absolutely committed to the principles and policies of Respect as contained in our founding statement, subsequent manifestos and conference decisions: Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community, Trade Unions.

Yours in solidarity,

Linda Smith, National Chair
Salma Yaqoob, National Vice Chair

Mobeen Azhar, National Council
Ayesha Bajwa, National Council
Victoria Brittain, National Council
Rita Carter, National Council
Ger Francis, National Council
George Galloway MP, National Council
Jerry Hicks, National Council
Abdurahman Jafar, National Council
Abdul Khaliq, National Council
John Lister, National Council
Ken Loach, National Council
Abjol Miah, National Council, Leader of Tower Hamlets Respect Councillors Group
Bernie Parkes, National Council
Yvonne Ridley, National Council
Clive Searle, National Council
Alan Thornett, National Council
Nick Wrack, National Council

Recently there have been a whole series of plastic surgery shows on television, providing extreme makeovers. In some cases, surgery is clearly and unambiguously beneficial. For example when someone has lost a very large amount of weight and their skin is hugely too big for their body, or reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy.

But breast enhancements and tummy tucks are becoming very common.

This raises the question of who is to decide which surgery is ethical and which is not? Who is to decide what surgery is socially useful, and thus can be NHS funded? Whose body is it anyway? If a woman beleives bigger tits will make her happier, then isn’t that just her choice? But what do we say about the social pressures that link a woman’s self esteem so much to her breast size?

Some people are so unhappy with their bodies that they seek extreme ways of changing themselves. At its most extreme this becomes the personality disorder, body dysphoria.

The most culturally explosive version of body transformation was in the US reality TV show Swans. Broadcast by the loathsome Fox Corporation in April 2004, the show took 16 women who considered themselves ugly, and transformed them through the course of the series, including reconstructive dental procedures, and plastic surgery. Gradually they were eliminated until there was a series winner, the “ultimate swan”. Thousands of women submitted audition videos to compete in this degrading pageant.

The TV show’s official web site needs to be quoted to appreciate the how offensive it is: “Kelly wants to be a swan because she would love to look in the mirror one day and be happy with what she sees. Fortunately, she has a boyfriend who loves her for who she is but believes that their relationship could benefit from her feeling a bit sexier. They’ve only been physically intimate seven or eight times in the last three years. This statistic makes the experts watching the video cringe. But then there’s good old Mom, who doesn’t think she needs any transformation at all. … … The experts agree, Kelly’s got potential. Just a little nip here, tuck there… well, maybe a little more than that. Kelly will be receiving a complimentary: brow lift, lip enhancement liposuction on the cheeks and chin, several visits to the dermatologist, collagen, lasic eye surgery, breast enhancement, etc ”

What is most revealing is that before surgery all the women look normal and individual. Perhaps their self esteem would benefit from spending a few hundred dollars on clothes and a new haircut, but they are basically people like us. After reconstruction every one of them looks like Barbie. This is a disturbing twist on the “Stepford Wives”: the women replace themselves.

Similarly, a “Miss Plastic Surgery” beauty pageant was run in China in October 2004 that was only open to women whose “beauty is man made”. China now has one million beauty salons employing 6 million people, with a turnover of 20bn yuan ($2.4bn).

Clearly, sexism was an important issue for Swans. But not only women are affected. The original “Swan” is Cindy Jackson who has become a media celebrity in the USA through becoming a Barbie Doll after 9 bouts of surgery. However, Miles Kendall, an Englishman was inspired by Cindy Jackson to become a real life Ken doll, and has also had extensive cosmetic surgery to look “perfect”.

There are also forms of Body Image Disturbance that are almost exclusively male, such as muscle dysphoria (popularly known as Bigorexia), where men compulsively build muscle, becoming addicted to weight training. Here the cultural icons of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van-Damme, etc, are clearly playing the same normative influence on male image as cover girls have on women.

It is important to recognise therefore that the traditional feminist concerns about women being culturally conditioned to be dissatisfied with their own bodies are now also relevant to many men. This means that any explanations simply based upon gender stereotypes being used to reinforce women’s subordinate role are inadequate.

The fact that we as human beings must sell ourselves as commodities surely lays us more open to marketing influences about how we can improve our own competitiveness. A positive self body image is important, and American economists have published research showing that people who consider themselves good looking earn 5% more on average.

This commoditisation of people reinforces an alienation from our animal selves. Increasingly we culturally distance ourselves from the pain, discomfort and bloody animal reality of birth, disease and death. Capitalism regards nature as a resource to be conquered and exploited, and we tend to regard our own bodies with the same alienated dispassion.

We may therefore regard Body Art as a contradictory phenomenon, partly self mutilation as an expression of modern alienation, and partly a return to atavistic pre-modern traditions. As someone who personally stuck a safety pin through my cheek in 1977 as a punk, I can assure you it does hurt.

Certainly piercing and tattooing are becoming increasingly widespread as part of popular culture. (There has also been a long tradition of tattooing in the aristocracy as well, and all male members of the Royal family are tattooed- remember you read it here first).

While most body art is purely decorative, extreme tattooing (for example, spiders webs on faces) is also known, and the desire for such exhibitionist self mutilation has been linked with schizophrenia. But even in less extreme cases visible tattoos and piercings can be designed to provoke an alienation reaction in the Brechtian sense (Verfremdung), a dislocated response where the observer experiences the mutilation as a barrier inhibiting easy human connection. Most tattoos are much more conventional, but even here the wearer is mediating your relationship with them through the iconography of the tattoo.

On the other hand, tattooing and piercing also have long traditions in pre-modern cultures, and their introduction into modern Britain was via naval contact with South Pacific Islanders in the Eighteenth Century. To a partial extent the contemporary resurgence of tattooing resonates with a rejection of enlightenment rationalism.

The most explosive defiance of rationalism and modernism must surely be the French performance artist Orlan, who has grotesquely transformed her own body in systematic violation of any normative concept of beauty.

There is no comfortable way of experiencing Orlan, even to the degree that she has made her own surgical procedures into theatre.
In the conventional vocabulary of art criticism it would be pernicious to speculate whether Orlan as an artist is influenced by Body Dysmorphia, and it would be presumptive to question whether she is happy doing what she does. However, the separation of Orlan the artist from the woman underneath (whose name is unknown) is itself a symptom of alienation and indeed of commodity fetishism, where we experience a real living woman through the commodity she has transformed herself into.

Personal identity involves self acceptance of your own body. But we are social animals, and the attitude that others in society have to our bodies impacts upon us. Although our bodies have physical existence, the mental self image we have of our bodies, and our physical and psychological relationships with others (including gender and age) are forms of consciousness. And consciousness is a socially constructed and collective set of beliefs and signifiers that we internalise, and then provide the prism through which we relate to others.

The degree to which treating labour as a commodity has led to us treating ourselves as objects distinct from our animal, hormonal, bodily selves has not been sufficiently explored by socialists.

Derek Wall, Principal Male Speaker of the Green party of England and Wales gave the following  opinion on his blog about the current events in Respect.

“I am keen to see greens, socialists and progressive Muslims and plenty of other sections of society work together but I guess like most on the left I have not been confident that RESPECT would hold together….if a broad, pluralist, democratic party comes together out of the current rows the Greens ought to find ways of working with it towards shared goals of ecology, social justice and no war.”