AROUND THE BLOGS - THE NO PLATFORM DEBATE
I put my own tuppence worth in earlier today over the question of whether or not the left should modify its position of “no platform” for the BNP. There has been a lot of discussion of this in the leftish blogs, for example: Green Party councillor Rupert Read argues:
‘No Platform’ is dead. We need to smell the coffee of political reality. And then celebrate the fact that the vast majority of the 8 million who saw Griffin on Thursday night saw an embarrassing / appalling car-crash performance by him. That needs to be continued and redoubled. The man and his ilk can be stuffed even more thoroughly than he/they were on Thursday night, in future debates, e.g. with us Greens. His endless lies need to be endlessly exposed to the cold light of truth. What we must not do is turn Griffin into a victim and martyr. The most likely way one would do that is by saying that he has no right to speak at all, even when he was (I’m afraid) elected.
Dolphinarium highlights the debate in the Socialist Workers Party, the leading force in Unite Against Fascism, where a motion from John Rees and his supporters highlights the fact that
“at the last two National Committee meetings of the SWP a majority of the CC who spoke argued that the SWP should be prepared in the future to debate with members of the BNP in the media after Nick Griffin appears on Question Time on October 22nd, thus abandoning the No Platform position.” ……”The only public reference to this change of position has been a letter from John Molyneux in Socialist Worker (13th June) arguing that we should abandon the No Platform position. The justification for this reversal of the SWP’s traditional stance is tht the election of two BNP MEPs and the change in the position of the BBC means that we have to change our tactics and debate with the BNP. John Molyneux argues that Gramsci had to debate with Fascists in the Italian parliament in the 1920s and that we should adopt the same tactic.”
This is a bit odd, because the SWP’s Central Committee motion, supposedly in opposition to John Rees, also confirms
“SWP members in UAF will refuse to appear on a panel with Nick Griffin or any other member of the BNP or fascist party. We will redouble our efforts to win the case for no platform for the BNP in the media and build the UAF campaign of protests and pickets to challenge the BBC’s decision – “Pull the plugs on the BNP thugs””
So there seems to be a fierce factional argument where both sides have the same position. Confusing? Perhaps, but at least the John Rees motion does very clearly explain what the political debate is actually about. Has the political context caused by the BNP being elected shifted so much that the left should, where necessary, be prepared to debate with the BNP.
Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy tackles the issue in a slightly different way, examining the furore among the right wing commentariat about the alleged bullying of Nick Griffin, while Sunny establishes quite neatly that in fact, the majority of people support the way the BBC handled the BNP on Question Time, and that the public’s perception of the BNP had not shifted either way following the programme. Empirical evidence that is important to consider when judging how significant it is to attempt to deny the BNP a platform.
A poll for the News of the World this Sunday found that 90% of people rejected the view that all immigration into the UK should be banned. It also found that just 6% of people thought the BNP had the right policies to sort out Britain’s problems.
Voltaires Priest at Shiraz Socialist asks a very good question “What would have been the point of banning Griffin?” He argues:
It is only an opinion, but in my view the time has come to shine the light of publicity directly on the BNP. Whilst it is possible (at a decidedly large stretch) that some people may have watched Griffin on Thursday and been persuaded to the cause of fascism, it seems to me more likely that neutrals of all backgrounds will have been horrified. The long-term outcome of the BBC’s decision, it seems to me, will be to galvanise opposition to the BNP beyond its usual redoubts and into the population as a whole
Darren Turner, of Mutterings from the South thinks No Platform just doesn’t work:
No platform policies do not work. It didn’t work when the UK government tried to suppress Sinn Fein by barring their leaders from being heard. It doesn’t work in Trade Unions when the central heirarchy tries to suppress factions and groups: they just keep coming and getting bigger. If you aren’t allowed to talk about it, people instinctively want to talk about it, and censoring the BNP will just make them (a) more interesting and (b) able to play the martyr card.
Random Blowe disagrees, and argues passionately in defence of No Platform, however while his arguments address the question of whether or not the BNP SHOULD have been invited onto Question Time, he doesn’t address the question of how the left deals with the situation of the BNP being invited anyway. He says:
Throughout the week, people who should know better - including a fair number of liberal bed wetters I follow on Twitter - have been anguishing over the question of Griffin’s freedom of speech as though it is some kind of difficult issue. It really isn’t. Griffin, his party and everyone who supports them are free to hold whatever warped opinion they like. If they decide to write their blogs, produce their magazines and leaflets or stand out in the street and bellow their lies at the top of their lungs, that’s their choice. If they incite violence in doing so then they deal with the consequences like the rest of us - either arrest or a damn good kicking, but consequences nevertheless. …. …. Offering a platform to a party of true believers, people who will never change their views and who are prepared to lie at every opportunity, isn’t going to persuade racist voters to stop scapegoating their neighbours. It instead sends a message that their racism is one equally valid opinion amongst many.
But this isn’t the point. For the left it is not a question of free speech. I am sure most of us agree that the BNP would ideally NOT be on the TV. the question is how we navigate around the fact that they ARE on the TV.
Harpy Marx just doesn’t get what the debate is about either. She concludes:
“For me it was about politically protesting by expressing noisy anger making sure the vile Hitlerite was never in doubt what we though of him and the BBC heirarchy”
But “No Platform” isn’t about what you feel, angry or otherwise, and surely making Nick Griffin aware of our disapproval is the lowest of all priorities. Following this logic, the strategy for fighting the BNP should be making them sit on the naughty step. Her arguments don’t address at all the question of whether or not the left should ever participate in a debate with the BNP, in circumstances where they have been offered a platform by social forces beyond our control.
Sceptiscle at the Obsolete blog offers the opinion that the tactics of the left are unconvincing:
I’ve always doubted the efficacy of the “no platform” stance which was taken against the party up until very recently. As much as the likes of Unite Against Fascism and other similar groups have the right intentions, their own authoritarian leanings and determination to stop the BNP from exercising their democratic right, especially when invited to student debates, is self-defeating in the extreme. There was perhaps a case when the British National Party was more anti-democratic than it currently is, and more openly racist and radical in its policies for it to be denied the right to spread their hatred, but even if Griffin’s “sanitising” of the party is just for show as it almost certainly is, that time now has almost certainly passed.
Racism begins with our families, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, people we admire, respect and love.
However, as we grow and mature we come to the realization that what we were told by our family when we were children were slanted lies base on their prejudices. We realize that most people are like ourselves and not so different and want the same things, like a home, steady work, a Medicare plan and schools for our children (if you travel you will see this). We realize that most people are of good hearts and goodwill.
This reminds me of a parable from the good book where a Levite and Priest come upon a man who fell among thieves and they both individually passed by and didn’t stop to help him.
Finally a man of another race came by, he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy and got down with the injured man, administered first aid, and helped the man in need.
Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his fellow man.
You see, the Levite and the Priest were afraid, they asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before us. The question is not, “If I stop to help our fellow man (immigrant) in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help our fellow man, what will happen to him or her?” That’s the question.
This current climate of blaming others for our woes is not new. We have had this before and we have conquered it.
Remember “Evil flourishes when good men (and women) do nothing”. Raise your voices with those of us who believe we are equal and we can win this battle again.
Comment by Paul — 26 October, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
When rapists rape they dont debate with the victim beforehand. There should not only be no platform given whatsoever to facsism, history has taught us that, the fasicst must be driven off the streets by mass action wherever they raise their ugly heads. The Communist party has a position of no platform for fascism. Compromising this position is weakness and giving in to liberal idealogy. So called capitalist democracy only exists when there is no threat to the ruling class, when they are threatened fascism is their last resort. Just look what is happening in the Honduras. The left must unite including the trade union movement to go on the offensive against the BNP.
Comment by Alfie — 26 October, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
No platform always was a daft position.
It always meant calling on the bureaucrats to police what was and was not an acceptable point of view, and as with all bans, justs end up giving more power to people who are not to be trusted.
What’s more, it sets up a false - and conservative - dichotomy between respectable opinion and the pale beyond. But if radical ideas mean anything, they will be a greater threat to respectable opinion than the BNP ever could be, so it will be the radicals who will lose out.
Finally, it rests on a false idea that today’s British National Party is a fascist movement - when really it is just a bad joke about a fascist movement. History does *not* repeat itself (as Marx in fact meant, the qualification being greater than the original proposition). As Trotsky explained, Fascism was a mass petit bourgeois movement mobilised to crush the organised working class. The B.N.P.’s growth is not because the working class is a threat, but because the mainstream parties are losing their influence over society. Last year the people that voted B.N.P. voted UKIP. Before that they probably voted Green - or RESPECT. It is just a protest vote. It will move on to the next bandwagon.
Comment by James Heartfield — 26 October, 2009 @ 7:36 pm
Before that they probably voted Green - or RESPECT.
I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence to support this James. Plus the BNP’s vote doesn’t dramatically rise or fall, which we would expect if it was merely the current recipient of a protest vote that is equally likely to go to other parties in other years, it rises, year on year.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the debate about No Platform matters very much anymore. The spread of the internet largely renders the idea of No Platform redundant, particularly given the popularity of the BNP website. Only a prolonged feat of technical wizardry could do anything about this.
Comment by Duncan — 26 October, 2009 @ 7:50 pm
No evidence that there is a Green/BNP crossover? When the party list was published last year, quite a few Green Party activists were discovered to have defected to the BNP, like Keith Bessant, a two-time parliamentary candidate, and Rev John Stanton, a former local party chairman. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5197862.ece
Maybe switching from Respect to BNP seems less likely (especially where Respect’s support draws on the Asian community), but if you look at the Front National in France, they did well in former Communist strongholds.
You say the B.N.P.’s vote just keeps climbing, and that looks true on the aggregate (though obviously they put more into different elections), but in specific areas where they have got support, like the Isle of Dogs, or Burnley, it has evaporated rather quickly afterwards.
The Green Party was the recipient of the protest vote, especially around 1989, when it did particularly well in the Euro-elections, with Respect doing well two years ago. Since then the left’s collapse opened up some room on the right, which UKIP and latterly the BNP have taken up.
Comment by James Heartfield — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
Yesterday the Green Left general meeting fully supported the position of No Platform for Fascists.
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:20 pm
Rupert Read is a rather marginal figure in the Green party who threw his toys out of the pram when he didn’t get a certain position at our last conference - ex Lib Dem - say no more!
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
If the left were in control of all the platforms, then we could probably ensure that the BNP never got one. But we are not. Of course, wherever we have a say in the matter, we should try to freeze out the BNP. Nobody is advocating inviting them along to address trade union branches, community associations, campaigning bodies or whatever. But the BNP can find their own platforms, including some which we cannot just abandon, like council chambers and the like. How best to deal with the BNP in such situations is a question that requires some serious thought.
Comment by Francis King — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
I am sure James will use Green Left to justify his fascism crossover point and will be arguing just as persuasively for some kind of link between voting BNP and Respect.
‘quite a few Green Party activists were discovered to have defected to the BNP’ i.e three!
along with substantial numbers of tories, some ex Labour and Lib dems and even some socialists.
Comment by Derek Wall — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
“but if you look at the Front National in France, they did well in former Communist strongholds.”
This is glib and baseless as your alleged Green-BNP connection. All the research I have seen indicates that Communist voters were the least likely to transfer their affections to the FN during the 1980s and 1990s. That of course does not mean that right wing voters in “Communist strongholds” didn’t start supporting the FN, or that young people in these areas without any voting history did so also.
Comment by lone nut — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
No evidence that there is a Green/BNP crossover?
I think there is little evidence of a Green/BNP crossover amongst voters, that is, I think it highly unlikely that Green voters would switch to the BNP and vice versa as some sort of protest vote searching out an anti-system alternative.
The fact that some relatively active Green Party members subsequently joined the BNP doesn’t demonstrate this. Former Conservative Party members have become active members of the BNP, as the list you referred to indicates, but it would not be accurate to use this as evidence that the Conservative Party and the BNP share a common voting base.
I agree with your point about the PCF and FN vote in France but this is an example which isn’t relevant to Britain as Britain has never had a mass, or electorally successful, Communist Party.
You say the B.N.P.’s vote just keeps climbing, and that looks true on the aggregate (though obviously they put more into different elections), but in specific areas where they have got support, like the Isle of Dogs, or Burnley, it has evaporated rather quickly afterwards.
You’re talking about highly localised exceptions rather than general, and obvious, trends. With regards to the first, a BNP stronghold in the 1990’s, the party has largely abandoned places like inner London as a result of demographic changes, the same applies like places like Tower Hamlets and Brick Lane.
The second example is more interesting. I don’t think it’s fair to say the BNP vote in Burnley has ‘evaporated’, they won their first county councillor in the country in Burnley this year, but it is one of the few places where the BNP expect to do well where there vote has fallen. However, what has happened in Burnley is the exception rather than the rule.
The Green Party was the recipient of the protest vote, especially around 1989, when it did particularly well in the Euro-elections, with Respect doing well two years ago. Since then the left’s collapse opened up some room on the right, which UKIP and latterly the BNP have taken up.
I’m not disputing that the Greens, BNP, Respect, etc are not the recipients of protest votes. Instead I’m point out that this group of voters probably can’t be treated as a single group who transfer their vote from one to the other regardless of the ideological differences between the parties.
Data from the 2004 and 2009 European elections seems to support this. In 2004 Respect tended to do better in areas the BNP did poorly in, or at least scoring lower percentages than their average for the region, and in 2009, when Respect didn’t stand, the BNP continued to do badly in these areas.
Comment by Duncan — 26 October, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
There’s a really good letter in todays Independent from Paul Rees setting out why the BNP shouldn’t have the right to ‘free speech’ - ie a defence of the no platform.
It’s very powerful. It details personal experience of racist abuse and the physical violence that always accompanies a political platform for the far-right.
It’s available here (second letter down):
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-palestine-and-the-west-1809445.html
Comment by Ed — 26 October, 2009 @ 9:01 pm
Derek Wall says ‘only three’ Green Party members joined the BNP. Well, I wasn’t seriously trying to make an argument that there was a lot of crossover, only that the Green Party had been lifted by the decay of the main parties, and then later on, so was the British National Party. Third parties have been doing better as the mainstream parties’ social bases have declined. (And I haven’t re-checked, but it certainly was said at the time that there was crossover from the PCF to the FN in the mid-eighties - maybe ‘lone nut’ doesn’t appreciate just how nationalistic the PCF was.)
Still, Derek, I am not sure that you can downplay the defection of a two-time green parliamentary candidate and a party chairman quite so easily. (Not to mention Edward Goldsmith, or his nephew Zac’s political trajectory).
Ed thinks that it is obvious that the association of speech and violence means that speech should be circumscribed. By whom? Who is the higher authority that you are calling upon to decide whether the public are to be allowed to hear an other opinion?
Comment by James Heartfield — 26 October, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
“but it certainly was said at the time that there was crossover from the PCF to the FN in the mid-eighties - maybe ‘lone nut’ doesn’t appreciate just how nationalistic the PCF was”
Yes, it was “said at the time” and became one of the “three things I know about France” endlessly repeated by the British left. But that doesn’t make it true. Perhaps you don’t appreciate that the prestige and mass appeal of the PCF was centrally based on its role in the struggle against fascism.
Comment by lone nut — 26 October, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
On Christmas Eve 1980 the Communist mayor of Vitry and other PCF sympathisers bulldozed the power supplies and staircases to an immigrants’ hostel … that struggle against fascism you mean? Or the PCF’s opposition to Algerian independence, and collaboration with the Pieds Noirs struggle against the FLN?
Comment by James Heartfield — 26 October, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
James I have long criticised far right Greens but three people is well three people, of course some people see environmental concern as intrinsically reactionary, and as I write for a newspaper with strong links to the CP even I could be at risk I suppose.
I am not an advocate of Zac who has never been a Green Party member but I was not aware he had joined the BNP….do tell us more.
Comment by Derek Wall — 26 October, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
Ah, I see you have come up with the other two things you know about. On the first incident, were you wearing your Furedite nitpicking hat I am sure you would be pointing out that hostility to the presence of an immigrant hostel in one’s neighbourhood could be motivated by any number of factors and is certainly not synonymous with fascism. Neither of course is equivocation over the question of Algerian independence, and the fact that you can charge the PCF with “collaboration with the Pieds Noirs” shows that you have no idea what you are talking about. Nobody in the FLN ever made any such accusation.
Comment by lone nut — 26 October, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
The PCF described the Algerian protests for liberation in Constantine in 1945 as ‘fascist’, even after the natives had been bombed into submission. In 1956 it voted special powers to Guy Mollet’s socialist government to repress the Algerian revolution. (Roland Lew and Jean Pierre Garnier, From the Wretched of the Earth to the Defence of the West’ in Ralph Miliband et al (Eds)Socialist Register, London: Merlin, 1984, p 311) The PCF had opposed Algerian independence since Massali Hadj first proposed it in 1937. In 1955 the PCF complained against charges of disloyalty to the Algerians: ‘Have we not already shown that we support a policy of negotiation with the peoples of North Africa for the creation of a true “Union française”?’(L’Humanité, November 5, 1955) — as if the Algerian people were demanding a true Union française! But with the outbreak of war, the PCF faced some criticism for this uncomradely betrayal of the Algerian people. Rather than take responsibility for the policy outright, they sought to deflect responsibility by shifting the blame onto the working class. In a speech to students, the PCF spokesman Laurent Casanova asked them to take into account ‘the spontaneous attitude of the French popular masses on the question’.(Paris, March 17, 1957, quoted in Frantz Fanon, Towards the African Revolution, p 85) Writer Francis Jeanson, who undertook clandestine work for the FLN, remembers Casanova speaking more bluntly. ‘He used to say, “The working class is racist, colonialist and imperialist.”’ (in Bernard Henri-Lévy, Adventures on the Freedom Road, p311) In fact it was the Communist Party above all that was responsible for spreading chauvinist attitudes towards the Algerian struggle amongst working class people. ‘Victims of the myth of French Algeria,’ wrote Fanon, ‘the parties of the Left create Algerian sections of the French political parties on Algerian territory’. The truth was that it was they, before it was the working class, who assumed the right of France to rule over Algeria. In fact, the Communist Party of Algeria (PCA) recruited heavily amongst white settlers in Bab el Oued and Belcourt, according to Michael Farrell, who also charges that many PCA members were later active in the reactionary OAS.(Michael Farrell, The Battle for Algeria, Belfast: Peoples Democracy, circa 1972, p15)
Comment by James Heartfield — 26 October, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
Yes, the situation has changed. If the BNP are already gaining access to a public audience , then refusal to appear on the same platform means we censor ourselves, and the best, class based arguments from the left don’t gain a look in. But that is not the be all and end all of no platform. However - when discussing altering the no platform policy, bear a few things in mind:
1) The BNP and other fascist and far right movements cannot be defeated by debate alone. It is naive liberalism to imagine that stopping fascism cannot be done through “pure reason”. Arguing with fascists and extreme racists is like trying to nail jelly to the wall! Their positions will keep shifting, they will be evasive, dissemble and conceal their real views. They will say random things opportunistically to be popular. Win an argument with them today and it will be forgotten tomorrow.
This is because fascism, along with extreme racist and xenophobic reaction are not based upon reason or rationality. They are irrational forces, stemming from the dynamics of despair, about people in an economic crisis desperate to find a scapegoat, they are reaction become a social force, a bandwagon with its own momentum. This can not be stopped by reason alone, but can only be checked by a counterveiling social force - the mobilised politics of hope. This means the existence of a powerful working class movement pushing the other way, able to find solutions to peoples problems and the crisis through class struggle and making the capitalists pay.
Its about understanding the relationship between social force and ideological hegemony. Thus our powers of reason and debate alone is not enough - we need a powerful movement on the streets and workplaces able to drive society in the other direction. But this does not mean we don’t use reason and debate at all, that we just stand their dumbly mumbling ‘no platform’ where the BNP already are on the platform! We use all our weapons - including reason - along with the force of mobilisation and direct action.
But there is another confusion - people around Question Time spoke of the need to ‘take on’ the BNP’s arguments, rather than ‘ignore them’. But you don’t have to give the BNP a platform in order to ‘take them on’ to address, challenge and expose their arguments. This can be done through our own platforms, leaflets, street agitation and other media.
2) Having acknowledged the need for some clarification and alterations of our positions, we still need to keep the central aspects of no platform. ‘No platform’ has become confused, the term used to cover different situations. It did not initially mean state or media bans. It was about ‘our platforms’, the creations of the labour and trades union movements, social movements and community campaigns. For instance, just because the BNP say they are against the war does not mean they should be included on an STWC platform! We know that trades unions, social movements, community campaigns can only win by uniting the working class, uniting as many people as possible, from different races and religions. We can not do that if the campaign is infiltrated by organised racists and fascists, who will divide the movement! So no platform must be defended within all our movements.
Comment by Barry Kade — 27 October, 2009 @ 12:00 am
Barry Kade.
This is absolutely correct, and if anything the movement is stronger on this than it was in the past. Every major trade union is strongly committed to opposing facsism; and racism is far less tolerated in the trade unions than it was 30 years ago.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 October, 2009 @ 12:42 am
Barry Kade writes “The BNP and other fascist and far right movements cannot be defeated by debate alone.”
Which is true, in so far as fascism is the use of force and intimidation. There is no point in having a polite exchange of views with someone who is beating you up. When force is used, you have to reply with force.
But I am putting words in Barry’s mouth. He means something else
“Arguing with fascists and extreme racists is like trying to nail jelly to the wall! Their positions will keep shifting, they will be evasive, dissemble and conceal their real views. They will say random things opportunistically to be popular. Win an argument with them today and it will be forgotten tomorrow.”
Here, Barry endows the B.N.P. with persuasive powers they just do not have, and betrays a sorry disdain for the populace, as if they could not see through such shifty dissembling, but were going to be swayed by any poxy populism.
“This is because fascism, along with extreme racist and xenophobic reaction are not based upon reason or rationality.”
Agreed, but when Barry goes on to say
“They are irrational forces, stemming from the dynamics of despair, about people in an economic crisis desperate to find a scapegoat, they are reaction become a social force, a bandwagon with its own momentum.”
their is a strange slippage in the argument. First Barry was saying that the fascists were irrational, then he slipped into arguing that the people were irrational, prey to desperation and scapegoating, given to following bandwagons. Well, of course, some are, but mostly, no, that is a dim view of the working class.
Still, I agree with this
“This can not be stopped by reason alone, but can only be checked by a counterveiling social force - the mobilised politics of hope. This means the existence of a powerful working class movement pushing the other way, able to find solutions to peoples problems and the crisis through class struggle and making the capitalists pay.”
And of course, Barry is right to say there is no need to offer the B.N.P. a platform in our discussions, but the problem is when you call on others - the state, or the bureaucracy - to police the debate. That only makes sense if you have no respect for the ability of working people to see through what are threadbare arguments from Griffin and co.
I would have thought that the lesson of the Question Time appearance was that it made Griffin look like an idiot. More ridiculous than terrifying.
“
Comment by James Heartfield — 27 October, 2009 @ 1:04 am
Correction to my post 19 above: “It is naive liberalism to imagine that stopping fascism cannot be done through “pure reason”
This Should read:
“It is naive liberalism to imagine that stopping fascism can be done through “pure reason”.
Comment by Barry Kade — 27 October, 2009 @ 1:05 am
Of course, pure reason is unlikely to work against die-hard fascists. Most of them are pretty stupid, and reasonableness is never their strong point. But our main target audience is not die-hard fascists, but the people who might be swayed by their arguments. And if we want to convince them, what else can we use other than reason?
Comment by Francis King — 27 October, 2009 @ 1:30 am
23 - But the question is not of using “pure reason” and leaving it to the debating chamber. Its about reason combined with action and powerful counter-mobilisation. So, yes, I’m also talking about how this influences the BNPs periphery, not just hardened fascists, but “the people who might be swayed by their arguments” - the desperate working class people clutching at straws. What convinces them to move away from the BNP is not “pure reason” alone (although that’s an indispensable part of it) - but on us developing the actual ability to mount a real fight to defend jobs, homes and services against capitalist attacks, and become another pole of attraction, a better anti-fascist one. To break the social dynamic of dispair, and repace it with one of hope. But its about social dynamics, not ‘pure resaon’. Ie its about ‘reason in revolt’, of experiencing collective working class solidarity, therefore its about embedded and embodied reason.
Comment by Barry Kade — 27 October, 2009 @ 2:02 am
So there I am reading a stimulating and challenging post from Andy when this creeps in: “Harpy Marx just doesn’t get what the debate is about either. ”
Hark! Is that a comradely tone I hear? The sound of us all putting our heads together to hammer out a solution to the problem? Or just hammering fellow lefties?
Comment by Madam Miaow — 27 October, 2009 @ 3:09 am
James, post 21 - its not just about whether people are ’stupid’ enough to be taken in by the BNP or ‘clever’ enough to see through them, when taken as an abstract and static question.
At the moment the majority of people can see through the BNP’s lies, and only a minority are taken in. But lets be gloomy and confront some worst case scenarios - what if the British economy does not recover, but sinks into a long period of stagnation or even depression? What if our rulers make the workers pay a high price for the crisis - putting millions more on the dole, cutting benefits and services, and we start to loose our homes and pensions? Maybe either this won’t happen, the economy recovers or maybe even if it gets worse workers unite and fight back, and things move to the left, rather than the far right.
But if things get worse without a workers fightback? We have seen those who want to spark of a civil war between angry white poor people and Britain’s angry and poor Muslim minority - especially those from a Pakistani and Bangladeshi background?
What if the imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia intensify? What if Pakistan is dragged into the war, and British troops end up fighting against the Pakistani people? What if all those who want to turn this into ‘a clash of civilisations’ against Islam then start to get their way? All this is what the BNP hope for, they are playing a long game.
And what about the impact of other events? What if climate change leads to a water crisis and crop failures, making important parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable, creating millions or even billions of refugees?
Maybe I’m exaggerating, and capitalism will encounter a new period of stability and growth, providing a habitat for moderate rather than extremist politics.
My point is that it is never just a question of pure reason on its own. Reason and rationality are also sociological, they are embedded in a social and historical context.
Thus when people feel powerless and atomised, they may blame the weakest and most vulnerable - such as ethnic minorities. But when people are empowered, can feel unity and hope, via trades unions and strong communities - then they can challenge capitalism and win a more just situation for the majority. People will either pick on those below them, or resist those above them. The former is the politics of despair, the second is of hope. These are sociologically conditioned, and not merely the outcome of philosophy or some abstracted versions of rationality.
Thus peoples ability to resist the pull of xenophobia and moments of pogromist frenzies is conditioned by their ideas, the kind of debates and information around them, but also whether they experience the solidarity and empowerment generated by class struggle. These last factors are a key ingredient.
So our response is not merely to debate - and certainly not to focus on debating with neo-fascists. It is instead to debate and reason within the context of mobilising a collective class struggle against exploitation, poverty, racism and division.
Comment by Barry Kade — 27 October, 2009 @ 5:16 am
‘Hark! Is that a comradely tone I hear? The sound of us all putting our heads together to hammer out a solution to the problem? Or just hammering fellow lefties?’
Good point MM. I hope u make it when he’s hammering people u don’t like as well as those u do.
Comment by up the posties!! — 27 October, 2009 @ 6:38 am
James Heartfield - this is the usual Trotskyist scissors and paste hatchet job based entirely on English language sources which gives a crude and one sided picture of the PCF’s positions and slides into outright fantasy. Were you in any sense an honest commentator, for example, you would at least acknowledge that the vote to give Mollet special powers was in a context where Mollet had pledged to pursue a more liberal line in Algeria, and where the PCF was anxious to pursue unity with the Socialists to isolate the far right? Sartre, corretly, called the vote “a calculated risk”. By all means criticise the PCF’s attitude to the question of the Algerian independence, but ro portray it as supportive of the war is totally misleading - can you explain why “L’Humanité” was suppressed no less than 28 times during the conflict?
And your comments on the PCA are simply an outrage. I note that, incredibly, your sole source is an obscure pamphlet written by an Irish Trotskyist in 1972! Let us briefly review the real history: “Though not connected to the FLN, the PCA joined the liberation war in its early days. Almost immediately after the start of the war, the PCA worked together with the Communist-led union, the CGT, to get dock-workers to refuse to unload arms from French ships. The PCA had taken a stand for independence for Algeria in 1952, and in the Spring of 1955 it set up its own fighting groups: by September of that year the Party was banned. Its stand for independence, as well as its acceptance of armed struggle, placed it far from the position of the French Communist Party, which stressed a desire for peace in Algeria… The PCA’s armed group, called Les Combattants de la Libération, (CDL) initially carried out actions in the main cities; Algiers, Oran, Constantine and Blida. Abandoning this tactic for tactical and logistical reasons, they established a “maquis rouge” (“red guerrilla”) in the Chelif Valley, between Oran and Algiers… The CDL was never a large group, but its mixed Arab-European membership — the most notable of whom was Spanish Civil War veteran Maurice Laban — carried out a number of actions in towns in their area of operation. Less than two months after the arms hijacking, on June 5, an informer gave away their location. The group was ambushed by a French unit, and Maillot and Laban were killed… At the time of these events negotiations were already under way between the FLN and the PCA, the FLN represented by Ben Khedda and Abban Ramdane, and the PCA by Bachir Hadj Ali and Sadek Hadjeres. After two months of negotiations, on July 1, 1956 an agreement was signed, integrating the PCA into the FLN.” (http://www.marxists.org/history/algeria/algerian-communist-party.htm)
Comment by lone nut — 27 October, 2009 @ 7:28 am
Incidentally, James, if you are so concerned about socialists in imperialist countries showing insufficient solidarity with Arab victims of colonial aggression and mass murder, might I suggest that you have a word with your pals at Spiked Online concerning their endless, tedious attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement?
Comment by lone nut — 27 October, 2009 @ 8:31 am
Oh yes, the ‘Red Maquis’ - which according to Alasdair Horne (Savage War of Peace) was deliberately sent by the FLN commanders into ambushes to be wiped out, and that these same commanders even set up fake ‘Red Maquis’ battalions to deliberately flush out PCA supporters for slaughter. Not a chapter that does honour to the FLN, but evidence that the ‘agreement’ was only the PCA accepting the inevitable.
Comment by James Heartfield — 27 October, 2009 @ 9:33 am
It seems pointless to discuss events which are now ancient history, but in French Algeria almost all the industrial workers were Alsatian, South European or Maghrebi Jewish and almost all regarded the natives of North Africa with, at best, benign contempt.
The very idea of majority rule in Algeria - or Independence - struck them as ludicrous, hence the abrupt apparent change-of-heart so many had in the late fifties / early sixties in abandoning their allegiance to Leftist parties and clinging to the OAS as their only hope.
De Gualle sold them out just as he betrayed the ‘harkis’, as we all know, and very few of the Pieds Noirs chose to stay behind in an independent Algeria.
A few were still living in Bejaia / Bougie when I lived there in 1973. Like the whites who chose to remain in independent Zimbabwe, their condition was worsening slowly from year to year.
Comment by Gerry — 27 October, 2009 @ 10:14 am
Its disturbing that arguments are now being made on the back of this argument against no platform that the BNP should be invited into universities. The BNP are seeking to organise racists. Not all racists in Britain are in the BNP. Racists also don’t respond to the cold light of truth even if put brilliantly by my friend and comrade Rupert. Every time they appear in the media they win. At this stage in the argument, with controversy still raging about the access of Nazis to mass media, up to and including splits in the leadership of the Labour Party over the issue, its just a mistake to retreat like this.
There also seems to be enourmous confusion between those who are claiming that this retreat is a tactical neccessity, and those who seem to believe its a good thing that the Nazis are on TV and represents some kind of opportunity.
Comment by johng — 27 October, 2009 @ 10:51 am
#25
Miaow
You may have a point, and apologies to Harpy marx is she though my tone too sharp.
I get exasperated sometimes, it is not personal, it is politics.
Here is the problem.
There is a serious tactical debate between position A and position B
Position A is that we should never debate with the BNP on public forums
Position B is that where the BNP are on a public forum anyway, it is better for the left to join the debate.
Position B is informed by an evaluation that the left doesn’t have the weight or capacity to prevent the BNP getting onto some platforms prvided by forces beyond our control. Both position A and position B are informed by the idea that it would be better if the BNP didn’t have a platform
Perhap it is just me, but I find that debate more difficult to conduct when some people raise the temperature by supporting position A just on the basis that they don’t think the BNP should be give a platform; because this misrepresents position B.
Now maybe my tone towards Harpy was too sharp, but she does say that she is writing an article on “No Platform” for Labour Briefing. And as this is an important debate, then it should focus on the real question that is causing a debate in the anti-facsist movment, and not raise a red herring. My particular exasperation was that she both combined a misunderstading of what the actual debate is about, with a very emotional contribution to that debate. Now emotion and passion have a role in politics, but its role when there is a discussion of tactics is to raise the temperature, by implying that those you disagree with are somehow less committed to anti-fascism.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 October, 2009 @ 10:53 am
“Barry is right to say there is no need to offer the B.N.P. a platform in our discussions”
Isn’t that exactly what James Hughes/Heartfield and the RCP did with their ‘free speech’ campaigns in the 90s? A certain Mark Collett claims that’s where he got his political grounding.
Comment by Mike — 27 October, 2009 @ 10:59 am
#31
“Its disturbing that arguments are now being made on the back of this argument against no platform that the BNP should be invited into universities. ”
JOhn this is a dishonest “amalgamation”, whereby you are seekking to establish “guilt by association” of people arguing different hings.
There have been people arguing to allow the BNP into universities, and before them the NF, for thrity or forty years. They are not doing so “on the back of this argument “.
Yes life is complex. But the contrived and disingenuous bewilderment which you pretend to feel everytime completely mainstream political arguments that you disagree with are put forward don’t help.
Equally, I would put myslef as someone who supports “No PLatform” - I don’t think that the labour movement shoudl provide platforms, and we shoudl argue that the BNP are not given opportunities to appear. However, what this discussion is about is what is our fall back position where the BNP are going to appear anyway, now that they have breached the wall.
That is an entirely different argument of whether or not they shoudl be invited to have a platform in a university.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 October, 2009 @ 10:59 am
“Not a chapter that does honour to the FLN, but evidence that the ‘agreement’ was only the PCA accepting the inevitable”
Yes, so inevitable that a few moments ago you were claiming that they actually fought on the other side. I really would drop this if I were you - whatever the faults of the PCF in building solidarity with the Algerians, their contribution to world history was a damn sight weightier than that of the Irish Freedom Movement. And this kind of contempt for those who actually fought fascism and colonialism is a bit rich coming from somebody whose combat experience consists of a papercut he got while unbundling copies of “the next step”.
Comment by lone nut — 27 October, 2009 @ 11:03 am
Andy- I do think you should put up a link to Barry Kade’s Blog on SU. There is always good, thought-provoking stuff there. barrykade.wordpress.com
Comment by senseless thing — 27 October, 2009 @ 11:32 am
- 36 -
To the Pieds Noirs of the fifties*, the very idea of handing Algeria to the majority population was every bit as grotesque and appalling a proposal as the idea of handing Texas to the Mexicans, or Ohio to the redskins or New South Wales to the aborigines.
In fact, as things turned out, France ended up with the worst of all possible combinations; the loss of Ageria and its resources PLUS an immense influx of Algerians of the worst class, who have brought their own distinctive enrichment to metropolitan France over the last 47 years.
* The war began in 1954 and ended in 1962, with the deliberate butchery of the harkis and the Oran massacre.
Comment by Gerry — 27 October, 2009 @ 11:35 am
#37
good call, thanks
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 October, 2009 @ 11:41 am
#35 - the problem is that it isn’t an entirely different argument. People wanting to invite the BNP into universities will find it an easier argument to make after Griffin’s been on ‘Question Time’. And they would find it an even easier argument if a prominent figure of the left were to debate Griffin publicly.
There is a serious tactical debate to be had, but a key part of that is properly evaluating the impact of Griffin’s appearance. Part of the impact has been to harden up anti-Nazi feeling, from the right-wing press to Labour MPs. Let’s not mistake losing one skirmish for losing the battle.
Comment by chjh — 27 October, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
#40
Yes, that is a good point, well made, chjh.
Reading the various reactions to the QT time debate gives you the impression that people were watching differtrent programmes, but that is partly becasue peopple had different anxieties.
A number of people were simply relieved that Jack Straw, and Baroness Warsi laid into the Nazi bastard; and to a degree the programme did consolidate revulsion against the BNP, many people will have been hearing about Grifin’s links with the KKK and his holocaust denial for the first time. Or at least it will be the frist time they hear that sort of thing from a mainstream politician.
So in some ways it make be easier to argue against BNP members having a platform in a university; for example I can imagine a LGBT activist standing up in a student union meeting, quoting what Griffin said about gay men kissing in public, and arguing that LGBT students shoudl be protected from exposure to that sort of bigotry in their own union.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 October, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
chjh: Certainly the appearance on Question Time will be used by all sorts of people as reason to invite the BNP onto shows (ratings) and places like the Oxford Union (ratings in a different way for those issuing the invites).
And there is a tactical debate to be had. The other part of the impact was the ability of Griffin to present himself as an anti-establishment figure. That’s easier for him when the opponents on the show were… of the establishment, which is discredited in so many people’s eyes.
I have no confidence in the anti-Nazi feeling of the right wing press. Take the Daily Express. It has viscerally attacked the BNP for many years - partly following the predilications of its owner - while running front pages or features on average twice a week that have done at least as much to stoke racism as the BNP has (again, reflecting its owner’s tirades against Muslim “fundamentalists”).
As for most Labour MPs: of course it’s good that Tony McNulty speaks at the counter-protest at Harrow mosque. But the same McNulty as Home Office minister has helped put in place the legal system that demarcates asylum seekers and many migrants as easily targetable others.
What’s required is a clear argument from the left in defence of immigrants and against racism, put with tactical flexibility.
This isn’t something new. On the Isle of Dogs in 1993 Anti Nazi League leafleters physically defended themselves from the BNP and established the confidence of others to campaign door to door. Most of the campaign, however, was canvassing and arguing, including with hardline BNP sympathisers. When a white boy was stabbed by an Asian boy at a school in Tower Hamlets, opponents of the BNP did not physically attack the march the fascists were instrumental in calling in the aftermath. Instead, they went into the march and created an enormous argument which separated the BNP and its core from wider confused elements.
I cannot see what is wrong with saying that we oppose the BNP having a platform, will not offer them one where we are in a position to determine that, but will make an assessment whether to deploy effective, anti-establishment, socialist figures if they nevertheless do get an important platform - ie one that had an audience of 8 million.
Further, I can’t undertand a distinction which says that appearing on the Moral Maze when the BNP are also questioned on it and, therefore, having to deal with their arguments is “No Platform”, whereas being on the same show if both of you were interviewed together is conceding a principle. This is scholasticism worthy of a medieval abbot.
More importantly, when it comes to the EDL and how to respond under particular circumstances the dogmatism can be dangerous.
For example, I’ve now heard a fair few SWP students arguing that it is wrong to “call for state bans” on the EDL marching. They seem oblivious to the fact that calling for withdraw an invite to Nick Griffin to speak is calling for a state agency to “ban” (what else is it?) the BNP - and let’s leave aside the campaign for the state to “close down the BNP headquarters” in Welling in the 1990s.
Instead, the argument I’ve heard over the EDL is that we should not call for the police to ban their public events, but we should turn up and do it ourselves. Such an argument will only alienate those who need to be won if anti-fascist mobilisations are to be successful. The argument boiled down is: the EDL are violent, racist thugs; but we don’t want the police to stop them; we want to have a good ruck with them instead.
No one who seriously wants to mobilise or to hold a position in the media would dream of putting such an argument.
Comment by Nas — 27 October, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
#42 Of course we can’t rely on the right-wing press to be consistently anti-BNP. But the fact that they have become more critical of Griffin following ‘Question Time’ tells us something. There is still a huge debate about whether the BNP is part of acceptable political discourse in this country - we have not lost that argument. And that is not separate from the general arguments about racism and immigration. If the BNP become acceptable, their language and their arguments become acceptable too.
And as far as the EDL is concerned, I don’t mind if the state does ban them. The real issue at stake is what do we do when the state does not ban them? What do you do in Leeds this week, if not try for the biggest possible mobilisation?
Comment by chjh — 27 October, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Lone Nut- Much of my political education in my 20’s was in a trotskyist (mainly USFI) milieu, some of which I still find valuable, much far from it. However, what I do think I know about the PCF, in relation to Algeria and Vietnam, I find problematic to say the least.
I’m genuinely interested, did the PCF play any kind of progressive role at any stage in the Algerian struggle?
Comment by Armchair — 27 October, 2009 @ 6:52 pm
Armchair - well try the following for an insight into a side of the PCF’s role which is left out of the standard Trotskyist/Maoist accounts:
“Opposition to the French occupation of Algeria was always with the goal of encouraging popular pressure to end to the war. So communist organisations called for popular support as they demonstrated when troops were returning from Algeria to the army camps, such as at Rouen, or in the trains transporting the troops. At the Richepanse army camp in Rouen, the demonstrations lasted several days, with soldiers refusing to leave for Algeria; beyond the barracks, the movement was supported by dockers and factory workers of the city as a whole, as described by Roland Leroy, at the time secretary of the communist federation.
Throughout the whole Algerian War, the PCF published underground newspapers destined for the soldiers engaged in the war. Six million copies of Soldat de France were printed, handed out on the trains and on the ships with the help of the railway workers and sailors, thrown over the walls of military barracks, sent by mail in France, and, for sending to Algeria, printed in special airmail editions for the “Algerian postal sector”. French communist activists, such as Alfred Gerson, were seconded to the Algerian Communist Party to publish the Voix du soldat, which was so embarrassing to the military administration that Massu himself referred to the “enormous effort” that the police services would have to undertake to arrest those who were responsible.
The actions within the army included also the soldiers who refused to participate, such as Alban Liechti. But, under the conditions of this war, there were only a few dozen like him. There were, however hundreds, among them many communists, who opposed the generals’ aborted coup d’état, throwing in prison those of their officers who were tempted by the rebellion. All these testimonials have been collected together and are now available for consultation in the PCF archives.”
(http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article270)
Comment by lone nut — 27 October, 2009 @ 7:25 pm