Issue 170 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published December 1993 Copyright © Socialist Review
I am a 'left wing' Labourite, sympathetic to the work of the ANL and read Socialist Review with interest. However, I must protest about Pat Stack's article, 'Any means necessary'.
Lenin and Stalin sought to create a socialist society by any means necessary. The result was one of the most evil regimes in history and millions of people being slaughtered for nothing.
Pat Stack needs to be reminded that democracy is necessary to maintain the stability of society. The BNP has every right to march. It is the responsibility of the ANL to march to discourage people from following the BNP. It is true that in the 1970s the ANL did defeat the Nazis and by peaceful means they can be defeated again. Violence will do nothing other than discredit our cause. One cannot evade fascism by using fascism, and who are the fascists anyway?
In Millwall, and in many other parts of the country, the fascists are working class people. Generally they are motivated by social deprivation, persuaded by the Tories and other elements of the establishment that the reason for their hardship is immigration and not capitalism. The 'racist card' is part of a wider strategy to divide working people and rule them--for example, black from white, young from old, the employed from unemployed, unionised from non-unionised workers, countrymen from city dwellers, intelligent people from the less able. By fighting other working class people one simply plays into the hands of the establishment. Our rule should be to win the argument and let people live in unity from their own free will.
I don't accept that if Hitler's movement had been smashed with the utmost brutality that it would have stopped. Instead it would have been driven underground, only to fight another day.
Ken Livingstone is absolutely right to suggest that one should listen to the deprived people in Millwall and similar areas. By showing concern for their lives and needs, showing our love for all people, they will see who the real enemy is and join us in working for a fuller society.
I hope that Pat Stack will be convinced. If not, may I suggest that he watches the film Gandhi as soon as possible.
Adam J Powell
Bradford
In October's Socialist Review Chris Harman, while writing about the Falklands War, said '...it was only us and ten Labour MPs who were opposed to the Falklands War and it was Socialist Worker which was the opposition'. Really?
In Nottingham the group which organised a several hundred strong demonstration against the war, a daily tea time vigil and other activities was dominated by CND activists, Communist Party members and a local Women for Peace group. The SWP played a small but useful role in organising the leafleting of local hospitals, once.
I know from friends elsewhere in the country that in many towns CND members formed the bulk of many local committees. The pacifist Peace Pledge Union also produced excellent posters which were widely used and for the first time in many years mobilised their members nationally.
I have no doubt that the SWP was part of the opposition to the war and would never suggest otherwise, but for Chris Harman to suggest that it was ten MPs and the SWP alone who stood against the tide is reminiscent of those who rewrite history.
Ross Bradshaw
Nottingham
Chris Harman didn't mean to give the impression that only us and ten Labour MPs opposed the Falklands War. He was stressing how little opposition there was from the parliamentary left.
Kieran Allen writes (October SR) about the mistakes made by People's Democracy. Yes--we made plenty. We are willing to admit that and to discuss the lessons which can be learnt from our history. In fact we believe that a critical assessement from a socialist perspective would mark a big step forward for the development of the Marxist programme for Ireland.
On the evidence, we won't be looking to Kieran Allen to provide this. His article is the opposite of political analysis--a completely unserious ferrago based on the conflation of 25 years of political development into the airy dismissal of 'mindless militancy'. He then damns us with faint praise in order to 'prove' his pet nostrum--that economic militancy will unite Catholic and Protestant worker.
In fact any serious examination of our early history points the other way. The early People's Democracy, despite a great deal of political naivety, worked hard and consistently to build unity of Protestant and Catholic workers. Not only did we stand candidates in all areas, sell papers and run a whole series of campaigns, but we did in fact physically unite Catholic and Protestant in our own organisation.
What went wrong? The answer has little to do with mindless militancy and a great deal to do with Loyalist violence, British repression, state pogroms and the physical intimidation of members who lived in Loyalist areas. Our experience, like many other elements in the history of the working class in the north, shows the impossibility of workers' unity within the confines of the sectarian state.
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Kieran Allen says that as material conditions worsen for Protestant workers they will radicalise and can go to the right or left. That is not true. Radicalisation is taking place in the context of a sectarian state and the implantation in the class of Loyalist reaction that grows daily more vicious. This can be challenged, not by recruiting activities of a far left organisation, but by building a stronger left current within the Irish working class as a whole.
John McAnulty
Belfast
Sales of the Review are going generally very well. At the moment I'm trying to break habits.
1. Always carry SR with you along with Socialist Worker and membership cards.
2. Try to sell the Review to paper contacts and to everyone who buys the paper.
3. It is not just for party members. An obvious point, but one that needs to be made given the tendency to this opinion.
4. Persuade people to be as pushy with the Review as with the paper.
Hopefully by the end of the year we could sell twice as many copies.
Leo Zeilig.
Exeter
What exactly does Joe Martin (TalkBack, November SR) find so wrong with child psychologists? I think we should be told.
Rob Wheatley
Stoke on Trent
Socialist Review--November. I would like to make a point or three.
'Strong Arm of the Law': the argument against banging up people (unless they are dangerous) is well made. In HG Wells's History of Mr Polly the woman at the Potwell Inn says of Uncle Jim, 'It was that reformatory ruined him.'
Pat Stack's article re the fascists hit nails firmly on the head. I do not know if Trotsky actually said it, but a pal of mine did--'the only way to debate is to introduce his face to the pavement'.
On a lighter note, concerning 'Portillo's Private Practice', Spike Milligan once said, 'I used to have a practice in Harley Street but the police moved me on.'
Alan Crabtree
Isle of Man
I think Sabby Sagall's review of Mike Leigh's Naked (Nov SR) was far too soft. Sabby makes the point, briefly, that the women characters in the film are shown as victims of men. This is an understatement. All of the female characters are weak and submissive in the extreme, incapable of taking any control over their own lives without first being given a lead by men.
We could excuse Leigh's portrayal of women if it stopped at this sort of sympathetic naivety but Leigh develops this to express an opinion of women that borders on misogyny. Sophie, the main victim in this totally bleak picture, is raped twice but remains a figure of fun. Her casual approach to sexual partners leaves you wondering whether Leigh is asking us to think well, maybe she deserved it.
Leigh's views on men are equally as bad if not worse. They are either incapable of relating to women at all or able to only in the most brutal of ways. Johnny, the down and out main character, has a sort of shadow upper class yuppie character whose presence in the film is never really explained. Both of them only seem happy when they're subjugating women, physically or mentally. At one point they clasp hands and call each other 'brother', suggesting Leigh's opinion that all men are made this way.
The film lacks humanity, hope and, most crucially, any understanding of how the vast majority of people live and behave. Leigh has travelled a long way since his first brilliant TV play Bleak Moments, and on this evidence it has all been in the wrong way
.
Val Bezzina
SE London
Thanks for the review of Les Enfants du Paradis. It is a powerful evocation of resistance despite adversity in the Second World War and we can see the motivation behind Carné's choice of 1840s Paris.
I was also pleased to read Gareth Jenkins's refutation of the charges of collaboration levelled at Marcel Carné. At great risk Carné employed composer Joseph Kosma and designer Alexandre Trauner, who were both Jewish, to work clandestinely on the film using 'fronts'.
My only problem with the review is the portrayal of the German censors as Hogan's Heroes type goons who were incapable of picking up hidden meanings in the script. Whilst the fascist administration of the French film industry was certainly inconsistent, its primary motivation was to get bums on seats and increased receipts. This was only really successful when it used a French product, as audiences refused to watch unsubtle German propaganda films. The fascists also hoped the French film industry could compete against Hollywood, which they saw as ethically and morally degenerate. French films were intended to be an influential advertisement for the 'New Europe'.
Les Enfants du Paradis did not make it past the Nazi censors. Annoyed at Carné's unwillingness to work for their film company, Continental, they kept the film under wraps and it was not shown until 1946. However, many other films containing oppositional messages were shown. In all, 220 films were made in France during the Occupation and receipts rose by $84 million between 1938 and 1943.
Seen in this way, the German regime can be more accurately explained as the cold, calculating managers of capitalism they would like to have become. Over confident that the French people had been irrevocably subdued, the censors were prepared to let some of the less overt messages pass for the sake of profit.
Sarah Gregson
Sydney, Australia
To suggest that we are all naturally bisexual, as Steve Hack does (November SR), might fit the experiences of many more people than are prepared to admit it. But, unless the majority of people are consciously telling lies, it does not fit the experience of everyone.
To argue that genetic factors might play some minor role in sexual orientation is not to say that heterosexuality is any more natural than homosexuality. I would not be at all surprised to find that virtually everyone is to some extent bisexual. What I am concerned about is attempts to stigmatise people who believe themselves to be either exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual.
Steve admits that in a future socialist society many people might choose not to engage in same sex relations.
In a socialist society no one would waste a penny trying to discover whether there was any evidence for a genetic component to sexual orientation. But can we rule out the possibility that some statistically significant link will be discovered before workers take power and end this obscene waste of time and money? To categorically deny this possibility is either to imply that our support for gay rights is conditional on there being no genetic component involved, or else revealing ourselves as academic Marxists.
No one suggests research is done into uncovering some tenuous link between our genetic make up and our different tastes in food or music. By concentrating research on sexual orientation rather than either of these, there is an implication that sexual orientation has a special significance. Just as immigration controls imply that the problem is race rather than racism, research into sexual orientation implies that the problem is homosexuality rather than homophobia.
Revolutionary socialists could end up very politically disorientated if the statistically significant evidence they deny does indeed become available. There is only one way of preparing ourselves against this, and that is an attitude of complete indifference to such evidence.
Tom Delargy
Paisley
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