Issue 265 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published July/August 2002 Copyright © Socialist Review
Rather the gangster than the fascist?I agree with Chris Harman (June SR) on the danger of a re-emergence of popular front politics, but I do not agree that this meant abstaining in the second round of the French presidential election. The LCR in France were right to call for a vote against Nazi Le Pen and therefore, unfortunately, for Tory Chirac during and only during the crucial two weeks of street demonstrations between the first and second rounds. Football fans understand two things that are relevant here. Firstly, if they are there in the stadium, and if they choose to support one side, they can have a small but real effect on the result. Secondly, they understand that if someone draped in a flag of St George is yelling their head off for Korea against Italy, it does not mean that they have formed a popular front with Korea--it means they think it would be better for England if Italy took the plane home. The 'support' is strictly limited to 90 minutes. Clearly, anyone in the crowd who is not shouting is wasting an opportunity. Also, no fan would be very impressed with an argument that went, 'Korea are two-nil up, there's no need for you to support them.' For those two weeks in France there was a real opportunity for the working class to emphatically reject any thought, however remote, that their rulers had of resorting to fascist rule.They took it. The question on the ballot paper was not, 'Do you think Chirac is an adequate bulwark against fascism?'. It was 'Who do you want to rule you for the next seven years?' and the choice was that thieving Tory who at least pretends to believe in parliamentary democracy or an out and out fascist. I know the answer to that one. No one withdrew in favour of the right (and this is where the comparison with Hindenburg in 1933 breaks down). There were only two candidates left, only two teams in the match, and that was that. I welcomed the 82 percent who voted against Le Pen. The young demonstrators with 'Better the swindler than the Nazi' stuck to their foreheads were right. The LCR, in supporting them had, in this case, a firm grasp of political reality.Those calling for an abstention (sensitively or insensitively) weren't at the match.
The two weeks are now over.It's rule by capital that is the problem--so long as it exists, there is the danger of it resorting to fascism.It's another match, but the fact that the Nazis were nowhere in the last one will help. I don't agree with Chris Harman (June SR) that the French left should not have voted for Chirac to keep Le Pen out of power. People on the streets don't get counted towards a vote. History does not repeat itself, although there may be echoes from a similar period in the past. We most certainly don't want our hands to be tied by what other generations decided. Implicit in Chris's argument is that if Hindenburg, when president of Germany, could make Hitler prime minister, then Chirac in his turn could make Le Pen prime minister. This is a dubious and unlikely scenario, as the 'Brownshirts' are not in the ascendancy, the French don't take their salaries home in wheelbarrows, and France isn't paying off war reparations to anyone. We have fought long and hard to get the vote--should this tiny bit of leverage granted to us be thrown away so that the 'right' can get the credit for blocking Le Pen from power, and the 'left' is seen to sit on its hands? Chris is being wise after the event in suggesting that the right wing had Le Pen beaten two to one. The intention the 'left' had in voting for Chirac was to throw the largest bucket of cold water on the Front National possible. They went into the polling booths backwards holding their noses, saying, 'Rather the gangster than the fascist', making it quite clear they were not giving him a mandate.
Everyone knew that voting for Chirac was just an act of expediency, in effect just to buy time to prepare a response to the far right. Crucially, I hope the SWP would realise in similar circumstances that Lutte Ouvrière made a huge mistake in arguing for not voting for Chirac, because it cut them off from the mass of the workers, making them look even more of a sect than they already are. |
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Chris Harman argues (June SR) that it was wrong to call for a vote for Chirac against Le Pen in the second round of the French election.
I agree that the way to stop the Nazis is by mass action, not just by voting. I agree that the slogan of the left should be 'Onto the streets' not 'Vote Chirac'. I agree that our politics should be those of the united front, not the popular front. I agree that in certain circumstances the Tory-type right would let the Nazis into power. And I agree that the left should never agree to withdraw from standing in elections under pressure to 'unite behind an anti-Nazi candidate'.
But I still think that, on the day of that second round ballot, we would have to drag ourselves down to the polling station and vote against Le Pen. And I certainly think that it would be a mistake to actively campaign for abstention.
To call for abstention is to say that it doesn't matter which candidate wins. This undermines our argument that fascism is qualitatively different from right wing conservatism.
In fact Chris weakens his own arguments when he says that there was no chance of Le Pen winning, and that 'there was no need for the left to vote for Chirac' to prevent a Le Pen victory. Doesn't this imply that if there was a chance of Le Pen winning Chris might be saying something different?
Phil Webster
Blackburn
Here is a draft letter we have done in Britain for the regional and local press. I hope everyone will write at least one letter to their local press, wherever they may live.
Dear Editor,
The increasing tension between India and Pakistan is of concern for all of us. Firstly it is a humanitarian question--already in the border region innocent civilians are daily being wounded and killed. If the conflict develops into full scale war, thousands of people would be killed with the deadly weapons which both sides have been acquiring. In our area of Greater Manchester this is made the more fearful as many local people have relatives in the region.
But if that were not enough, both sides now have the capability to launch nuclear weapons. No one should ever forget what suffering was caused when the US dropped the first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over a quarter of a million innocent people were killed (burnt alive or died painfully from radiation sickness), or maimed by bombs which by today's standards were relatively small. Exploding large scale nuclear bombs today could bring unknown pollution and radioactive contamination to wide regions of the world.
What can we do? We can speak out for continuing negotiations and against resorting to war. We can demand that our government stops selling arms to the governments in the region, and this of course is part of a wider campaign to reduce Britain's arms manufacturing and sales. Weapons fuel wars.
Above all, we can work even harder to ensure that the nuclear weapons states, in particular the UK and its ally the US, which has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, comply with their obligations under the UN treaties to disarm and at the same time work for a verifiable global ban on nuclear weapons. Britain cannot keep the four US-designed Trident nuclear armed submarines (each with 4,000 times the killing power of the bomb at Hiroshima) and claim we need them for deterrence while saying we would be prepared to use them (in a statement by the minister Geoff Hoon), and then lecture India and Pakistan. Our government must live up to its claim that it has an 'ethical foreign policy', stop saying, 'Do as we say, not as we do', and scrap the UK's nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms do not deter 'terrorists'--they do not stop war and conflict. Nuclear weapons are deadly dangerous and threaten the security of every single person.
Rae Street
Chair Greater Manchester CND
In a review of Antony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall (June SR), mention is made of 'the greatest maritime disaster of all time', the sinking of the Goya by a Russian submarime with the consequent drowning of 7,000 refugees. However, a disaster of even greater magnitude took place on 3 May 1945, when the RAF bombed and machine-gunned the German luxury liner, Cap Arcona, in the Baltic in the bay of Lubeck, south of the Danish island of Lolland. On this occasion 7,700 died, and what makes the incident even more grotesque was the fact that the victims were concentration camp prisoners.
At the close of the war a determined effort was made by the Nazis to kill the surviving concentration camp inmates by commanding them on forced marches away from the advancing Russians--the infamous death marches. Ten thousand prisoners from Neuengamme, a camp in the vicinity of Hamburg, ended up in Lubeck, where they were then ordered aboard the ship Cap Arcona, and fully expected to meet their deaths by being sunk by the Germans. Sighting British planes they were overjoyed, believing they would now be saved. Of course the British airmen did not know the ship was full of prisoners. Yet their fate has been allowed to disappear from the general historical consciousness, and instead it is the Russians who are given the responsibility for the world's 'greatest maritime disaster'.
Steve Parsons
Denmark
I was surprised to read that Paul Jakubovic (Letters, June SR) considers the 'Big Bang' theory of the origin of the universe to be idealist and regressive. There is overwhelming evidence for this theory, which was predicated on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
Observations by Edwin Hubble in 1929 showed that the galaxies are receding away from each other, and the discovery of the relics of background radiation in 1965 suggested that the expansion of the universe began at a finite time (about 13 billion years ago) in the past from a state of infinite density and temperature.
Surely Marx would have supported the Big Bang theory of the universe, as he did Darwin's materialist theory of evolution. What 'superior alternative' theory of the origin of the universe would Paul Jakubovic propose?
Dave Taylor
Hampshire
Dogs were let loose on anti GM crop protestors in Scotland recently. At least one activist required medical treatment for bites to the chest.
This followed extensive damage that was done to the huge 40-acre crop nearing maturity at Munlochy, near Inverness. An eyewitness described the events: 'A lot of us were attacking the crop. It was a full moon and we were probably spotted when the clouds broke. In the early hours the police arrived, and searchlights were set up and mad dogs let loose. Everyone scarpered!' The police are refusing to say whether they were police dogs, or private security with whom they were colluding. Police cars blocked all roads nearby and questioned everyone.
Five people were arrested and many escaped. But what followed was just as disgraceful as the dog attack. All five were kept in solitary confinement for three nights. Soaked by rain and snow, dry clothing (which was delivered next day) was kept from the prisoners, and one young man was seen--for the first time -- 36 hours later on Sunday still shivering in his underwear. Another prisoner had dog bites bandaged up but was not taken to hospital.
The partners of two of those in the cells were only allowed to see them after the intervention of solicitors the next day. All five were denied any visits from friends, and the duty solicitor advised them all to plead guilty. But guilty of what? As yet the charges have still not been made known. Three of the five are members of the Scottish Socialist Party.
Even those arrested for serious assault are usually released the next day, but it appears that orders have come down to treat these activists with particular vindictiveness.
Such treatment would be no surprise in a dictatorship. That it is happening on behalf of the Labour/Liberal-controlled Scottish government is perhaps not much of a surprise either. The executive still dances to New Labour's familiar tune: 'Do as the multinationals tell us'.
News of the incident has not deterred the fight. The very next night another large force inflicted even more damage to the crop!
Unfortunately both SNP and Green Party spokesmen have 'deplored' the crop attacks, saying the 'democratic process' must be followed. But even this flawed process is being ignored and abused by those in power, and the crop will have seeded while government stalls.
A fighting fund has been set up. Please send cheques urgently to Munlochy 5 Defence Fund, c/o 77 Hilton Court, Inverness, IV2 4JW.
Frank Ward
Easter Ross
I would like to congratulate the SWP for your work, and especially for the great Socialist Review. It is a great fresh air in this polluted capitalist system. Keep on with the good work.
I would like to make you aware of a very good and very informative website. It is called Basque Red Net. The website is self explanatory in its contents. What I think is most striking and can be a potentially very good report for the magazine is the acccount of the brutal torture that Basque civilians are suffering from the Spanish police. The pictures and reports by independent anti-torture NGOs are again self explanatory.
In my opinion all this information needs to be known by progressive and socialist people in the UK. I would like to engourage the editor of Socialist Review to consider publishing something about torture in the Basque Country. I hope you consider my request. Thank you very much for your good magazine.
Unai Pascual
www.basque-red.net/eng/guesueng/tat00/rom2ing.pdf and
www.basque-red.net/eng/guesueng/iseng.pdf