YOUR article on the way Ford in Dagenham is obtaining steel shipments (13 March) included a disgusting slur on the train drivers' union ASLEF, with the statement: "The loading is courtesy of TGWU members and delivery is by ASLEFpowered British Rail.' This implies that ASLEF members are deliberately scabbing on the steelworkers. In fact the umol was almons te first le officially call for a boycott of the movement of all steel within the first week of the strike, and since then trainloads of steel have been rusting away in sidings.
If Ford is using its container waggons to transport steel, the train crew have no way of knowing because the containers would be sealed and padlocked by Ford with no information about their contents:
If International Marxist Group members in Ford have proot that the containers are being used for shipping steel, 1 suggest that they pass the information on to ASLEF's executive and to the union's local branch. I am sure that a satisfactory result would be obtained.
PM GRANT, ASLEF Paddington I WAS extremely surprised to read your unsigned report on the 'Rebel' youth conference (20 March). If your reporting of Simon Turner, the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, is correct then all one can say is that the model they have in mind owes more to the dreaded J Stalin than to Lenin.
The Komsomol (youth organisation) which grew in the Soviet Union after 1917 was totally committed to the revolution, but maintained and jealously guarded its independence from the party.
of the Komsomol was in those early years when the dead weight of Stalinism had not crushed its creative urge. From 22,000 members in November 1918 it grew to 400,000 in 1920. It was not subjected to any central control.
It was often gripped by what Simon Turner, with hindsight, would describe as 'sectarian squabbling'. In 1920-1 there was a strong opposition current in the Ukrainian Komsomol on the national question. They wanted an independent youth organisation for une wante The independence of the Komsomol resulted in a large section of the organisation supporting the Left Opposition against Stalin. Stalin wreaked his revenge. Purges and dissolution followed, and in 1928 the Great Leader stated: "The Komsomol is an instrument of the party and a tool for doing the party's work.
That is the carbon-copy of how the Workers Revolutionary Party and Militant view a youth organisation, It appears that the SWP has joined their ranks.
have the right to do so, but let them not pretend that they represent the spirit of Leninist orthodoxy!
DAVID WAX, London I WAS suprised to read Tariq Ali's rendering (6 March) of my New Left Review 119 article on Afghanistan.
It is a travesty of what I wrote.
Tario states that I offer no serious alternatives to the policy of Hafizallah Amin, yet on pages 39.41.
secialist Challeng • 71 March 1980 *69 there is a whole section entitled 'What Were the Alternatives?'. Tariq proposes that a constituent? assembly should have been elected; my very first criticism of the Afghan regime is precisely its 'complete absence of concern for the most elementary democratic norms'.
Tariq goes on to say that I fail to discuss the relationship between the Soviet intervention and the question of national self-determination. Again, this is quite untrue. I develop the argument that some foreign military interventions by post-revolutionary states are justifiable that of the ÚSSR in the Spanish civil war, and of Cuba in Angola being However, such interventions • to popular consent, and the degree of response by imperialism. provide a basis for socialists to assess the Soviet role in Afghanistan of rather more substance than an abstract invocation or non-interference.
Afghanistan will be an issue of major concern to the left for a long time; 1 can only suggest that comrades read my article itself, rather than relying on Tariq Ali's rather deficient account of it. FRED HALLIDAY, London W1 general strike to kick out the Tory strikers should overthrow the the purpose of the strike itself being to say arrest Thatcher's government Alternatively, you may have the ment to resign and hold a general stand their ground and the strikers prepared, or return to work before tood suppiles run oul. brolsky useu it is only one step from the General to have workers rush headlong into the highest form of class struggle, while simultaneously keeping them in the dark about its implications. Dave Bailey, Newham Concessions to March) I would like to take issue tion. presses West Indians and Asians These - it produces a group of people who are super-exploited and for be provided.
combat their oppression and black that unity. The Bradford Youth March for Black Freedom; the Black Socialists Alliance and amples of this.
she is white) to glibly quote their personal (and no doubt ideologyAsians feeling 'loathing' and 'contempt' for West Indians. the case, nor does Jenny Flintoft and what we feel. Comments like hers serve not to the interests of black domination.
to arrive in Britain full of hope development:
IN REPLY to Jenny Flintoft's letter 'enormous cultural differences' (20 with several points which I consider to be divisive, dangerous, and contoft.
wnie l is true mal wie stale opthrough different tactics, the overall effect of that oppression is the same whom the minimum of services need work with them)?
Black people have long since realised the need for black unity to youth particularly are experiencing Organization of Women of African and Asian descent are but a lew exWhat good does it serve for whites (and from the tone of Jenny Flintoft's letter I can only presume behind this induced) impressions of Asian/West Indian relationships? Doubtless, the police and the Home Office would like to believe what she says about However, I do not believe that to be provide any evidence to support her Hilary Wainwright The overriding impression I get from fellow black people is one ol hostility to the forces that oppress us and anger (dare I say contempt?) to unity at people like Jenny Flintoft who so imperiously tells us what we think black liberation, but rather those of And then, to top it all, Jenny Flintoft states: Asians have tended (otherwise why come?)'. Admittedly many Asians believed in the myth of Britain as the home of democracy, but those illusions were surely dispelled on arrival at Heathrow and on confronting British immigration officials. For the real reasons why Asians came to Britain, I can only advise Jenny Flintoft to read up the terms "imperialism' and 'underLastly, might I just add that if black people are expected to see the Campaign Against Immigration Laws as being an organisation campaigning for our rights, it would serve well for other members to take up the points made by Ms FlinRashid Meer, Brighton Revolutionary WHY DO the IMG always have to ascribe grandiose schemes to people who sometimes criticize them (and In her report of the LCC-far left debate, Valerie Coultas (20 March) accuses me of rejecting both left reformism and revolutionary politics' in favour of a 'third way'. I would not claim to be doing anything so pretentious and foolish.
I simply believe that some all — features of present-day Leninist organisation do more to put workers and women off socialist politics than to involve them. By opening up some of the problems "Beyond the Fragments" could, I think, help to strengthen revolutionary politics — not play into the hands of the Labour left as Valerie implies.
But, by equating our criticisms with ta third way' (as if you guard the only true way), you only confirm, I'm afraid, the sort of things we've been criticising. IF, as you state in 'Our Common Cause' (13 March), revolutionary unity is the equivalent of unity between the Socialist Workers Party and the International Marxist Group, what has happened to the thousands of revolutionary socialists who are in neither group yet who participated in such campaigns as the Anti Nazi League? What indeed has happened to the thousands (?) who have passed through both organisations in the past decade or have they all become reformists?
In a thinly veiled attack on the authors of Beyond the Fragments, you state that 'those who believe organisation can be built outside the existing groups through socialist centres and so on are living in a dream world'. Really?
It is a gross caricature to suggest that such centres can only be built apart from existing groups.
'rank and file groups' versus 'united fronts', the IMG did participate in for example the Rank and File group in the National Union of SWP's manipulatory attitude towards non-party groups and movements, not whether they are united fronts, socialist alliances or centres, rank and file groups or, as the ANL was, neither.
It is the 'numbers game' that lies behind so much of the SWP's Yet your juggling of membership figures - 3,000 (SWP) + 1,500 (new recruits) = 6,000 falls into precisely that trap. It is the needs of the situation — a reactionary government intent on slashing the social and industrial wage, in addition to political attacks on , sexual and racial minorities, civil liberties and so on which demand a mass response It is in this context that socialist alliances and centres and other forms of organisation can play their part as well as the IMG. But no, the IMG sees redemption lying in fusion with the SWP Could I suggest that instead of dismissing the ideas contained in Beyond the Fragments as lending weight to Benn's view', as Valerie Coultas maintains in her-report on the Debate of the Decade, you ask why it is that the behaviour of the far-leit groups in Britain have giver comfort to the reformists and put off large numbers of people from joining any group.
I write incidentally as an exmember of the International Socialists and as a founder member of the Socialist Students Alliance. TONY GREENSTEIN, Brighton
----- pull-quotes -----
Beware the fate of Komsomol
No serious alternative
The numbers game approach