Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.  V. I. Lenin
	Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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No 1103 September 11 2001                                                                                                                                   25p
Northwest seminar Sept 15. Sat 2 pm. Rcpts pse

Misunderstanding in Britain of the scale and implications of imperialism's defeat by the Irish national liberation struggle, now evident in Ardoyne has undermined all political posturing from the fake-'left' to the far right. It is this inability to grasp the actual historical dimensions of imperialist crisis and retreat, essentially expressed in the current but long inevitable uncontrollable economic collapse, which makes all the opportunist manoeuvres (single-issue reformist or parliamentary careerist as in Socialist Alliance, SLP, Reclaim Our Rights, environmentalists, anti-globalism, etc, etc) effectively a deception, and therefore ultimately sterile. All pretence that outside of world socialist revolution, there are other reformist 'solutions' to such disasters as working-class splits and chauvinist fears from 'asylum-seeking' economic opportunism in a slump period of cut-benefits and cheap-labour strike-breaking, - is just deluded moralising which will play right into the hands of the BNP. The whole point of reformist unity exhortations in history has precisely been to keep the working class divided because of the dud perspective. Only a verifiable revolutionary prospect for the world can unite the proletariat. The whole point of Marxism is to make this clear. Expecting the BBC to want to reduce fascist-imperialist influences on earth sums up the whole bankruptcy of the 'black nationalist' petty-bourgeois movement, typical of all-PC reformist reaction: Chauvinist backwardness can only thrive in the midst of such rotten political confusion. Build Leninist contempt for all reformism, which only always disarms the working class but then always only leads it into ultimate catastrophic war or counter-revolution.

The humiliating exposure of the sheer rottenness of the politics of 'British-Irish ordinary people' in the Ardoyne has shattered much fake-'left' posturing in Britain as well as lethally embarrassing the bourgeois establishment's 'post-imperialist' pretensions.

The tragic upholders of the decadent British Empire in the Occupied Zone of Ireland are a casualty of an out-of-date world which time will no longer stand still for. These unfortunate people have become the playthings of the dying Orange-colonist order which Labour Government weakmindedness is still allowing to fester obstructively instead of telling it to get on with the implementation in full of the Good Friday Agreement by which the Irish national-liberation struggle agreed to end its revolutionary guerrilla war, led by Sinn Féin and the IRA.

The entire fake-'left' misleads the working class on the actual historic balance of international class and national forces, - which alone determines all political possibilities in this world, - on Ireland by their pretending that either the peace process was an imperialist-imposed defeat for Sinn Féin and the IRA, or else that the Good Friday Agreement must imply separatist self-determination for the 'British-Irish' within Ulster if the GFA is to succeed or make any sense at all.

Both crackpot notions merely express the permanent defeatist subjective misery of the petty-bourgeois-minded fake-'lefts' spewing up this garbage.

The Union-Jack-waving rottenness in Ardoyne is just the final outburst of the indigestible poison that the whole colonisation of Ireland by Britain has always represented.

It sums up the inhuman evil of that colonial infamy very appropriately; and the stinking mentalities in the British 'liberal' press commentaries, and elsewhere, who are squirmingly trying to blame the Irish parents for "subjecting their children to this vilification tyranny just in order to make a political point for themselves", are merely covering up their own guilt for never having seen-through or denounced the monstrousness of British colonialism in the first place.

The proposed 'democracy' of even-handed all-round 'self-determination rights' which both fake-'left' and reactionary right pretend to aspire to for 'solving' all universal problems and not just Ireland, - is shown-up to be just an abstract academic joke which the requirements of real history have demonstrated to be just hollow 'moral' posturing, part of dying bourgeois ideology, in other words.

Obsessed by the rubbish values of formal 'democracy' (the most treacherous self-damaging deception which the working class ever fell for under capitalism), - the fake-'left' (Trots, Revisionists, Socialist Alliance, SLP, etc) has on all world issues capitulated to UN-NATO-imperialist stunts everywhere, for supposedly 'solving' local nationalist grievances but in reality just retaining a stranglehold for the monopoly-capitalist 'free-market' system via various manufactured 'self-determination' rackets.

In Occupied Palestine, all fake-'lefts' join the sick chorus apeing bourgeois-imperialist crocodile tears accepting the moral restitution claptrap of "self-determination rights for democratic independence there for Jews" - which means that the aggressive US imperialist stunt for perpetual backing for Zionist colonisation to keep its local stooges ever-ready to tear the throat out of any Arab nationalist regime which threatens American interests in the Middle East in any way, - is the sole continuing reality. But it is clearly a reality which can no longer be tolerated by history, - this being the epoch of the death of imperialist world-domination.

The fake-'lefts' are thus totally misleading the international working class about the real world and the true perspectives of its ever-deepening imperialist-system crisis by pretending that Zionist colonisation of any part of the Palestinian homeland from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, can continue.

In Ireland, the anti-imperialist triumph of the GFA has been missed by all these sects of non-Marxist opportunism because they are all always too busy subjectively boasting about their own 'real revolutionary socialist' credentials, while pursuing in reality the path of parliamentary careerism, unwilling to declare too much solidarity with the effectiveness of IRA 'terrorism', and even less willing to acknowledge Sinn Féin's superior understanding of the real weakness of the British imperialist position in Ireland and of the best tactics to force Britain into open retreat from its colonial debacle.

This subjective-idealist philosophy has meant nothing but ultra-leftist boasting (about how each sect "would have settled for nothing less than total socialist revolution or instant Ireland reunification"), plus at the same time a crass chauvinistic inability to see how Britain's already reluctant and weak imperialist position in Ireland has been manoeuvred into ridicule internationally by much cleverer Sinn Féin tactics.

And these armchair-revolutionary sects (who brag about how they "would have fought it differently" - to the last drop of Sinn Féin and IRA blood, of course), don't say why they have never bothered to organise their own "all the way" anti-imperialist revolution themselves in Britain, (if it is all allegedly so easy to 'just insist on this' or 'just insist on that', etc, etc, in a guerrilla war on 'British' soil against the full military and police might of the British imperialist state), which others have, in fact, triumphantly undertaken.

It is precisely the dramatic extent of this total Sinn Féin and IRA victory over the reactionary colonial-fascist arm of the decadent British imperialist state that is showing up on the streets of Ardoyne now. The feeble London government has allowed the wretched Trimble-ites, etc, to promote the most disgusting lying propaganda posturing against Sinn Féin and the IRA throughout the peace process in spite of the fact that the Good Friday Agreement basically casts into law the truth that the Irish national-liberation war was completely justified from the start, and right in everything it did in exposing the putrid dictatorial tyranny of the fascist statelet called 'Northern Ireland' which the GFA effectively dismantles.

It is the reality of this dismantling, effectively covered up by the relentless anti-Sinn Féin propaganda particularly ruthlessly parroted by the BBC and the other most reactionary elements of the British imperialist state machinery, backing the disgraceful neo-fascist 'Unionists' and 'Loyalists' to the hilt, - which is finally now dawning on the poor dupes on Belfast's streets who have misguidedly carried on believing in their 'British-Irish' supremacy, wanting only to continue parading their 'No Surrender' 'Glorious Twelfth' triumphalism, and to derisively keep on obstructing any serious implementation of the totally new all-Irish dimensions of the GFA, replacing the old discredited 'Northern Ireland' bankrupt colonial tyranny.

Just listen to the mealy-mouthed admissions by the reptile counter-revolutionary British 'liberal' press, still trying to make the anti-communist best of a bad job even at this late hour:

ISOBEL McGRANN never missed a day at Holy Cross primary school despite the riots, the mass expulsions and the gun battles that erupted all around her in this war torn corner of north Belfast in the early Seventies.

Her bucolic memories of Holy Cross and Ardoyne Road as an oasis of relative peace amid the sectarian maelstrom of the Seventies contrast with the scenes of hatred and terror experienced by her own child on that same road 30 years later.

Isobel blames the present crisis on two factors: the changing sectarian demography in Belfast and the role of the largest loyalist terror group, the Ulster Defence Association. 'Even in the early Seventies the Upper Ardoyne Glenbryn area was a religiously mixed area until the Catholics were driven out. Then last year there was a new group of people who moved into the area. We called them "new kids on the block" - they were UDA families expelled from the Shankill Road by the UVF during the loyalist feud. They are the ones behind all this trouble,' she said.

Protestant residents, some of whom jeered or blew car horns and whistles as terrified Catholic children were escorted along Ardoyne Road last week, are using the schools dispute as part of a wider strategy to secure territory.

'We want a wall built across Ardoyne Road to protect Protestant houses,' said Jim Potts, a spokesman for the Glenbryn Concerned Residents. 'It can be opened for a while during the day to let the children go to school as long as their parents respect the Protestant people living there and agree to behave while in our area.'

Surrounded by other mourners, all heavy-set men in black suits, white shirts and ties, he appeared in no mood for compromise.

Tomorrow morning loyalist and Protestant residents would resume their protests at the school, Potts vowed. The Protestant protests will take various forms every day, including a so-called 'Colombian coffee morning' on the Ardoyne Road - a cheeky reference to the IRA's problems over Colombia following the arrest of three republican activists in Bogota.

Ironically, the only winner has been the IRA. Until last week the world's media, particularly in the United States, had been putting awkward questions to Sinn Féin leaders about the IRA's links to the left-wing Farc guerrilla group in Colombia. The harrowing images, however, of tearful children running the gauntlet of baying loyalist mobs has diverted attention away from the republican movement.

IN RESPONSE THE UDA has warned that it is prepared to retaliate against the very force it and all other loyalists once sought to defend. In a chilling warning, the UDA's north Belfast brigadier told The Observer on Friday that, if 'heavy-handed RUC tactics' continued and loyalists are beaten up this week, the loyalist terror group will target policemen and their families.

'We will go to the doors of police officers involved in these attacks on the loyalist people. The protests will be peaceful. but we will make life very difficult for police officers and their families who live in north Belfast. If loyalists are beaten and abused by the police this week, then the UDA and the loyalist people will make their families pay the price,' the UDA commander said.

The Protestants of this west Belfast ghetto that surrounds the Holy Cross primary school will go to bed tonight secure in their grievances and their right to keep protesting on the Holy Cross school run. They will be back on Monday morning and perhaps for many Monday mornings to come. For, in their own minds, they are the victims of a Catholic conspiracy to drive them from their dreary poor streets.

"If we don't stand up now, where will the Catholics take over next: Glencairn, Highfield, Ballysillan?"

In the last 10 years Protestants have gradually abandoned their street. Their ghetto around the Holy Cross school has, shrunk to half its size: 1,500 Protestants surrounded on three sides by the hardline Catholic Ardoyne. 

Catholic Belfast is exploding:  Father Troy baptised 16 children last month. "Why should we be pushed out to take care of their breeding?" asks Hugh Megarry, Kate's partner.

The old certainties are gone. The traditional, if triumphalist, parades through Catholic areas are mostly banned; the police force that once supplied their side with the names of IRA men to kill are now beating the Protestant protesters back; and the IRA haven't even handed in a single gun. Old heroes like the Reverend Ian Paisley are tired and quiet while "that bastard Gerry Adams" has become a world statesman.

Hugh Megarry sits chainsmoking at the kitchen table. Blinded when he was 17 by a Catholic bullet, he calls himself a community worker, but says he hasn't walked past the Catholics at the bottom of the road - a distance perhaps the length of a football pitch - for  23 years.

Fourteen of Belfast's 17 grey steel "peace walls", the "interfaces" that rise 20ft high between the two peoples, are in north Belfast. For Kate, it is not enough. "We want a wall built here so we can live without fear," she says.

They keep an incident book, a child's blue school exercise jotter. It records the grievances: how Catholic boys scream "Hun" and "Orange whores" from a distance - and then come and break their windows.

Mostly, it's the stuff of 30 years of division. But, because they're frightened and hemmed in, they see every Catholic parent bringing their child to school as an IRA man casing their streets for another hit.

Between them, among the empty cigarette packets, is a bottle of diazepam tranquillisers. "I was deprived of the right even to have children when they murdered my husband," says the neighbour. "So don't talk to me about what we are supposed to be doing to those kids going up to the Holy Cross school. We have to protect our area."

"No one knew until all this started happening at the school that we couldn't even go past those Catholics to the shop. Now the whole world sees. I don't care what they think of us - we're damned anyway," says Kate Riley.

"The Catholics have the biggest propaganda machine in the world. We have been tarred like a leopard and we may as well act like one."

On Thursday, the Holy Cross Protestants did try to regain some of the propaganda ground. At 4pm they produced for the media a disabled Protestant boy in a wheelchair who couldn't get to his day care centre because the police were blocking the road to escort Catholic children.

His mother told how the police had chucked her into a garden after last week's blast bomb at Holy Cross injured four officers. Another victim dropped his trousers to show a bruised bum. "How many victims are there?" the press inquired. Nobody seemed to know.

At the Sinn Féin press office on the Falls Road they are much more polished with their sums. A query about loyalist attacks on Catholics immediately produces three neatly typed pages detailing 169 incidents. A young law graduate, one of their team of eight media workers, talks about the Holy Cross school as though it were Alabama.

It is just possible to make out, - through these convoluted apologetics (in the full version) for degenerate 'British-Irish Unionism', - the admission that this dog-in-the-manger destructive savagery, full of total doom and without a glimmer of a perspective in it, arises because of the non-stop rotten British propaganda (from all sections of the British bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, - right, 'liberal', and fake-'left') ceaselessly denying the reality of the imperialist-retreat GFA just so that the British and international monopoly-capitalist establishments could carry on pretending that there had been "no surrender" to armed revolutionary 'terrorism', etc).

But despite the non-stop diet of lies and distortions routinely brainwashing the British public over Ireland, little bits of the truth are constantly slipping through, resulting in the massive political advance by Sinn Féin in both parts of Ireland and internationally, and in the British opinion poll (see last week’s Review) which accepted that majority views in this country are now in favour of severing 'Northern Ireland' from Britain completely, and allowing the natural and inevitable reunification of Ireland (the eventual unavoidable aim and result of the GFA) to take place immediately.

The national-liberation struggle's mastery of the situation has continued to dribble out even in the recent weeks of desperate last-ditch anti-IRA propaganda-hysteria, and even in the mealy-mouthed 'liberal' capitalist press:

He refused to offer himself for reappointment as first minister and, under the rules, that left the Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, with a straight choice. He could either call for fresh elections or suspend the institution. He chose the latter for the minimum possible period of 24 hours.

It was that move which so incensed and surprised republicans. It may seem like a mere procedural trick to outsiders; after all, to suspend a body for a single Saturday in August when the body in question is not even in session seems more abstract than real. But the meaning was real enough to the republicans.

For one thing, the very idea of suspension is anathema to them - suggesting that Northern Ireland's institutions do not exist in their own right but live or die at the whim of the British government. That undermines the status of the bodies, confirming the suspicions of hard-line republicans who have long regarded both the assembly and executive as glorified fronts for British rule - and who have condemned Sinn Féin for taking part in them.

More specifically, republicans were infuriated by British acquiescence in what they saw as yet another unionist violation of the Good Friday Agreement. The institutions were set up by that accord and overwhelmingly backed by the people in a referendum; they require parties that do not like each other to sit together. Yet Mr Trimble has twice refused to take part because he regards one party, Sinn Féin, as illegitimate.

Republicans believe that makes Mr Trimble the violator of the agreement. Yet each time his intransigence, as they see it, has come to a head; the British government has backed him. It happened first in February 2000 when Peter Mandelson, then Northern Ireland secretary, suspended the institutions also over a Trimble ultimatum on IRA decommissioning - and it happened again last weekend. "Whenever they come to a fork in the road," one republican, "the Brits take the unionist path." They did, indeed, anticipate a negative reaction from Mr Trimble and that alone would not have been enough to derail their plans. They were struck, however, by his sudden raising of the stakes last week  - when he added an extra condition for his return as first minister. He would need not only IRA decommissioning but SDLP support for the new proposals on policing.

"That incensed republicans," said the source, for unionists again seemed to confirm the analysis of republican hardliners: that decommissioning, even if offered, would never be enough for unionists, they would merely demand something else.

But a rejection from Mr Trimble was factored into republican plans. What shocked them was the reaction of the British. Republican insiders said Sinn Féin's president, Mr Adams, genuinely believed that, this time, Tony Blair would side with him and stand up to the unionists - and refuse to suspend the institutions. Mr Adams was apparently told as much in private talks with Mr Blair: that the Mandelson suspension would not be repeated.

It was that pledge which underpinned republican actions last week; Mr Adams believed he had "an ace up his sleeve". So the IRA made its move last Monday, via Gen de Chastelain, confidently expecting a positive British response - a refusal to suspend. 

What it would have meant in practice is fresh elections. Sinn Féin was in no hurry for those, predicting they would make minor gains from the SDLP and no more. But that was the preferred alternative to another suspension which they regarded as proof of a unionist veto on the process.

The way republicans see it, they took a huge step last week - and at enormous cost. Eight meetings with Gen de Chastelain, and perhaps twice as many internally to overcome hard-line opposition, culminating at last in a process of complete and verifiable disarmament.

They thought that would honour their understanding with the British - it is the Brits, not the unionists, whom they see as their opposite number in the peace process - and London would respond by refusing to suspend.

It did not happen, and that is what yesterday's IRA statement meant when it referred to the British "failure to fulfil their commitments."  

No doubt Mr Blair believed he was hardly repeating the Mandelson move of last year by suspending for a mere 24 hours. But it was enough to anger republicans.

IRA statement:

On Thursday August 8 we confirmed that the IRA leadership had agreed a scheme with the IICD to put arms completely and verifiably beyond use. Our initiative was a result of lengthy discussions with the IICD over a protracted period.

This was an unprecedented development which involved a very difficult decision by us, and problems for our organisation. While mindful of these concerns, our decision was aimed at enhancing the peace process.

We recognised the very broad welcome which the IICD statement received. However the outright rejection of the IICD statement by the UUP leadership, compounded by the setting of preconditions, are totally unacceptable. The subsequent actions of the British government, including their failure to fulfil their commitments, is also totally unacceptable. The conditions therefore do not exist for progressing our proposition. We are withdrawing our proposal. The IRA leadership will continue to monitor developments. Peacekeeping is a collective effort. Signed: P ONeill.

Ireland is to be reunited, the only possible historically-progressive and legitimate result; and the Good Friday Agreement is the vehicle to deliver it in due course, unless the feeble British imperialist executive (currently the laughably incompetent Blairites) allows the condemned colonist-Unionist rump to carry on wrecking the deal by refusing genuine implementation. In which case the national-liberation war, including guerrilla-war terror into Britain, will resume. The warning could not be clearer. British middle-class propaganda confusion, from far 'left' to far right, is playing a very stupid game.

Particularly unbelievably deranged is the role of the CPGB Weekly Worker which continues, along with other anti-communist Trotskyite lunatics, to peddle their utterly academic 'principled progressiveness' (in total disregard for the material historical class-war reality on the ground) of advocating that the essentially fascist political detritus left over in the minds of the flag waving supporters of the utterly discredited and deservedly collapsed 'Northern Ireland' colony, should now be given the kiss of life by a British military carve-out of just three of Ulster's nine counties (replacing the Six Counties stolen at British bayonet point in the first infamous 1921 Partition) so that these sad relics of benighted racist chauvinism and colonial supremacism should be able to continue to strut their depraved stuff again over any Irish still unfortunate enough to have their homes, area, and traditional pursuits anywhere within such a new three-county master-race laager.

The pathological anti-communism of these Revisionist extremists (see last week's EPSR on their cynical distortion of Marx's Communist Manifesto) is also a useful handle on the 'politically correct' opportunist backwardness with which the fake-'left' is helping bourgeois ideological confusion on 'human rights' and 'self-determination' to spread more and more mischief-making to split the working class over the immigration and asylum-seeking issues (see also last week's Review).

Some of their latest PC agitation is again on the question of how to deal with the working-class voters in Oldham (e.g.) who have misguidedly supported the BNP because of all the unaddressed confusion surrounding the economic opportunism of 'asylum-seeker' immigration.

Intervening in the mistaken-on-both-sides dispute between Red Action/Anti-Fascist Action on one side and the SWP/Anti-Nazi League on the other, CPGB academicism declares:

Of course, RA sometimes demagogically makes correct criticisms of the SWP/ANL's popular-frontist blocs with liberals, bishops and the like. But the standpoint of their criticism is not progressive - on the contrary, it is in the service of an even worse political programme. Essentially, they prettify the bigotry of the least class-conscious 'indigenous' workers as being a form of class-consciousness. We should be clear - the mistaken consciousness of those who believe that immigrants and asylum-seekers are some sort of 'privileged' layer being foisted on them by the powers-that-be is not class consciousness.

It is a kind of pseudo-class-consciousness, and completely misdirected. It is akin to Bebel's description of its equivalent in his day - 'radical' anti-semitism as the 'socialism of fools'. Insofar as it takes on an organised form, it is akin to the support of some workers for 'radical' Tories in the past, or on a more alienated level in a situation of qualitatively greater social instability, to the kind of sentiment that animated the 'left' wing of the Nazi Party - the Strasserites.

Indeed, in general, we are clear that this kind of consciousness is reactionary when it rears its head in the form of the kind of lynch mobs that seek to hunt down 'suspected paedophiles', or the two kids convicted of the killing of James Bulger; we are rightly outspoken in condemning these reactionary outbursts of 'working class' lynch law. We have correctly criticised Red Action for tailing these kinds of movements. Yet when Red Action makes criticisms, from exactly the same standpoint, of the 'multiculturalism' ideology of the SWP and the like, and attacks them for raising "provocative", "offensive" and "finger-wagging" slogans in defence of refugees ('Refugees are welcome here'), some of our comrades concur and echo the (incorrect) criticism.

The ideology of RA/Afa, its 'physical force' tactics notwithstanding, systematically apologises for and identifies with this kind of pseudo-class-consciousness, and confuses it with genuine class-consciousness. From this strategic, ideological standpoint, notwithstanding its superficial advocacy of more militant tactics than the SWP, the thrust of RA/Afa critique is from the right. We should distance ourselves decisively from this critique 

And we should not blindly denounce 'divisive' multiculturalism - this sounds as if we are denouncing leftist 'multiculturalists' such as the SWP for being 'divisive' by offending the sensibilities of those whose consciousness is that of this 'socialism of fools'. Despite many supportable elements, some of our coverage of this question gives credence to this. Thus, according to Robert Grace, "The SWP's acceptance of the state's 'institutional racism' leads to fundamental mistakes and a soft underbelly when it comes to tackling the negative consequences of multiculturalism - not least white working class alienation. In the face of [Sir Herman Ouseley's report on 'race relations' in Bradford], the SWP is disarmed. Rather than focus on the divisive effects of the multicultural project on working class communities, the SWP implies that the state's anti-racism does not go far enough or is being deliberately sabotaged" (Weekly Worker July 19).

This clearly implies that the SWP's propaganda is partly to blame for provoking "white working class alienation" - for being too militant in their denunciation of state 'racism'. This is completely wrong, both in principle, and in terms of missing the complexities of the situation itself. Firstly, a crucial common element in the racial clashes in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford was the cops' transparent manipulation of 'crime' statistics to present a false picture of racial attacks being mainly perpetrated by Asians upon whites. A complete perversion of the truth, carried out by unreconstructed followers of the late James Anderton resistance within the ranks of the cops to the Blairite 'anti-racist' makeover is as rife within some, particularly provincial, police forces as resistance to the Patten proposals is within the ranks of the RUC.

It is perfectly obvious that the cops have acted quite consciously as provocateurs of racial violence in this situation in defence of the old 'culture of policing'. The "white working class alienation" being talked about here hardly being a product of Blair's multicultural project, but rather of the concerted efforts in terms of propaganda by the cops to promote a paranoia among whites in pursuit of their own caste interests.

The use by such cops of a perversion of the recommendations of Macpherson, systematically reporting ordinary street crimes committed often by minority youth on the receiving end of discriminatory levels of unemployment and poverty - street robbery, etc - as 'racially motivated' and thus producing a false picture of reality, illustrates how nothing, not even the holiest policies and pronouncements of the incumbent government, are immune to being mangled for other purposes. In many ways, the revolts on the streets of Bradford, Oldham and Burnley were revolts by Asians against this kind of scapegoating and abuse of the Asian population, the intervention of the BNP being of an opportunist character - trying to ride on the back of the situation that had been created by the cops.

The SWP is guilty of many rigidities - including being unable to explain why, if the government and the cops are equally and inherently 'racist', there should be tensions between them; and yet why, when the government is confronted with the breakdown of 'law and order' provoked by the actions of the cops, it is forced by class interest regardless to side with the cops in suppressing the uprisings. While no doubt behind the scenes continuing to press for its 'anti-racist' agenda, which is ultimately aimed at strengthening support in society as a whole for the cops and thereby making them a more effective defender of the rule of capital. However, we should attack the SWP in the correct way, for these rigidities, and not echo rightist denunciations of them for 'alienating' those who have already been seduced by bigotry.

It is not in the interests of the working class for socialists to temporise, or conciliate, the kind of pseudo-class-consciousness that periodically comes to the surface in the more backward sections of the class, in events such as Paulsgrove, or more recently the polarisation around asylum-seekers in Sighthill, Glasgow. Such events are usually, of course, underlain by economic grievances and as socialists we should actively take up those grievances - but in no sense should we conciliate the consciousness of those who express bigotry. We want to clash with - and in that sense 'offend' and 'alienate' - this kind of consciousness. Such a clash with the views of a reactionary-minded section of the class is necessary to destroy this consciousness and replace it with genuine class consciousness, which sees itself as the defender of all the oppressed.

Indeed, if such things are done simultaneously, there is every reason to believe that such working class communities can be won to a militant defence of refugees - witness the very positive activity of Scottish Socialist Party comrades on August 25 in Sighthill, who played a major role in leading a 350-strong 'unity march' of refugees and 'indigenous' working class Sighthill residents under the banner, 'Sighthill united. Against poverty, against racism, asylum-seekers welcome'. This modest but significant initiative struck a real blow against bigotry - and certainly undermines in its principled demands the perverse view that such slogans express 'contempt' for the working class.

Instead of making ham-fisted attacks on "divisive multiculturalism", it would be better to attack the Blairites' ideology, which, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads to a new kind of segregation. We need to clearly distinguish between the advocates of such schemes and those who superficially share some of the same terminology, but have egalitarian-integrationist, not 'meritocratic', anti-working-class and cynically manipulative and divisive aims. There is a massive gulf between the two, though it is true that the particular theoretical rigidity of the SWP's position, that bourgeois-imperialist-nationalist ideology is necessarily determined by considerations of 'race', disarms them against elements of the more refined forms of bourgeois ideology that are often manifested today. 

We should criticise these aspects of their politics, while at the same time making it clear that in doing so we are seeking a more consistent expression of their own best impulses: I.e. a defence of the historic interests of the oppressed, firmly grounded in the historically evolved social and political situation. 

Fight all forms of bourgeois ideology aimed at dividing the working class on grounds of ethnicity! 

For the unity of workers of all nationalities against capitalist impoverishment and all forms of social/special oppression! 

The working class has no country! For the dissolution/merging of the progressive elements of all cultures into an international socialist culture! 

The obvious inevitable disaster in this outlook is the crazy anti-historical perspective of expecting to be able to unite the working class around a purely reformist future, hoping to build "genuine class consciousness which sees itself as the defender of all the oppressed".

But such a never-ending programme of defensive protests and agitation for the relief of oppression is precisely the heart and soul of the whole reformist delusion, which has existed for a century and more, solely to keep the working class permanently divided and permanently defeated.

The only possibility for working-class unity ever envisaged by Marxist science is around a highly plausibly CORRECT perspective for successful proletarian revolution to seize power, when one finally emerges. Before historical conditions and the struggle for a mass-supported party of revolutionary-theory leadership have produced such a realistic perspective, then by definition the working class is still obviously going to remain divided among a variety of fake-'left' sectarian opportunisms, and therefore still incapable of any worthwhile unity. As Marxist science endlessly points out, it is far easier to envisage and carry out a total socialist revolution than to morally persuade or re-educate the entire working class to stop being the unfortunate victims of racist or chauvinist confusion, for example. If it is really possible to get the entire Glasgow working class to unite and say "asylum-seekers welcome", then surely it will be 100 times easier to unite the proletariat on the slogan: "Let us take all the wealth and power away from the rich bastards who are oppressing all of us".

It is like the social-pacifist slogan of 'No to war' or 'Nuclear disarmament now'. If it was really possible to persuade a moral majority to disarm the ruling class in this way, it would surely be 100 times easier to make out the 'moral' case for the total socialist revolution.

But this is all, of course, reformist pipe-dream fantasy of the nastiest fake-'left' kind, - posturing as 'revolutionary Marxism', but predictably cynically condemning the working class to the further permanent diet of just defeats, demoralisation, and division, which is all that 'reformist pressure' can ever mean.

There is not going to be any working class "unity to welcome all asylum seekers".

And if this insane Mary-Poppins pipedream is pursued by these fake-'left' petty-bourgeois PC posturers, then the BNP is going to draw more and more interest because it is at least showing awareness that the working class is properly agitated about the hypocritical lack of any clear picture of what bogus 'asylum-seeking' and people-smuggling 'immigration' is really all about in the current imperialist crisis situation.

Are they recruits for the revolution? What revolution? Who has called it? Who is organising it? Are they recruits for the total unionisation of the labour force to regain full employment and put a stop to cheap casual labour? So when is this total reformist elimination of all the effects of imperialist economic crisis going to be completed? How is it to be imposed on the free market? Is it to be imposed internationally (because there are at least 500 million more, utterly crushed and impoverished, desperate 'asylum-seekers' waiting in a queue all round the world to join the dream of those who have made it through the immigration rackets to get to Britain (or Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, etc) already)?

Are they genuinely tiny handfuls of genuinely 'misplaced persons', just one-off idiosyncrasies from here and there whose lost souls just don't fit in with the poverty and tyranny (that the other hundreds of millions suffer throughout the Third World), but who are the future Einsteins, Rachmaninovs, and Joseph Conrads of this world?

Or are they the tip of the iceberg of an intolerable worldwide imperialist-system economic and political crisis in which growing refugee-floods will be the only pressure safety-valve for avoiding revolutionary explosions everywhere, and in which masses of world-market cheap scab-labour will keep inter-imperialist trade-war cost-cutting and unemployment-exporting going for long enough to wreck entire economies and drive whole populations into fascist-chauvinist despair so that the imperialist system can get World War III going, in order to complete the destructive work of 'recovery' from this iron-law Marxist crisis of world capital 'surpluses'???

And if it is the latter, then why the surprise that the BNP should be able to make such mischief among a totally confused, leaderless, and demoralised existing proletariat?

These race-riot asylum-seeking issues really are nothing but a deliberate total chauvinist diversion to distract the working class from what it really needs to be concentrated on which is the immediate future of the whole planet in world socialist revolution. 

The real "rotten political passivity" which the anti-communist herd-mentality 'activist' posturers like the SWP and the CPGB love to sneer at in others, belongs in fact to themselves and to all their like-minded 'left-reformist' opportunists, who claim 'revolutionary' labels but who spend 100% of their time on one party-careerist manoeuvre after another on the insane grounds that "something must be done now", and who not only simply refuse to stop and consider whether specific conscious revolutionary perspectives are the only sane answer now to the ever-more-clearly insoluble imperialist economic crisis, but who of course actually hate any prospect of proletarian-dictatorship revolution throwing their smug 'activist' existences into total upheaval.

These are all incorrigible petty-bourgeois reformists by unchangeable class disposition, and their hectoring moralising tone can be heard behind every dumb idealist plea.

"Oh do stop being seduced by bigotry and embrace multiculturalism instead. It will be so much better for you... (and us, because we can out-flank 'left Labour' multiculturalism that way)."

And "Oh do stop this national-liberation guerrilla war and embrace self-determination rights for all instead. It will be so much kinder and fairer for the poor British-Irish people who are feeling terribly unhappy at the moment" etc, etc, etc.

It is the 'left alternative' version of the Vicar of St Albion in truth. And it is from a different world entirely to the materialist class-war reality of Marxism.

The rival incorrect line from Red Action/AFA merely shows up the other way of retreating from the role of revolutionary theory by posturing with supposedly more militant activism than the SLP brandish, and adding the same strand of schematic/chauvinist wishful thinking that some Trots have dreamed up for Ireland, - declaring that on paper, the working class should be no less potential recruits for a CLASS revolution than the 'catholic' workers, and that therefore Green 'nationalist terror' and Orange 'nationalist terror' were (and are) equally rotten obstacles to a socialist seizure of power by the united working class.

Applied to the race-wars/asylum-seekers mess, this schematicism gets round the genuine problems by simply academically mouthing the completely meaningless assumption that there a good potential revolutionary outlook on both sides of the ethnic agitation being stirred up by economic crisis, and that therefore nationalism is wrong on both sides and should be demoted in favour of common class-war consciousness throughout the whole proletariat.

And while it is an advance not to kowtow to the treacherous reformist 'multiculturalism' of black nationalist consciousness, - it is 'progress' (in the wrong direction entirely) of brushing over white working-class backwardness with 'revolutionary activist' assumptions about workers stirrings which a) don't yet exist; b) have not a single theoretical perspective to back them up or to inspire their existence; and c) still fail to deal specifically with the immigration/asylum-seeking confusion which the BNP is using to agitate workers with, - problems analysed above.

Only when given the proper world-revolutionary context in which the immigration/asylum-seeking phenomenon can be understood and put in perspectives which workers can more happily work towards than any other, will this racist diversion be controllably dealt with.

For as long as the fight for revolutionary theory in Britain fails to get off the ground because of the refusal of the fake-'left' establishments (Socialist Alliance, all parts; SLP, all parts; etc) to open up serious polemics on the whole question of the socialist revolution, its past and its future, - and in particular deliberately trying to close down or ignore the EPSR’s arguments, - for just so long will the BNP problem continue to get steadily worse.

This fake-'left' establishment censorship of serious Marxist revolutionary debate is doomed to failure, of course. The sooner that elements in and around the 'Alliance' and the SLP force the issue on the despicable cowardly silence on all of the weighty arguments raised by the EPSR over the past 22 years against Stalinist Revisionism AND against Trotskyite anti-communism; against single-issue reformist reaction such as feminism, black nationalism, etc; on Ireland; for a proper revolutionary analysis of world imperialist economic and political WEAKNESS, not 'strong New World Order' and against the anti-communist essence of all 'activist' posturing which refuses to acknowledge the absolute primacy of fully (and endlessly, if necessary) debating and then adopting a complete Marxist revolutionary perspective for the immediate future development of the whole of world politics; etc, etc, etc; - then the sooner will real progress start to be made on comprehensively routing the Little Englander chauvinism (that the BNP and others love to cash in on) with serious socialist aspirations for the whole working people, here in this country and everywhere else. 

All 'left reformist' attempts to morally shame the racist diversion into retreat will only make matters steadily worse, playing right into the hands of the BNP.

Blunkett’s new government 'firmness', when it appears, will satisfy no-one, merely continuing the messy confusion New Labour is now permanently in because all its posturing administration of capitalism towards a 'New Britain', - 'which is inclusive, opportunity-based, but compassionate' - has only resulted in capitalism steadily showing more and more of its very worst features, and showing them to be completely and permanently incurable.

The SWP’s multicultural happy-clappy pipe dreaming will fall apart just like all other born-again Christian moralising.

And in between, the Bill Morris finger-wagging at the BBC for legitimising racism by broadcasting 'political pornography' interviews with BNP halfwits, will only make matters worse still. What about all the far more degenerate half-wits of New Labour and the TUC, endlessly interviewed to justify government acquiescence in unbelievable imperialist-system tyrannies being imposed all round the planet every day of the year, and all with murderous implications for the suffering Third World far, far worse than anything seriously threatened by Nick Griffin’s shallow nastiness. So the BBC counter-revolutionary anti-communist censorship machine is all right, is it Mr.Morris, provided it gives no publicity to the sad little BNP???? What monstrously degenerate and smug capitalist-system complacency. This is the voice of the imperialist-world system which imposed the First World War barbarism on civilisation without any need for a Hitler 'excuse'; which imposed the Vietnam War holocaust on part of humanity with the only blameable 'fascists' in sight all on the side of the BBC and the 'good guys'; which inflicted at least 500 other such murderous colonial tyrannies on mankind throughout the 20th century via the British, French, US, Dutch, and Belgian empires with soothing 'explanations' on hand from the BBC every time; and which has never ceased trying to whip up warmongering hysteria against all workers states that have ever existed since 1917, with the BBC at the crucial heart of that CIA-directed worldwide propaganda brainwashing.

And what is Morris up to now? He is "demanding" that the BBC bosses meet him so that he can tell them off.

The desperately demoralised BNP voters in Oldham cannot do that. Nick Griffin cannot do that. Most trade union leaders cannot do that, come to think of it. But Bill Morris can. Why? Because he's black.

Morris is playing the race card. To wipe out racism? To wipe out the sad effects of racism within the working class?

It hasn't happened in 200 years of capitalist reformist democracy yet; and currently racist-chauvinist strife looks set to continue or newly-unleash an infinitely-greater quantity of ethnic warmongering conflict around the world (tribal and race-war tensions currently at unprecedented heights all over Africa; in Indonesia; over five different key areas of the Middle East; throughout the Balkans; ongoing in Ireland and the Basque country; afflicting six of the 15 former Soviet republics; ever-threatening in Central and South America; etc, etc, etc).

Morris is just part of moralising establishment brainwashing which imbecilely tries to pretend that the World War II atavistic savagery, which the capitalist system inflicted on civilisation, was all down to Hitler, a laughable social inadequate from a Munich beer cellar.

What foul disgusting brainrot is being served up here. World War II was already being well planned-for and prepared-for by the entire Western World leadership long before the ocean of blood had dried from World War I. So-called 'fascism' was just a diplomatic-manoeuvre plaything of the same routine inter-imperialist arms-race warmongering as produced World War I, as prepared World War II long before Hitler had been heard of, and has been busy preparing World War III ever since World War II ended.

And what effect will Morris have by using his blackness to "insist" on telling the BBC that it is interviews with Nick Griffin which threaten civilisation as we know it????

Firstly, the establishment will laugh at him, and welcome his stupidity in helping them to make the BNP the diversionary hate object instead of the capitalist system. Secondly, the BNP vote in Oldham is likely to double as Griffin & Co spread more sick resentment at the 'multicultural' aspect of the establishment which is 'doing them down' (and 'silencing the BNP', etc, etc).

Western imperialist establishment bans on 'racists' are such hypocritical humbug that it makes advocates such as Morris one of the most dangerously deluded types of illusion-spreaders around. 'Non-fascist' parliamentary democracy??? It is nothing more than the illusion-riddled temporary interval between one inter-imperialist warmongering holocaust (plus chauvinist hate-hysteria, i.e. 'fascism') and the next. 'Parliamentary democracy' was precisely what put Hitler into 'legitimate' power.

And which political figure had the guiltiest responsibility of all for what ended up as the long-drawn-out Vietnam holocaust; John Kennedy. And he came within a hair’s-breadth of inflicting that fascist tyranny on the Cuban workers state too.

It would be better if Mr Morris's pompous black-nationalist arrogance was reserved for a while, and he studied some Marxist world-history instead. The whole working class could benefit enormously. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

	REVENGE ON EMPIRE

In the greatest act of symbolism conceivable, victims of imperialist-system world exploitation today struck back at the American ruling class.

Disgusting boasts of "ruthless retaliation against those responsible for these terrorist outrages", etc, etc, poured out of those responsible for maintaining the tyranny of international monopoly-capitalist exploitation and armed-might bullying, with the wretched Blair distinguishing himself by instantly pledging to help US imperialist tyranny to wreak vengeance on the desperate suicide bombers (who carried out these remarkable feats of guerrilla war) and the peoples they represent.

The 'innocent' accidental victims on the ground of these guerrilla-war counter-attacks for past and continuing US imperialist domineering are indeed a tragedy, but the West’s first concern needs to be for the hundreds of millions of 'innocents' whose lives are made one permanent horror-story of brutal suppression, impoverishment, and starvation by the actions of the monopoly-capitalist system.

These guerrilla-war actions are a warning that the rotten and collapsing imperialist system is driving human tolerance to the limits throughout the Third World, with nothing but reformist nonsense being poured out about what might be done to remedy the worst crimes and excesses of exploitation.

The Palestinian nation, for example, has daily for more than 50 years lived through far worse torments by a long distance than the incidental tragedy of one-off bombing accidents.

That torment, and scores more like it all round the world, will continue for as long as the world imperialist system continues. Guerrilla-war retaliation against it can therefore only relentlessly increase.  

	World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Reactionary NATO imperialist counter-intelligence stunt to link Irish visitors (to FARC freezone internationalism) to Sinn Féin

IT IS NOW CLEAR that the recent high-profile arrests of three Irishmen in Bogota is a result of the machinations of shadowy forces within secret intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic with an interest in scuppering the direction of the Peace Processes in both Colombia and Ireland.

The subsequent political and media reaction has served to further the sinister agenda of these spies and spooks with cynical and unjustified political attacks and allegations against Sinn Féin and a virtual trial by media of three Irish citizens.

No evidence of any description against the men has been presented to link them to anything other than passport violations.

Despite the outrageous and politically-inspired media hype, the mere presence of three Irishmen in Colombia's demilitarised zone is not legitimately a cause for any suspicion.

Colombia is a country that has witnessed deep political conflict throughout its history. The roots of the most recent armed conflict go back to the mid-1960s.

That conflict has witnessed a number of guerrilla groups opposing the government in Bogota. The government, which receives support and assistance from the US  administration, has been accused of organising right-wing death squads to carry out the murder of many civilians.

As a result of political negotiations within a tentative peace process, a demilitarised zone about the size of Switzerland has been ceded to the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla group fighting the Bogota government.

The area controlled by FARC has been regularly visited by countless international groups, observers, journalists and diplomats.

Weekly conferences have been held in the Zone, attended by government ministers, trade union leaders, schoolteachers, and anyone interested in being involved in the future of Colombia. FARC leader Manuel Marulanda has said the organisation is open to talk to anyone.

McCauley, Monaghan and Connolly were just three among many international visitors to the Zone, public transport to which is paid for by the Colombian Government.

Reactionary elements in the Colombian military and US intelligence services with whom they operate, are totally opposed to the manner in which President Pastrana has handled the peace process and in particular want to rescind the demilitarised status of the FARC-controlled area.

Next October, the demilitarised status of the Zone is up for review, and it is a real probability that peace talks will be discontinued.

There is a vested interest among CIA elements in sensationalising visits to the Zone by foreigners with political affiliations. This is particularly true if information on those visitors, such as imprisonment for revolutionary political or military activity, is available.

In the case of two of the three Irish men, Jim Monaghan and Martin McCauley, such information was readily available from British Intelligence.

British securocrats opposed to the Irish Peace Process are more than willing to assist in black propaganda operations which further their own interests. Hence the Bogota arrests and the unprecedented media hype of the past week.

As soon as the men were arrested, British Intelligence sources contacted Peter Robinson of the DUP to facilitate a media and information spin on the arrests with the aim of inflicting the maximum possible damage on the Irish peace process.
Robinson succeeded in creating a bandwagon effect over the past week in which unionists and all sorts of opponents of Sinn Féin queued up to attack the party, despite the fact that none of the arrested men are party members, and to link Irish republicans to every conceivable activity from drugdealing to manufacturing nuclear bombs.

Plots worthy of the cheapest pulp fiction were churned out in the Irish and British media with anti-Good Friday Agreement unionists and British securocrats manipulating the situation to portray the IRA and not themselves as posing a threat to the Irish peace process. This against the backdrop of a loyalist paramilitary campaign of bomb attacks against nationalist homes, GAA grounds and property.

Nationalists across the Six Counties in recent months have been driven from their homes and have had their communities placed under loyalist siege, while the UDA, responsible for the murder of hundreds of nationalist civilians both directly and in collusion with British state forces, parades thousands of men openly and in paramilitary uniform on Belfast's Shankill Road.

Gerry Adams has said that Sinn Féin had no case to answer following the Bogota arrests. The Sinn Féin President said the treatment of Monaghan. Connolly and McCauley was reminiscent of the trials by media of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.

Adams said: "The first I learned of this business was when the three Irish people were arrested. I can say with certainty they were not there representing Sinn Féin. I would have had to authorise such a project and I did not do so. Neither was I or anyone else asked to.

"Efforts to make Sinn Féin accountable for these three Irish men are totally unjustified and serve no good purpose. My own view is that they should be released, and the Irish Government should be doing its best to secure their freedom as soon as possible.

"So whatever the hype, the lies and the propaganda, and no doubt there will continue to be a lot of all this... arising from this Sinn Féin has no case to answer."

Sinn Féin has also supported calls from the men's families for the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs to intervene. Caoimhghin Ó Cáolain TD said it is important that the men's human rights are protected while they are in custody and that they are brought back to Ireland as soon as possible.

Ó Cáolain said that he was deeply concerned at reports emanating from Colombia that the lives of the three could be in danger from right-wing paramilitaries.

"The Irish Government has a responsibility to ensure that the rights of Irish nationals being detained abroad are upheld and I am calling on them to intervene immediately to ensure that these men are protected from any danger.

"Furthermore as the unsubstantiated reports, on which this case seems to be based, have shown to be false I am calling on the government to do all in its power to have these men released and returned to their families," Ó Cáolain said.