In German colours

John Rees has boasted of the political affinity between the SWP’s Left List and Germany’s Die Linke. Ben Klein agrees, but says this is nothing to boast about

Much is being made of the fact that, back in 2004, Lindsey German missed getting elected to the London assembly by just 0.43%. Indeed, John Rees and the Socialist Workers Party leadership are still trying to persuade their demoralised membership that they really can get in this time … if they just pull out the stops in the final week of the campaign.

As we all know, however, things have changed somewhat since 2004, and the chances of the Left List getting anything more than a derisory vote are extremely small - not only is the SWP banned from using the ‘Respect’ name, but the thousands of East End muslim votes that Respect garnered four years ago are surely not theirs this time. Given Alex Callinicos’s hilarious depiction of the Respect split as one of left versus right akin to the Bolshevik-Menshevik divide of 1903,1 one would have expected the SWP ‘Bolsheviks’ to make the most of this opportunity to promote their claimed politics of “revolutionary communism” in the “tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg”.

Instead, the SWP leadership peddles left reformism in the name of broadness and “practical” unity with “the movement”.2 Yet the Left List is hardly “broad” - certainly far less so than Respect. The SWP has provided the overwhelming majority of campaign foot soldiers and its Left List amounts to little more than the SWP operating under a different name with a few allies and hangers-on. Nor, practically, has the Left List got much of a chance of getting anyone elected to anything.
Linke links

Discussing the Left List’s campaigning materials and the political orientation of the project, comrade Rees claims that “the red star design is unique and a reference to the left tradition in which Respect stands [!]” - and, significantly, goes on to state that “the star design also refers to the political affinity that Respect’s Left List has to the European Left Party and the highly successful Left Party in Germany”.3

This is worthy of comment - not merely because it represents a desperate attempt to give the Left List some sort of ‘broad’ pedigree, but also because many on the British left seem to be still labouring under the illusion that Die Linke is some sort of model that communists and revolutionary socialists should be aspiring to imitate.

Die Linke is the result of a slow merger process between the WASG (Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit), backed by former Social Democrat trade union bureaucrats, and the PDS (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus), whose predecessor once ruled the German Democratic Republic.

Die Linke has gone through some painful birth pangs - not least on the questions of minority participation in government and Germany’s role in UN ‘peace-keeping’ forces. As of yet it is still programmatically undefined formally, with discussions still taking place about what policies it is to have. What is practically clear, however, is that the PDS and WASG tops have joined together to ensure that the party is not and cannot become a Marxist party of any kind. Rather what they have created in an explicitly reformist party, a party that seeks to revive the previously strong German ‘social state’, which has been under constant attack since the Wende, or turn, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

What explains its attraction for John Rees, though, it that Die Linke proved to be successful in the last elections, winning 54 seats in parliament. Indeed Germany is perhaps the only country in the world today where such a halfway house project can be held up as an example to emulate. Elsewhere, there is by contrast, either complete organisational failure or naked class collaboration: eg, Italy, Scotland, Brazil, Australia and Spain.

The SWP’s satellite group, Linksruck (which has now dissolved itself, officially at least, to join forces with others in the officially recognised left-Keynesian Socialist Left platform4), has always insisted that Die Linke “would become superfluous if it adopted a socialist programme, because it would exclude many of the people who could be won” otherwise.5 Linksruck comrades have been duly rewarded with minor places within Die Linke’s apparatus. But whereas Linksruck is a tiny minority in Die Linke, Rees and co are, of course, firmly in control of the Left List and are fully and undeniably responsible for every line, every dot and every comma of its miserable political programme.
Platitudes and compromise

Judging by the so-called Programmatische Eckpunkte, or key political principles on which Die Linke’s programme is to be based, the final document will simply be common or garden fare, with a few platitudes included in order to placate the left. So, while there is talk of challenging “property and power relations” in order to highlight “the question of the system”,6 the new party has enthusiastically taken up minority positions in regional governments and helped enforce cuts and job losses that it claimed to be against when in opposition. In the last instance then, it is a party that like the Workers’ Party in Brazil accepts the bourgeois state, and thus inevitably capitulates to “the system.”

This is what Die Linke and the Left List have in common - their readiness to ditch principle. The Left List’s manifesto is full of populist posturing but completely devoid of any concrete class demands. It does seem that the Rees leadership is really doing its utmost to come across as nice and respectable - and steering well clear of anything that might scare off voters. Lindsey German, who is standing for mayor as well as heading the Left List of assembly candidates, described herself as a “Respect member and convenor of the Stop the War Coalition” - definitely not as a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party (does she have something to hide?).

In line with the way the SWP operates in its Stop the War Coalition and Unite Against Fascism ‘united fronts’, the Left List is against a lot, but its election material is very short on detailed policies, preferring catch-all phrases like “Peace, equality and justice”. For example, there is a vague call for “cuts in bus and tube fares” - at least the Greens say how much they want to cut them by. One presumes that the totally rational call for free public transport in urban areas is seen as too extreme for the SWP nowadays.

There are calls to “close the gap between rich and poor”, to “tax the wealthy” and for an “emergency house building programme”, but, once again, they are so vague as to be almost meaningless. Thankfully the Left List’s demands are sometimes specific - it calls, for example, for a 35-hour week for all and for a “universal childcare service, based on the same principles as the NHS”.7

However, the Left List does not go beyond the ‘bread and butter’ issues. Certainly it fails to map a realistic vision of republican democracy, socialism and a world where human need and nature exist in harmony. It talks a lot about “the ordinary people” and “working people”, but does not even hint at how the voiceless majority can become a political class for itself.

So there is indeed an affinity with Die Linke, which is also big on platitudes and sound bites, but not so hot when it comes to a clear articulation of working class principles and concrete solutions. Not really surprising from a lash-up between trade union officials, former Social Democratic Party ministers and refugees from the ‘official communism’ of the GDR, but surely we ought to expect more from the “revolutionary communists” of the SWP?
Crisis of programme

The Left List does nothing more than mirror the existing (extremely low) levels of class-consciousness and peddle soft left myths - like the idea that imperialist war spending can simply be shifted to education or council housing. Under Rees, attempts to resist “moves to narrow the movement to those who are already part of the radical left” has led the SWP cadre into a narrow and cynical reformism.

Of course, if life itself were to produce something on the scale of Die Linke on the British political scene, then it would be entirely principled to consider entering such an organisation and use any democratic space available to argue for Marxist politics (as opposed to the “realistic, radical” approach put forward by Socialist Left, backed by Linksruck).

Yet to consciously set out with the aim of creating such a formation betrays the same narrow lack of ambition that has infected virtually the entire left. This method - whether in the Socialist Alliance, Respect or now the Left List - has led the SWP into all sorts of unprincipled programmatic compromises. Even after it has parted company with Respect’s “right wing”, the SWP is standing on a platform that remains virtually identical l
Notes

1. See Weekly Worker November 8 2007.
2. www.swp.org.uk/about.php
3. www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14397
4. www.sozialistische-linke.de/cms/front_content.php
5. www.sozialismus-von-unten.de/lr/artikel_1363.html
6. Weekly Worker June 21 2007.
7. www.electrespectcoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=41

NUS: Right prepares for fresh assault

Although the right's governance review was not passed at this year's National Union of Students conference, the fragmented left suffered a series of defeats. Chris Strafford and Ben Klein report

If last year was a rightwing orgy, then this year's conference at Blackpool was certainly no different. Labour Students and the so-called 'Organised Independents' further extended their control over NUS policies and structures. The only thing that did spoil the right's celebrations was the failure to get rid of awkward things like delegate elections as part of the plan to transform the NUS into nothing more than a corporate-friendly gravy train for aspiring bourgeois politicians. The mood at Flares nightclub - where outgoing president Gemma Tumelty and her clique of self-serving careerists gathered - had a certain flatness.

Using her Bonapartist powers, she awarded herself an extra speech following the review's defeat (the poor delegates had already been subjected to her self-congratulatory valedictory). Wagging her finger at delegates, she told us off for "making a mistake" by voting down the governance review (actually the necessary two-thirds majority was lost by a mere handful of votes). Tumelty was, she said, "sick and tired" of those blocking reforms - ie, the left. President-elect Wes Streeting also made clear that he was not going to back down on the anti-democratic reforms.

So at least things were not all bad this year. Scuppering plans to get rid of the directly elected 'block of 12' executive members, splitting the executive up into a largely unelected 'board' and 'senate' and reducing the NUS to a sort of lobbying group is certainly a good thing. News of it even made its way into the bourgeois media. Channel 4 ran a piece on the struggle between the left and the right and how "student power" and "radicalism" is "set to continue" within the NUS.

Yet the rest of the proceedings saw the left suffering defeats in both elections and policy-making. And Streeting is already making his next move. He organised a 'questionnaire' to all delegates which read more like a declaration of war. Forthrightly, he claimed he had a "clear mandate for change". One of his questions is: "How could we have improved consultation with you about the proposals?" Well, "consultation" definitely does not involve pro-review hacks trying to forcibly remove the voting cards from those who insisted on opposing the review despite being undemocratically 'mandated' to support it - as happened to Manchester delegate and Communist Students member Chris Strafford. Other delegates from Sheffield and Edinburgh are in a similar position.

There is no room for left hyperbole or complacency. The right won every crucial vote (apart from the review) and swept the board in the elections (apart from the Left List's Rob Owen and Hind Hassan, who were elected to the 'block of 12'). Indeed it is rumoured that the leadership may go for two extraordinary conferences before the year is out. Hence SWP triumphalism belies the fact that the left lost the argument, with most delegates being in favour of the review. The requirement for a two-thirds majority is, of course, completely undemocratic. But it has at least given the left a breathing space to think things through.

In an extremely limited sense the right are quite correct to underline how there is a pressing need for "change". Formally there are seven million members, but it is doubtful whether most students would even know what the NUS is beyond the scope of a cheap pint and a pasty in the union bar, or a 10% shopping discount on the high street. Given that the left has been unwilling to actually present its own alternative that would look to expand democracy and bring politics to the fore, the right has been able to dismiss opponents of the review as conservative diehards.

Elections

So there are now only two leftwingers on the executive - the SWP's Rob Owen and Hind Hassan, who is not an SWP member. She gave an impassioned speech, which won a lot of support. As well as winning an excellent vote in her bid for vice-president, she came first in the block elections (comrade Owen came third). Alliance for Workers' Liberty member Heather Shaw very narrowly missed out by 0.8 votes. Communist Students did not vote for her because, despite previously claiming to support 'troops out now', she was not prepared to actually come out and say so. Unlike Daniel Randall and other Education Not for Sale candidates, she did not respond to our written questions. When asked face to face, she told us she did not agree with the 'troops out of Iraq' formulation we use.

Talking of comrade Randall, he did well in the elections for president, giving a well honed speech about the relationship between the students' and workers' movements. It is a shame that his politics are so tainted by social-imperialism. Two ENS candidates that Communist Students did support were Koos Couvee and Laura Simmons - who, unlike their comrades in the AWL, both agreed with the demand for the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of US-UK troops from the Gulf.

Chris Strafford, standing as Communist Students candidate for the block of 12, received just six votes. This is not much of a surprise, given that voting is largely based on factional considerations and numbers mobilised to conference. What was important for us, however, was putting across ideas and in this sense our standing was a success.

Motions

The right's strength was seen in the vote to formally drop the demand for free education. There were leadership appeals for common sense and realism. What we have now is a position for the defence of top-up fees - up to a certain level.

Two minor successes. The NUS will oppose asylum-seekers being charged the higher fees for overseas students and also calls for the latter to be reduced. But these were pretty meaningless decisions, given that there are no plans for any real campaigning. In other votes conference resolved to support the 2012 London Olympics and agreed to encourage students to vote in local and national elections.

Showing that the political spectrum in the NUS is considerably to the left of society at large, there was an overwhelming vote to maintain support for Unite Against Fascism. Ditto the policy of no-platforming fascists. But where this leads could be seen when comrade Sham Rajyguru - a member of Workers Power's youth group, Revolution - proposed a motion calling for the state to ban far-right websites like Redwatch.

Whilst it is obvious that such websites encourage attacks on left, LGBT and peace activists, any law banning them would inevitably be used against the workers' movement. That has been the case in the past; eg, so-called anti-fascist legislation passed in the 1930s was turned against the left. Communists call not for more state powers, but less.

The debate on 'society and citizenship' saw a motion agreed on Darfur which essentially supported African Union troops and called for a United Nations peacekeeping force. The 'Don't attack Iran' motion put forward by the SWP/Student Respect was also carried. While this was positive, there was no mention of solidarity with the most consistent anti-imperialist forces in Iraq - the working class and the democratic opposition to the Tehran regime. A point made by the ENS motion, which had thankfully been reworded to remove the statement that "American (and British) military adventures in the Middle East have almost inevitably disastrous consequences" - implying that on occasion such adventures might not be so bad. However, the motion was not reached.

Left unity?

The SWP's Rob Owen has claimed that the NUS conference left the Labour rightists and so-called independents "demoralised and reeling" and that "students are radicalising, with grassroots movements springing up on campuses against war, racism, climate change and many other issues." Socialist Students, the student front of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, write in similar fashion that anger exists in the colleges and shows the potential for "campaigning against fees and against cuts, closures and privatisation".

ENS has made a more serious attempt at getting to grips with NUS reality, arguing that the left must now take up the fight for the "real expansion of NUS democracy" and listing some good demands. However, the author of the ENS report claims: "We are now the only left grouping of any size to exist in NUS". Even if this were true (it is not), the main problem with ENS is its economistic agenda and lack of elementary democratic structures. Where it has politics, they are of the labour bureaucracy or, what amounts to the same thing, the social-imperialism of the AWL.

Pious calls for free education, opposition to ultra-right crazies, campaigning designed to build this or that sect and tinkering with NUS structures are in fact woefully inadequate. Leftwing and all genuinely progressive students need the politics of extreme democracy, republicanism and unity in the fight for human liberation. In a word they need to learn Marxism.

There were plenty of backroom deals in order to win votes. Matt Dobson, SPEW's student organiser, told us that, although Chris Strafford of CS was politically preferable to the AWL candidate, his comrades would nonetheless be voting for the AWL, as a deal had been struck. Communists are not opposed to wheeling and dealing. It would be stupid to reject horse-trading, yet that does not mean throwing principles overboard. Communist Students will continue to make propaganda not for warmed over Labourism, but for the ideas of Marxism.

Given the contradictory class dynamics of student life and politics, it is fatuous to treat the NUS like a trade union and make the core of our intervention questions of fees and grants. Students must be armed with ideas - not to equip them for some dead-end office job, but to empower them as revolutionaries linking up with the workers' movement to change the world. We are well aware that at present only a minority can be won to such an outlook, but that does not mean advocating left reformist politics in the meantime.

NUS democracy

The Save NUS Democracy campaign organised a fringe meeting following the defeat of the governance review. It was a funny gathering for more reasons that one. Communist Students, along with Socialist Students, it should be recalled, were deliberately excluded from its leadership. Since its inauguration in September 2007 it has been run by the SWP and Socialist Action. Frankly, they have made a hash of it.

To her credit, Sofie Buckland of the AWL, refused to join in the 'rah rah, we won' rhetoric of Rob Owen and Ruqqayah Collector (Socialist Action). Comrade Buckland argued that left unity in NUS had been blocked by sectarianism - principally from the SWP - and criticised the decision not to allow a speaker from Socialist Students onto the platform. The reason given was that Socialist Students did not have a member on the NUS NEC - a thoroughly bureaucratic response. She called for a "united rank and file movement" amongst students - a call that was repeated by a number of AWLers later on in the meeting.

Ruqqayah Collector, who on the NEC had failed to oppose the review outright, nevertheless celebrated its defeat. Likewise comrade Owen. He argued the NUS had never been at the leading edge of radical struggle. But his solution, repeated by other SWPers, was that the left should base its intervention on "the movements". No mention of what politics we need. Presumably that was to be saved for the later Socialist Worker Student Society meeting entitled 'Why you should be a socialist'. This was addressed by former Sheffield SWP organiser Alan Kenny, who just a couple of years ago aborted a Student Respect meeting, as there were "only socialists" present. How short some people's memories are.

Arran Cottam of Socialist Students said this should be seen as "a historic day" because of the defeat of the NUS governance review and the National Union of Teachers vote for a 24-hour strike.

Any worthwhile campaign must have a broadly representative steering committee, which should meet openly. This was suggested by CS comrade Chris Strafford. It is as clear as day that the left needs to thrash out a wide-ranging programme of extending NUS democracy, including for the election of NUS officers. We are for ending the present system of electing a Bonapartist president and other little Bonapartes by conference. Instead, elect a working committee, which in turn elects - and can recall - its own officers.

It is incumbent upon the left to use the window provided by the defeat of the governance review to build an open and democratic campaign that can turn the outdated structures of the NUS on their head. Merely saying 'no' and avoiding rocking the boat - hitherto the method of Socialist Action and the SWP, will simply not do. Nor will organising a democracy campaign that mirrors the bureaucratic shortcomings of the NUS itself. Communist Students looks to extend NUS democracy and above all the fight to educate students in the politics and programme of Marxism.
Iran solidarity

Hands Off the People of Iran held a successful fringe meeting addressed by Yassamine Mather and Chris Strafford. Despite the fringe taking place at the same time as meetings of the Stop the War Coalition and Unite Against Fascism, 18 people attended from campuses across the country. Which is not at all bad.

Comrade Strafford talked about Hopi's principled politics. He condemned the opportunism of the STWC in giving a platform to reactionary organisations like Hezbollah and apologists for the Iranian regime, while moving to sideline any organisation that dared to criticise the theocracy in Tehran, let alone talk about raising the profile of the increasingly radical student movement in Iran.

Comrade Mather gave an interesting insight into the dynamics of that movement. She rejected the notion that Iranian students were hoping for some kind of imperialist intervention. Their slogans are against war and against the theocratic regime, whether under the sway of the so-called 'reformists' or the hard-liners. She called for the student supporters of Hopi to forge closer links with the Iranian students. Such activists form the core of the movement for radical change in Iran.

Although there was little time for debate, an interesting discussion ensued which largely focused on the British anti-war movement. SWP member Hanif Leylabi was first to speak and defended the SWP's record. The STWC leadership were not apologists for the Iranian regime and the refusal to allow Hopi to affiliate was based on decisions taken at a mass meeting. Apparently, this is how all decisions are made in the STWC.

Vicky Thompson from the Hopi steering committee pointed out that the decision to ban Hopi was made by the officers of the STWC and then pushed through conference by the skilful Stalinist chairing of Andrew Murray. She said she had left the SWP because it would not support demands similar to those of Hopi.

Kath McMahon said it would be stupid to call all STWC activists apologists for Tehran, because her Hopi branch in Edinburgh is actually able to work alongside Stop the War comrades. She did, however, underline the point that the SWP leadership has allowed apologist views on the Iranian regime to go unchallenged within the movement - especially through leading figures such as Abbas Eddalat and Somaye Zadeh.

In response, comrade Leylabi defended Campaign Iran by arguing that there were people and ideas in the organisation with whom he did not agree, but the campaign nevertheless had a good record of raising anti-war awareness. He claimed the reformist movement had scored successes in Iran - particularly in terms of women's rights and dress codes in comparison to other Middle Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia.

This was refuted by comrade Mather. Advances made by Iranian women compared with women from Saudi Arabia could be traced back to the economic characteristics of the country - ie, Iran's capitalism as opposed to the tribal and semi-feudal system in Saudi Arabia - and to the fight of women and the progressive movement, not the generosity of the hugely discredited 'reformists'.

On the question of the STWC, Yassamine said she would remain an individual member and encourage all comrades to do the same. She agreed with Hanif that our main focus in Britain is to stop any war on Iran, and that Hopi is first and foremost an anti-war campaign that seeks to bring genuine internationalism into the movement.
Two vice-presidents

Conference overwhelmingly voted for Iranian student Anoosheh Azaadbar as honorary vice-president of NUS. The struggles that she and her comrades have engaged in should be an inspiration to students across the world - not merely for their militancy in the face of the regime's brutal repression, but also in terms of their fresh and radical ideas, inspired by Marxism.

The election was, however, complicated by the fact that the SWP, having seen that ENS and Communist Students put forward Anoosheh, decided at the last minute to propose its own candidate. Namely the co-founder of Military Families Against the War, Rose Gentle. This stunt created a potentially farcical situation where delegates would be forced to choose between supporting an anti-war activist in Britain and an anti-war activist in Iran - as if the two were not in some way connected!

However, thanks to an amendment from ENS, conference was able to vote for both.

Posing Left or defending principle?

Thought I would reprint the debate between the AWL's David Broder and I on student politics - searching for it today on my blog I came to realise that I hadn't actually posted this up. It is pretty interesting stuff though. David's article can be read here: www.workersliberty.org/node/9475...


David Broder, a member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, has responded to an article by Tina Becker on the campaign for democracy in the National Union of Students. Ben Lewis continues the debate

It has long been part of the AWL’s modus operandi to accuse the CPGB of ‘smear tactics’ and ‘gossip’. Anything written about us must, it seem, contain such formulations - preferably linked to the description of our organisation as “the Weekly Worker group”. David Broder takes this well-trodden route in his reply (www.workersliberty.org/node/9475) to Tina Becker’s article on the attacks on NUS democracy (Weekly Worker November 1).

It is quite revealing that David desperately digs up Solidarnosc and how the CPGB once “regarded the Soviet Union as the centre of the world revolution” (www.workersliberty.org/node/9475). This is rather silly and cheap polemic, amounting to a deliberate attempt to confuse readers.

True, when we were publishing The Leninist back in the early 80s, we refused to join the orchestrated hysteria surrounding Solidarnosc. Lech Walesa was no hero of ours. Instead warnings were issued that Solidarnosc was bent on capitalist restoration and selling Poland to US imperialism.

David should also know better than most, as he was once a member of the CPGB, that the Soviet Union was always described as the “centre of world revolution” because of objective criteria. Russia/Soviet Union being that country where the contradictions of the global transition from capitalism to communism were most acute, most intense. There was no admiration of Leonid Brezhnev or Mikhail Gorbachev. On the contrary, they were denounced and the regime they presided over was described as “bureaucratic socialism”.

But that was a long time ago, almost as long ago as when the precursors of the AWL were championing the provisional IRA. Comrade Broder’s attempt to spread confusion and bring in secondary or completely irrelevant issues is, however, standard when it comes to the AWL’s approach.

Nonetheless, comrade Broder does at least attempt to engage with some of the political points that comrade Becker and Communist Students have made in relation to the attacks on democracy in the National Union of Students that we are currently witnessing.

I cannot speak for comrade Becker, but I imagine that when she characterised a meeting of the AWL’s student group, Education Not for Sale, as a rather “dull” affair, this was not on account of her fetishisation of “ultra-left politicking”, as comrade Broder claims, but rather due to the fact that the gathering revolved around lectures on topics such as ‘Ten years of New Labour’s education policy’. It would be much better if the organisers had consciously sought to promote debate where there are important differences.

A good example within the AWL (and probably ENS too) is over the vital question of Iran. For example, there could have been a discussion with a speaker from Hands Off the People Of Iran, which in the face of the “political degeneration” of the anti-war movement, as Sofie Buckland put it, would have made for a good debate.

The Communist Students proposal for such a debate was, however, “forgotten” by the organisers. They preferred to invite a couple of slightly washed out ‘Marxist academics’ from the 1970s who rambled on for ages about nothing in particular (even AWL members in the gathering admitted that the long opening session was tedious and boring).

But what about the main points raised by comrade Broder on the substantive question? Yes, David, while we support the ENS’s statement (www.free-education.org.uk/?p=397) as a starting point for an NUS campaign, we think it is insufficient - despite the abstract aim to “widen and extend democracy”. If this is a real aim, and not a routine pose, why do you refuse to call for the abolition of the direct election by conference of NUS officers, particularly the president?

This arrangement is far from democratic - though it might appear to be for the naive or the uneducated. Direct election of officers in practice leads to a situation where they cannot be held to account until the next conference. If they so choose, they can do exactly as they want, regardless of competence or political persuasion. As you will undoubtedly recall, it was Kat Fletcher - a former AWL member benefiting from the organisation’s fulsome backing - who, despite talking the talk, used what is the Bonapartist position of NUS president to attack NUS democracy.

Instead of this procedure we propose that the elected executive should decide who from among its number should fill which officer’s post - and have the right to recall and replace those who either are not up to the job or see fit to ignore the NEC’s collective decisions in the name of a claimed mandate to act for the ‘whole membership’. That would probably have meant that Kat Fletcher would not have remained NUS president over the whole 2004-06 period. No loss, as far as we are concerned.

Moreover, unless in addition the executive as a whole is made accountable to and instantly recallable by the membership, we will never reach the stage where Labour bureaucrats look for their training elsewhere. Comrade Broder dismisses this extreme democracy as being a system that would “in reality mean the election of officers wielding wide powers by a very small number of people”. No, David, that is the situation that already exists, and one that needs to end.

This relates to our criticism of the AWL proposal for a “major cutting back of bureaucratic waste and redirection of resources to campaigning”. It is not that we disagree with this - far from it. But what is the best way to achieve it? Should we urge NUS delegates to trust candidates who pledge to cut “bureaucratic waste”? Or should we go further and seek to bring the whole NUS machine under wider, more democratic control?

The drive for accountability and control of the leadership is also pertinent within our own working class organisations - that is, if we are to break from the straightjacket of the Labourite and trade union bureaucracy. The AWL itself does not operate a system of direct election of officers by the whole membership. Quite correctly, conference elects a national committee, which in turn elects an executive to whom the officers are accountable. What is the objection to a version of this system for the NUS and, for that matter, other democratic bodies?

Communists Students, for example, consciously eschews the direct election of officers. Its constitution lays down that: “Conference is the highest decision-making body of CS …. Conference elects the executive, which acts as the national leadership of CS between conferences … The executive will appoint recallable national officers to facilitate its work” (www.communiststudents.org.uk/const.html).

If David could elaborate on the way that the ENS membership constitutionally elects, holds to account and, if necessary, recalls its leadership, I think that this may also be helpful to the discussion, because all I can find by way of a democratic structure is a “draft document” from 2005 (www.free-education.org.uk/?p=40#more-40). Does ENS actually operate according to the rules of democracy and accountability?

We are not rubbishing the “united front” comrade Broder puts forward as a way of fighting the attacks on NUS democracy. Our method is not that of the Spartacist League - we are willing to work with any serious campaign fighting against the further bureaucratisation of the NUS. What we are saying, though, is that this present campaign has insufficient politics. But, as Sofie Buckland of the AWL argues in her critique of the rightism of the SWP on this question, the fact that a campaign may “as a whole” adopt “a particular platform” does not mean that “people have to agree with every dot and comma to work with it”.

Quite right, yet it does beg the question as to why the AWL - purportedly against war on Iran and in solidarity with democratic struggles there - cannot support Hands Off the People of Iran! But, given the foul politics the AWL espouses on the role of imperialism in the Middle East, perhaps the answer is not so hard to work out. The AWL “model motion” for NUS conference on Iran states that “the current chaos, sectarian conflict and corporate plunder consuming Iraq proves that American (and British) military adventures in the Middle East have almost invariably disastrous consequences” (my emphasis). At first sight this seems reasonable enough. But what is meant by “almost invariably”? According to the AWL’s number two, Martin Thomas, a “surgical operation” to “take out the foul Ahmadinejad” would actually be “good” and not at all “disastrous” (Solidarity October 11).

Back to the NUS campaign. The point made by comrade Becker is that there is hardly any difference between the AWL proposals and those of the SWP. For example, ENS agreed to drop the demand that “Salaried officials should receive no more than an average skilled worker” on the basis that its “non-inclusion was a judgement call about how to build a broad campaign”.

So the ENS did not want to scare the SWP off and AWL comrades have admitted as much to me. But the SWP still did not support the remaining ENS demands. The worker’s wage principle has a rich history in our movement and we think it would be good to include it - as comrade Broder points out, it is not as if nobody has raised these demands before. At the launch meeting for the campaign to defend NUS democracy, AWL comrades actually supported CS members when they put it forward. Why not include it in the ENS statement? Especially now that the SWP has made quite sure that it will not be adopted by the campaign overall.

Comrade Broder states that all student unions should hold regular, decision-making general meetings. That too is a good demand, so why did it not feature in the ENS statement drafted for the campaign?

The same applies to the restoration of the NUS winter conference (or at least for the increased duration of the conference now) - why do you not put forward such a demand if you actually think they are a good idea?

As to David’s barb that our comrades did not know about the old winter conferences - as well as coming across as rather desperate, it is demonstrably false. In the report of the last NUS conference that Dave Isaacson and I produced, we noted: “Back in the early 1990s there used to be two conferences a year, five days in length. Clearly if we are interested in increasing democracy in NUS we need to start reversing these ‘reforms’ (cuts) and giving members the time (and energy) to discuss motions properly” (Weekly Worker April 5).

Yes, there are some organisational challenges involved in our proposal for staging a unified national election day for all student unions, but to dismiss this as “almost impossible” seems to underline how the AWL approach does not seriously pose an alternative to the bureaucracy. One of the reasons that the right gets away with what it does in the NUS, and why the mass of the membership is so apathetic, is that student unions call elections at the most odd times, and fail to publicise them properly, so that many students do not even know about them, let alone think about or engage with the politics of the candidates.

Let us move on to grants. To allege, as comrade Broder does, that the figure we are putting forward - that is, £300 per week - is nothing more than to “pose left”, then this once again highlights the AWL’s substitution of Labourism for the Marxist political method. We begin with human need as against the logic of capital. Our demands address what students actually require in order to live something like a rounded life. Not only having sufficient money for housing, transport, food, clothing, etc, but time - including time for thinking, time for relaxation and time for politics. We completely reject the idea that time-consuming minimum wage jobs, poverty and huge debts are the inevitable lot of the mass of students.

The AWL method is to note what the trade union or student bureaucracy is saying, add on a couple of pounds and sprinkle onto it the ‘transitional’ fairy dust to concoct a recipe that they understand as politics. This is the point we have raised with the AWL and will raise again: the failure to intervene in struggles armed with the Marxist programme. Unless we stop asking what the system can afford, unless we go beyond making empty calls for a “democratic campaigning NUS” with a few left sound bites added, we will continue to see the election of yet more well-meaning leftists turned bureaucrats like Kat Fletcher.

Such differences should not prevent the cooperation of ENS and CS on issues like the democracy campaign. However, pathetic attempts to pass off our criticisms as attempts to “bash others on the left as a matter of principle, especially anyone connected to Workers’ Liberty” or to argue on the basis of ‘We’ve been doing this for years - you haven’t!’ are just not serious politics.

We criticise the AWL not “as a matter of principle”. We criticise the AWL for what it has been doing “for years” - that is, over its lack of principle. And we shall continue to attack the AWL’s economism, the AWL’s inconsistent approach to democracy and the AWL’s appalling social imperialism witnessed over Iraq, Iran, Israel, etc.

Israel is buying crude oil from Iran

Published in the Swiss newspaper “Sonntags”, March 30 2008; p.20. Translated by yours truly.

Israel is buying crude oil from Iran
In spite of their own calls for a boycott, the Israelis are profiting from their arch-enemy’s black gold - delivered via Europe. Israel is protesting against the deal on natural gas struck between Iran and the Swiss electric company Laufenberg. Yet research shows that Israel itself is obtaining oil from its adversary.

By Shraga Elam

Last week, the trustworthy Israeli Energy Newsletter “Energia News” reported that Israel is importing Iranian oil via Europe on a grand scale, although contact with Iran, as well as the purchasing of its products, is officially being boycotted. The newsletter is produced by experienced economic journalists, and renowned politicians and people from the world of economics sit on its editorial board.

“Energia News” received the information about the trade with Iran from sources close to the management of the Israeli company Oil Refineries Ltd. This company definitely knows where the black gold is coming from – after all, this is the company refining it. According to “Energia News” Iranian crude oil is popular in Israel, as it is qualitatively better than other forms of oil.

The editor-in-chief of “Energia News”, Moshe Shalev, further states that the Iranian oil reaches various European harbours. But it is predominantly shipped to Rotterdam, where it is bought by Israelis and given the relevant transportation and insurance papers. Then it is transported to Haifa in Israel. The importer is the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline company (EAPC), which however keeps quiet about the source of its oil.

Half of the EAPC actually belongs to Iran – it was founded in 1968 by the Shah together with Israel. In order to avoid embarrassing Iran, the transaction was carried out through a common company in Geneva – Trans Asiatic Oil. Since the fall of the Shah there has been a court procedure against this company. The reason: Israel is refusing to recognise Iranian claims, which are in the billions.

It is unclear whether the Iranian exporters know about the import of crude oil from Israel. The Israeli purchasers and government departments on the other hand – in a crass circumvention of the boycott that they are publicly promoting – are fully aware of the origin of the precious black gold.

The article even managed to survive Israeli censorship, although it did push through a few amendments. Yet this further increases the reliability of the information. In the nineties, such reports were still banned.

At the request of the Swiss newspaper “Sonntags”, the energy expert of a leading Israeli newspaper confirmed the information, saying that Israel has been importing crude oil from Iran for years, albeit on the free market and not directly from Iran. Still, despite the fact that these are boycotted goods and that Israel is the driving force behind the ostracism of Iran were not considered sufficient for the Israeli media to pick up this subject.

The spokesman of Oil Refineries Ltd., Moshe Debby, however denied that his company imports or processes Iranian oil. Yet his statement conflicts with articles in Israeli newspapers from October 2006. At this time there was an exception in the censorship policy and newspapers like “Ha’aretz” reported that the Israeli company Paz wanted to import Iranian crude oil - which was to be refined in Israel, partly delivered to the Palestinian authorities and sold on the Israeli market.

In the same article, the Israeli Energy Minister Benjamin Ben Elieser is quoted as pragmatically saying that, “every attempt to make contact with an enemy state which serves the business and economic interests of Israel increases stability in the region”. And the Israeli Finance Ministry let it be known that researching where the oil came from was not the business of this particular department.