Daily Telegraph – 26 March 2003

Having raised the curious case of Andrew Murray, "chair" of the Stop the War Coalition, in the Commons last week, may I add to the excellent report (22 March) by Philip Johnston on the role of Communists at the head of this anti-war organisation? The idea that huge numbers of sincere protesters are allowing themselves to be led by a supporter of a nuclear-armed North Korea beggars belief – but that is what is happening.

In his recent "Political Report" to the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Britain, Mr Murray warns his comrades of

"the very real dangers in the Far East and around Peoples Korea",

adding that:

"Our party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear."

He gloats that the present rift between America and Britain, on the one hand, and France and Germany on the other,

"marks the worst state of inter-imperialist relations since 1945",

and identifies a struggle between the great powers

"over how, and by whom, the peoples of the world are to be dominated in the interests of capital".

He admits that his aim is

"not only to stop the war drive, but also to deal a broader blow to 'new Labour' itself"

and accurately predicts that the second huge demonstration (held last weekend) will

"inevitably have a second slogan, as well as Stop the War. It will be Blair Must Go ... The 'reclaim Labour' strategy needs to be taken out of Parliament and ... onto the streets in rallies in every major town over the next month or two".

His report ends with a plea:

"We need to do far more to study Marxism-Leninism in an updated and relevant way"

and to ensure that new members

"are educated as Communists and learn to work as Communists".

I had thought that my days of unearthing totalitarians at the heart of "peace movements" had ended in 1991. Yet, here is a case of a former worker for the Soviet Novosti Press Agency in precisely such a key position, being solemnly quoted by the anti-war media as if he were a representative of democratic politics.

JULIAN LEWIS MP
Opposition Spokesman for Defence
House of Commons
London SW1

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[For Andrew Murray's response in the Daily Telegraph, click here. It states, in part: "I have never made any secret of my political views. The document from which [Julian Lewis] quotes is freely and publicly available."

Not any more, however.

Whereas the full text of Murray's 'Political Report to the March 2003 Communist Party of Britain Executive Committee' used to be available (at "www.communist-party.org.uk", subsection "/articles/2003/march/10-03-03.shtml"), that link has been mischievously re-directed away from the CPB website to a spam-generating site.

Indeed, as it appears that the Murray Report has been removed from the CPB website altogether, it is now made "freely and publicly available" below, courtesy of the Wayback Machine internet archive.]

* * *

Communist Party of Britain: Report To the March 2003 Executive Committee Meeting

By Andrew Murray

There is no need to exaggerate the historic significance of the times we are living in. As we meet, a year-long struggle against an Anglo-American attack against Iraq is reaching its climax.

That struggle has already proved historic in our own country. On February 15 in London and Glasgow we saw the largest demonstrations – by a very considerable margin – that have ever taken place in Britain. We have seen the largest back-bench rebellion against a government in more than 100 years of parliamentary history. And we have seen the TUC General Council come out against the war – at long last; the first time it has done so against a conflict in which Britain is going to participate for many years.

The International Crisis

The international crisis is proving historic in other respects, too. It is provoking the collapse of not one but two world orders at the same time. Firstly, it is putting the institutions which have embodied the post-world war two world under unprecedented strain, both those, like the United Nations, in which humanity has invested considerable hopes, and those like NATO and the European Union which have expressed more specifically the interests of imperialism alone. And the crisis also marks the end of the 1991 "new world order", the illusion of a peaceful and stable domination of the world by a consortium of big powers, under the benevolent hegemony of the United States.

What is happening at the UN, within the EU, today is about far more than simply whether or not to launch a war against Iraq. It is the opening shots in a new struggle for global domination, triggered by the brazen drive of the present ultra-right administration in Washington to impose US hegemony on the world. This basic thrust is spelt out in all the documents of the Bush administration, and its targets include not just the so-called "axis of evil" but also long-standing allies.

I will not deal here in any detail with the underlying economic impulses at work, largely because they were clearly spelt out by John Foster in his report to the executive committee last November. But it is important to note that this conflict arises in a context of deepening economic problems for all the major capitalist powers, problems which, I would argue, are more than merely cyclical.

They represent the exhaustion of those factors which powered the prolonged boom of the 1990s – the opening up of the former socialist countries, the introduction of new technology in production and services, the removal of most barriers to the free movement of capital globally. These factors permitted a great increase in the mass of surplus value and a general rise in the average rate of profit. But these factors are now to a large extent incorporated within the world capitalist economy – that is, they no longer provide significant opportunities for achieving super-profit, over and above the average rate.

We should note here that investment in Britain has already fallen to a forty-year low, in advance of the further dislocation war will bring. This will affect manufacturing jobs in particular. The working class in Britain will pay a heavy price, we should remember, for war.

The drive to seize command of the world economy in the interests of its own monopoly groups now propels the US government to seek to seize command of every corner of the world itself. This does not need any amplification in relation to the Middle East at present. But we should also be alert to the very real dangers in the Fareast and around Peoples Korea. The clear desire of the USA to effect "regime change" in its second "axis of evil" target could well provoke an armed clash there, too. Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear.

What is just as striking is the rift that has opened up between the USA and Britain, on the one hand, and France and Germany on the other, with Russia more aligned at present with the latter group. The level of vitriol, the diplomatic stand-off, marks the worst state of inter-imperialist relations since 1945.

These are the harbingers of still more serious conflicts than those we face today. They show that the "unipolar" world which has emerged since 1991, centred on US military supremacy does not merely embody US hegemony but at the same time undermines it by calling forth an increasingly assertive challenge to Washington’s policies among other powers now convinced that the US will look after its interests alone, rather than those of imperialism as a whole.

In the current crisis, this is shown by the actions being taken by the Bush group to undermine the unity of the EU, to prevent its emergence as an alternative pole of power in the world economy, something spelt out in Bush’s security doctrine. Hence the rounding up of the east European states into a bloc against France and Germany, hence the drive to force Turkey into the EU in order to weaken the Union’s cohesion. We do not wish to see the emergence of an EU superpower, nor do we want to replace a world with one great imperialist state by a world with several. But we should not the purpose and plan behind the attitude now being taken by Washington, with Britain’s support, towards European politics.

It may be noted in passing that all the parties to this conflict are capitalist countries, more-or-less democratic. This makes a nonsense of the theory of the "end of history", which posited that the universal dominance of democratic capitalism would remove systemic conflict from the conduct of human affairs.

So there are two struggles going on at present. There is the struggle between the great powers over how and by whom the peoples of the world are to be dominated in the interests of capital. And there is the struggle of the peoples of the world against US hegemony above all, expressed today in the unprecedented – there is no escaping that word – movement against Bush’s planned attack on Iraq.

That war drive is continuing unabated. The most sober assessment that can be made is that Bush will start his war, probably later on this month. He will not be deflected by the latest Blix report, which outlines improving co-operation by the Iraqi regime with the inspections process, nor by the parallel report by El-Baradei, which not only declared that there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons programme, but also firmly stated that evidence purporting to disclose one had been deliberately forged. In Niger, apparently.

Bush has stated he will go to war without United Nations sanction, if necessary. This makes a nonsense of the present proceedings at the Security Council. Either the USA will ignore the UN, behaving in a manner reminiscent of the attitude shown by nazi Germany towards the League of Nations, leaving the UN redundant. Or it will impose its will on the Security Council through bullying and bribery, thereby turning the international organisation more plainly than ever before into the instrument of one power"s policy.

In this situation, Blair’s talk of "unreasonable vetoes" is absurd. You can see Jack Straw brandishing the UN Charter – yet nowhere in that document will you find a reference to the concept of an "unreasonable veto". It doesn’t exist. It shows simply that the whole second resolution issue is about nothing except saving the neck of the British government, about helping it attempt to bridge the gap between the promises Blair has made to Bush and the clear views of the British people. It is not obvious that a second resolution extorted under such circumstances will give the Prime Minister the public opinion lift he is counting on.

The British ruling class is deeply split over Blair’s policy. This is reflected in the media, in the Tory Party and, according to report, in the military and intelligence services themselves. This fact enhances the possibilities of victory for the mass movement.

It arises because of the clear sense that this war is in the interests of the USA alone, and that the interests of the British ruling class are not so dramatically different from those of France and Germany. This shows the deep fractures in the bourgeoisie over British imperialism’s specific role in world politics, the tension between its over-arching strategic alignment with the USA, which reflects the global role of the City of London above all, and its deep engagement with the EU. The contradictions in British imperialism’s position are being accentuated by the crisis, and this may affect the way in which the single currency issue is handled in the near future.

We should note here that, from the point of view much of the rest of the world, this appears simply as a reassertion of the aggressive role of British imperialism. Certainly, we are today on the brink of a British invasion of Iraq, a former colony of the British Empire and one, moreover where chemical weapons were first used against civilian populations – by the RAF.

The Mass Movement in Britain

The world crisis has called for the a movement in Britain which has the capacity to not only stop the war drive but also to deal a broader blow to "new Labour" itself.

The character of that movement is changing and developing. Prior to February 15, it was a very large anti-war movement. From February 15, I believe it has extended still further into a broad people’s movement for peace, of course, but also as an extension of that, for democracy and for popular sovereignty, against a government which is denying the people’s will on an issue of transcendent importance, and subordinating our people to the interests of the USA.

Historical analogies are necessarily imperfect, but this movement has similarities in its aim and scope with the classic ideas of the popular front. However, I would emphasise two important differences.

The most significant is that while the popular front was directed above all against fascism, and sought to bring social democracy into a broad movement against fascism, today’s people’s movement has as its target a particularly reactionary group within social democracy itself. Secondly, the present movement has developed a more explicit anti-imperialist content than any we have seen before. Both these points bear deeply on the movement’s character.

The anti-war movement has the greatest political potential of any I have encountered in my political lifetime. It combines militancy with breadth. It is rooted on the left, and in the peace movement, with CND paying a particular role. It has embraced the Muslim community in Britain in a wholly new way. It has now got a firm and extensive base in the trade unions. It reaches out into the Liberal Democrats in a serious way, and even into the ranks of conservatives.

The Stop the War Coalition has itself played a role in relation to all these forces. As February 15 showed, it reaches into the great mass of those who ordinarily consider themselves non-political. It is just about as broad as the country itself.

I would emphasise again that it is not just a movement against war, but it also feels like a movement for democracy, for popular control, a movement that believes the rights of the British people are being traduced by government.

The issue the Coalition is grappling with now is how to develop that movement. The next stage is the People's Assembly we are convening on March 12. Like everything else we have attempted, it is a gamble. It is conceived as a new instrument of popular expression, in the context of the war crisis. Its aim is both to serve as the real representative voice of the people, and at the same time as an amplifier of calls to action, as a legitimiser of various forms of mass struggle. Its strength will in large measure depend on the perception of its representative nature and democratic character. Its future role is obviously uncertain at present. In my view, the development of the mass struggle against the war will set the limits of its activities. It will be driven by the people in that sense.

Mass action against the war both before it breaks out in the time we have, and particularly when it breaks out, is the critical issue. Walk-outs in the workplace are absolutely critical. We understand that the trade unions cannot call for such action themselves because of the anti-union laws. But we must organise to make it happen anyway. We should follow the lead of the inspiring school students walk-out on Wednesday – can trade unionists do less? I speak as a proud parent in this respect. If war breaks out there will certainly be an explosion of anger in communities, colleges, schools and workplaces throughout the country. The Stop the War Coalition will call a further national demonstration. It will inevitably have a second slogan, as well as Stop the War. It will be Blair Must Go.

The Crisis in the Labour Movement

This is where the political situation is full of possibilities, but equally full of dangers. The biggest danger is that the wave of anger unleashed by war will wash away the political cohesion of the labour movement. It is the task of the Party to ensure that the movement that will arise breaks Blair, but not the Labour Party.

The present situation within the labour movement is febrile. Many people are not merely opposed to the government now – they have come to hate the government. At least two unions are openly talking of disaffiliation from Labour. There is speculation that many thousands of individual members may leave. Some left MPs are canvassing different projects that risk re-running the experiences of the SLP and the Socialist Alliance. The danger is of a fragmentation of left and working-class forces at a critical time.

Opinion polls still suggest that the great majority of Labour voters will, if they vote at all, continue to vote Labour. So the danger that arises from a fragmentation is not of Labour disappearing, but of the possibility of defeating new Labour within it disappearing, as the forces needed for that fight disperse among a variety of schemes to do something or nothing. If the mass peace movement gets drawn into such projects, then there is a risk of it fragmenting too, and its potential shrivelling.

In this context, we should look briefly at the May elections. We should endorse proposals for Party candidates in Scotland, Wales and some English districts. But we should also be aware of the likelihood of a number of anti-war candidates standing in some places. This is a reflection of the anger and disillusionment with Labour, but it is not particularly sensible. The Stop the War Coalition will not, I think, endorse such candidates, but it has no brief to oppose, still less prevent, them. Our own policy in the elections should be firmly focussed on our central demand for a change in the leadership of the Labour Party and labour movement.

Our Party has to walk a very fine line in the implementation of our strategy. We want to fight to reclaim Labour. We believe that fight needs to be fought now. We are opposed to breakaways and disaffiliations. But we want to ensure that the fight against new Labour does not drift off in a narrow or reformist direction. We want an emphasis on struggle around the immediate demands "peace above all" rather than on policy formulation for better days. The network of left union leaders are critical here. They could be at the centre of the struggle to change Labour. There are proposals for closer working with the Campaign Group.

This is welcome as far as it goes, but an exclusive concentration on the Campaign Group will not lead to victory. The net needs to be cast far wider, into the heart of "real Labour". Glenda Jackson, Peter Kilfoyle, Chris Smith, Frank Dobson and, if they leave government, Clare Short or Robin Cook are the critical figures. The union left needs to align with them as well as the parliamentary left if Blair is to be defeated.

The prize is then defeat of the most reactionary trend British social democracy has yet produced, a revival of the left and of the political confidence of the working class more generally under circumstances of a mass people’s mobilisation for peace and democracy. Only a united political labour movement can realise that aim.