SWP: In the footsteps of WRP?
international |
anti-war / imperialism |
other press 
Monday November 05, 2007 12:06
by John Cornford
Jamers Turley outlines the history of the WRP and how it recieved money from despots such as Saddam and went to pretend that Iraq was a democracy. This raises questions as to why the SWP support the Iran Regime and portray it as progressive.
It is now indisputable that Healy was looking beyond his own members and supporters for funds. It was this that led him in 1976 to send a WRP delegation to visit the Libyan government of Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi and to request money for a new printing press. Healy himself apparently visited Libya the following year.6 It is unclear the extent to which financial assistance was ultimately procured from Qaddafi. In his investigative documents relating to the 1985 split, David North claimed over £1 million in total from Libya, Ba’athist Iraq and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.7
Some of this was undoubtedly given a ‘legitimate’ veneer. The WRP’s print shop took on contracts to print, for example, 250,000 copies of Qaddafi’s Green book. Various other ‘favours’ are well documented and now infamous. News Line journalists were ordered to take pictures of communist demonstrators outside the Iraqi embassy and print off extra-large copies to be handed to the WRP’s Ba’athist paymasters.8 No less repulsively, money was taken from Libya for “information-gathering” with “openly anti-semitic undertones” - the defunct libertarian-socialist paper Solidarity describes it plainly as “Jew-spotting in the media, politics and business”.9
Likewise, there is a political imperative behind the SWP’s new-found appreciation of Tehran. I am not for a moment suggesting that the SWP is doing it for the money, but its recent popular frontism could lead it in all manner of directions. The presence of an Iranian state television crew at the STWC conference is certainly worrying, for example, demonstrating at the very least a degree of cooperation with the Iranian embassy. It is clear that the SWP has talked itself into regarding the foul Tehran regime as basically anti-imperialist and therefore progressive. Rotten politics will lead socialists to rotten actions.
Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2An article in The Independent deals with accusations of the SWP/STWC taking a soft line on Human Rights abuses by the Tehran Regime.
Disagreement has broken out between activists within the anti-war movement after the Stop the War Coalition refused to allow HOPI, a group that campaigns against military intervention in Iran, to join its ranks.
The decision has prompted a number of prominent activists, including Peter Tatchell and Michael Mansfield QC, to accuse the coalition of being apologists for the Iranian government by "refusing to allow any criticism" of the Tehran regime.
There is a bitter division within the anti-war movement over human rights abuses perpetrated by the Iranian regime amid bellicose US policies towards Iran. A growing number of activists have begun arguing that the anti-war left is too willing to turn a blind eye to the Ayatollahs' policies.
"None of the outrageous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Iranian government have ever been condemned by the Stop the War Coalition," Peter Tatchell said. "There's a worrying minority within the anti-war movement who are out-and-out apologists of the Tehran regime."
Attila the Stockbroker said: "Various members of the left are prepared to make very bizarre friendships with regimes that they should have nothing to do with. I'm completely puzzled how anyone could adopt such an uncritical attitude to a regime that persecutes homosexuals, leftists and women."
This is a letter published in The Guardian on 6 November 2007.
As long-time supporters of the anti-war movement, we are alarmed by the decision of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) to reject the affiliation of Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi). The StWC claims Hopi's aims and campaigns are "entirely hostile" to the anti-war movement.
In fact it is committed to two humanitarian objectives: opposition to western sanctions or military attacks on Iran, and solidarity with the struggles of Iranian democrats, socialists, women, students, workers and oppressed minority nationalities against the Ahmadinejad regime. Hopi is totally opposed to externally imposed regime change. It supports democracy from below and within.
We are deeply concerned that the StWC refuses to allow any criticism of the tyranny in Tehran and that it opposes solidarity with progressive Iranians working for human rights and social justice. We reject both Bush's war-mongering and the despotism of the Iranian regime, and so should the StWC.
Michael Mansfield, Peter Tatchell, Derek Wall, Lisa Goldman, Sue Blackwell, Attila the Stockbroker, Dave Osler, Mohamad Reza Shalgouni, Yassamine Mather
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