From Islamophobia to Islam

Using concepts of Islamophobia as grounds for alliance with religious fundamentalists is not the sole prerogative of the SWP. In Denmark the red-green alliance, which once boasted that it was doing so well that it might well put forward a socialist platform in the next elections, decided that the way to show solidarity was to stand a Muslim candidate in the November elections. They decided on no half measures and selected as a candidate Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a young Muslim woman who wears the hijab and avoids contact with people of the male persuasion to the extent of refusing to shake hands with them. The Danish press had a field day, expressing dissatisfaction with her answers to questions on the death penalty and religious fundamentalism.

It is true that Denmark has a history of racist provocation against Muslims and it is the duty of socialists to oppose that provocation, but how it leads an organisation claiming a link with socialism to stand a religious zealot as their candidate is a little hard to follow.

The supporters of the Red-Green alliance found it hard to follow also. In fact they didn’t follow it to the extent that the alliances’ vote was cut from 3.4 % to 2.17 % of the vote, the worst result for the alliance since it entered parliament in 1994. In case the RGA was in any doubt about cause and effect, the opinion polls went through the floor as soon as they announced their candidate. Any remaining doubt was removed when former voters left the polling booth declaring that they no longer supported the group on the basis of Asmaa’s candidacy.

To rub salt in the wounds, the left reformist Socialist Peoples Party (SPP) more than doubled its votes from 6 % to 13 % on the back of worker’s radicalisation based on big mobilisations defending the welfare system.

We are far from seeing a revolutionary movement in Denmark. Neither the Red-Green alliance nor the SSP come close. But certain things are clear-cut. Socialists should oppose imperialist wars. They should defend Muslims from racist prosecution, but a socialist programme is aimed at the working class, rather than some confused liberal alliance with religious fundamentalism.

Mind you, Denmark isn’t the only part of the globe where leftists have given up on the workers and embraced alliances with quite reactionary forces. These miniature Denmarks are likely to go the same way as the Red-Green alliance.

Eamonn McCann, the zeitgeist and the RIRA

In the Belfast telegraph of November 22^nd http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/article3164196.ece ) Eamonn McCann wrote a piece ‘How five deaths in 1957 are still echoing today’. The article has caused some comment, interpreted as McCann supporting or defending republicanism. The comments miss the point. McCann is doing what the SWP does best – sensing the zeitgeist. In the process he is yet again moving sharply to the right.

The central argument contrasts Adams support for the 1957 Edentubber martyrs with his condemnation of real IRA attacks on the RUC/PSNI today. For McCann, Derry today is no different from Edentubber in the past. The problem is republicanism, he concludes, quoting Adams hypocritical attack on the RIRA: "These groups have no strategy, no programmes, no popular support and no real capacity - militarily or otherwise. They have chosen random acts of intimidation and isolated acts of individual violence which are politically ineffective and result only in pain and suffering for the individuals targeted and their families. The overall effect is retrograde at every level and in every sense."

But what is the context? Is there a current debate about strategy among republicans or a debate in the socialist movement where the important thing is to put forward a socialist critique of militarism? No there is not. What there is, is an attempt by the remaining republicans to relaunch their military campaign, countered by hysterical demands for their repression, led by Dublin, Sinn Fein and the northern Catholic bourgeoisie, with the Derry journal labelling the RIRA fascist.

Socialists oppose the militarist tactics of the RIRA, but we believe that republicans and socialists should oppose a settlement that is sectarian and undemocratic. We should oppose Sinn Fein’s lick-spittle hypocrisy, the calls for repression by the nationalist reactionaries and the attempts to advance further a police offensive in nationalist areas.

Although Eamonn knows all this, like all economist socialists he falls behind the popular mood. The fact that the next day he finds himself protesting when the RUC/PSNI refuse medical treatment to a republican whose arm they have broken in three places just shows the confusion that this position can get you into, a confusion magnified by McCann’s place in court as a defendant in the Raytheon 9 case – McCann’s own milder version of the direct action he decries in RIRA

The current imperialist settlement is no longer up than it is decaying from its own corruption. It so bad that even a movement as politically bankrupt as republican militarism can begin to revive. In no small measure this is due to the reluctance of the left to lead any principled opposition to the reactionary Stormont regime. Once Eamonn would have told us that that imperialism was responsible for the endemic violence in Ireland – no more.

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