Labour Briefing will be discussing a proposal about the future of the magazine at its AGM in July. Pete Firmin, member of Briefing’s Editorial Board and Joint Secretary, Labour Representation Committee, argues that Labour Briefing should be the LRC’s magazine. Briefing EB member John Stewart argues that Briefing should retain its independence.

Pete Firmin

At the AGM of Labour Briefing on 7th July, I shall be proposing that Labour Briefing become the publication of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). Central for socialists is organising around our politics. A publication plays an important role in that. As part of the LRC, the magazine could make a major contribution beyond what Briefing is capable of.

In context

Neo-liberalism has collapsed post-crash, but the ruling class is not clear about what should replace it, nor is our movement. Ultimately this will be decided by the balance of forces. Revolts in several North African and Middle East countries have brought down or seriously troubled the existence of regimes, but they are far from being replaced by anything resembling socialism. In most of Europe and the U.S. this has not gone beyond the level of protest. The ability of the working class and oppressed to resist has been limited by the weakness of our organisations, ideologically and organisationally.

In Britain capitalism has succeeded – so far – in imposing austerity measures and launching an assault on welfare provision. Apart from 26th March 2011, the TUC has worked to demobilise any fightback (such as over pensions). Some unions have been considerably better, though many have refused to go beyond the occasional protest. The victory of the electricians was achieved despite their unions.

Devoid of even social democratic policies and internal democracy, the Labour Party leadership has merely argued – within the confines of Parliament – over the detail with the “too far, too fast” mantra. Individual MPs struggle to get a hearing for an alternative. Labour-led Councils have shown next to no inclination even to protest against the cuts imposed on them. UK Uncut has been far more effective.

Those seeking to build an alternative party to Labour have had little success. Labour Briefing has correctly argued that an important part of the fight to reorient the labour movement must be within the Labour Party, but it also needs to recognise that there is a layer of activists who see Labour as a neo-liberal party, some seeing little point in relating to the broader labour movement at all.

The strength of the left in the Labour Party reflects the level of the class struggle. Without an increase in extra-parliamentary struggle there will be no strengthening of the left. If a resurgent left is to thrive, socialists must be part of the mass movements. We have to win their activists to our ranks, pointing to how political gains can be achieved and secured through the labour movement, without claiming to have all the answers.

What does this mean for Labour Briefing?

Briefing provides a broad, non-sectarian voice for the left, orientating politically towards the Labour Party and fighting to channel the demands of the broader movement and campaigns towards the Party and a Labour government.

We should be proud of Briefing as a magazine. Making Briefing the publication of the LRC would give it the bigger base, bigger readership and wider audience it deserves. There is much overlap of both political views and personnel (and even more so of supporters) between Briefing and the LRC. Many contributors to Briefing have prominent roles in the LRC.

The LRC, as an organisation, is committed to fighting for the Labour Party to support the resistance and, because of its links to the unions and to the wider movement, it is well placed to organise socialists. However the LRC is in need of a publication giving it a higher profile than its website does. To start one in competition with Briefing would be a duplication of effort.

An important aspect of Briefing’s tradition is that it has always been a non-sectarian current, rather than a monolithic journal propounding only its own line on issues. Briefing draws on authors who are not necessarily associated with its political “line”. The LRC must encourage those currently involved to continue.

Those who argue that the LRC has been wrong on this or that policy, whether or not they are correct on any one issue (and Briefing itself has hardly been immune), miss the point. A healthy organisation with a democratic life will sometimes make the wrong decision. Unless comrades are arguing that the LRC is intrinsically wrong and undemocratic, wrong decisions can be corrected. An organisation which is always right has serious faults.

For these reasons I am proposing that the AGM agrees to transfer Briefing to the LRC with immediate effect, with the aim of a relaunch at this autumn’s Labour Party conference.

Briefing should keep its independence

John Stewart

A document has been circulated calling for Briefing’s forthcoming AGM “to transfer Briefing to the LRC with immediate effect.” I want to argue that Briefing should retain its independence.

Labour Briefing has published since 1980. It has been a voice for socialists in the Labour Party – both reporting on campaigns and participating within them. Many supporters have been involved for the past 20 years or more.

Briefing’s durability gives it a stability lacking in the LRC. We should be cautious before giving that away. Our default position should be to retain Briefing unless others can demonstrate the superiority of their proposals. We should not surrender Briefing to another organisation simply because we are tired, see no way forward and are hoping for an immediate injection of human and financial capital.

The transfer proposal is argued on the LRC’s large membership and that the LRC overlaps with Briefing both in terms of shared politics and shared personnel. The LRC claims the support of over 1,000 members and dozens of affiliates. However, my standing order to the LRC lapsed 26 months ago and I have never been asked to pay any subscription since, yet I still receive LRC mailings and recently filled in my LRC membership survey. How many others are in the same position?

A cursory look at the LRC website show that two affiliates (Network of Socialist Campaign Groups and Labour Against the War) have not existed for several years. Briefing’s administration is simple and reliable. Subscribers pay for their magazine and everyone knows where they are. If, as argued, there is such an overlap of supporters, then an LRC takeover of Briefing cannot bring with it the promised avalanche of new subscribers.

Affiliates to the LRC include the New Communist Party and the Morning Star Supporters Group. Would an LRC Briefing have to open its pages to those who supported the USSR’s invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and who may now support the Governments of North Korea and China? Recently, another affiliate, Labour Party Marxists, repeatedly criticised Briefing Chair, Christine Shawcroft, in print during the Labour NEC election campaign. Would this be the way forward for an LRC Briefing? Anyone who follows the LRC email discussion list will know this is not an unwarranted fear.

My greatest concern is that an LRC takeover may lead to negative developments on the wider Labour left.

In 2008 there were arguments over the Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) slate for the Labour Party National Executive elections. A resolution was agreed at the May 2008 Briefing AGM re-affirming Briefing’s support for the CLGA. In June, at the first meeting of the newly elected Editorial Board, a leading member of both Briefing and the LRC moved that Briefing neither contribute financially to the CLGA nor distribute its leaflet due to the recommendation to vote for Ellie Reeves. When I objected that this contradicted the AGM decision and asked the then-Chair of the EB, also a leading LRC activist, to rule this proposal out of order, she refused to do so. This was an example of the LRC having a negative influence on both the politics and the internal democracy of Briefing.

In 2007, Jon Cruddas ran for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party on a platform of building more social housing, scrapping new NHS private contracts and city academies, and increasing party democracy. His refusal to nominate John McDonnell for Labour leader led to the LRC refusing to support Cruddas. This approach infected Briefing, with the June 2007 editorial implicitly calling for abstention in the contest and an article by Pete Firmin explicitly declaring “a plague on all their houses”. I wrote an article criticising this approach and arguing support for Cruddas which was published in the next issue. Would an article advocating support for one of the leading lights of the soft-left be included in a future LRC Briefing?

The central political strategy of the LRC has been to promote John McDonnell MP for Labour leader despite there being no chance of a Campaign Group-type candidate getting much support. When this attempt inevitably fails, others are criticised for their treachery, hostility to plurality, etc. I believe I could get an argument on these lines published in Briefing. Would such an article be included in a future LRC Briefing?
While the situation in the LRC has improved in recent years it remains politically capricious. It consistently overestimates its own strength while making little impact on the mainstream of the movement. Its national leadership gives little priority to building political co-operation and sometimes even damages existing alliances. While continuing to work with the LRC and others on the left, Briefing should retain its independence.

By Keith White

Dave was an early and keen Briefing supporter, though in recent years he became increasingly sceptical that the Labour Party would blossom again as a viable arena for socialists.

The car industry, where his dad worked, dominated Coventry – laying firm class foundations to Dave’s politics. He read English at Leeds University, where he found exciting political discussion enriched by such as E.P. Thompson, Cliff Slaughter and John Rex. Dave spoke vividly of those times which, together with experience in the LPYS, led him to the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League.

Healy’s youth movement, focussed around social activities, was an image he often evoked. He built significant YS groups in Leicester, where he trained as a teacher. His politics were people-friendly and he complained that many socialist organisations shied away from the human element.
The SLL was particularly inhuman and deeply sectarian, and in the period when the Vietnam War shaped left political life, Dave turned to the very small Workers Fight group. From 1968 to 1972 they worked in the International Socialists (IS) before Cliff got rid of them. Until 1990 – through the fusion with the Workers Socialist League, the split, the formation of the Socialist Group (SG) and then the International Socialist Group (ISG), Dave played a key role, trying hard to make these successive Trotskyist groupings less sectarian, more democratic and more open to broader radical movements.

Enthusiastic about Briefing’s Streetlife supplement, deeply affected by the feminist movement, he often quoted “the personal is political”. It became central to both his politics and teaching. Dave maintained work in several political arenas while contributing to education through his Primary Schools Programme, which thousands studied. Daytime classes in local schools allowed women with childcare responsibilities to study.

Inspired by Paulo Freire, Dave’s vision was that through education people could develop strength and confidence and be better able to take charge of their lives. It was his great achievement.

Dave encouraged people to write about their lives and emotions and what they produced exceeded his wildest hopes. Many women re-evaluated their future plans, even relationships, as a result of their studies. Though the scheme became widely known and eventually won a national prize, Dave never received the recognition he deserved from his employers – though his 1997 PhD was glowingly praised and in the hearts of his many students there was gratitude and deep affection.

In the Labour Party he became a West Midlands County Councillor and was almost selected as the candidate in our Euro-constituency. Through Socialist Organiser, the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, the Benn for Deputy campaign and Briefing, Dave was always pushing us to think bigger, broader and become more open to debate and dialogue. In 1981 young YS members in his tendency played a significant role in the Coventry anti-racist/fascist movement, forging important links with bands like the Specials.

He helped initiate West Midlands Labour Briefing, which tried to draw together the left throughout that vast area. It had huge potential, but the Metropolitan Counties and the GLC were abolished in 1986. Local Briefings such as Coventry and Warwickshire had more long-term success. After the miners’ strike and other defeats, when the Labour right became rampant, Dave eventually withdrew from the Party (they failed in an attempt to throw him out).

When Arthur Scargill launched the SLP Dave worked hard to build it but then, like most members, walked out in disgust at the behaviour of the leaders. Later it was the Socialist Alliance: he was an early member and then the sects moved in, took it over and closed it down. “The sects are a menace and a roadblock,” he later wrote.

For 20 years until his death, he worked with New Interventions a magazine of open socialist discussion and also, more recently, with The Commune. Locally, he and others organised discussions through the Coventry Radical Network.

He enjoyed playing the piano, singing in a local chorus, good food and people. He trained in shiatsu massage and aromatherapy and as a qualified counsellor helped refugees on a voluntary basis.

Active in his Residents’ Group, he was delighted that he, his partner Corinne and others had secured the children’s playground which will be a permanent reminder of his concern and contribution to the area. The sheer happiness on his face as he played there with his grandchildren says it all.

Political friend or foe alike found it easy to like him. He treated people with decency, humanity and respect. He was a true friend and comrade to many, and he kept the faith in his own inimitable way. He will be so terribly missed by all of those who loved him so very much. Condolences to Corinne, his son John and his grandchildren Austin and Olivia.

Mike Phipps examines attempts to hold accountable perpetrators of crimes against the peoples of a once war-torn region.
On 28th January 2012, a Guatemalan judge ruled that General Rios Montt, the US-backed dictator who ruled the country in 1982 and 1983, should face charges of genocide for the scorched earth policy he operated. The charges identify him as the intellectual author of crimes carried out in the Ixil Triangle in the El Quiché department. These include the forced displacement of 29,000 people and the deaths of 1,771 individuals in eleven massacres, as well as acts of torture and 1,485 acts of sexual violence against women. Activists from the indigenous Mayan community, which bore the brunt of these atrocities, hailed the decision as “historic and momentous”.

“We can establish these are acts so degrading, so humiliating that there is no justification,” the judge said after detailing the human rights abuses from survivors’ testimonies. The case was filed against a backdrop of rising danger for those involved in fighting for justice – 2011 was the most violent year since 2000 for human rights defenders, 19 of whom were murdered. It also has major implications for Guatemala’s new president, Otto Pérez Molina, who was a military commander in the Ixil Triangle where the genocide was carried out.

The war of the Guatemalan state against its citizens lasted 36 years. Some 200,000 people were killed and a further 45,000 “disappeared” in this period. It involved acts of unbelievable cruelty. One documented case was a massacre of over 160 villagers by government soldiers in 1982. According to the US-based Human Rights Watch, the abuses included “burying some alive in the village well, killing infants by slamming their heads against walls, keeping young women alive to be raped over the course of three days.” This was not an isolated incident, but one of over 400 massacres documented.

In another massacre, the army arrived in the evening, rounded up the villagers, disabled all escape routes and divided the women into two groups: one for rape before being killed and the other for immediate killing. To save bullets, the victims were crammed into a small house which was set on fire with grenades. Some 250 people were killed. In 2004, the government of Guatemala admitted to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights that the Rios Montt regime had practised a strategy of genocide.

The role of the US in all this is worth mentioning. Despite a suspension of military aid to Guatemala under the Carter Administration, covert support continued. In 1982, President Reagan resumed arms sales to the regime, saying Rios Montt was receiving a “bum rap”.

Human Rights Watch went so far as to say that “the Reagan Administration shares in the responsibility for the gross abuses of human rights practiced by the Government of Guatemala.” The CIA worked inside the Guatemalan army at this time, operating torture centres and helping to run a unit responsible for thousands of killings.

Guatemalan military officers were trained at the notorious US-run School of the Americas in Panama, which relocated to Fort Benning in Georgia in 1984. Manuals used in the training of officers contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnapping a target’s family members. The Pentagon eventually admitted that these manuals were a “mistake”.

Many of the threads of the Central American story lead back here. The School has graduated over 500 of the worst human rights abusers in the western hemisphere. One of them, a former Guatemalan Defence Minister, gave an address to the School as part of his “anti-terrorist” operations in Guatemala. In El Salvador, ten out of the twelve army officers cited in a UN report as responsible for a 1981 village massacre of over 200 people, the majority children, were graduates of the School. The same was true of the officer responsible for the rape and murder of three US nuns and a lay missionary a year earlier.
El Salvador’s gruesome past is also being revisited. The country’s Foreign Minister recently issued an apology for the El Mozote massacre 30 years ago. This was perpetrated by the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadorean army, who rounded up the over 1,000 villagers and systematically tortured, raped and murdered them, before setting fire to all the buildings. Girls as young as ten were raped and children had their throats slit and were hanged from the trees. One survivor, who escaped in the confusion and hid in a tree, later told reporters that the soldiers killed her husband, her nine-year-old son, and her three daughters aged five, three and eight months. The same troops went to a neighbouring village the following day and committed a further massacre.
The Reagan Administration dismissed the reports as “gross exaggerations” and the actions of the Battalion were described in the US Senate at the time as “commendable” and “professional”. The reporters who covered the story were vilified in the US media as credulous dupes of communism. Journalist Mark Danner, who wrote a book about the massacre in 1994, even suggests that US advisors were with the Battalion and observed the mission from its base camp. To this day, the US has never apologised for its role in the affair.

Nor has it ever apologised for its war on Nicaragua, which has never received a cent of compensation from the US for the long campaign of destabilisation it waged in the 1980s. This included US funding and training of armed terrorists who targeted health care clinics and workers for assassination, kidnapped, tortured and executed civilians, including children, raped women and seized and burned civilian property.

In a 1986 judgment, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the US had violated international law by supporting the Contras and by mining Nicaragua’s harbours. The US blocked enforcement of the Court’s judgment at the UN Security Council and thus prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any compensation. To this day, the US continues to ignore the ruling and has never paid any damages.

The US prefers to use proxy forces in its wars in the region. One exception was the invasion of Panama in 1989 which saw a full-scale US invasion of the country, involving 27,000 troops. At least one major massacre was perpetrated in the El Chorillo neighbourhood of the capital. On the night of the invasion, US Cobra and Apache helicopter gunships, airplanes, warships and land-based artillery bombarded, strafed and set fire to the area, while its residents slept. Some 4,000 houses were destroyed and the ensuing fire engulfed the neighbourhood. Firefighters were not allowed in by US troops. The attack was later compared to Guernica.

US forces arrested 7,000 people, including virtually every trade union leader and the leaders of all the progressive and nationalist parties, as well as cultural leaders. The invasion left 20,000 people homeless. The UN General Assembly condemned it as “a flagrant violation of international law”. No apology – let alone compensation – has ever been offered.

The Obama Administration has not distinguished itself from its predecessors. In June 2009, a military coup overthrew the popular Zelaya government in Honduras. The Obama Administration appeared to distance itself from the putsch at the time and pushed for fresh elections. These duly took place, without the participation of the ousted president, and were subject to widespread fraud and intimidation. Both presidential contenders in the fraudulent election backed the coup. Zelaya’s supporters called for a boycott and hundreds of candidates for Congress and local councils withdrew their names and shunned the elections.

Some 800 US personnel oversaw the poll, however, and were quick to proclaim its legitimacy. The Obama Administration hailed the poll as a “very important step forward for Honduras”, despite 23 Latin American and Caribbean nations of the Rio Group refusing to recognise the election and Amnesty International proclaiming a “human rights crisis” in Honduras. Time magazine headlined its coverage “Obama’s Latin American Policy Looks Like Bush’s”.

Nearly three years after the coup, human rights groups highlight the ongoing political assassinations of regime opponents, journalists and civil society activists. Yet the Obama Administration appears to side with the death squads. “Now it’s time for the hemisphere as a whole to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in June 2010. Within days, the US resumed military aid to the Honduran regime.

Since then, the situation has only worsened. Crime is thriving. There were 120 political assassinations in the country in 2010-2011. In the region of Bajo Aguan, where people are defending their land from large developers, 45 peasants have been murdered.

In March 2012, 94 members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her “to suspend US assistance to the Honduran military and police given the credible allegations of widespread, serious violations of human rights attributed to the security forces”. The Obama Administration, meanwhile, is asking for increased military aid for Honduras for 2012.

Today Central America is the most violent region in the world. Certainly some of that is attributable to the drugs trade, which feeds on the atomisation and insecurity produced by global neoliberalism. But it also stems from the region’s brutal and traumatic past, when state forces could commit atrocities with total impunity, aided and abetted by the US. Bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to justice is a vital first step towards not just elementary justice but articulating an alternative political way forward.

Glen Rangwala looks at how the remnants of the old regime in Egypt are still trying to cling on to power.

Egypt’s old order will not leave quietly. The uprising of the population from 25th January 2011 led to the exit of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency, but over the following months it became increasingly apparent that the military generals who inserted themselves as interim rulers did not seek to oversee a smooth transition to a new order, as they had claimed. They did not want a transition at all.
The drafting of a new constitution and the election of a new president were scheduled for May and June this year. Instead, the military rulers have worked to ensure that the constitution is drawn up without popular participation and that only their own favoured candidate is left standing among the plausible contenders for the presidency. They have taken Egypt’s uprising as a vehicle to install themselves permanently as the powers behind the throne. For this to succeed, they have to depoliticise an energetic and engaged population.

Their most conspicuous attempt to retain political control since last November’s announcement of “extra-constitutional principles” has been the elimination of leading candidates from the forthcoming presidential elections. A month before voting is due to begin, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) announced that ten candidates were not eligible to stand. These include the two leading Islamist candidates, the most well-known liberal reformist and the nominee of the main socialist party.

SPEC is made up of ten judges, but the appearance of neutral oversight is a façade. The process of vetting and excluding judges in the Mubarak era ensured that only those with a mindset that equated law with the defence of the ruling authorities’ interests could hold that role. Members of SPEC were appointed by the military junta, and their decisions in each of the cases of these excluded candidates are redolent of Mubarak-era reasoning.

Two of the leading candidates were excluded on grounds of their past criminal convictions. Khairat el-Shater – the most well-known political figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged in January’s parliamentary elections that as the largest party – was disqualified on the grounds that he had been convicted for “money laundering” in 2007. The legal term, again, is misleading.

El-Shater had served, in effect, as a treasurer for the Muslim Brotherhood, which was then prohibited and persecuted. It was caught out by the Mubarak regime’s attempts to prosecute political activism under the guise of seemingly technical aspects of criminal law.

Ayman Nour, a long-standing liberal critic of Mubarak, had similarly been imprisoned on forgery charges after he registered papers to enter the 2005 presidential elections as a challenge to Mubarak, in a contest in which in the past only one candidate had been allowed to stand. SPEC’s decision to validate these political convictions amounts to a decisive anti-revolutionary move: it classifies past opposition as proof of the ineligibility for office.

As with el-Shater and Nour, the exclusion of Hazem Abu Ismail, a prominent candidate with a mobilised support base from a highly conservative Islamist party, and Hossam Khairat, of the Arab Socialist Party, gives an ominous sign of the direction in which the military junta want to take Egypt. Abu Ismail was excluded because his mother is alleged to have held a US passport alongside her Egyptian citizenship for three years. The exclusion reinforces a belief that the bizarre rule barring the parents of presidential candidates from having citizenship of another country was introduced by the military last year with the specific purpose of excluding his candidacy. Khairat was thrown off the ballot because SPEC did not approve of the leadership format of the socialist party, again relying on Mubarak-era rules that curtailed political activism through closely regulating the internal make-up of any permitted party.

Defenders of SPEC’s impartiality draw attention to how Mubarak’s close ally, Omar Suleiman, was also excluded from the ballot, once again on seemingly spurious grounds. He was 33 individual nominations short of the 30,000 needed to qualify for the ballot. However, the generals in the junta had long resented Suleiman, who had prioritised Egypt’s intelligence apparatus – of which he had been head – ahead of its armed forces.

The only well known candidate left in the fray after SPEC’s purge is Amr Moussa, Mubarak’s long-serving foreign minister and subsequently the head of the Arab League under Mubarak’s sponsorship. Moussa represents everything the military wants in a leader: an adherent of the old order, he deploys nationalist rhetoric against those who seek political, social and economic change.
Although there are other candidates, including one anti-corruption lawyer, an Islamist outsider not affiliated to any party, and one rather dull Muslim Brotherhood stalwart – their insurance policy in case of el-Shater’s exclusion – none has a national profile. With voting due to begin on 23rd May, the timing of the exclusions ensures that they are unlikely to have the time to build one.

The other major focus of the junta’s activity has been in circumventing the process for writing a new constitution. The chief task of the newly elected Parliament was to have been overseeing this process, and subjecting the drafting to popular participation and scrutiny. However, this is where the liberal groupings in Parliament played into the military’s hands. The Islamist parties have a majority of parliamentary seats and so constituted the largest group – though, arguably, not a majority – in the constitutional drafting committee. The decision by non-Islamist parties to boycott the committee and a legal challenge has led to the suspension of its work. Mubarak’s strategy had been to point to the possibility of Islamist dominance as a reason why liberal reformists should not seek popular accountability, and the military have adopted the same tactic.

The junta has now announced its intention to create a separate body that will draft a constitutional text without parliamentary participation – and will do so by 30th June. The ten-week deadline excludes any mechanisms for popular consultation. Although this text will have to be put to a referendum, the parallels with earlier eras are noticeable: the Egyptian public will be presented with a fait accompli, and their role will be relegated to that of either endorsing an old political elite or disengaging from the political process. The continuation and fulfilment of their revolution depends upon their ability to act otherwise.