CHRIS BAMBERY, national secretary of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), spoke to Green Left Weekly's PETER BOYLE on September 5. Bambery was in Sydney to attend the International Socialist Organisation's Marxism 2003 conference.
How big is the crisis confronting British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government?
Blair's government is fatally wounded. The one thing that Blair had going for him was his image, that smile that said: "Trust me, I'm a regular guy." Now the polls are showing his support is down to 6%.
The population is saying: "Yes, we trusted Blair and he lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He lied and he has been caught out."
Is the main factor that Blair is seen to be a liar? The Australian government has been caught lying about the reasons for the Iraq war but the impact has not been the same as in Britain.
You can't separate what's happening to Blair from the huge impact of the demonstrations by the British anti-war movement. That impact percolated up. Cabinet ministers saw their children at the demonstrations.
One of the differences I have noticed, in the short time I have been here, is that in Britain, unlike in Australia, the anti-war movement has kept going. It hasn't taken the pressure off.
[In the course of the official inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly, the government official who revealed to the BBC that the Blair government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction contained lies], a lot of letters, emails and other documents have been released. This is very unusual. Such government documents are usually embargoed for 30 years. These documents reveal a sense of real panic in the Blair government and the British state at the start of the year. There were deep divisions exposed, with the head of MI6 telling journalists that the spy agency did not believe the war on Iraq was justified.
Kelly was a weapons inspector in Iraq for more than 10 years. He was an expert on Iraq. He was obviously quite closely linked to British and US intelligence agencies. So his suicide is just one indication of those divisions.
In what ways has the anti-war movement kept going in Britain? What has it done since April?
On August 30, the second national People's Assembly was held (the first was held just after the 2 million-strong February 15 anti-war demonstration in London). It drew 1500 people. There was a range of speakers, including John Pilger, former Labour MP Tony Benn, trade union leaders and school students. There were delegates from trade union bodies, stop the war groups, Muslim groups, school student groups and so on. The purpose was to build the demonstration on September 27 against the US-British occupation of Iraq.
The Stop the War Coalition has continued to organise. For instance, at my local group in London, if someone had come in after the fall of Baghdad and said we should stop organising, people would have said: "No. We are going to keep going."
There's 30,000 British troops in Iraq, so it's a huge issue. There's a mass feeling against the war. Stop the War Coalition public meetings have been as big in the least three months as they were at the start of the year. Local groups have kept functioning and public opinion has started to shift again because of the huge crisis facing the Blair government.
British troops are dying in Iraq and the reality of the occupation is coming home to people.
People are making the connections between foreign policies and Labour's domestic agenda. In Britain's school system there is a "budget crisis", but there is no budget crisis when it comes to waging war.
Opposition to the war as measured in opinion polls fell slightly when British troops were committed. It fell slightly when Baghdad fell. But it is now back to the same level that it was at the beginning of the year.
There were some workers' strikes against the war, but they were weaker than the school students' strikes. We had a very big unofficial strike in British Airways at Heathrow Airport, which was led by young workers — a lot of them Asian. The key leader of the strike had only been on the job for six months and had been involved in the anti-war demonstrations, clearly gaining political confidence from that.
Have there been splits in the British anti-war movement over the demand for an end to the occupation or by those who argue for a greater United Nations role in the occupation?
This is not an issue in the British movement. This argument came up in the movement during the first war on Iraq and the war in Yugoslavia. But this time around, the sort of people who would have made the argument for working with the UN, for instance Tony Benn, took the position that if the war was wrong without UN sanction, then it was wrong even if the UN voted for it.
The kind of wheeling and dealing that Bush and Blair did at the UN Security Council meant that many people decided that even if the UN had been forced to support the war, this would have been the result of blackmail and bribery.
Following the US invasion, the small Communist Party took a position that it would like to see the UN take control of Iraq. When they put that position in the movement, there was an audible gasp. People know it will be a US occupation, whether it has UN endorsement or not.
Is the Labour government facing increased opposition from the trade unions?
We are beginning to see a rash of strikes, led by the rank and file. There is a big battle coming up in the post office over pay. The leadership of the postal union is one of the most militant in Britain. It is involved in the Stop the War Coalition and was present at all the big anti-globalisation events, including the European Social Forum in Florence last November. It will be at the World Social Forum in India next year.
Three trade unions, the main railworkers' union, the civil service union and the journalists' union, have made quite a break from Labour and there is debate over whether candidates who really represent pro-union policies should be funded.
During the firefighters' dispute at the beginning of the year, the left-wing leader of the firefighters' union faced the choice of loyalty to the Labour government or loyalty to his members — he chose loyalty to the Labour government. Now there is a rebellion coming from the rank and file.
The leaders of the train drivers' union made a big play about sticking with Labour and they had a big loss to the left in the union's elections.
What are the likely electoral consequences of Blair's political crisis? European elections are taking place next year, are left candidates likely to make an impression?
I hope so. There is an argument coming from inside the Stop the War Coalition. People are saying: "I've always voted Labour, but I am not going to vote Labour anymore. We have to have an alternative."
The left has a duty to get its act together for the European elections and the local elections in London, which coincide. Both are going to be conducted under a proportional representation electoral system, rather than Britain's traditional first-past-the-post.
What vehicle does the SWP support for this left electoral challenge? Is it the Socialist Alliance or a broader electoral alliance?
It is still unclear. I think we have to keep supporting the Socialist Alliance, but there is an argument to try and broaden the alliance so that it includes [former Labour] forces involved in the Stop the War Coalition. This will pose the question: Are they going to break with the Labour Party or stay with it?
We've had good experiences of people in the Asian communities being prepared to give support.
In relation to the trade unions, we have to show we are a credible alternative. The unions are not going to start giving money and support to the left unless it can mount a credible campaign. If we can do well in European and local elections, that will help. It is like the chicken and the egg.
The weakest link is waiting for Labour MPs to make the break. They are the least likely to, because of their personal careers.
We seriously think there is an alliance to be made between revolutionaries and reformists around the program of "old Labour". The centre-left is so committed to the neoliberal agenda that social-democratic positions like free education are now almost revolutionary demands.
What does this mean for Europe-wide left regroupment?
We have developed close links with the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in France and the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) in Italy. PRC leader Fausto Bertinotti was one of the keynote speakers at our Marxism 2003 event in July. We are very anxious and hopeful we can help create a Europe-wide electoral list for the European elections.
What's your assessment of the anti-globalisation movement? Do you see it as distinct anti-capitalist layers in motion? What its relation to the anti-war movement?
In Britain, leading individuals in the anti-capitalist movement like George Monbiot seamlessly rolled into the anti-war movement. He made the connections between Washington's neo-liberal economic agenda and its drive for a "new American century". Imperialism is now a commonly used word in the anti-war movement, as well as in the anti-globalisation movement. So the connections between the movements are very strong and this is pulling in larger numbers.
London is probably the most globalised city in Europe. The sheer diversity of the demonstrations against the war was reflected in the rich interconnections of struggles made in the meetings of the Stop the War Coalition. We had people from Colombia, the Philippine and so on telling us about their struggles. The anti-war movement has created a new working-class movement that is a lot more multi-racial and includes new layers of younger workers.
Some writers, such as Naomi Klein, argue that the movement for global economic justice was more advanced than the "single-issue" movement against the war.
In Europe, the anti-war movement was biggest in Spain, Italy and Britain — the three countries with the most right-wing governments. This argument had some validity in France, where the leadership of the main anti-globalisation movement, ATTAC, really did try to avoid taking on the question of the war and tried to separate the free trade and war issues. This had less to do with the influence of writers like Klein and more to do with the movement leadership being too tied in with the Socialist Party.
The leadership of ATTAC France — but not its rank and file — were very critical of the Florence European Social Forum, and the PRC in particular, because it thought it was too radical and too anti-war.
The Florence European Social Forum was very radical and working class. And there was a big debate about the relationship between political parties and movements, in front of 15,000 people. It was the biggest meeting at that forum. It included Bertinotti, Chris Ninenam from Globalise Resistance, Bernard Cassen from ATTAC and others. It was a very sharp debate, and what was clear was that in Italy any attempt to separate the anti-globalisation movement from the fight against the agenda of the right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi and its backing for the US-led war on Iraq just didn't make sense.
The grassroots feeling is you can't separate questions of the war, social justice issues and opposition to the neoliberal agenda. It is part of a package deal.
From Green Left Weekly, September 17, 2003.
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