I went to a SWP Marxist forum last night with Chris Bambery speaking on “Imperialism, War, and Terror”. Attendance 12, including the speaker and chair, and aside from myself and a sceptical SWPer friend of mine most of the audience seemed to be with Bambery.
It was the usual stuff in his opening speech. Islamic extremism did not exist prior to the Iraq war as the force it is today, therefore it was caused by the Iraq war. The only way to explain terrorism without reference to Iraq is to do so by reference to Islam, therefore to claim the war is not the cause of terrorism is Islamophobic. The violence of the oppressed cannot be equated with the violence of the oppressors (which must come as a great comfort to the victims of it). The conclusion Bambery came to, unsurprisingly, was that we had to demonstrate on the 24th September in order to give the movement confidence. It is not, apparently, just about demonstrating for demonstratings sake, although Bambery reassured us that: “was important too”. Forgive me if I remain unconvinced.
This seems to confirm all the worst elements of the SWP analysis following the London bombings. This is not a case of a few badly worded ideas they can wiggle out of. Quite explicitly the idea that there is any political program behind the terrorist attacks beyond pure reaction to imperialism has been rejected. Bambery characterised the terrorists not as political enemies but as allies with objectionable methods. He compared them to the people on May Day demos who like to brick in MacDonald’s windows. I kid you not. A leaflet for the 24th September demo being handed out proclaims: “We reject the view that terrorism is rooted in Muslim fanaticism… Terrorism is rooted in real problems here on Earth”. As I tried to point out, I understood Marxists thought religion was likewise rooted in real problems here on earth as well. In fact, as Marxists, we would require pretty much everything to be analysed as rooted in real problems here on earth. Materialism has never meant that people were not responsible for their actions, and if it is argued that it does in fact mean that then surely Bush and Blair are similarly not responsible for theirs! Logically as well as politically, this is pretty confused.
I attempted to point out what I felt was wrong with this; in particular the simple factual inaccuracy involved in claiming political Islam did not exist prior to the Iraq war. What, for example, would they say about the Iranian revolution, I asked? The response I received from another floor speaker was that of course political Islam did actually exist, but that it was a different phenomenon altogether then; the phenomenon we now face is not political Islam. Exactly where the old style political Islam had gone who can say, and no one attempted to do so. It was alleged that I would not have had the same line towards Jewish fundamentalism in the 30s as I do towards Islamic fundamentalism now. In response to this I asked if they felt we were on the brink of a holocaust against Muslims. The answer I received was that the scenes in Trafalgar Square of the Ashes victory parade recently were reminiscent of Nuremburg. I should have called it quits there I suppose.
The really bad stuff came in the closing speech by Bambery, where he seemed to pull out all the stops to cram in as much wilful missing of the point and straight out inaccuracy as possible. Iran, he argued, was just as democratic as Florida! We should not reject supporting religious groups as we supported Solidarnosc after all, and most of the members were Catholic. The fact that Solidarnosc was a genuine trade union movement and most religious communal organisations are not seems to have passed Bambery by. He then rounded off the speech with two real beauties of misrepresentation, claiming first of all that we shouldn’t be so hung up on the workers as Lenin wasn’t, and then claiming that Marx wasn’t really a secularist at all. To support the Lenin accusation came a quote I’ve heard many SWPers bandy about in the last year or so to justify popular fronts, to the effect that those who wait for a straight battle between the workers and the bosses will never see a revolution. As Jean Lane said at Ideas for Freedom this year, the very idea that Lenin could have intended cross-class alliances with this quote seems unlikely bearing in mind the reams he wrote against them elsewhere. To support the accusation that Marx would not have been in favour of secularism the quote that religion is the “heart of the heartless world” was brought out. This is easier to dispense with as it clearly shows Marx attacking the materialist basis for religion, not praising it as a temporary solution. It is, once again, a quote I’ve heard many SWP members use on numerous occasions to try and attack the left’s pesky adherence to secularism. Even if you ignore pretty much everything else Marx wrote it still does not justify their politics.
To clarify briefly - It was reported this week in the "Looking Left" column in Solidarity that it was Bambery who said the Ashes victory parade was reminiscent of Nuremburg. Unfortunately this is a misreading of my report, which is vague on this point. That accusation was raised during the floor debate, and not by Bambery himself.