Dan R an anarchist comrade from Nottingham on his Naked Lunch blog [1] has made a lengthy contribution on the Left and Iraq [2] which I promised to respond to but my response got a bit long to put as a comment to his blog. But both Dan and I agree that we would welcome other's contribution either here or there [3].

Dan's article was a reply to my earlier comment on his article on the Joy of Sects [4]

My comment intended to argue against 3 issues raised by Dan

1. Against the possible implication in his article that the initiative [5], that Tom U and I were involved in, was a sect intervention and not a genuine attempt to organise, on a non-sectarian basis those who wanted to contribute to a re-organisation of the anti-war movement.
2. Against his conclusion about staying 'independent' which read, to me at least, that people should avoid battles that are being conducted between the SWP and those that oppose them and their leadership of StW.
3. Against the argument, raised by both Dan and Rich (writing as disillusionedKid) that the AWL has been 'muddled' on the issues presumably of war, terror and political Islam when the facts show that of all sections on the left, organised or unorganized, the AWL has been the least muddled

On the first… Tom and I are both in the AWL. We were both involved in drafting the particular statement on Iran that kicked off this discussion. But the AWL is not a sect and the AWL likes to think we have a good history of building and attempting to initiate genuine united fronts. And that is what we were doing with this statement.

There are similar statements [6] being drawn up elsewhere. I hope we should be able to pull them into something coherent and national in the near future.

Dan and Rich signed the statement, nevertheless Dan writes 'I would advise others who have received the statement to sign or not sign on a similar,' (i.e. individual) 'basis, not on the basis of sectarian politics’. I may be oversensitive here but isn’t there an implication here that Tom and I might perhaps be requesting people to sign 'on a sectarian basis'? Maybe not, but I can’t help feeling that throughout Dan's article there is an implication that the AWL, like the SWP, is a sect, that puts sectarian objectives in front of more important and wider political objectives.

On the second…Dan says ‘pete's criticism seems to suggest that he thinks i'm a fan of the SWP(!).'Not at all, Dan. Dan like many who have been involved in StW has an unabashed hostility to the SWP. My argument with Dan is that the SWP and their leadership of StW have to be opposed by being organised! Not around some petty sect objective but around the aim of re-organising a new anti-war movement.

The whole reason about reciting the recent SWP (and StW) history was not to imply that Dan supported any of those positions. Rather I was referring to his suggestion that people should stay 'independent' and away from sects (does this include the AWL?). Many think that activities such as organising, setting up networks, meetings, formulating platforms that unite us etc. are what constitutes 'sect' activity. They are not. We need to be more organised.

I can remember in the 2 weeks after 9/11 we had local organisational meetings in Nottm, small but politically far wider than StW later was. There were Iraqi refugees there, there were people of an anarchist persuasion, and all of the left groups. The SWP’s refusal to argue against the Islamists around Bin Laden (and it took local SWPers a week to find out that actually was their line), or later against Saddam, was a minority view.

But the SWP took over the anti-war movement, locally and nationally. And they did so only partly because they were the biggest element. They were mainly able to take over because throughout the country they were organised and most of the rest were both muddled and disorganised. They didn’t want to believe what we in the AWL were telling them of the need to fight against the politics of the SWP and their organisational control of the anti-war movement that was soon to take off.

Both Dan and Rich have argued that the AWL defines itself negatively against the SWP. This is actually generally inaccurate historically. We took our position against political Islam before the SWP changed their position to be in favour of it. We opposed the 9/11 attack before the SWP supported it (as an attack on imperialism). We opposed Saddam before the SWP made their alliance with Galloway and a position of defense (or non-criticism) of Saddam.

Where I think there is a difference between Dan (and Rich) and the AWL is in our assessment of the importance of the SWP. Viz Rich’s statement [7] on our 'obsession with ... "the SWP" Many, including those at the early anti-war meetings I mentioned above, also disagreed with us on this. They thought (and perhaps Dan and Rich think?) that the SWP will go away and that it’s wasting time arguing against them etc.

But what would be Dan's explanation for what has happened over the last 4 years?

1. A movement that 3 years ago could draw 2 million onto the streets can now mobilise no more than 10-20,000 last week.
2. The soft political Islamists of the Muslim Association of Britain (which 4 years ago no-one in Nottingham, including the SWP!, had ever heard of) have used the StW to launch themselves and now appear to have outgrown it. They are now a significant sectarian force within the Pakistani, Bengali and other communities in Britain.

Of course the war has fuelled the growth of political Islam in Britain. But is it really so far-fetched to have expected that the revulsion at the war could have brought people from those same communities into a secular, non-communalist anti-war movement?

I don’t believe that it is so far-fetched. Why didn’t it happen?

• Because the genuinely muddled left (not I stress the AWL) were dragged by the SWP into political excuses for political Islam. I think elsewhere in Dan's article he repeats some of the muddled thinking on 9/11 which I will touch on in my next blog bit
• Because coupled with that genuine muddle was a failure to recognise that even where you have clarity, if you don't organise, the more organised will defeat you. Which is why anarchist methods are not adequate for revolutionaries.

Part 2 - Why there was nothing anti-imperialist in the 9/11 attack [8]