How much dissent should the left allow?

There's a couple of low level rows brewing on the left at the moment which Charlie Pottins had brought together in this angry post aimed squarely at what he sees as the left's hypocrisies.

The two rows in question are firstly over part of the left's response to Ruth Kelly's decision to send her child to a £15,000 a year school. Charlie quotes Respect MP George Galloway on the matter saying quite rightly and properly "Everyone wants the best for their child. What used to be a badge of honour for a Labour politician was that they wanted the best for everyone’s children. Ruth Kelly’s decision to withdraw her child from state education in Tower Hamlets undermines the life chances of other children in the borough whose parents cannot afford £15,000 a year to go private.

"It is a slap in the face for the hardworking teachers and dedicated support staff in east London who have an excellent record of including children with special needs into mainstream education. It will do nothing for the morale of staff and pupils at the outstanding Stephen Hawking special school in Tower Hamlets, who achieve miracles despite a lack of resources".

Excellent stuff I'm sure you'll agree. Except what Galloway fails to mention is that he supported leading Respect NC member Yvonne Ridley over her decision to send her child to a fee paying school. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that Kelly (who doesn't call herself a socialist as far as I'm aware) is wrong to take this kind of decision and Ridley (who makes grand claims about her own radical credentials) is right to. It's my own opinion that Kelly is not a hypocrite - just right wing - whilst some on the left will use any stick to beat a dog.

Those who have raised this have come in from some vituperative attacks - but surely if the left is not holding itself to account then who will? Surely we need to be able to be critical of each other, as long as that criticism is warranted rather than some of the pointless sectarian bile that we all too often see on this end of the political spectrum.

Charlie also compares the UAF's call to sack BNP ballerina Simone Clarke with its defense of anti-semite Gilad Atzmon's appearance at the Cultures of Resistance festival (Atzmon is a Jazz musician who has regularly appeared on SWP sponsored platforms).

On this occasion the august publication Socialist Worker is to be congratulated for allowing dissent to creep into its letters page from no lesser personage as Michael Rosen. I do wonder whether it had been an ordinary Joe whether this letter would have got in at all - but all credit to them anyway. In his letter Rosen says that;

"I have to say I’m mightily dismayed that you have saxophonist Gilad Atzmon on board. He is someone who has frequently expressed racist ideas and surely we have always said that you can’t fight racism with racism? I fear that the racism he expresses is seen by some in the liberation movements as a racism that doesn’t matter as much.

"That’s to say, it’s said by some that racism towards peoples from countries oppressed and exploited by the West is the main racism we’re fighting, but a racism directed towards peoples seen as heavily implicated in the West’s oppression matters less. Thus, antisemitism in the 21st century is seen perhaps as “mistaken” within the liberation movement, much as we might say that going on about Rupert Murdoch being Australian is “mistaken”.

"This is a disastrous route to go down. Antisemitism imagines the removal or elimination of a group of people from the world system. All we have to ask ourselves is: 1) would eliminating that group change the system for the better? 2) what ghastly processes would a state create in order to do the removing and eliminating?

"I think Cultures of Resistance is making a great mistake taking Atzmon on board with them and this will undermine and weaken what we are all trying to do."

The replies are less than satisfactory. One letter essentially says that Atzmon claims not be racist and they had not seen him do anything racist so that's enough for them. But you don't need to look very far to find references to "world Jewry" the crimes of the "Jewish people" and repetitions of very old and evil lies. Check out Mark Elf for more detail. All this letter really tells us is the writers have chosen not to investigate the accusations. Seeing as a proper look at Atzmon's website itself will reveal all you need to know this is just unforgivable, even if he has retrospectively removed some of the more blood curdling claims.

The other response is from Lindsey German, someone I have a lot of time for. Her piece is more thoughtful and in other circumstances there would be little to disagree with. However, what it signally fails to do is answer Rosen's very legitimate concerns. It simply makes clear that she believes anti-semitism is not to be dismissed, although she does try to set up an interesting hierarchy of racisms by saying "We also have to recognise that in Europe today the main form of racism, taken up and propagated by governments and media, is against Muslims." This probably merits more discussion and thought.

What everyone on the left will agree with is that we make mistakes sometimes - that's inevitable - but it's how we deal with these mistakes that's important. I don't want to see Chris Bambury (Socialist Worker editor) lashing himself with birchtwigs whilst being paraded down the high street... hold on... bad example... anyway - you know what I mean, if we refuse to recognise problems due to pride or to save face then we're setting ourselves up for a fall. And the more we build a wall around ourselves, the more we create a situation where any criticism is seen as a sectarianism and machievelian plot of our "enemies" rather than something we might need to think about and address.

This tendency towards dogma is, I think, partly a product of the one true path Leninism model that a number of far left groups have promoted in the last fifty years and, I suppose, I'd like to see the end of it at some point - if only because I believe it would mean we'd start thinking a bit more before we open our mouths and stop turning a blind eye to some unforgivable behaviour just because it's politically convenient to do so.