Communist Party of Scotland: Scotland A Nation Again?

Review 

 

by Robert Laurie

Scotland A Nation Again? Glasgow, CPS, 2013 pp. 46. Copies available from Jean Muir, CPS/Alert Scotland, House 01, 112 Shawbridge Street, Glasgow G43 1LY price £2.00.

THE EMBLEM used in this cover of this pamphlet accurately reflects the contents. It is a Saint Andrew’s cross surrounded by vertically arranged words, some of which are obliterated by the fluttering flag. On close examination these are the English words of Eugène Pottier’s The Internationale, but presented in such a way that they are reduced to gibberish: “For reason in r...” and “strike the iron come rally” and so on. In short identity politics override class politics. Surely a communist party should use the good old hammer and sickle as an emblem, perhaps with an added thistle or a bottle of whisky to symbolise Scotland?

This is the third such pamphlet produced by the tireless Communist Party of Scotland in as little as nine years. Radical Perspectives for an Independent Scotland came out in 2004, in 2007 they issued the less radical Perspectives for Scottish Independence, and in February of this year they published the present work, partly based on a seminar they held as recently as November 2011.

  The pamphlet also marks the 21^st anniversary of the CPS which was founded in 1992 following the dissolution of the revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain. Curiously instead of encouraging new members to rally to the CPS, the back page appeals for recruits to a new organisation the “Scottish Socialists for Independence”. Explicitly admitting to having a diminishing membership which is too frail to attend meetings (page 43) might be honest but not very inspiring. Neither organisation has set up one of these new-fangled website things on the Interweb.    

The religious and nationalist symbol is appropriate because much of the pamphlet is devoted to promoting the cult of Saint Alex Salmond and his blessed Scottish National Party. Opponents are damned as heretics rather than offering any informed criticism of their opinions. One particular example of this occurs on page 37 when Maggie Chetty attacks former Labour MP Maria Fyfe who dared to criticise the SNP links with big business in a letter to the Morning Star.

Chetty also berates Fyfe for ignoring Labour’s links with big capital but she does not take the chance to deny the influence of big business on the SNP or take up the other points in the original letter about the lack left-wing protest in the SNP about their neoliberal to cut corporation tax in an independent Scotland. 

The pro-independence Green Party and the surviving rump of the Trotskyite Scottish Socialist Party provide more robust left wing pro-independence critiques of the SNP than is attempted here. There is little discussion of economic issues beyond a moan about plans for high speed rail links from the dreaded London not reaching Scotland.  Is an independent Scotland to be a member of the European Union or not as the SNP insists will be the case? What view does the CPS have on an independent Scotland in or out of the EU? Is the CPS support retaining the pound sterling, joining the Euro like Italy, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus or restoring the bawbee? I think we should be told.

Another contributor deplores the Morning Star for ignoring or attacking the SNP and actually accuses it of censorship (page 20). How the paper can both attack and ignore the SNP at the same time is difficult to comprehend. While the Star’s editorial line does not support the SNP it has given space to pro-independence views in both the features and letters pages. Why should a left wing paper not criticise a neoliberal political party?

Earlier he noted that the SNP has won some working class seats from Labour at Westminster by-elections, but carelessly forgets that all those they mentioned are now back in the hands of Labour. It is an interesting paradox of Scottish politics that gains by the SNP in working class (two words rarely used in the pamphlet) areas are partly due to the more backward elements abandoning their traditional Orange allegiance to the Tories in favour of the SNP in protest against Labour’s successful policies on Northern Ireland.

Another hero often mentioned here is Jimmy Reid who is frequently praised for joining the SNP. This is absurd. Reid was the Communist firebrand deservedly famous for playing a leading role in the struggle to save Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in the early 1970s. But by the time he joined the nationalists he was a pitiful whisky sodden shadow of his former self. After joining the Labour Party he made his name by joining in Kinnock’s attacks on the left and betrayed the miners in a disgusting article penned for the Tory Spectator at the height of the 1984-5 strike. His career is warning rather than an inspiration to the left. 

Scottish culture as a bonus, the pamphlet offers a competition. It is to provide “stirring Scottish Music” for a new “Sang fir Scotland” entitled The braw blue an’ white Saltire Here is a sample verse to inspire any musical reader: 

Nae flag o’ tryant or oppressor

Bit yin o’ people’s liberty an’ pow’r

Fluttering in the Scottish breeze

Oor braw blue an’ white Saltire

If this sort of sub-Andy Stewart doggerel is the sort of Scottish culture to be expected in an independent Scotland then the high speed rail link will find most of its passengers heading south of the border.

The editing could have been better. Pages 23 and 26 have two references to one Ian Trevitt before they are corrected to Levitt. On page 31 there is a mistaken reference to our Gracious Queen’s “Golden Jubilee” last year, anyone who was not on an interplanetary journey to Mars in 2012 will know it was the Diamond Jubilee. The quote on page 36 describing London as “the Great Wen” is wrongly attributed to Samuel Johnson; it was in fact William Cobbett.

Anyone interested in the question of Scottish independence and the left would be better off consulting the Scottish Left Review. Available online at www.scottishleftreviw.org  this six-times-a-year magazine offers a platform for various shades of the Scottish left and actually includes some real debate sadly lacking here. 

Russia’s path to socialism

 

by our European Affairs Correspondent

SOCIALISM in the 21^st century is socialism of genuine people’s will and we seek to replace western-type parliamentary democracy with a Soviet-type democracy. That’s how Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov put it at the 15^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in Moscow last month and more and more Russians are agreeing with him these days.

The CPRF has recruited a new generation to join the veterans who served the Soviet Union before the revisionists and traitors finally destroyed the USSR in 1991. This was clearly seen in the age of the delegates and observers at the congress that met during the last weekend in February

Last year Zyuganov came second in the presidential election, with just over 17 per cent of the poll and over 12 million votes in a contest that was inevitably won by Vladimir Putin amid allegations of electoral fraud and ballot-rigging in favour of Putin’s ruling United Russia Party. 

Putin’s Russia is a country run by oligarchs and corrupt bureaucrats who plunder the country and stash their ill-gotten gains in the West while the country runs on a “pipeline economy” based on diminishing oil and gas resources. But the communists have made gains even in Moscow, the capital that has long been seen as a Putin stronghold, while the global capitalist slump hits Russia and the living standards of workers plummet.

Zyuganov has led the CPRF from the very beginning when it was established in 1993 when the ban on communists was lifted in Russia. It is now the biggest communist movement in the country with some 160,000 members and four million active supporters. It is the second biggest parliamentary party with 92 seats in the 450-strong Duma.

New Communist Party of Britain leader Andy Brooks attended the Congress, together with 105 other delegations from communist parties and progressive movements from all five continents, at a conference centre in the capital’s 1980 Olympic Village hotel complex.  And the significance and importance of this congress was reflected in large number of fraternal delegates from the world communist movement.

Delegations from the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Democratic Korea, Laos and Vietnam took part in the Congress as well as those that participate in popular front governments like the two Syrian communist parties, the Communist Party of Venezuela, AKEL in Cyprus and the South African Communist Party. Progressive movements like the ruling Syrian Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (Baath), United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua  were there as well as representatives from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), World Peace Council, Women’s International Democratic Federation and the European United Left.

Zyuganov’s party is the direct Russian successor of the old CPSU – but not that of the CPSU’s discredited politicians who led the Soviet Union to disaster in its final years. The party upholds the doctrines of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin to lead the class in the 21^st century. As the Russian leader said in his report of work:

“The look of socialism in the 21^st century is that of a developing socialism with a communist perspective. For us communism is a logical result of scientifically planned progressive movement of socialism. It is not just a beautiful dream, nor is it a position that can be achieved by a certain date. That was why Khrushchev’s slogan of “building socialism by the 1980s” caused great damage to socialism.

            “Joseph Stalin in his time thus formulated the main economic law of socialism: ‘Maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of high technology’.”

            Zyuganov said that Russia was in deep crisis and that there were four possible scenarios:

The establishment of a repressive, openly dictatorial regime by oligarchic capital and still greater oppression of the masses;

 Accelerated processes of disintegration of Russia with the participation of external forces;

 Left-wing patriotic forces coming to power by peaceful means through bourgeois democratic procedures;

A social revolution as a result of a nationwide crisis that breaks out regardless of the wishes of social classes, parties and leaders.

“Our Party will do everything to make our programme one for the salvation of the country so that Russia’s pivot to the left can be consolidated by the formation of a government of popular trust” Zyuganov declared.

The communist party has drawn up a programme for a people’s government that would restore the rights of working people and prevent the collapse of the Russian economy, including the renationalisation of the railways and all the key industries including mining, energy and other strategic sectors and the partial renationalisation of manufacturing and the power sector. The private banks will be curbed and progressive income tax will be used to fund the social programme to restore workers’ and farmers’ living standards.

The CPRF has a programme that can take Russia out of economic crisis and elevate the class struggle to replace capitalism with socialism.

“Capitalism is dangerous,” Zyuganov said. “Humanity’s need to get rid of it is becoming even more urgent. ‘Socialism or barbarism’ – this is an increasingly stark choice. We Communists have no right to lose that battle. Our policy is the policy of the majority. Our goal is socialism.”

• Political Report of the Central Committee of the CPRF 
• Fraternal observers and guests

The Murder of Patrick Finucane

                                          By Neil Harris

 

THE FINUCANE Independent Review, published in December 2012, found only some evidence of “collusion” between the British State and Ulster “loyalist” death squads, limiting those involved to a few “rotten apples”.  This has satisfied no one, least of all those hoping for the truth and because of this, the likelihood of further successful prosecutions after all these years is slim.

Written at the insistence of the Irish and American Governments, the review was a concession forced on the British government as part of the deal behind the “peace process” in Ireland and by the 2003 European Court of Human Rights finding that Britain had failed to carry out an adequate investigation into the murder of Patrick Finucane, in breach of Article Two of the charter.

Rather than simply report on the review, the New Worker thought it would be more interesting to look at the newly revealed material, including some heavily redacted secret documents and some partial statements from the Stevens investigations which now help us to see the direct links between the murderers and the British State. Of course, Mr Da Silva was looking for cast iron legal proof of collusion, failing to understand that the kind of people who involve themselves in this kind of murder, rarely leave more than a trace behind. This article pieces together the traces.

It all began in August 1987, when an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) Colour Sergeant passed out weapons from the Palace Barracks armoury to the fascist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) for use by its front organisation the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). This included a standard British Army nine milimetre Browning pistol, one of the weapons later used in Finucane’s murder.

The Browning was to become part of a cache of weapons held by William Stobie, a paid informer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch. Stobie was a member of the UDA and acted as a Quartermaster to the UDA/UFF, holding weapons for the Active Service Units (ASU) of the West Belfast Brigade, amongst others.

As an informer, he kept the Branch aware of the weapons he was holding, who he supplied them to and, on occasion, passed those weapons out to the RUC for forensic tests to be carried out, before they were returned to the cache for use. Despite this knowledge, between 1987 and 1989, the West Belfast UDA/UFF carried out numerous sectarian murders unimpeded by the RUC.

In his statement to the Stevens investigation, journalist Neil Mulholland gave evidence of an interview with Stobie in 1990, where he described how he had warned RUC Special Branch that he had handed over the Browning to an ASU for imminent use against Finucane:

“It was after this that he said he had decided there and then, to take no more with the SB. He felt that these guys were killers, he said they knew Finucane was away for his tea and did fuck all about it, he said this scared the shite out of him.”

Prior to the murder of Finucane, RUC officers were making threats to his life via his clients and inciting his murder when interrogating “loyalists” at Castlereagh.

The Security Service conducted a propaganda operation against Finucane and other lawyers, who were also UDA targets, intending to discredit them.

Douglas Hogg MP, who was Tory Under-Secretary at the Home Office, visited the occupied north of Ireland on 24/11/88 where he was briefed by Sir John Herman (RUC Chief Constable) and other RUC officers about solicitors the RUC didn’t approve of. At Hogg’s request, this was followed up with a written briefing on Finucane and the others, which was sent to him on 13/1/89.

In a parliamentary statement on 17/1/89, Hogg used this information and referred to a number of solicitors who were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”. Seamus Mallon MP of the Social Democratic and Labour party responded by saying that lawyers in Northern Ireland would become “targets for assassins bullets” as a result of Hogg’s comments. This was to prove an accurate forecast; on the 12th February 1989, Patrick Finucane, an Irish lawyer of great courage, was shot in his own home by a gang of UDA/UFF murderers.

Brian Nelson had been an Army informer, before he moved to Germany. The Force Research Unit, the Army unit responsible for running covert agents in Ireland, persuaded Nelson to return and resume his undercover activities in the UDA, which he did from 1987 to 1989. During this period as a paid informer, he returned to his old role as Intelligence Officer for the UDA, responsible for their “Intelligence Dump”, a collection of “personality cards”, essentially profiles of Nationalist targets for assassination built up from leaked security forces material.

It seems to have been widely known in “loyalist” circles that Nelson was an informer and in contact with the FRU, indeed, how else could he have access to such material?  For example, when he took over the dump again in 1987, the FRU completed a “contact form” (CF 14/10/87) setting out the confidential material it held, presumably after Nelson had given them access to it. It included: RUC statements, Garda reports on Nationalist personalities, British Army Personality files, Photos of British military ops rooms walls (that is of operational material; maps, photos and so on), British Army NI aide memoire and 500 RUC files of personalities (Nationalist targets).

Later Nelson passed the dump over to the FRU so that out of date material could be weeded out before it was returned to him for UDA use.

In 1989 FRU took possession of the dump to secure it from the Stevens enquiry into leaks of confidential information. At that time it included so much confidential material we can only quote a sample: 238 Army photo montages of suspects, 27 RUC photos of PIRA suspects, 500 photos from Army/RUC, Army notebooks, 42 B/W Army photos, 10 pages of suspects names from RUC source, 18 Army style photos, “Country Suspect” lists Army/RUC, 26 pages Army/RUC information (target files), 113 military photos PIRA, 24 B/W photos funerals, 25 photos – “stop and search”, “stop lists” of vehicles, vehicle registration numbers, Newry PIRA “sightings list”, RUC “sightings lists”, Army air photos, Army maps, RUC photo fits, lists of “Arrests for the month”, RUC lists of “persons of interest”, Army films, military style photos and one letter from the fascist British National Front, presumably begging for help.

This “dump” was to be given protected status by the Army and RUC; in his statement, the Officer Commanding the FRU’s East Detachment (East Det FRU)  told the Stevens II investigation on 9th December 1993: "I have said before and I repeat – RUC Special Branch, in particular the Source Unit, were aware of the address where the int dump was contained, and to the best of my knowledge, this address was listed by them as a 'do not search property without reference to the FRU'."

All this information collecting was not just “trainspotting”, Nelson was providing accurate targeting material based on Army and RUC secret intelligence to UDA/UFF death squads and then reporting to his Army handlers what was going to happen. This is what he did in relation to Finucane, including providing the UDA with his personality card, photographs and even doing a “recce” of his house in advance of the assassination.

In a FRU telephone contact form dated 13/2/89, the following conversation was recorded between Nelson and his handler regarding the Finucane murder;

Nelson: “It was done this morning”

Handler: “Was it?”

Nelson: “Yes”

Handler: “OK thanks”

Nelson: “See you tomorrow”

Handler: “OK bye”

Nelson: “Bye”.

The review concludes: “The handler commented that Nelson was referring to the murder of Patrick Finucane. The Officer Commanding (East Det FRU), A/01, added proudly that this intelligence was "passed to Source Unit before it was claimed on Downtown Radio".

Kenneth Barrett drove the murderers to Finucane's house and many years later made admissions that resulted in his conviction and life imprisonment. But after the murder, he agreed to become an RUC informer and as a result forensic evidence from the hijacked car used in the murder disappeared. This was not the only evidence to go missing; Barrett’s first taped confession vanished and the Browning pistol was bizarrely returned to the UDR after its recovery, where its barrel and firing mechanism were removed and destroyed. All of which protected Barrett for some years, while he was providing information.

In fact the protection went further; an RUC CID officer investigating Barrett’s role in the murder, Detective Sergeant Brown, gave the following account of  a discussion with R/06, an RUC Special Branch officer on 3/10/91:

"'Move away from it', Sam [DC R/06] said …

“I brought it to his attention that we could clear the controversial murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane … What he said next astounded me.

“ 'We (Special Branch) know he done it', he said.

“ 'Pardon?' I replied."

Later, after being convicted and imprisoned for life for his role in the murder, Barrett made statements to the Stevens investigation where he set out exactly what had happened.

On the 28th April 2006, he described how police were “putting word out that Finucane should be shot”. Then he described how “Nelson produced a card for Finucane” as well as photographs. He described how Stobie brought the guns from their hiding place and that “somewhere on the Antrim Road there was always a roadblock. L/20 made a couple of calls to remove it…the week before the murder the road block was removed”.

He also separately described how it was arranged that he could steal weapons from Malone Barracks: “It was set up for me to go in. There were a few with knowledge of what was happening – MI5, FRU he spoke to, whatever.”

He described how he lost confidence on the first attempt but then returned “when it was explained the Army were in on it….I was allowed to walk in the armoury”. He signed for various weapons in a false name while wearing uniform: “I took two SA80’s and some Brownings. I walked out with the guns but there was a problem”. He described how he was threatened into returning one of the SA80’s: “One of the SA80’s had to be recovered…we were told what we could do and what we couldn’t do.”

The extent of active collusion can be best understood in this example we have pieced together from the review and its documents: in early December 1988 Nelson reported to his Army handler that the UDA were going to enter an Ulster Defence Regiment barracks to obtain secret information, with the help of sympathetic soldiers. The RUC decided not to intervene, neither did the FRU on behalf of the British Army.

The Security Service (MI5) was kept informed and recorded a discussion their officers had with the Deputy Head of RUC Special Branch (D/HSB) in an internal note:   

"[L/03] was planning to break into a UDR camp on 2nd December to photograph some intelligence reports … We agreed that this was … odd … a view endorsed by D/HSB when I spoke to him subsequently. D/HSB advised that 'since the UDA already had lots of this stuff anyway' and that they would find nothing of value there was little to be gained by trying to prevent [L/03's] activity."

In fact amongst other material, the UDA obtained a video tape of a secret UDR briefing on Nationalist targets. Nelson was reported in an FRU CF dated 6/12/88 as having viewed the tape and saying that the sympathetic UDR soldiers had offered refuge in the barracks to the UDA/UFF hit team if they needed somewhere to hide. The UDA targeted the individuals on the tape and murdered Loughlin Maginn. It was that murder that started the chain of events leading to the three Stevens inquiries, the prosecution of Nelson, the inquiry by Justice Cory and eventually the Finucane review.

In an FRU CF dated 4/1/89, Nelson reported to his handler: “If no attacks resulted on any of those mentioned on the video tape, the UDR personnel who supplied it would not supply any more”. There was little danger of that happening; they knew the security forces would not have taken any action to prevent it.

In the second part of this article, we will look further at the involvement of the State and politicians in the cover up that followed the murder, and to what extent this was all deliberate policy.