A response to Andrew Murray’s latest nonsense

by Dave Isaacson

In response to the emails protesting the exclusion of Communist Students (CS) and the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign (Hopi) from the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) Andrew Murray, who sent us the original email informing us of our exclusion, has been replying with a cardboard cut-out response filled to the brim with lies and misrepresentations. Interestingly we at Communist Students have not ourselves been sent a copy of this reply, but numerous supporters have sent us the copies they have received. The reply can be read here: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/693/Hopi%20Murray.htm

A comrade from Workers Left Unity – Iran (Etehadchap Kargari) has already penned a reply (see: http://www.hopoi.org/iranstatement.html) which deals with a number of the slurs that Andrew Murray throws at us, principally the idea that Hopi is nothing more than a CPGB-front group. Comrade Amir Javaheri Langaroudi describes the real origins of Hopi and shows that while both the CPGB and CS have both been very active in building Hopi the campaign itself has a much wider base of activists and supporters, not least amongst left-wing Iranian exiles, but also from the Green Party and numerous socialist individuals and groups to whom the fact that they are CPGB stooges will surely be news!

The same slur (of being a CPGB front) is thrown at CS. However, unlike the youth groups attached to Andrew Murray and the Morning Star‘s Communist Party of Britain, CS is genuinely autonomous and free to make its own decisions. Indeed even the CPGBers with CS have been free to argue their own points of view, rather than being gagged and forced to push a particular ‘line’ as happens in most groups on the British left. CS, in fact, does not deny its links with the CPGB: we are open and upfront about the fact that the initiative to set CS up, and many of CS’s most energetic comrades, come from the CPGB. In no way, however, does this mean that we are “effectively controlled by the Weekly Worker group.”

In response to Murray’s bald-faced lie that “Workers Weekly [sic] established Hands off the People of Iran at the start of 2007 explicitly as an alternative to StWC and because it no longer wished to support the Coalition” comrade Amir Javaheri Langaroudi explains that, “rather than becoming an ‘alternative’ to the StWC, HOPI sees its main task as giving give a voice within Coalition to left activists inside Iran, who were deeply hurt and angered by pro Hezbollah slogans raised in last summer’s anti-war demonstrations in London and elsewhere.”

Murray starts his response by stating that: “the Stop the War Coalition is a voluntary body set up by individuals and organisations to pursue particular political aims. As such no individual or group has a “right” to membership of it.” Of course not any individual or group should be allowed to join or affiliate, but those that clearly support the stated aims of StWC, as both CS and Hopi do, should be accepted. As the StWC constitution states: “The Coalition is open to the affiliation of any organisation that accepts those objectives, and of any local Coalition that works in support of them, on payment of an affiliation fee as laid down by conference.” Comrades wanting to view the whole constitution and aims should go here: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=8&Itemid=28

Andrew then loses all grip on reality and argues that excluding us “is in no sense “censorship” … since nobody is thereby denied their right to publish or circulate material.” Well, within the StWC our groups are! We are no longer entitled to submit motions in our name for discussion at conference. While Hopi’s motion is thankfully now being submitted by the CPGB, the motion on democracy and Stop the War Students will not even make it into the motions document (see here to view the motion submitted by CS: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/692/stwc.htm). The timing of the announcement that our affiliation was revoked (on the day of the deadline for submission of motions) shows that this was clearly about stopping these motions being discussed. If this is not censorship then I don’t know what is!

Then there is Murray’s laughable suggestion that this has nothing to do with differing positions on our attitude to the Iranian regime; well, the Stalinist method of falsification is clearly well-ingrained in this man! The depth of his opposition to the theocratic regime is amply demonstrated by his claim that we would be, just “fuelling the danger of war if we start listing what’s wrong with the regime” (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/629/iran.htm). As for his claim that our critique of the StWC leadership’s stance “reflects the attacks made by our pro-war opponents”, since when have pro-war opponents criticised the StWC for failing to consistently call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupation troops from the middle east?

Murray’s text is nothing but a slimy attempt to justify the unjustifiable using the most underhand methods. But can one really expect any better from a lying old Stalinist who has claimed that the POUM militia in Spain took up “arms to stab the republican forces in the back by launching an insurrection in Barcelona” (The Communist Party of Great Britain: a historical analysis to 1941, Andrew Murray, Communist Liaison, 1995, p. 70)?

Despite their attempts to exclude us and silence our criticisms members and supporters of Communist Students and Hands Off the People of Iran will be heading over to the StWC conference at Friends Meeting House on Euston Road, London, on the Morning of Saturday October 27, to protest our exclusion and raise the banner of genuine anti-imperialism. We call on all those who oppose these exclusions, and who want an anti-war movement based upon democracy and genuine anti-imperialism to join us.

Against imperialism! Against repression!