Unionising Iraq (4): Introducing the Wacky World of the International Socialist Organisation

“Unions in the West” should “reject collaboration with the IFTU” says Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the International Socialist Organisation (American co-thinkers of the British SWP). The ISO calls on all trade unionists to boycott the IFTU as ‘collaborators with imperialism’.

Socialist Worker urges support for “those Iraqis who decided to actively oppose the U.S./British occupation” i.e. the Ba’athist and Islamist ‘resistance’, the beheaders, the suicide bombers, the torturers and murderers of Iraqi trade unionists. Sharon Smith, a leader of the ISO, has been gung-ho in her ‘Marxist’ support for the Ba’athist-Islamist ‘resistance’. She wrote “If we are waiting for the “ideologically pure” movement--assuming the unlikely scenario that all those opposed to the war could agree on one--we could be waiting forever…The antiwar movement must not lose sight of the fact that its main enemy is at home--and any resistance to that enemy deserves our unconditional support”.
Socialist Worker tell a pack of lies about the IFTU.

Lies of omission: The ISO does not mention that IFTU offices were raided by the coalition and its leaders jailed. ISO does not mention the strikes led by the IFTU (nor does it raise support for the strikers). The SWP does not mention the IFTU's opposition to the invasion. The ISO does not mention the IFTU’s opposition to the bombing of civilian areas. The ISO does not mention that EVERY political force in Iraq bar the Ba’athist and Islamist would-be dictators participated in the UN-backed political process in Iraq.

Lies of commission. Abdullah Mushin did not make a passionate speech “in support of occupation” at the 2004 Labour Party conference as the ISO claim. He spoke to union delegations about the UN-backed political process in Iraq and explained why the IFTU had decided to critically support that UN-backed political process as the best hope for Iraqi workers. He carefully explained to the union delegations why the IFTU had decided against taking up arms alongside the Ba’athist and Islamist ‘resistance’ so loved by the ISO. He spoke to the delegations about achieving the speedy removal of the troops as part of that UN-backed timetable, along with building up the Iraqi labour movement and democratic political parties, as the best policy for Iraqi workers. Every trade union delegation that heard that message understood and backed it overwhelmingly after democratic deliberation and vote. Every serious trade unionist who had the issue honestly set out before her reached the same conclusion: that is what I would have done. The ISO have never forgiven Abdullah for bringing some reality to the debate in the UK and US. So they slander him and mutter darkly about ‘collaborators’. It is desperate stuff.

The ISO sneer at Abdullah because he has “lived outside of Iraq for 20 years” but they don’t say why he lives outside Iraq. Abdullah Muhsin was a student activist in opposition to Saddam and was chased and harried across Europe by Ba’ath Party goons, seeing his friend stabbed before his eyes in Italy. Abdullah works tirelessly for the IFTU building solidarity across the globe for Iraqi workers. And he may have to continue living outside Iraq in the future because the ISO’s good friend, big brave George Galloway, called Abdullah a ‘quisling’ in the Arab press.

Contrast that to the man the ISO introduce as a ‘political exile from Saddam’s Iraq’ and the authentic voice of Iraq, Sami Ramadani. He can correct us if this information is wrong but didn’t Ramadani leave Iraq in 1967, 38 years ago, and before the Ba’ath, let alone Saddam, came to power? Ramadani is a UK academic who talks breezily from the comfort of his desk in a London university about ‘collaborators’, while IFTU militants who have given their lives for the rebirth of trade unionism in Iraq are murdered.

Seeing the ISO call for a boycott of the free trade unionists of Iraq, and support for the fascists of ‘the resistance’ we might ask the same question Tom Paine posed to George Washington: ‘the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any’. (AJ)