I am an rs21 member, and still a member of Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, who argued against the September 2024 motion, as did a small number of other members. A majority of members abstained in the final vote. If I am expelled from rs21 for showing solidarity with Ukrainian workers, the victims of Tsarist and Stalinist oppression for far too long, so be it. At least three million Ukrainians died in the genocidal forced famine of 1932/33.
Leslie, thank you for this — and for staying in the USC against the grain of the September motion.
The fact that a majority abstained rather than voted for is important information the article couldn't have included, and it changes the texture of what happened somewhat: this wasn't an organisation that enthusiastically embraced the turn so much as one that allowed it to happen. Whether that makes the outcome better or worse politically is an open question, but it matters for understanding where the minority stands and what remains possible.
Your mention of the Holodomor is exactly right. The Ukrainian working class's experience of Stalinist terror is not incidental context — it is constitutive of what national self-determination means in that specific case. An anti-imperialism that abstracts from that history isn't just analytically incomplete; it's asking Ukrainian workers to treat their oppressor's methods as someone else's problem.
I hope you're not expelled. But if the price of remaining is silence on this, the expulsion would at least be honest about what the organisation has become.
I served as a ceasefire monitor in Ukraine with the OSCE for over a year. Your pinko hairsplitting is utterly irrelevant. It’s like listening to Jane Austin fans arguing over whether Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley would be better in bed.
On the Jane Austen analogy: with respect, you have it exactly backwards. The question of whether Mr Darcy or Mr Bingley would be better in bed is genuinely irrelevant to anything, because neither of them exists and no consequences follow from the answer. The question of whether the British trade union movement should deliver trucks to Ukrainian miners, or be instructed by its revolutionary left to oppose doing so, has consequences for actual people in actual Kherson. That is precisely why it matters which side of that argument wins.
Yes, but you have described a movement that seems determined to continue in a tradition of pro-Russian useful idiocy. In writing this article, it seems like you are already conceding defeat. Were I in your position and I wanted to truly help Ukraine, I would investigate ways to get funding and other support to Ukraine through the UK equivalent of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America or RAZOM. You might not like their politics (UCCA was founded by exiles/refugees from the USSR) but they know what they’re doing.
Are you the Duncan Chapel who wrote those lovely songs and recorded his first album for fifty quid? I enjoyed them very much.
This is exactly what my union and many other unions are doing, both directly and through the Ukraine Solidarity Committee. There is pro-Russian ideology in many places, including the White House. I'm no conceding anything. Quite the opposite: I am supporting material aid to Ukraine and in this Substack debate with left organisations like RS21, which previously supported Ukraine's independence struggle, about why they should also support working-class resistance in Ukraine.
Link fixed. So weird to think that, during the Socialist Alliance years, they discussed merging their papers despite effectively the same political gap as today.
It's called Google Search. Obviously, I am aware of the CPGB (PCC). I occasionally read The Leninist and wondered if the same people designed the next step. I visited their printshop once, which was grim. I'm aware of their general role and project. But it's not a periodical I've found very useful or a group that's interesting to me, and it's been more than a decade since I bumped into them. It's like Eastbourne: I'm aware of it. I just don't think about it.
Duncan it’s very strange that you fail to mention the SWP’s opportunist volte face on the issue, the SSP, Republican Socialist Platform ( RSP) Communist Party of Scotland, Radical Independence Campaign, Conter, Skotia, etc, etc - all left nationalist or indeed the nationalist coup carried out at the YP Scotland conference.
The narrow majority you mention - in itself disputable - is within the population as a whole, not the left, which apart from the British nationalist CPB and Labour Party, is mainly part of the Scottish nationalist tide I started with.
As to its Nairnist justification for that ( has that been used before? Should’ve been as usually the only one! ) I’m thinking now it’s perhaps also a form of campism in your terms but I’ve not thought that through yet…certainly there is a correlation with this article in that the aforementioned RSP have an article published in Heckle yesterday. Their brand of left nationalism, notably theorised in the works of the lamented comrade Alan Armstrong, saw them affiliate to the CIA front organisation with fascist origins, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. Here’s another Weekly Worker article on just such rife social-imperialism, a far bigger problem for the left in Britain than your campism https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1388/a-toxic-operation/
Not out to make a conspiratorial thing about it but that was in response to your list of the Indy supporting left in Scotland which appeared to fall far short of reality. Now that comment appears first, because I had to sign in to post it and doesn’t quite all make sense now. Can you re-jig them in order? That would get us back on topic and perhaps help continue the debate. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Notes On the War article I sent first off if you have the time and inclination.
I can see why someone might think the point is conspiratorial, because it's really not very likely that I wrote about RS21 in Ukraine to deflect attention from articles I didn't know about on a website I don't read much. I just made a comment about the organizations that came to mind. I don't think I've seen that paper on sale here in Scotland.
I'll add a note to the article about that Tam. Thanks for pointing out the oversight. Honestly, that's not a newspaper I come across, or hear mentioned, here in Scotland.
Probably because, amongst many of its unique features, it strongly critiques the nationalist tide dominating left politics in Scotland for decades now, Duncan.
This comment doesn't require a serious reply. I didn't mention them in the context of Ukraine because it's neither a major organisation, nor one I come across. The idea that I deliberately don't mention an article on Ukraine because of their view on independence, when I'm not really aware of [or even very curious about] either, is silly.
I am an rs21 member, and still a member of Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, who argued against the September 2024 motion, as did a small number of other members. A majority of members abstained in the final vote. If I am expelled from rs21 for showing solidarity with Ukrainian workers, the victims of Tsarist and Stalinist oppression for far too long, so be it. At least three million Ukrainians died in the genocidal forced famine of 1932/33.
Leslie, thank you for this — and for staying in the USC against the grain of the September motion.
The fact that a majority abstained rather than voted for is important information the article couldn't have included, and it changes the texture of what happened somewhat: this wasn't an organisation that enthusiastically embraced the turn so much as one that allowed it to happen. Whether that makes the outcome better or worse politically is an open question, but it matters for understanding where the minority stands and what remains possible.
Your mention of the Holodomor is exactly right. The Ukrainian working class's experience of Stalinist terror is not incidental context — it is constitutive of what national self-determination means in that specific case. An anti-imperialism that abstracts from that history isn't just analytically incomplete; it's asking Ukrainian workers to treat their oppressor's methods as someone else's problem.
I hope you're not expelled. But if the price of remaining is silence on this, the expulsion would at least be honest about what the organisation has become.
Thank you very much indeed for your very prompt and encouraging reply.
See my Substack Beware the Pitfall of False Anti-Imperialism: Why the Left Should Stand With Ukraine, for a different angle: https://deborahwafoulkes.substack.com/p/beware-the-pitfall-of-false-anti?r=1f2ej0&utm_medium=ios
I served as a ceasefire monitor in Ukraine with the OSCE for over a year. Your pinko hairsplitting is utterly irrelevant. It’s like listening to Jane Austin fans arguing over whether Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley would be better in bed.
On the Jane Austen analogy: with respect, you have it exactly backwards. The question of whether Mr Darcy or Mr Bingley would be better in bed is genuinely irrelevant to anything, because neither of them exists and no consequences follow from the answer. The question of whether the British trade union movement should deliver trucks to Ukrainian miners, or be instructed by its revolutionary left to oppose doing so, has consequences for actual people in actual Kherson. That is precisely why it matters which side of that argument wins.
Yes, but you have described a movement that seems determined to continue in a tradition of pro-Russian useful idiocy. In writing this article, it seems like you are already conceding defeat. Were I in your position and I wanted to truly help Ukraine, I would investigate ways to get funding and other support to Ukraine through the UK equivalent of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America or RAZOM. You might not like their politics (UCCA was founded by exiles/refugees from the USSR) but they know what they’re doing.
Are you the Duncan Chapel who wrote those lovely songs and recorded his first album for fifty quid? I enjoyed them very much.
This is exactly what my union and many other unions are doing, both directly and through the Ukraine Solidarity Committee. There is pro-Russian ideology in many places, including the White House. I'm no conceding anything. Quite the opposite: I am supporting material aid to Ukraine and in this Substack debate with left organisations like RS21, which previously supported Ukraine's independence struggle, about why they should also support working-class resistance in Ukraine.
Hilariously just remembered my ancestors were mole-catchers in East Linton!
Oh dear. :(
The link you’ve posted is not to the Weekly Worker article Duncan but quite the opposite- the social-imperialist Workers Liberty…
Link fixed. So weird to think that, during the Socialist Alliance years, they discussed merging their papers despite effectively the same political gap as today.
Weird you can pluck up such an idea without having come across the Weekly Worker before. Is that the power of AI or summat?
It's called Google Search. Obviously, I am aware of the CPGB (PCC). I occasionally read The Leninist and wondered if the same people designed the next step. I visited their printshop once, which was grim. I'm aware of their general role and project. But it's not a periodical I've found very useful or a group that's interesting to me, and it's been more than a decade since I bumped into them. It's like Eastbourne: I'm aware of it. I just don't think about it.
Shame- celebrated this New Year 2026 in Eastbourne and its clay Channel funnily enough.you’re missing something.
Duncan it’s very strange that you fail to mention the SWP’s opportunist volte face on the issue, the SSP, Republican Socialist Platform ( RSP) Communist Party of Scotland, Radical Independence Campaign, Conter, Skotia, etc, etc - all left nationalist or indeed the nationalist coup carried out at the YP Scotland conference.
The narrow majority you mention - in itself disputable - is within the population as a whole, not the left, which apart from the British nationalist CPB and Labour Party, is mainly part of the Scottish nationalist tide I started with.
As to its Nairnist justification for that ( has that been used before? Should’ve been as usually the only one! ) I’m thinking now it’s perhaps also a form of campism in your terms but I’ve not thought that through yet…certainly there is a correlation with this article in that the aforementioned RSP have an article published in Heckle yesterday. Their brand of left nationalism, notably theorised in the works of the lamented comrade Alan Armstrong, saw them affiliate to the CIA front organisation with fascist origins, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. Here’s another Weekly Worker article on just such rife social-imperialism, a far bigger problem for the left in Britain than your campism https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1388/a-toxic-operation/
Given that this article is about rs21 and Ukraine, is it really *very* strange that I don't mention those things?
Not out to make a conspiratorial thing about it but that was in response to your list of the Indy supporting left in Scotland which appeared to fall far short of reality. Now that comment appears first, because I had to sign in to post it and doesn’t quite all make sense now. Can you re-jig them in order? That would get us back on topic and perhaps help continue the debate. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Notes On the War article I sent first off if you have the time and inclination.
I can see why someone might think the point is conspiratorial, because it's really not very likely that I wrote about RS21 in Ukraine to deflect attention from articles I didn't know about on a website I don't read much. I just made a comment about the organizations that came to mind. I don't think I've seen that paper on sale here in Scotland.
Why have you completely ignored this major article on the war in Ukraine-
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1573/notes-on-the-war/ ?
There has been a stack of these Notes on the War by Jack Conrad so what’s the score here?
I'll add a note to the article about that Tam. Thanks for pointing out the oversight. Honestly, that's not a newspaper I come across, or hear mentioned, here in Scotland.
Probably because, amongst many of its unique features, it strongly critiques the nationalist tide dominating left politics in Scotland for decades now, Duncan.
There’s quite a feast there for you now then!
This comment doesn't require a serious reply. I didn't mention them in the context of Ukraine because it's neither a major organisation, nor one I come across. The idea that I deliberately don't mention an article on Ukraine because of their view on independence, when I'm not really aware of [or even very curious about] either, is silly.