One of the more glamorous parts of producing Socialist Resistance is transcribing meetings. Below is an edited version of the video that will appear in the next issue of the paper. Gilbert flies in the face of the conventional view among some British socialists. He makes the radical proposal that socialists in other countries prioritise relationships with socialists in the Middle East. He even says where you can find them.

What kind of forces should socialists be dealing with in the Middle East? The established socialist principle is to support the popular resistance to imperialism despite the leadership of the movement. Our anti-imperialism is unconditional. We are opposed to imperialist governments intervening militarily or trying to impose their will anywhere. Supporting the withdrawal of imperialist troops from the region is objectively a way of supporting people’s right to resist. We don’t try to impose preconditions based on the nature of the leadership.

But this means that we have to avoid a simplistic approach which says “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. We need to look the real circumstances on the ground. It’s much more complicated than just giving support to whoever is fighting imperialism.

Iraq is a case where you couldn’t meaningfully say “support the resistance”. The key forces fighting the occupation were also fighting a sectarian war. You can’t identify any forces deserving direct support. There isn’t any kind of significant progressive national force existing on the ground.

The tragedy in Iraq is that the only force which could have been a source of hope, the Iraqi Communist Party, behaved disastrously after the occupation. They joined Bremmer’s council and discredited themselves. In the last elections they got less than 1% of the vote. This contrast with the situation in the 1950s where the Communists led demonstrations of more than a million people and had huge support among the Shiites. When you look at the forces which are now dominant you can see how big the regression has been.

The Oil Workers’ Union is the only significant working class force. This deserves the support of the left even if it is not ideologically of the left. Its members hold the ideas of their society. They are religious believers but they genuinely hold a class point of view, particularly in their sector.

In Palestine we have another indication of the disaster. The first Intifada which began in 1997 was led by the left. Hamas has succeeded in building itself as the main opposition to the rightwing PLO leadership. The left has been marginalized but it still exists. While we support the right of the Palestinian people to vote for whichever group or party they want but socialists should be relating to leftwing forces. We can point to some improvement in the positions of at least one section of the Palestinian left, the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine. This organisation, after a long history of tail ending the PLO leadership now refuses to join the coalition government. The PFLP now has a more independent position on a generally left wing platform and should be our privileged partner.

Our privileged partner in Lebanon should be the Lebanese Communist Party. You don’t have the same problem that you do in Iraq. Hezbollah has never engaged in that type of sectarian violence during its fight against Israel and this allows us to support the Lebanese resistance as a whole. But we favour the Lebanese Communist Party. This is the most promising remaining section of the left in the region. It has no relations with regimes like the one in Syria and other dubious forces and it is building itself on a progressive platform. It is renewing itself and learning the lessons of the recent past. It is keen on rebuilding the left in the region and is calling for open conferences of leftists and Marxists. It wants to be the pole for some form of regroupment.

The left in the Middle East is much weaker than it was some years ago but our view need not be as bleak as the one presented in the media. There are still class forces that could be elements for rebuilding the left and that it what we should be promoting.