The Communist Platform has already enjoyed five minutes of fame, with our motion on the right to bear arms predictably being used by Andrew Neil – host of the Daily Politics – as an indication of the ‘mad’ politics of those involved in LU during his interview with principal speaker Salman Shaheen.

It should be needless to say that the motion does not call for Left Unity to immediately begin handing out AK47’s to all and sundry. Rather, it points to the eventual necessity of a ‘popular militia under democratic control’, to replace the standing army and other armed wings of the state in a socialist transformation of society.

But self-described ‘moderate’ Salman distances himself from the motion, and claims that the majority of those in LU do not hold such politics. We’re not so sure- though many might say that one certainly doesn’t talk about such demands publicly, thus putting themselves essentially in agreement with our Salman.

ComPlat supporter Jack Conrad addresses the whole issue in greater depth in the current issue of the Weekly Worker:

http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1009/left-unity-arms-and-our-moderate-speaker/