WHATEVER the current protests against live exports may indicate about middle class disenchantment with the social order, the issue is important in its own right. Animal welfare is not just an eccentric British past-time as Aidan Day (Socialist Outlook 76) seems to suggest.
Whether or not animals have rights from a Marxist viewpoint, they are conscious and sentient (mammals espethe predominant ideology amongst those opposed to the Tories', whereas in fact she merely quotes Davis Marquand saying this at an LCC conference. Moore herself says it is a struggle taking place 'amid the evidence of the failure and inadequacy of social democracy' I would not dispute some of what Menear goes on to write about Marxism and social democracy, but he oversimplifies considerably, for instance when he says that the Labour "traditionalists' defend a 100% class collaborationist idea of collectivism. What, all of them? While we have important differences with the likes of Arthur Scargill, Dennis Skinner and many of the activists who want to defend Clause IV, it does not help the argument to describe them as dyed-in-thewool class collaborationists.
But the main problem with Menear's letter is that it is hard to