why the long face?" If you really care about this"
Sorry but I don't, history moves on
perhaps time for Left Unity?
*ironically this eeyore does have an incredibly long face
why the long face?" If you really care about this"
Sorry but I don't, history moves on
perhaps time for Left Unity?
Which 'eeyore'?
I honestly believe a year from now the SWP will continue to be a major force for good in the world
you eeyore
Sorry Red Cat, wasn't being rude, just too busy admiring the view. I think the honest answer is the party couldn't (or thought it couldn't) afford to lose another cc member so soon after the Counterfire split and the people who dealt with this case just had too much political stake in the outcome to be completely objective. Stack was and decided there was a case to answer. But he was a minority of one. Then once the decision was made everything else had to follow. If there's one thing this tradition does well its defend a decision once made (I like to think that explains much of my thinking on this). What made things so much worse was the fact that there was an opposition waiting in the wings, looking for a chance to strike - even though they may not have been conscious of their own need to break at an earlier stage- and the fight against that project has given people like me an excuse not to admit what was blatantly obvious about this case from the word go. Namely that the group of people who judged it never should have. And that is no slight on them. It is not an inch of a concession to the crazy argument that the SWP is a sexist organisation. That notion is just mad. But pure and simple, the people deciding if MS had done wrong should never have been some of his closest colleagues.
So. What now? Clearly the party will survive this if it decides to tough it out without admitting the mistake. And the attempts to exclude it or people associated with the case from left events / actions or just heckling them will eventually lose its force because it's just daft. There are people on left platforms associated with parties responsible for much worse than this. But for the sake of simple justice and the good conscience of those who are staying with the SWP , there needs to be a reckoning with what went on beyond the "this case is closed" stance.
It does remind me of the Socialist Alliance, which I had great hopes for until the inevitable collapseThe Left Unity project does sadden me, because it looks like the first time since the Socialist Alliance that an admittedly small proportion of those involved in a national project are people who are genuinely new to active "left" or pro-working class politics, and will inevitably be driven off by the shit that goes with it.
the whole point of the image, and what was written on her chest, was no matter how provocatively I dress, "I'm still not asking for it" (any kind of abuse including rape). The interference that was meant to be taken from me putting that image under my writing was, no matter what I've said I am not inferring there was any kind of asking for it (abuse) in young gay men seeking out older gay men (the example I gave) or women.I used to be in the swp and didn't find it an unsafe space for women. In fact I found it full of people genuinely committed to fighting sexism. I really do pity those people still in the organisation who are. And reading the posts of RMP3 and it's ilk has made me question whether I was just blind to the kind of hideous attitudes clearly present. "Ah, those teenagers are often predatory. Poor sexually aggressive old men, what are they to do?" WTF?!
that is disingenuous, because I clearly stated I was ignoring those factors, and just making a single point about age difference relationships several times, including this one;To be fair to RMP3 (not something I thought I'd be writing!) there are quite a few cases coming out now, so perhaps it's not surprising that he's mixing them up.
But seriously, yes, he is being totally disingenuous. If it were just the age difference, perhaps some of hisargumentsexcuses might hold up, but there's also the fact that Smith was in a position of leadership/authority, the fact that it was secret because Smith was ostensibly in a long-term relationship with someone else, and the fact (and this is relevant whether we like it or not) that there is always potentially a power imbalance between a man and a woman, even if all else is equal (which in this case it's clearly not).
That's before we even start on what happen once W went to the Party, and before we consider the nature and character of Smith himself, who many sources describe as an aggressive bully.
Adding it all together, dismissing this by attempting to argue that criticising a relationship between two people of such different ages is an indication of bourgeois morality is fucking ludicrous.
it's not particularly that it is Marx, it's just a well-known example. You could've took my early example of the young gay man claiming to be a predator of older men. My single point is about, the age difference and doing it behind a wife's back, which October lost judged as enough to make him stand down. But hey Ho.
One to prove the game ain't over quite yet. When we stopped SEK comrades flyposting by the Omonia metro station earlier and asked for a poster to take home to England they immediately offered one and said "you realise we are the sister organisation of the swp?" Only ruined slightly by mrs bb's observation that this picture was taken by her in a 5 star hotel.
I thought he'd be slimmer.One to prove the game ain't over quite yet. When we stopped SEK comrades flyposting by the Omonia metro station earlier and asked for a poster to take home to England they immediately offered one and said "you realise we are the sister organisation of the swp?" Only ruined slightly by mrs bb's observation that this picture was taken by her in a 5 star hotel.
Socialist Party EC statement on Steve Hedley and the RMT investigation: http://m.socialistparty.org.uk/arti...-concludes-steve-hedley-has-no-case-to-answer
One to prove the game ain't over quite yet. When we stopped SEK comrades flyposting by the Omonia metro station earlier and asked for a poster to take home to England they immediately offered one and said "you realise we are the sister organisation of the swp?" Only ruined slightly by mrs bb's observation that this picture was taken by her in a 5 star hotel.
I thought he'd be slimmer.
This is a perflectly legit question though. Her account - assuming what she says is true - suggests it isn't at all competent, with questions like why weren't your injuries worse amongst other howlersHow was the investigation and decision making handled, does anyone know?
questions like why weren't your injuries worse amongst other howlers
Maybe, but the neither should the SWP cases have been. Some might argue that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander especially as the gander has been prominent in criticising the goose. In neither case is anybody here is in a position to judge what actually happened. So there's no point in discussing them. Time to archive this thread?I do really think this case should not be discussed on this thread - and probably shouldn't be on here at all to be honest.
Hang on - didn't he resign from the SP before they were forced into carrying out their own investigation and then making a decision? Surely the most one can criticise them for now is if there's any hint of just ratifying the RMT's decision without any investigation of their own?
Then again how can they do an investigation of their own?