SWP: Mother of all splits looms?

butchersapron · Dec 12, 2008

osterberg said:
So why do you care ?
And shouldn't you be out building tirelessly building the socialist movement if you're so clever are you to busy obssessing about the swp , you sad git ?

I care because it's funny and revealing. As is your attempt to flannel away the laughs and interest in it.

osterberg · Dec 12, 2008

Couldn't give a shit about trying to "flannel" (whatever the fuck that means) anything away quite frankly. You carry on . Or you could just fuck off and get a life .

Nigel · Dec 12, 2008

Students With Placards

osterberg said:
Couldn't give a shit about trying to "flannel" (whatever the fuck that means) anything away quite frankly. You carry on . Or you could just fuck off and get a life .

How, by being an active member of the Socialist workers Party? :rolleyes:

AKA pseudonym · Dec 12, 2008

osterberg said:
Couldn't give a shit about trying to "flannel" (whatever the fuck that means) anything away quite frankly. You carry on . Or you could just fuck off and get a life .

cheers mate.
You certainly raised the bar in your analysis of the OP. For some of us plebs outside the inner workings of the swp, much like most of its membership i suppose, it is interesting to see how the 'vanguard of the working class' operates.
I question the so called democracy of a well known socialist party and hopefully i will be enlightened by those in the know presenting some counter arguments that will demonstrate that the swp does indeed represent an organisation that can be taken seriously in the fight to create a better world.

As yet i have heard nor seen anything that makes me feel any confidence in the SWP.

I am willing to be proven wrong though as i have an open mind not constrained by any ties to any party loyalties or ideolagies...

I still await any input from any swp'ers with the courage of their convictions to defend their organisation from legitimate queries.

audiotech · Dec 12, 2008

butchersapron said:
Effectively expelled. Let's not be all coy now. We all know what it means.

'We' being the anarchist vanguard with extra powers, who don't even know the meaning of the word flannel? Boy, and aren't you full of it.

AKA pseudonym · Dec 12, 2008

http://www.faust-pages.com/transfer/tragedy.jpg

butchersapron · Dec 14, 2008

Fucking hell, Rees is going for it

I have always hesitated to take these arguments beyond the Central Committee. I remember from the internal fights in the 1970s that such debates can be damaging as well as enlightening. But I now think that we have no choice but to initiate a full and wideranging debate in the SWP. This document deals with the following key issues.

1 There is a serious debate to be had about the experience of Respect. But this
should be an informed political discussion not a personalised blame-game that
distorts both the facts and the general lessons that can be drawn from our recent
electoral work.

2 The personalised and restricted nature of the discussion so far obscures the fact
that four Central Committee members (Lindsey German, Chris Nineham, Chris
Bambery and I) have raised a number of issues that have resulted in sharp
disagreements on the CC over the last year. These are: recruitment to the party,
the SWP’s slow response to the recession and the CC majority’s failure to support
the Charter.

3 The nature of leadership in our party. This is now being contested by a number of
comrades, including those who support Neil Davidson’s document in Internal Bulletin 3, but also by some CC members.

However, he concludes with a please let me back on and i'll stop wink at the panel:

To get that political clarity is the essential thing, not organisational reform. I hope
this document will assist in developing that clarity.

AKA pseudonym · Dec 14, 2008

i sensed that Ree's was not going to lie down quietly. Fair play to him...
Hopefully if anything we may now see some real discussion as to the direction the swp is taking
we live in interesting times...

btw: good spot butchers
:cool:

articul8 · Dec 14, 2008

Rees on SWP at present:

a confusing mush of different perspectives with no prioritisation or consistency over time. This is the ‘buffet lunch’ approach to leadership~come whenever you like and take a bit of whatever takes your fancy.

JHE · Dec 14, 2008

Lindsey Kraut had a lucid moment

Some document written by Lindsey G on recruitment to the Social Workers Party is added as an appendix to John R's document.

Lindsey G, in November 2007:

Problems
The major problem is perhaps that people feel in the past we have had such drives [i.e., recruitment drives] and have recruited or claimed members who in fact were not seen again, didn’t know what they were joining and didn’t pay us money. This sort of recruitment can be counter productive.

Observers of the Social Workers cannot have failed to notice that sort of 'recruitment', but I wasn't aware until today that any member of the Social Workers' leadership admitted it.

butchersapron · Dec 14, 2008

JHE said:
Some document written by Lindsey G on recruitment to the Social Workers Party is added as an appendix to John R's document.

Lindsey G, in November 2007:

Problems
The major problem is perhaps that people feel in the past we have had such drives [i.e., recruitment drives] and have recruited or claimed members who in fact were not seen again, didn’t know what they were joining and didn’t pay us money. This sort of recruitment can be counter productive.

Observers of the Social Workers cannot have failed to notice that sort of 'recruitment', but I wasn't aware until today that any member of the Social Workers' leadership admitted it.

"can be"

butchersapron · Dec 14, 2008

Note who the bambers letter was addresed to - the power behind smith - the prof.

treelover · Dec 14, 2008

My view is that if the only way of saving the Carnival was to take the money, then we should have done. We are not moralists but Marxists for whom the advance of the struggle sometimes requires difficult compromises. After all, Lenin accepted the help of the German state in the midst of war to return to Russia even though he was accused of being a German spy ever after.

blimey, the 'chequegate affair' is compared to Lenin's manoeveres with the Kaiser!

mk12 · Dec 14, 2008

treelover said:
blimey, the 'chequegate affair' is compared to Lenin's manoeveres with the Kaiser!

Rees and German should just resign from the CC now and go to the sailors.

kavenism · Dec 14, 2008

For Christ sake, this is just washing your dirty linen in public, I’ve never heard even rank and file SWP members talking so openly about failures in strategy and particularly about recruitment. If there are problems then keep the debate internal and don’t make a laughing stock ( yeah yeah more of a laughing stock) of the whole organisation with your self indulgent long winded bloated blog rants. Rees should go just for this pathetic excuse at a “public debate”.

butchersapron · Dec 15, 2008

No word from Iggy or the band?

Bakunin · Dec 15, 2008

mk12 said:
Rees and German should just resign from the CC now and go to the sailors.

What makes you think the sailors would have them?

The sooner the SWP disintegrates and dies away, the sooner something better and democratic might, just might, be able to take its place. Personally, that day can't come soon enough. As the 'world's smallest mass party', the SWP have seemingly had a lousy effect upon the way the rest of the activist movement in the UK is seen seen further afield. Not only do they shit in their own straw and complain about the stink, they also ruin potential for growth and success for everyone else.

The problem for Rees and German is that, as the de facto public figureheads of the SWP, they are most closely identified (by anyone who cares) with its many, many failures. That means that I don't see anybody in the activist community touching either of them with a bargepole if the either leave or are expelled from the SWP.

penderyn2000 · Dec 16, 2008

Nothing excites leftists more than a crisis in another left group, but when all's said and done the crisis in the SWP is the result of the continuing lack of a significant fightback from the working class. That's what's driven an already opportunist party to increasingly desperate measures. The SWP in Wales have recently done good work in attempting to initiate a fightback over jobs, but yet again workers have failed to respond - possibly because union officials have scared them off anything which might threaten their redundancy negotiations, though it's true what people say here that the SWP's methods have sown distrust, or rather confirmed anti-left prejudices in the working class.

This and other failures to kickstart the class struggle will undoubtedly strengthen the hand of the anti-Rees group on the CC, who are also opposed to the People Before Profit charter as I understand. Being optimistic, it may encourage some within the SWP to take a step back and look at their methods rather than plunging into another frenzy of activism.

Either way the crisis of the left does not end with the SWP, and if they do collapse further there is a danger it will leave nothing but a vaccuum. All this makes it even more important that the next Convention of the Left on Jan 24 is a priority for all socialists. There is no secret cabal or hidden agenda behind the COTL and it affords the possibility of analysing openly and honestly the problems we face and taking steps towards regroupment.

chilango · Dec 16, 2008

penderyn2000 said:
Either way the crisis of the left does not end with the SWP, and if they do collapse further there is a danger it will leave nothing but a vaccuum.

The loss of an increasingly small and isolated group with what, 2 to 3 thousand active members (tops) will leave a vacuum?

That vacuum's already there...

Fedayn · Dec 16, 2008

penderyn2000 said:
The SWP in Wales have recently done good work in attempting to initiate a fightback over jobs, but yet again workers have failed to respond - possibly because union officials have scared them off anything which might threaten their redundancy negotiations,

You patronising fucker..... that bit in bold is a fucking disgrace.

Red O · Dec 16, 2008

penderyn2000 said:
Nothing excites leftists more than a crisis in another left group, but when all's said and done the crisis in the SWP is the result of the continuing lack of a significant fightback from the working class. That's what's driven an already opportunist party to increasingly desperate measures. The SWP in Wales have recently done good work in attempting to initiate a fightback over jobs, but yet again workers have failed to respond - possibly because union officials have scared them off anything which might threaten their redundancy negotiations, though it's true what people say here that the SWP's methods have sown distrust, or rather confirmed anti-left prejudices in the working class.

This and other failures to kickstart the class struggle will undoubtedly strengthen the hand of the anti-Rees group on the CC, who are also opposed to the People Before Profit charter as I understand. Being optimistic, it may encourage some within the SWP to take a step back and look at their methods rather than plunging into another frenzy of activism.

Either way the crisis of the left does not end with the SWP, and if they do collapse further there is a danger it will leave nothing but a vaccuum. All this makes it even more important that the next Convention of the Left on Jan 24 is a priority for all socialists. There is no secret cabal or hidden agenda behind the COTL and it affords the possibility of analysing openly and honestly the problems we face and taking steps towards regroupment.

Christ almighty, the same old same old: the left can't possibly be doing anything wrong, the fault must lie with the working class instead.

chilango · Dec 16, 2008

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3169#comment-107299

Is interesting in illustrating the scale of the decline.

Now if the SWP still has its "3 for me" policy on paper sales, then that put the active membership at a maximum of under 3000, assuming no other sales were made. Clearly if sales were at 8700, then membership must be close to 2000. Perhaps even less now, if even the CC are commmenting on recruitment problems.

how soon before they're down to 3 figures?

...and more importantly how soon before they are no longer the biggest group left of the Labour Party.

Interesting times for leftist trainspotters.

Random · Dec 16, 2008

i'm going to miss the SWP

penderyn2000 · Dec 16, 2008

When Hoover announced it was ending production in Merthyr, an SWP member set up a facebook group opposing the closure which gained 2000 members in a week, including Hoover workers and their families. They ran successful stalls in Merthyr, visited several other sites facing redundancies and won the (apparent) support of union convenors. On the back of this they organised two public meetings, in Merthyr and Cardiff. Very few came. Then what is wrong with saying workers failed to respond to their call? It's a fact! It's not a judgement on the workers in question, it's recognition there is a problem between the aspirations of the left and what is happening in the class struggle. But then the fact activists are trying to spark a fightback at all is an affront in the eyes of dyed-in-the-wool workerists such as the ones who have insulted me here. Red O hasn't even read what I said, which is explicitly critical of the SWP's dishonest methods.

chilango · Dec 16, 2008

Random said:
i'm going to miss the SWP

Maybe a part of some student union somewhere could be set aside to preserve the last few members before they go extinct.

audiotech · Dec 16, 2008

John Molyneux replies.

It is clear from the contents of the IBs as a whole that a significant democratic upsurge is taking place in the ranks of the SWP and I regard this overall as a positive, not a threatening, development (regardless of my agreement or disagreement with particular contributions) in that I believe this discussion and debate can help the party improve its understanding of the situation we face and our ability to operate politically within it.

There's more:

I think the question of John’s removal from the CC is bound up with the question of improving party democracy because it is seen by the members as asserting the principle that no one is ‘above’ accountability and that is why it is popular in the party.

Molyneux's reply, initially to a major article in the SWP's 'Pre-conference Internal Bulletin', is likely to undermine Ree's position further, if that was possible, given the feeling from the pressure that has built up among rank-and – file party members, particularly those in Sheffield apparently.

Good to see that the rank and file in the SWP has found it's voice again. About bloody time!

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3176

treelover · Dec 16, 2008

Imo, Sheffield SWP 'cadres' are very hardline indeed.

cutandsplice · Dec 16, 2008

treelover said:
Imo, Sheffield SWP 'cadres' are very hardline indeed.

Do they amount to double figures?

the button · Dec 16, 2008

cutandsplice said:
Do they amount to double figures?

IQ?

chilango · Dec 17, 2008

MC5 said:
John Molyneux replies.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3176

Well if the 1983 Labour manifesto was the longest suicide note in history, this must be the longest "told you so" that the SWPs have had to suck up on p&p.

Lets have a little looksee at some choice John Molyneux nuggets.

One side effect of this was the decline in student radicalism As someone actively involved in student work in the late sixties and through the seventies and then a lecturer in the eighties and nineties I thought the change was palpable but could never get any acknowledgement of this from the party leadership. But if we recall that in the early seventies the common slur against IS was that we were all just students, and that Marxism began as a student event and, on occasion we had specifically Student Marxisms with about 1000 attendance we can see that the decline must had a real affect on our recruitment possibilities

So, there you have it. The SWPs did rely upon fresher's fair to keep going...

The worst mistake however was the failure to admit or correct mistakes even after they had long become evident

How many threads have we had on here about this very thing, and how many times have our resident SWPs and fellow travellers done exactly that.

Somewhere in the anti-nazi struggle of the mid nineties there was a splendid South Wales Against Racism demo which mobilised several thousand people. On this demo we ‘recruited’ 107 members (the figure is etched on my brain). Two weeks later, after intensive phoning, visiting etc, no more than a handful, if that, remained ‘live’. It was time for the penny to drop, for a reassessment

Hmm. This is an illustrating example. the local SWP leadership in question here were notorious. I've given numerous accounts of their shenanigans here only to have the Party loyalists deny that my accounts could possibly be true.

The demo in question was only splendid because the equally large fash mobilisation against was quietly snuffed out by a bunch of anarchists and AFA types who had tagged along...and before you question the elitism of this approach, let's remember that the local SWP had a pretty long record of wilfully ignoring fash presence at ANL demos in South Wales in order to concentrate on said paper recruitement.

What SHOULD have happened in the above examples is that the members should have insisted on the reality on the ground as they experienced it, and called the leadership to account

...and here. Yet, not a critical voice to be heard from the SWPs here. Apparently you were wrong.

Even when Respect was going well we got too close to Galloway. It became very difficult in the party to criticise GG at any but the most abstract level

Ditto.

The disastrous election results, especially in London

...this is getting silly.

We told you all this months before JM got round to it.

The debacle over the Tower Hamlets Councillors. First, the defection of one of our ‘left’ councillors to the Tories (!) which was preceded the night before (!) by an email statement saying he had been spoken to and was staying loyal.

Ditto

Enough!

The truest word yet.

SWP: Mother of all splits looms?

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