Fascist attack on SWP in Lewisham

[HST]

Nicked off wikipedia but...

• Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010) ISBN 978-1-904491-12-5
• Bullstreet, K.. Bash the Fash: Anti-Fascist Recollections 1984-1993. ISBN 1-873605-87-0.
• Anti-Fascist Action: an Anarchist Perspective (Kate Sharpley Library, 2007) ISBN 9781873605493
• Hann, Dave and Steve Tilzey, No Retreat (Milo Books, 2003) ISBN 1903854229

Also The 43 Group - http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/books/DisplayBookInfo.php?ISBN=0903738759

 

[Anudder Oik]

Nicked off wikipedia but...

• Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010) ISBN 978-1-904491-12-5
• Bullstreet, K.. Bash the Fash: Anti-Fascist Recollections 1984-1993. ISBN 1-873605-87-0.
• Anti-Fascist Action: an Anarchist Perspective (Kate Sharpley Library, 2007) ISBN 9781873605493
• Hann, Dave and Steve Tilzey, No Retreat (Milo Books, 2003) ISBN 1903854229

Also The 43 Group - http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/books/DisplayBookInfo.php?ISBN=0903738759

Just add the Martin Lux to that lot and you've got a nice little library going.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

That's about the best explanation I can think of, this side of Nigel telling us he pulled that 90% figure out of his arse.

Just to be clear, I did pull that 90% figure out of my arse. I certainly didn't conduct an opinion poll.

I've met a lot of SWP members. I've argued with a lot of SWP members. There are two things I've learnt never to bother with in an argument with most of them: (a) The way that something one of their sister groups is doing abroad is completely opposed to the line they are arguing here or (b) some crazy shit they got up to more than five years ago. By and large, they don't know and they don't care. Caring about those things or even knowing about those things aren't part of the organisation's culture. As compared to other left wing groups, most of which pay a fair bit of attention to these things and some of which are practically obsessive about them, the SWP, for a lot of its own members, basically doesn't have a past.

 

[discokermit]

Just to be clear, I did pull that 90% figure out of my arse. I certainly didn't conduct an opinion poll.

I've met a lot of SWP members. I've argued with a lot of SWP members. There are two things I've learnt never to bother with in an argument with most of them: (a) The way that something one of their sister groups is doing abroad is completely opposed to the line they are arguing here or (b) some crazy shit they got up to more than five years ago. By and large, they don't know and they don't care. Caring about those things or even knowing about those things aren't part of the organisation's culture. As compared to other left wing groups, most of which pay a fair bit of attention to these things and some of which are practically obsessive about them, the SWP, for a lot of its own members, basically doesn't have a past.

i agree with (a), but the rest doesn't fit with my experience. mind you, it has been a long time since i was involved.

 

[Anudder Oik]

After hearing a few times the SWP's arguments against Squadism I found them to be somewhat dogmatic. Like sacred scripts they get out and polish every once in a while and which the membership dutifully learned and repeated.

the basic vocabulary is this; undemocratic, elitist, substitute for the class, makes us look as bad as the fash, doesn't work, it's what the fash want, etc..

But I've always had the feeling that there was a more hidden reason, perhaps more psychological, for opposing squadism and that it reveals a lack of seriousness about their goals and relationship with the working class as a whole.

 

[audiotech]

Only when I'm speaking to you, cunt.

Hahaha - plumb.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

i agree with (a), but the rest doesn't fit with my experience. mind you, it has been a long time since i was involved.

Both vary a bit. You'll meet the odd SWP member who used to live abroad or has an interest in some other country and so knows all about their sister organisation there. And you'll meet a higher number of SWPers who have spent time in the pub talking to an old timer about the days of yore in the pub after a branch meeting, or who are used to arguing with other leftists who do tend to have an interest in that sort of stuff.

But overall, the SWP has always seemed to me to be the far left strand whose members have the least interest in these things in relative terms. The Irish SWP for instance used to have a radically different line on elements of the national question, which is a pretty important issue here for obvious reasons, but I don't think I've ever met an SWPer who wasn't around in the 1980s who actually knows about it in any detail.

 

[Pickman's model]

Not strictly true - Americans are allowed to use the term 'soccer' as they have that funny version of 'football'.

i think I know what i've heard rather better than you do

 

[Pickman's model]

Hahaha - plumb.

The insult you're searching for is 'plum'.

 

[Pickman's model]

And yanks, ozzies, kiwis etc. Oh hang on...

As I pointed out to transpontine I know what i've heard better than you do.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just to be clear, I did pull that 90% figure out of my arse. I certainly didn't conduct an opinion poll.

Fair play to you for admitting it.

I've met a lot of SWP members. I've argued with a lot of SWP members. There are two things I've learnt never to bother with in an argument with most of them: (a) The way that something one of their sister groups is doing abroad is completely opposed to the line they are arguing here or (b) some crazy shit they got up to more than five years ago. By and large, they don't know and they don't care. Caring about those things or even knowing about those things aren't part of the organisation's culture. As compared to other left wing groups, most of which pay a fair bit of attention to these things and some of which are practically obsessive about them, the SWP, for a lot of its own members, basically doesn't have a past.

TBF most of the few Swappies (as opposed to ex-Swappies) I know are in their 40s and 50s, so they probably remember because they either were around when it happened, or heard about it soon after.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Hahaha - plumb.

Plum, as in "you plum".

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Plum, as in "you plum".

Or perhaps audiotech has a burning dislike of brickies?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Red Storm]

After hearing a few times the SWP's arguments against Squadism I found them to be somewhat dogmatic. Like sacred scripts they get out and polish every once in a while and which the membership dutifully learned and repeated.

the basic vocabulary is this; undemocratic, elitist, substitute for the class, makes us look as bad as the fash, doesn't work, it's what the fash want, etc..

But I've always had the feeling that there was a more hidden reason, perhaps more psychological, for opposing squadism and that it reveals a lack of seriousness about their goals and relationship with the working class as a whole.

Substitutes mass action for individual terrorism, comrade!

Even though Squad-ism is exactly what Trotsky argues for in the part on France in: Fascism: what it is and how to fight it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Substitutes mass action for individual terrorism, comrade!

Even though Squad-ism is exactly what Trotsky argues for in the part on France in: Fascism: what it is and how to fight it.

Any Swappie CC member worth their salt will tell you that what Trotsky actually meant was...

 

[Ranbay]

http://twitpic.com/9gekjz

or something

 

[krink]

http://twitpic.com/9gekjz

or something

woah bob man, just having me tea here

 

[audiotech]

The insult you're searching for is 'plum'.

Alright, yes I'm the 'plum'.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Any Swappie CC member worth their salt will tell you that what Trotsky actually meant was...

Not really because he was addressing (or so he thought) uniquely Stalinist arguments, he held them up to the light and forensically dissected them at both a macro and a micro level.

There is in other words no wriggle room; no 'what he actually meant was'. The lessons drawn are utterly explicit.

So rather than debate it, the SWP and other Trots have consistenly drawn a complete veil over it for at least 30 years and probably longer.

Someone somewhere decided that in the interests of the entire Trot 'movement' the safest course of action was to bury the pamplet with the same degree of conviction as an ice-pick in the head.

 

[discokermit]

the safest course of action was to bury the pamplet with the same degree of conviction as an ice-pick in the head.

on sale on the branch bookstall and at bookmarks, http://www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/...art_id=4219670.20227&search_request_button=Go

fourth on the "fighting fascism recommended reading list".

 

[discokermit]

Or perhaps audiotech has a burning dislike of brickies?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

more likely plumbers or leadsmiths.

actually, i think plumb works better than plum as an insult. one is a soft fruit, the other a dense, heavy, soft metal which is poisonous.

 

[malatesta32]

oh dont bring metal into it, its as bad as soccer teams.

 

[The39thStep]

The IS/SWP in the period in which the ANL Mark 1 and the RtW etc were built was a very different kettle of fish than the SWP is now. The implications to move to a Leninist Party weren't understood by a lot of the membership especially the large influx of recruits that the organisation gained through the ANL and RtW. The IS already had in some parts a tradition inside workplaces but its support there was far less dogmatic than now, branches by and large tended to have some unevenness of agreement about tactics and in the organisation overall there was a far wider degree of diversity of opinion and debate. You could argue a different line without getting expelled, even if you were suspended by and large you were let back in. its was only the serious Trotoid type factions that got the back hand of the hacks. The organisation basically was more tolerant.Branches were seen as less of a franchise of the SWP and more of a local branch with connections to the Socialist Worker paper

I was intermittently around the IS and other groups for a while in the mid 70s and joined during Grunwicks, I can remember Paul Holborrow reassuring me that IS/SWP were libertarian socialists! Socialism form below was the general ethos and political education was just as much about the Wobblies, early CP , Luxemburg as it was about the Russian revolution. Yes there was an obsession about Trotsky but that is because Trotsky was seen as left wing Stalinism and we wanted to be bigger left wing version of the CP.

Joe and BigNose will remember that the attacks on the fash were positively advocated by members of the CC, particular Deason.Equating the fascists head with the pavement was the general line along with denouncing the CP for aligning themselves with vicars and marching in the opposite direction when the fash came to town.The organisation was labelled as the 'throw a brick party' by the Broad Left, in general the IS/SWP and those who supported were the only show in town when it came to attracting those who wanted physical force anti-fascsim. I remember an article in the Guardian i think it was which visited some place where the NF had a meeting and the ANL had just ben formed and it briefly discussed the 'darker violent elements of the SWP' in the new ANL and has some comments from someone saying that they felt reassured when they turned up as it scared the NF but that they wouldn't like to meet them in other circumstances. The branches that I was in in West and North West London had weekly/fortnightly interactions with the fash with not many batting an eyelid, apart from a time when firearms( mainly airguns) were rumoured to be involved on both sides.

Joe Jacobs Out Of The Getto was encouraged reading over Our Flag Stays Red, we were following in the tradition of the 43 group, if Rosenhaft's Beating the Fascists has been published in the mid 1970s it would have been book of the month.

What caused political panic in the organisation was the ironically the implications of 'socialism from below' inside the organisation and the threat it carried to the introduction of the Bolshevisation of the Party from not only the influx of young working class supporters but those older ones involved in rank and file groups as well. After a few years , in some case less, of joining it was almost like the Party getting in the way of 'our' view of what we thought was our tradition , our view of a socialist organisation might be like.

Can't think of a way of actually concluding this post so I will stop there

 

[Random]

I was intermittently around the IS and other groups for a while in the mid 70s and joined during Grunwicks, I can remember Paul Holborrow reassuring me that IS/SWP were libertarian socialists! Socialism form below was the general ethos and political education was just as much about the Wobblies, early CP , Luxemburg as it was about the Russian revolution. Yes there was an obsession about Trotsky but that is because Trotsky was seen as left wing Stalinism and we wanted to be bigger left wing version of the CP.

Would that be the same time that people like Peter Sedgwick were interested in Victor Serge, etc. An exp-SWP member in Manchester who'd be about the same age as you spoke to me about a libertarian current in the party at that time, I think.

 

[The39thStep]

Would that be the same time that people like Peter Sedgwick were interested in Victor Serge, etc. An exp-SWP member in Manchester who'd be about the same age as you spoke to me about a libertarian current in the party at that time, I think.

We were encouraged to read Serge, Ten days that shook the world etc. Sedgwick wrote a brilliant book on mental health actually.Nigel Harris could have different opinions on the world economy and the nature of states. Even the early IS theories however flawed on permanent arms economy, state cap etc were bold and innovative.

 

[bignose1]

Malatesta32: Hitler my part in his downfall

The Missing Luftwaffe' Chiefs Looted Antiques called Goering Goering Gone
....their is also a recent history of the White Knights of the KKK..£7.99 also available on Klandle...3 days since the derby and Im feeling better though my son got sacked from H**C yesterday...but he's not too pissed off...full of wankers...and getting back on topic...I posted earlier on another thread about a possible resurgence in fascist violence and Ive had 3 mainstream press enquiries/requests on the back of whats happened recently.

 

[The39thStep]

The Missing Luftwaffe' Chiefs Looted Antiques called Goering Goering Gone
....their is also a recent history of the White Knights of the KKK..£7.99 also available on Klandle...3 days since the derby and Im feeling better though my son got sacked from HSBC yesterday...but he's not too pissed off...full of wankers.

My son got sacked on the eve of my wife's funeral last year!

 

[Random]

Sorry to hear about your wife, I didn't know

 

[bignose1]

My son got sacked on the eve of my wife's funeral last year!

Sorry to hear about that S and your lad....my son was set up by a work colleague...not financial shenanigans...before anyone starts....but office banter that got out of hand. Only been there a few weeks.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

We were encouraged to read Serge, Ten days that shook the world etc. Sedgwick wrote a brilliant book on mental health actually.Nigel Harris could have different opinions on the world economy and the nature of states. Even the early IS theories however flawed on permanent arms economy, state cap etc were bold and innovative.

Have to agree on Sedgwick's Psycho Politics; published in 1982 and still a great and interesting read today.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice