In a major provocation to the left and the whole antiracist movement, the BNP has announced that it’s infiltrated Unite Against Fascism, The Socialist Workers’ Party and Respect.
Diane Stoker and Jo Finnon, two students in Manchester SWSS and leading members of Respect North West, have announced themselves to be fascist spies. They have posted photos of themselves smiling with Nick Griffin, the BNP’s leader, and Tony Wentworth, the North West Youth Organiser, at this years Red White and Blue Festival on the BNP’s website.
We should unite in demanding that these fascist provocateurs are driven out of the students’ unions and off the campuses. They have abused the trust of hundreds of students and antiracist campaigners and, we must assume, passed on their personal details to fascist thugs. Indeed they boast on the BNP website, “Over the last twelve months, there has been nothing that these groups have discussed or planned that hasn't come back to the BNP.”
Now is a time to stand in solidarity with the members of these organisations whose safety has been compromised. However, we must also demand that the leaders of these organisations do more to publicise the dangers and immediately convene an inquiry to minimise the risk of any future infiltration.
A year ago Finnon and Stoker joined Manchester SWSS, on the instructions of the BNP to discover and undermine the work of Manchester anti-fascists.
Within days of entering the SWP local leadership promoted them over the next year they took:
Responsible positions within Manchester Against Racism
Leadership of student work at Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester University
Elected to the national SWP conference which agreed the Respect turn
Leadership of Respect in the North West
Globalise Resistance recruitment at Marxism 2004
Throughout this time there was no inkling that they were BNP spies. The SWP undertook no checks on them and allowed them unlimited access to membership lists, petitions, e-mail groups, photo archives and all other internal information of all these organisations at quite a high level.
IF YOU HAVE SIGNED A PETITION, PARTICIPATED IN AN ACTION OR JOINED, MANCHESTER AGAINST RACISM, UNITE AGAINST FASCISM, SWSS, GLOBALISE RESISTANCE OR MANCHESTER SWP IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS BE AWARE THE BNP COULD HAVE YOUR CONTACT DETAILS, ADDRESS, PHONE AND E-MAIL.
Their entry raises questions of a systematic nature. These two raw fascists who never demonstrated any political understanding or interest in theory or ideas, were promoted over the existing Manchester SWSS leadership because they fulfilled the essential test of SWP membership – obedience. They did what they were told. They unquestioningly accepted instructions from the bureaucratic apparatus and carried them out unswervingly.
But the entryism of Finnon and Stoker was not limited to discovering information on the left. They were genuine agent provocateurs who encouraged the arrest of leading Manchester anti-fascist militants and disrupted and undermined our work.
They were a part of the SWP led Manchester Against Racism organising committee which arranged the stewarding of the launch rally which was notoriously occupied by 20 or so Fascists: the first public presence of the fascists in Manchester for nearly 20 year. It should be said they didn’t have a difficult job disrupting the stewarding, as the SWP themselves proposed asking the police to steward and rang the police on the day when the fascists showed up.
In an even more sinister twist the following week Workers Power comrades were rung by Diane Stoker informing them that Tony Wentworth, the BNP youth organiser, was attempting to spy on the left by drinking in the main left pub in town. She reported that he was harassing women comrades and making sexist remarks towards them. She said she felt threatened and urged our comrades to come down. Aware of the risks of fascist attack we had no choice but to attend. And indeed Wentworth was there in the pub. We agreed to talk to Wentworth to discuss with him why his behaviour was inappropriate. He was immediately violent and aggressive. When we went outside to further discuss the matter with him two police officers appeared. We explained the situation to them and they escorted Wentworth away. It didn’t feel good at the time. But with the benefit of what we now know this was a clear attempt to have our comrades either attacked or arrested.
Anti-fascists be warned, this spying operation endangered the entire left.
The SWP must admit to some responsibility for enabling it to take place and apologise for exposing the wider movement. We don’t make these criticisms lightly, nor should we be complacent about our own security. Certainly, Manchester Workers Power supporters never suspected the two. We were duped along with the rest of the antiracist movement. However, we do have basic security measures in place: namely political education, background checks and a system of candidate membership.
All organisations that claim to be revolutionary must ask themselves hard questions when infiltration is discovered. Was the key test of any revolutionary – do you understand and can you apply the method of revolutionary socialism in the class struggle- ever asked of these two? Or were they rapidly advanced because they were the ultimate yes people, for obvious reasons they always did exactly what they were told. Enthusiasm is good; but political understanding and education is not an optional extra. Determined infiltrators may get over even these hurdles which is one of the reasons for a system of candidate membership (which the SWP does not currently operate) and for the immediate democratic recall of officials by the membership.
The SWP needs to act decisively to change this culture. But it won’t and indeed it can’t, on its current trajectory. The increasingly sudden swerves of position, the abandonment of key principles of revolutionary socialism – working class independence, women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights, secularism and indeed socialism itself, encourages a culture of compliant, obedient, subservient membership which partly enabled these two to advance so rapidly and with such disastrous results is the only type of membership the leadership can tolerate.
Days after this news was released the SWP have made no public comment on the matter, with the exception of the woefully inadequate quotes in the Morning Star report. Silence is not an option in the face of fascist infiltration.
We have yet to hear what campaign the SWP proposes to launch against these two.
We have yet to hear any proposals for correcting the damage.
We have yet to hear an honest accounting of what went wrong or the extent of the damage.
In the meantime, we mustn’t wait but immediately launch a campaign. Manchester Workers Power has already leafleted Finnon’s workplace, in a local supermarket, where black and white workers alike were disgusted that they’d been working alongside a fascist.
We have also submitted an emergency resolution to Unite Against Fascism to join us in the fight to get Finnon and Stoker expelled from their universities. We will also put resolutions through the AUT and Unison branches, whose members as well as students have been placed at risk due to Finnon and Stoker’s deceptions. They have not only used deception to gain access to personal details, they have contravened all the antiracist and equal opportunities policies of the universities, and secretly aided an organisation dedicated to race hate and violent attacks.
In the new term we will launch a massive publicity campaign amongst students and lecturers demanding-
Expel the fascist students
Kick the fascists out of the students’ unions
Boycott classes if Finnon and Stoker are allowed to attend
No platform for fascists to spread their racist filth
For god's sakes what makes you think an 'investigation' would have uncoevered these two in the first place if they were as convincing as they seem to have been?
