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SWP expulsions and squabbles

Scribbling S said:
I don't think that is entirely fair on Pat Stack - you can see that he attempted to make the investigation into "Delta" better in that he stood back and said that while "rape" could not be proved, "Delta" had done something wrong (standards of conduct below that expected of leading member or whatever formula), which as he was chair of the DC, you'd think should have swung the rest around - it would have been the best result possible within that structure. And the "filth" can obviously have those two different meanings (and also if he hadn't said it, we'd never have got Anna Chen's very insightful and moving poem - I'm hoping that will be set to music soon). It looks to me like Pat Stack was trying to do the right thing within a system that was going the wrong way. On the Counterfire issue - it's not impossible that there might be quite a few Counterfire people tempted to move towards the "Platform" people, rather than the other way round ?
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Interesting last point - might well be more activisty types in CF a bit pissed off at just providing support for the big twos media performances and making the tea.
 
butchersapron said:
And as bolshie is already repeating :D
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Thanks for noticing :)

Maybe it's just cause I'm having a bad morning but having read that Penny piece I'm actually more depressed about all this than at any time. There is a real possibility here that the swp image will be too tarnished to recover from this or that being on the defensive about it saps their energy here on out. Which is doubly depressing cause none of the splits are going to reclaim the tradition or anything so noble, they're all headed into the swamp. I've been open enough about who I've supported throughout all this but the unfortunate fact is this is going to make life very difficult for every hard working swp activist here on out. I never minded getting abuse at paper sales about the politics but how much can people take of being constantly accused of being complicit in the abuse of teenage women?!
 
butchersapron said:
Interesting last point - might well be more activisty types in CF a bit pissed off at just providing support for the big twos media performances and making the tea.
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I could be wrong, but Counterfire doesn't appear to much weight amongst students anywhere in the country except central London. At Middlesex Uni for instance there's some non-aligned left, and a SWSS but no Counterfire.

If people care, this is Counterfire's analysis of their split from SWP:


Respect was launched on the back of profound disenchantment amongst Labour’s supporters at Blair’s support for Bush’s wars. This disenchantment was deepest amongst working-class Muslims but was spread far more widely, creating a minority prepared to look elsewhere for political organisation and representation. Respect, for the first time in 50 years, won Parliamentary representation for left of Labour and produced spectacular results elsewhere. But as the anti-war tide receded, and with the suddenly plausible threat of a Conservative government understandably frightening many into supporting Labour, it fell into serious divisions and splits from late 2007.

The SWP, which had played so important a role in establishing first the Stop the War Coalition and then Respect, retreated in turn. A majority were won to the belief that nothing had been gained from the anti-war movement or Respect, and that a turn to “party-building” was now necessary. This meant, in practice, a turn away from engagement with the movements. Significant political divisions appeared between a minority who had attempted to build the movements and now saw the possibilities inherent in a wider political radicalisation, and a majority who believed that a “turn to industry” and a concentration on the clear routines of branch meetings and paper sales were necessary.
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their conclusions are

The road ahead is clear. First, in conditions of Britain today, work in united fronts is of the primary strategic importance. Openness, internal democracy, a willingness to act constructively as a minority in bigger organisations, and an ability to maintain long-term relationships with others not sharing our politics are critical. Second, understanding the transformations that neoliberalism has wrought on the British working class means understanding how political radicalisation can coexist with a still quiescent industrial struggle, and responding to it. It means understanding how changes in the workplace, and the role of the internet, have changed how it is possible for us to organise. Third, it means a reassertion of the central importance of strategy within the movement: that the key tasks for socialists in Britain today, a declining imperial power, are in opposing the British state’s drive to war and in building an effective anti-austerity movement – joined, in Scotland, by the fight for a radical independence. Campaign-hopping cannot substitute for serious work in the movements.
To have an effective strategy for revolution means having also an effective organisation. The need for that organisation is as strong as it ever was. Austerity and the crisis will grind on for the immediately foreseeable future. Labour, the historic party of the British working class, accepts the need for austerity. New organisations of the radical left, akin to Syriza, can be built in these circumstances and in those likely to prevail after the next general election, and within which revolutionaries can play a decisive role. But for them to be effective, they themselves must also be organised.
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so presumably they are happy to subsume themselves as part of a larger whole as in Syriza.
One question: what will happen to non-SWP parts of TUSC, will they be completely happy for the SWP to stay in? The toxicity level of SWP to people doing legwork has probably increased significantly after the Special Conference.
 
Significant political divisions appeared between a minority who had attempted to build the movements and now saw the possibilities inherent in a wider political radicalisation, and a majority who believed that a “turn to industry” and a concentration on the clear routines of branch meetings and paper sales were necessary.
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Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks all over again. :rolleyes:

I don't know the writer's politics but that "The road ahead is clear ..." piece that sihhi quoted is refreshingly free of the jaded rhetoric of 'far left' analyses. It's a pleasant surprise to be able to fucking understand what they're saying.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Throughout all this the Seymour lot have had a funny relationship with Counterfire. The public utterances seemed to dwell on Rees and German's alleged bad faith for not having broken with the prof's model of dem cen earlier. And obviously so long as Seymour was at least pretending to want to stay he couldn't say nice things about them. But in all honesty don't they match his ideas pretty closely? They shared his enthuasiasm for Syriza as a 'new formation' and even a 'left centrism'. They are at least open to his identity politics tendencies. And all the precariat stuff is right up his alley. Can't be that long before they come to some sort of accommodation?
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Even before I started reading the thread today, I was fairly certain you'd spout something like this, something insinuatory.

Glad to see you lived down to my expectations, bb. :)
 
sihhi said:
The Guardian's " but that the party responded by convening its own court, comprised chiefly of the alleged attacker's friends, to decide whether rape had occurred. They decided that it hadn't."
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Just on a pure technicality, and not at all to defend what the SWP did, wasn't the verdict of their Disputes Committee that the allegation was "not proven" rather than that "not guilty"? I'm not an expert in Scottish law but there appears to be a significant difference. According to wikipedia:
The result is the modern perception that the "not proven" verdict is an acquittal used when the judge or jury does not have enough evidence to convict but is not sufficiently convinced of the defendant's innocence to bring in a "not guilty" verdict. Essentially, the judge or jury is unconvinced that the suspect is innocent, but has insufficient evidence to the contrary. In popular parlance, this verdict is sometimes jokingly referred to as "not guilty and don't do it again"
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Louis MacNeice said:
That is precisely the problem; what uses would bans on poltical parties be put to?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
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ah. i wasn't endorsing smith's suggestion, merely pointing out the contrast between where he would trust the bourgeois justice system (to ban a political party) and where he wouldn't (to try himself for rape).
 
sihhi said:
I could be wrong, but Counterfire doesn't appear to much weight amongst students anywhere in the country except central London. At Middlesex Uni for instance there's some non-aligned left, and a SWSS but no Counterfire.
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There was an attempt to set up a Counterfire group at the start of the year Sheffield Uni, I assume that it didn't go well because I've heard nothing about them since.

Edit - http://www.counterfire.org/index.ph...nterfire-work-at-sheffield-hallam-university- - just making sure it wasn't a figment of my imagination!
 
sihhi said:
I could be wrong, but Counterfire doesn't appear to much weight amongst students anywhere in the country except central London. At Middlesex Uni for instance there's some non-aligned left, and a SWSS but no Counterfire.

If people care, this is Counterfire's analysis of their split from SWP:




their conclusions are


so presumably they are happy to subsume themselves as part of a larger whole as in Syriza.
One question: what will happen to non-SWP parts of TUSC, will they be completely happy for the SWP to stay in? The toxicity level of SWP to people doing legwork has probably increased significantly after the Special Conference.
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a)TUSC needs anyone it can lay its hands on
b)The SP case (Hedley) will be used in excatly the same way to criticise the far left
 
SpineyNorman said:
I reckon that's not far off right to be honest - probably about 2,000 subs paying members, though obviously there's some in that number who aren't especially active. I know we check our branch membership list once a year and take anyone off who hasn't been involved or paid subs over the year unless there's some kind of unusual circumstance that leads us to believe they'll be back.

I'm pretty sure I'm still counted among the SWP membership, despite sending a resignation to the centre. Otherwise I wouldn't still be getting the internal bulletins. That said I think before this shitstorm, even taking into account the questionable membership figures, the SWP were definitely still a fair bit bigger than us. I hadn't realised just how many members they had round here until they packed out a meeting a bit back. There's a section of the membership that you don't generally see at the usual events but who can be mobilised when they really need it and I think that's been the real difference.
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So I'm just interested, your organisation, the Socialist party, encouraged its members not to go to the said meeting?
 
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