I felt really uncomfortable with the way that so much of the coverage consisted of equally anti-feminist rivals gloating over the demise of one of their competitors. As vile as the SWP leadership have shown themselves to be, I don’t think the Galloway fanboys who hosted that leaked transcript are much better, and the publication that carried Tom Walker’s brave and important letter of resignation also gave space to an unspeakably awful article arguing that “rape is not the problem”, and concluding that “far from being insufficiently feminist, the SWP has been too soft on feminism”. To write anything about the political situation on the left in the UK at the moment without mentioning the SWP would be to ignore the elephant in the room, but I felt like if I wrote anything substantial on the topic, I might accidentally say something that would give even the slightest bit of comfort to either the loyalists still defending the indefensible, or the Newman/Demarty misogynist boys’ club eagerly celebrating the fact that a rape had led to some difficulties for a political organisation that they disagree with.
