SWP expulsions and squabbles

[J Ed]

That's the US SWP.

 

[Pickman's model]

So, while doing some research on something entirely unrelated to the SWP I came across critics of the party saying that the SWP supported the FNLA and UNTIA in Angola against the MPLA, can anyone confirm that or put it in context? This is totally bizarre.

yes, it's totally unrelated to the swp.

 

[butchersapron]

Mate, i've read stuff that is pages and pages long where someone has gone off on at the SWP (usually over Cuba) without even noticing their mistake

 

[bolshiebhoy]

fuck off

now you're just acting the spoilt little cunt

Well I never belboid. Our relations have become very frosty over recent weeks. One of us must be digging his heels in. I'm prepared to admit it might be me but are you by any chance being seduced by the ISN?

 

[Pickman's model]

I can't imagine any brand of feminist regarding calling someone a cunt as an acceptable form of insult.

your imagination is very limited.

 

[Pickman's model]

Cunt.

^^ post of the thread.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Bolshiebhoy will you do anything to defend the central committee and discredit the opposition, is there no limits?

The latest is that you have dismissed accusations of bullying despite knowing absolutely about the details. But you just write it off as certain kinds of feminists whinging.

Can you imagine, for instance, if after the woman who accussed the Lib Dem Lord of sexual harrassment/assault, someone defending the Lib Dem in public had reacted with the line that he should have "kept his dick in his trousers" and that there was a problem with "certain kinds of feminists". Expect that in this case your comments, if anything, are even worse, as there has not only been an allegation towards Delta of sexual harassment, another woman has alleged that he raped her. Do you seriously see your kinds of comments as appropriate? Or does it not matter because at all costs the IS tradition has to be defended. A tradition, incidentally that appears to have achieved very little and has let to a situation where they are more isolated than ever, with even more useless fronts than ever, and no idea of how to go forward other than going around in circles.

What is certain is that Delta thought it was perfectly ok, as a 48 year old leader of the SWP, to sleep with two women, one who was 17, and the other not much older. Yet this all gets swept under the carpet by people like you from the loyalist side by the pathetic defence that it is ok because you don't accept bourgeois morals, and heh you slept with a 17 year old when you were 22 so it's all ok. As if that's the only people who would have concerns about this. Indeed you'd think that if anything, socialists would have more concern. Unless of course they think that it's ok for a socialist organisation to be used by middle aged men to sleep around with teenage women from a position of leadership.

There is still the Sheffield case, where an organiser of the SWP was accussed of rape, sexual harrassment, attacking his partner, and general sexism and misogyny. It's still not clear exactly what the central committee accepted he had done, but they suspended him for two years, the same "sentence" they gave to four people for discussing internal SWP business on facebook. They then thought it was a good idea, despite accepting at least some of the allegations were true, that they should praise him for being a great organiser, give him some SWP literature on women and say they welcome him back to the fold. This was the official position of the CC. Or does this all get swept under the carpet as well because there were "certain kinds of feminists" making the complaints, and heh hoh, everyone can change.

These cases don't come out of nowhere. They come out of the stalinist politics and method of the SWP which puts itself as an organisation before anything else, including the working class which it is ever more isolated from. The fact that SWP loyalist trade unionists I know are now going round saying that it's all lies, despite knowing fuck all about the case, is also reflective of this (I have also seen the surge of paper selling outside workplaces that Past Caring talked about).

You and RMP3 can go around all you like talking about abstract debates, but it doesn't change what has happened.

They'll need a little more evidence of bullying than that weird collection of posts on the Sheffield swss FB page last night before anyone needs to genuflect before them.I've been shouted at by organisers and shouted back at them in my time in swss. Part of the normal operation of swss and the healthy tension between student life and branch/district demands. What was it Bambery used to call us and expect us to be 'intellectual hooligans'. Swss members spend their life looking for a good opportunity to annoy people in authority. Having a dreaded full timer on your case is not something that in my experience made the average swss member wet themselves. Something therefore has changed. Either the full timers have gotten scarier or the swss members have become a little less hooligan and a litle more swampish. I know where my money would be.

 

[butchersapron]

Or they're sick of your nauseating shit over a rape cover up and the special measures currently being used to keep the remaining members in the party.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm no expert either, but I do understand that. Obviously the emotional damage of being raped by somebody you know is a serious and real consequence of rape. But I wasn't making a specific comment on whether the victim knows their attacker or not; just because a victim knows an attacker doesn't mean at all that the rape isn't of the (for want of a better way of describing this) more violent type which I described. Therefore it seems to me that the scars left by rape can be both 1) deeper scars if the victim knew their attacker and 2) scars the depth of which correlates to the level of violence involved. It seems to me that every rape is a violent act, but it is also not incorrect to say that there are levels of violence... I know I'm explaining this incredibly badly because I'm struggling to explain what I mean without implying that some rapes are 'less serious', which is not what I want to say. I guess what I mean is that all rapes are by definition violent and abusive acts, but that it is wrong to say that one rape necessarily has qualitatively the same negative impact on a victim than another. At least I think that's what I'm trying to say.

I think it needs to be accepted that in any rape, the level of physical and emotional violence will differ along a spectrum that's unique to the circumstances of the event and the psychological "make-up" of the survivor. One instance can't be weighed against another easily because the events are unique, even if the crime committed is not. The best that can be achieved is a crude equivalence.

 

[ViolentPanda]

As a Socialist Party member I don't feel particularly welcome at a place that refers to the organisation I'm part of as a sect or a cult.
I'm not keen on the bullying behavior I've seen of commentators who don't fit the narrow 'in group' of opinions.

It's not just that people slag off SP posters, people do it here as well but I don't mind it at all. The reason is I never sense any sort of malevolence from people criticizing the SP here whereas that's most definitely the vibe from a lot of folks I get on SU. I think a lot of people who don't fit the mould feel the same as well.

SU is a deeply unpleasant place in much the same way Lenin's Tomb is. They're both headed by people who far too pleased with how clever they are and they both have a bullying, nasty clique of regular commentators completely intolerant of genuinely dissenting views.

[/quote]

I don't consider the SP a cult. I reserve that label for the AWL.

 

[SpineyNorman]

That's the US SWP.

I've been reading a lot about the Angolan civil war lately - it's fascinating, not something I knew anything about before. It seems incredible to me that anyone considering themselves on the left could have supported either of those groups, UK SWP, US SWP or anyone else.

Or the MPLA for that matter, though it's at least possible to see a fairly vulgar form of anti-imperialism could have led some kind of critical support for them.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Or they're sick of your nauseating shit over a rape cover up and the special measures currently being used to keep the remaining members in the party.

Not sure how the cc can have any special measures to keep anyone in the party longer than they want to be. There may be special measures to win the argument with those who choose to stay. But ultimately all of us who have ever left, well we just left. Some people seem to be getting very exercised over the large numbers who currently aren't leaving.

 

[J Ed]

I've been reading a lot about the Angolan civil war lately - it's fascinating, not something I knew anything about before. It seems incredible to me that anyone considering themselves on the left could have supported either of those groups, UK SWP, US SWP or anyone else.

Or the MPLA for that matter, though it's at least possible to see a fairly vulgar form of anti-imperialism could have led some kind of critical support for them.

Really? I honestly do not understand that position, given that UNITA and the FNLA were so thoroughly backed by distasteful regimes and the former was intimately linked to the interests of apartheid South Africa and served a similar function to Portuguese colonialism during the later periods of the Portuguese Colonial War, I'm not sure how anyone on the left wouldn't want to have given critical support to the MPLA.

 

[audiotech]

Or the MPLA for that matter,...

 

[butchersapron]

Not sure how the cc can have any special measures to keep anyone in the party longer than they want to be. There may be special measures to win the argument with those who choose to stay. But ultimately all of us who have ever left, well we just left. Some people seem to be getting very exercised over the large numbers who currently aren't leaving.

Of course they have special measures, they include being impotently aggressive, aggressively lying (and not being believed anymore) and implied threats (that are laughed at). That people have previously left is no indication that they are not using these methods now or an argument as to why these 'intellectual hooligans' (My god, this really happened didn't it - and you thought it was great!) should decide not to laugh in your face when you try them today.

 

[Anudder Oik]

Of course there are circumstances which are none of our business. But it doesn't make you a bourgeois moralist to think what the hell is a 48 year old leader of a socialist organisation doing trying to go to bed with a 17 year old, and another teenager not much older. Personally I think he is a tosser doing that behind his partners back as well, which I imagine must have been fairly humiliating. All in all it doesn't exactly paint a very good picture of him. Using your position as a political leader to sleep with young women, which is effectively what has happened, even in a best case scenario, is totally out of order in my view and he should be made to step down for that alone.

On a general point of age differences while I'm not saying it is always a problem, I think most parents would raise an eyebrow if their 17 year old daughter brought back a 48 bloke and said that this was their partner. I would sympathise with this, and wouldn't just denounce them as reactionaries. It might turn out that there is nothing wrong with it, but I can see at the very least why people might be concerned. At to that the power relation of someone in a teacher role, or a leader in a political orgnaisation and I can see why there would be even more concerns.

As for feeling passionate about it, the reason for this is the disgusting way in which the "loyalists" are treating the opposition. I think BB has been particuarly out of order for saying things like Delta should have kept his dick in his trousers, when there is a rape allegation. If this had been said by a leading Lib Dem then I can imagine what SWPers would have to say. There clearly is a problem with not just Delta, but the Sheffield case. To write all this off as "certain kinds of feminists" and write off bullying allegations without even knowing the facts shows someone that will blindly defend the leadership whatever they do.

A relationship like that has got to be completely uneven. The girl, who is inexperienced and at an impressionable age, is obviously the weaker partner. The older man/leader figure is, I believe, abusing the aura around his position and latching on to easy prey in an exploitative fashion. He can control her.

It's like the teacher pupil case last year where they ran away to france. Who believes that was a balanced relationship?

 

[redsquirrel]

Ahem , SWP thread on here...

One fucking thread, the focus of which has been an incident that has made the national press and could have ramifications for the left in general.

 

[butchersapron]

One fucking thread, the focus of which has been an incident that has made the national press and could have ramifications for the left in general.

And if there wasn't a thread about it he'd be moaning about it.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Really? I honestly do not understand that position, given that UNITA and the FNLA were so thoroughly backed by distasteful regimes and the former was intimately linked to the interests of apartheid South Africa and served a similar function to Portuguese colonialism during the later periods of the Portuguese Colonial War, I'm not sure how anyone on the left wouldn't want to have given critical support to the MPLA.

Depends what period. Like UNITA, the MPLA pressganged people into military and sexual (!) service. I'd certainly have given them critical support prior to the defeat of the South Africans and the liberation of Namibia, but later on things got well messy. For example, after Savimbi refused to accept the result of the election in 1992 (arguing that it wasn't free and fair - though the evidence suggests the MPLA won fair and square) they armed civilian death squads in Luanda, ostensibly to drive out UNITA, but also encouraged a pogrom against the Ovimbundu (who had formed a large part of the UNITA support but were by no means all UNITA - in fact their refusal to court their support was one of the main reasons why Savimbi split from the FNLA and formed the UNITA).

It's all very messy but certainly once the cold war had ended and South Africa had stopped funding and supporting UNITA you'd be hard pressed to find a reasonable justification for giving any support to the MPLA, critical or not.

(Edited to remove embarrassing fuck up confusing initials of the groups)

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I reserve that label for the AWL.

Really? I've never really seen much indication of that, bar perhaps their occasional role as vanity publisher for Matgamna's poetry.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Having a dreaded full timer on your case is not something that in my experience made the average swss member wet themselves. Something therefore has changed. Either the full timers have gotten scarier or the swss members have become a little less hooligan and a litle more swampish. I know where my money would be.

This sets up a falsely constricted choice. The circumstances are very different - the largest and bitterest faction fight in the history of the organisation, over an incredibly emotive issue, with the apparatus seeing the heterodoxy of "the students" as a key reason for the problems. Whatever your views on the dispute - and we both know that we differ on that - the situation is simply, bleeding obviously in fact, not analogous to some hyper fulltimer bickering with a few students in normal times.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-response-to-swss-notes-national.html
The students it seems are still in revolt. 5 SWSS groups have left, others have collapsed into inactivity, and the remnant appear to have an openly antagonistic relationship to the CC and the newly appointed student organisers.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

This sets up a falsely constricted choice. The circumstances are very different - the largest and bitterest faction fight in the history of the organisation, over an incredibly emotive issue, with the apparatus seeing the heterodoxy of "the students" as a key reason for the problems. Whatever your views on the dispute - and we both know that we differ on that - the situation is simply, bleeding obviously in fact, not analogous to some hyper fulltimer bickering with a few students in normal times.

Indeed but having the force of a faction behind you ought to give one more backbone before the almighty full timer rather than less. Yes a minority faction but then swss members of old were used to being in a minority in most arguments with fellow lefties. Its hard not to conclude that this latest batch have been having things far too cosy with their fellow left students and find the dreadful 'sectishness' (for which read saying something definite that goes against the common sense identity politics of much of the campus left) of their full timers just all too upsetting for words.

 

[butchersapron]

Harsh truths that need to be told to young kids. You couldn't make it up. You are defending the covering up of rape allegations and whatever you decide needs covering up after all. It's really really not them kids that needs some harsh truth telling to them.

You're now just openly hacking bb. You don't need to pretend anymore.

 

[butchersapron]

Indeed but having the force of a faction behind you ought to give one more backbone before the almighty full timer rather than less. Yes a minority faction but then swss members of old were used to being in a minority in most arguments with fellow lefties. Its hard not to conclude that this latest batch have been having things far too cosy with their fellow left students and find the dreadful 'sectishness' (for which read saying something definite that goes against the common sense identity politics of much of the campus left) of their full timers just all too upsetting for words.

Actually the SWSS have been one of the prime gateways for identity politics in universities and among the wider young. You trained them to defend what you now pretend you reject.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Harsh truths that need to be told to young kids. You couldn't make it up. You are defending the covering up of rape allegations and whatever you decide needs covering up after all. It's really really not them kids that needs some harsh truth.

You're now just openly hacking now bb. You don't need to pretend anymore.

No I'm against covering up rape. And I'm against covering up the differences between Marxism and feminism, between Marxism and centrism. people of all ages seem to be prone to the latter type of covering up even while they condemn the former.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Actually the SWSS have been one of the prime gateways for identity politics in universities and among the wider young. You trained them to defend what you now pretend you reject.

On the contrary the party didn't train them to be that way, it didn't do a very good job of challenging the training they were getting from their identity politics professors and mates. It needs to now, though clearly that's going to lead to a certain turnover.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Indeed but having the force of a faction behind you ought to give one more backbone before the almighty full timer rather than less.

It's simply not the same kind of situation. It's not about how much "backbone" anyone would show in a normal row with some fulltimer enthusiast. This is a situation where the apparatus as a whole, along with key lay members in many areas, think that the battle against student "heterodoxy" is now a life and death issue for the party.

 

[butchersapron]

On the contrary the party didn't train them to be that way, it didn't do a very good job of challenging the training they were getting from their identity politics professors and mates. It needs to now, though clearly that's going to lead to a certain turnover.

Rubbish - you lot hid behind them for 2 decades - you did it on here, cheering on every islamophobe! sexist! smear against people that you disagreed with.

What this shows is two things. Firstly, that the content of the smears are interchangeable - they can flip from being examples of identity politics to attacks on identity politics. The model remains though- hysterical shouting by junior trots, stealthily directed by people like you. And secondly, the ownership of the real politics of the SWP by an small core of longer term members who do hold the real positions, but are quite happy to have a wider membership who disagree with them on pretty much everything, even to encourage these disagreements as long as they can a) do the footwork b) pay for their jobs and c) make it look like the party is progressing rather than allowing people to to see the apolitcal hollowed out potemkin party based on covert accepted elitism that it really is.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

On the contrary the party didn't train them to be that way, it didn't do a very good job of challenging the training they were getting from their identity politics professors and mates. It needs to now, though clearly that's going to lead to a certain turnover.

A certain turnover? Apart from the 5 groups that have left so far, the rest appear to be in such disarray that there are approximately 15 left nationally in a state where they can send two delegates to a national meeting, and those still seem to be in revolt. You aren't talking about "a certain turnover" but the near complete destruction of SWSS as it stood a year ago and an attempt to start, if not quite from scratch, then from some shattered remnants.

Now you might think that's necessary or that it's the least bad option, but you should at least be clear about what it means. Particularly given that the SWP has been largely built and reproduced through the continuous recruitment SWSS has provided.