I have no idea why she hasn't gone to the police. The point is there could be a myriad of reasons.
Also she hasn't gone to the press. Why are you just making things up? Why are you almost putting the blame on the woman who has made the rape allegation by saying she would know who the dipsutes committee was. This is bollocks. The SWP even said that if people knew the people involved they could step aside. One person who knew the woman chose to. Martin Smith's mates chose to stay on. This didn't have to happen. They could have found people in the SWP who, even if they knew him, weren't his mates. That shouldn't have been too hard.
I think they wanted to handle it internally so they could try and minimalise any publicity about it and, as they did with the Sheffield incident, leave members not knowing the truth. Initially this was successful, and they managed to get a standing ovation for Martin Smith knowing that he had slept with a 17 year old teenager and that an allegation of sexual harassment had been made, but then this back fired massively. They could have got help from organisations that deal with rape victims. They could have got independent legal advice. Why is the privacy of the party of any significance when you are talking about a rape allegation? This in itself shows the mindset of where you are coming from.
Of course the Daily Mail would always make capital out of anything for totally the wrong reasons. But surely the important thing is the interests of the women who have alleged rape and sexual abuse? As it happens if they had put them first, it would be a lot harder for the right wing to use the incident for their own purposes.
The fact that you have people like BB making the disgusting comments that he is, and long term trade unionist SWPers selling their papers for the first time in years and calling the woman a liar says it all about how rotten the SWP has become. And that's not because they are being attacked by a "certain kind of feminist", it's because this has resulted from an organisation with stalinist methods and politics which seems to be degenerating more and more quickly. But it's political methods were always going to lead down a dead end, as their various dishonest front organisations show.
Then of course there is the shameful way the Sheffield organiser was dealt with.
the reason I am couching it in these terms "the self-interest of the party" "privacy of the party", is because people on here are couching it in those terms. You are saying, they are motivated ONLY by self-interest, cover-up. So I'm examining that. If they are really only motivated by self-interest, was it in their self-interest?
She added that she was coming forward two years later because she believes the SWP is a dangerous environment for women: "I want people to know it's a systemic thing. They've done this a few times, covered things up in the interests of the party and it's a dangerous environment to be in." You would have to be an idiot to believe cover-up is possible. More importantly, she had left the party, and not gone public. If self-interest was your only motivation, best leave it alone.
Everybody who was on that committee could be considered "his mates", couldn't they? Go through the list, and tell me which ones were acceptable. Pat Stack? Would even he have been acceptable to the Daily Mail, even though he disagreed with the conclusion of the committee? Anything that involved party members would be christened a kangaroo court by the Daily Mail, fact.
The disputes committee is elected, yes? How do you replace people, without electing them at National conference? You say they could have easily found people, but could they within the constitution? I don't think they could. But even if they could have done, would this have been acceptable, to do it non-democratically? You can't really complain about them being non-democratic, and then asked them to be non-democratic.
I asked this question at the beginning, and nobody has answered it in a way that satisfies me. They dumped John Rees. They dumped Lindsey German. Even dumped Martin Smith. So why not dump him earlier? If you really wanted to put the self-interest of the party first, dump him.
You say me and BB are typical. Well there is no way I would ever done a cover-up. EVEN FROM A POINT OF SELF INTEREST, it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. IF YOU want to put the interests of the party first, you don't do it in house. But more importantly, because you cannot be a socialist without gay rights, disabled rights, women's rights. It's completely and utterly an illogical contradiction.
Cover-up is completely and utterly illogical reason to do it in house, IMO there ARE other reasons why you would have done it in house. I would suggest them, but;
it's because this has resulted from an organisation with stalinist methods and politics which seems to be degenerating more and more quickly. But it's political methods were always going to lead down a dead end, as their various dishonest front organisations show.
okay, you are entitled to that point of view.
ETA I apologise, you are clearly right about me misrepresenting the woman in question going to the press.
where you can find all the news that's fit to print, and then some.
