SWP expulsions and squabbles

[SLK]

This gets me:

" i had a long, freindly and open argument with J shortly after her speech to the conference. When I found out she was telling people, without having spoken to me about it, that I was mentally ill and that was why I left, i challenged her about it. She told me that this was what CC members and old friends of mine (one the then CC member chris bambery and one just about to be promoted to the CC i gather) were saying. She was clearly worried that she had done something wrong and told me about about asking MS how guilty he was (a sign that she had a weakness in understanding the issues of sexual harassment and rape) and said she had told her it was a one. She also said she had been thinking of the situation in Scotland and the way people would use any problems to split the party. She wanted to know what I knew and at the time I refused to tell her any details--mostly because I felt she had just taken part in a cover up at the conference and whispering about it to individuals could not make up for that damage, the young woman had at that time left the party and i did not feel her story was mine to tell (rape, which i always thought was what had happened is about loss of self determination and control and as such is for the women involved to disclose or not). the first people to leave were not in Jan 2011 but in 2010. I was one and left the day after MS bullied and i felt threatened me while announcing he was to stay on the CC. I was shocked beyond measure as I had understood he was off the CC even though the young woman had not made an official complaint. When i contacted CK asking if this was really true, he didnt answer the phone so i decided that i had to resign. CK replied after a CC meeting, by email, saying that the CC had discussed me leaving and that i could if i wanted discuss the situation with MS! I obviously refused. I did not say anything about this publically until after the young woman rejoined and complained officially and the rest of this sorry saga began. I deeply regret leaving in 2010 and not fighting for my party. I don't personally think that this sorry and disgusting saga is all down to the closure of women's voice or because the party had a women's liberationist critique of feminism as many of us who shared that history and that critique were perfectly able, at personal cost, to see what was wrong. The issue is that these people had firstly crushed over some years the tradition of open argument and honest debate, plus dont understand and cant be bothered to learn about sexual harassment and rape and have reduced our politics to those of after the revolution that we used to criticise in the Militant Tendency in the 1980s. Added to that mix they also decided that no matter how bad the behaviour of a CC member, no more could be lost in the midst of splits and chaos. So they have hidden behind things like no formal complaint was made (as if that should be needed when such behaviour is described) and have lied and manipulated and smeared. They have relied on the fact that the majority of party members really really want a revolutionary party, now more than ever and would swallow the idea that the survival of the party is more important than anything else or simply refuse to consider seriously the possibility that something so alien to our politics could occur. The survival of a revolutionary party build on the traditions of the SWP and IST is more important than any of us. That is why they should have forced Martin Smith out and fought hard for a genuinely revolutionary, women's liberationist understanding of our politics, which includes criticism of that wing of feminism that seeks equality within capitalism and therefore compromises and sells out and cant deliver. that they forced hundreds of young people, disgusted by the obvious betrayal of women's basic rights let alone liberation, to look elsewhere for politics that promise equality is a disgrace. i own my part in the errors made--i should have fought openly in 2011.

there is always disagreement about what happened in any rape case. Of course you cant know what is true and what not for sure and neither can I. But there are basic things to consider in regard to our politics--what does it mean when the leading man is assumed to be telling the truth by CC members even tho he initially lied about having any kind of sexual "relationship"? It means that the several young women complaining are assumed to have lied or worse, that the young woman who complained of rape is assumed not to be able to judge for herself if she consented. i have had comrades earnestly explain to me that she didn't really want to have sex but for whatever reason agreed and that she only later made it in her head to be rape (showing that they feel able to judge without ever even having met her). there are so many basic rape myths being peddled here. the worst of all is the blatent and open dismissal of the second young woman as being factionally motivated--and the failure to believe a word she says because she has political differences.... it is just time for people to own up that the party fucked this up, sort out our position on rape and stop trying to perpetrate the cover up because it corrupts our politics

it was a vicious lie. But it is enough to make anyone lose it and i certainly have found it disorientating--not least becuase i am swp old skool all the way and i agree with quite a lot of what Alex and Charlie have to say in the article. what i find disgusting is the attempt to link together the pack of smoke and mirrors on the sexual harassment and rape issue with general politics in a way that is meant to smear anyone arguing that a revolutionary party cannot let this stuff re sexual harassment stand with the brush of political revisionism. I do think that people are layering politcal confusion and disagreement on the issue but it is disgusting that the CC and their supporters use this to obscure and avoid dealing with their own failures. if i had the choice between the most bourgeois of bourgeois feminists and a rapist... well i'd lean my rifle on the shoulders of the bouregois feminist.... innit? the CC are to blame for the confusion and disorientation. i am no great revolutionary and i dont pretend to have any answers. i want the swp to survive, i want to be able to rejoin it. i want to be able to work alongside the people that i respected for so many years. But the sad truth is that the CC would rather have a rapist than the likes of me and rather have a shell of a party under their control than a much bigger organisation in which they have to win, by the example of principled and uncompromising anti-sexism and by clear high level political argument, the argument for our politics against reformist ideas like privilledge theory. That is a tragedy. we need a revolutionary organisation. i personally think we all played our part in f'ing it up in various ways--but the big crimes are those of the people who knew that abuse was going on and thought it best, for often the best of intentions, to cover it up. it is time the CC stopped, decided if they really want to build a revolutionary party or if the whole point has got a bit lost along away and its all about personal lifestyle etc. If the CC do want to build, then when in a hole stop digging ffs!

I dont know how it can be rescued now. But each day I miss a bit more being in the SWP I once knew-- I cant work out how to negotiate the world all by myself and not compromise or drift off into all sorts of errors. I cant be an intervention in the world alone--cant print or blog ideas that hold and educate people. I miss too the friendships I have lost. I have not changed my politics and I dont have anyother politial home. But if we are serious revolutionaries then we all need to find a way to get over it. I always hate the sneering at Alex and Charlie, mad though I am at them. I dont feel comfortable with it--yes they are fucking up. But i still think it is from a place of fear of the party falling apart (ironic given they have pulled it apart) and being ignorant on sexual harassment and rape. But i am clear that the only way to get over it, is to admit that something was wrong, seriously look at what abuse is like and its effects on people and then reopen honestly the party to those driven out who want to be members. those who dont need to be in whatever organisation suits their beliefs and then we all need to get on working to change the world, combining when we can, working together when we can and being honest, and open but not so bloody sectarian and personal, in our criticisms of eachother."



That's my kind of comrade. Except it will never happen.

 

[Scribbling S]

I have a friend who is due to be elected onto the SWP CC.
And then this summary on facebook appears...

"Your National Secretary has......etc.

And personally. How do I deal with being a friend to this person? Rhetorical.

Personally, and unrhetorically, I guess I would deal with being a friend to a CC member by remaining a friend, but saying "I hate to be unpleasant, but what you are doing on the way the SWP has deliberately covered up sexual harrasment and assault is very wrong. It is morally wrong and frankly a bit mad - it can't be doing your soul any good and is destroying the party " or something like that - maybe you've done this already, but I don't think there is enough of directly saying to SWP members what they have done wrong. The fact that they tend to avoid the issue so relentlessly suggests they know they are wrong, but are just caught in some kind of vicious spiral. Some friendly advice maybe will help them get out of it.

 

[butchersapron]

I dont know how it can be rescued now. But each day I miss a bit more being in the SWP I once knew-- I cant work out how to negotiate the world all by myself and not compromise or drift off into all sorts of errors

Good lord, what does this party do to people?

 

[Oisin123]

The fact that they tend to avoid the issue so relentlessly suggests they know they are wrong, but are just caught in some kind of vicious spiral. Some friendly advice maybe will help them get out of it.

I agree that in some cases the problem is not cynicism but a kind of Freudian denial. Some SWP members literally cannot contemplate the truth. The idea that MS raped a teenage member is so far outside their mental model of the world that the thought cannot be grasped. The mind instantly slides to the side as it approaches that deeply disturbing idea, refuses to allow it existence, quickly grasping at 'explanations' that will avoid the horror of the collapse of a section of your personality that has been built up over decades. To hold to revolutionary goals for decades, when all around there is a great deal of subtle pressure to abandon them, is not easy. Part of the thinking that sustains SWP members in the party is a sense of pride and personal nobility in keeping on with the fight against injustice through thick and thin. We can read above how agonising it is to lose that (although SLK's friend will soon get it back once she appreciates the world beyond the SWP is rich with class fighters who are no more likely to drift off into error than the SWP CC). It's for those members, above all, that I spoke out early on in an open letter against the cover-up. It is much more likely that such members will be able to actually think about the truth of this matter when it is expressed by others within the SWP or IST. And to them I add that there are worse experiences than having to revolutionise your party (and thus your own self-image). The crisis you feel now will be as nothing if you devote the rest of your political life and energy to a morally bankrupt party.

 

[laptop]

Good lord, what does this party do to people?

 

[redcogs]

Many former swp people will know the powerful impulse towards building the party regardless of cost to individuals - its deep within the party's dna. Actually, its a noble and entirely honourable aspect of serious left politics, and plainly, without it, building a party capable of taking on the capitalist state would be impossible. Those in national leadership positions are surely charged with knowing this more than any, for navigating the good ship socialism can't be achieved if at the same time all the crew are being damaged and cast astern in the course of the voyage.

If the leadership catastrophically fail, as Callinicos and others obviously have in this appalling episode, and they then cover and twist the facts, (even if it is in the interests of maintaining a revolutionary presence in the uk), then they are recklessly betraying all the very best instincts of all the very best self sacrificing rank and file members (see SLK friend above). Such a leadership should not survive this, even if their motivations were beyond repute.

If the swp wishes to survive as a force on the political landscape, they have a conference opportunity to re-establish some credibility - but this time, the self sacrificing must be done by those responsible for producing this crisis.

i suppose the main question (for those not wishing to see the end of the swp) will be whether there is an alternative leadership out there, (one far less attached to the current stalinised model) who are willing to endure the inevitable difficulties and step forward?

 

[treelover]

Many former swp people will know the powerful impulse towards building the party regardless of cost to individuals - its deep within the party's dna. Actually, its a noble and entirely honourable aspect of serious left politics,

Appalling, this is what leads to the 'end justifies the means', and ultimately things like the Delta obscenities.

 

[redcogs]

Appalling, this is what leads to the 'end justifies the means', and ultimately things like the Delta obscenities.

Of the many problems faced in building an effective left party, the issue of recognising the ability of your opponents to play dirty is pretty crucial isn't it treelover? We all realise that the capitalist class will do virtually anything to hold onto their authority and protect 'their' interests. Sackings, victimisations, smashing communities (the pit strike), ultimately international (and civil) warfare hasn't been beyond them. Its hard to see that a political party which might challenge all that could consist of people who are entirely naive to the potential consequences of entering into serious conflict with the establishment.

Self sacrifice has to be a part of the psychology of the realistic 'revolutionary party' member doesn't it?

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, it's healthy. It's how the thing exists.

 

[chilango]

Is there any precedent, anywhere, in recent history of a left party making a come back from this kind of position?

 

[redcogs]

Is there any precedent, anywhere, in recent history of a left party making a come back from this kind of position?

Probably not. but for those who have ploughed their lives into the creation of what they regard as the only realistic vehicle for fundamental social change, its easy to see why they might want to do their uppermost to salvage something from the remnants?

Personally, i don't think i'd have the staying power, but i remain in sympathyy and admiration of those decent people that might.

 

[chilango]

Probably not. but for those who have ploughed their lives into the creation of what they regard as the only realistic vehicle for fundamental social change, its easy to see why they might want to do their uppermost to salvage something from the remnants?

Personally, i don't think i'd have the staying power, but i remain in sympathyy and admiration of those decent people that might.

Sympathy? For sure. Admiration? Hell no!

 

[ayatollah]

Probably not. but for those who have ploughed their lives into the creation of what they regard as the only realistic vehicle for fundamental social change, its easy to see why they might want to do their uppermost to salvage something from the remnants?

Personally, i don't think i'd have the staying power, but i remain in sympathyy and admiration of those decent people that might.

As an ex IS/SWP er in the dim distant past myself, redcogs, I too have some fond memories of that grouplet in better , mainly 1970's ,days (Rank & File Movement, ANL Mk I, its relatively open intellectual atmosphere in the 1970's) but let's not kid ourselves that the last , at least 20 years or so of the SWP's organisational and political history haven't been other than a slightly modified, slightly less dramatic , re-run of the Gerry Healy SLL/WRP tragic political train crash of the mid 1970's onwards. Healey of course actually sold the WRP body and soul to the murderous stalino/fascistic Assad and Gaddafi dictatorships (to the extent of spying on and grassing up left wing opponents of those gross regimes in the UK). In contrast the SWP's utter sellout to Islamic fundamentalism , particularly during the Stop the War and Respect opportunistic episodes , doesn't compare in scale to Healy's degeneration , but it's still some way down that disastrous slope of political collapse - justified in all sorts of "dialectical" verbiage - but actually just aimed at keeping the funds rolling in to support the self perpetuating full time bureaucracy at the "party" centre - who have long assumed that they alone were the arbiters of the true way forward to socialism - no matter how convoluted and opportunistic the route. Tragic, but inevitable - given the crushing impact of 30 years of downturn in the class struggle ,represented by the neoliberal hegemony of the last 30 years, on espoused "revolutionary socialist" groups.

You may still admire all those "decent people" who represented the membership of the SWP over that long period of gross opportunism and stagnation. I'm afraid I have serious doubts about most of those people. ANYONE who was able to swallow all that sucking up to the Muslim clerico fascists stuff of the last 20 or so years , and the ludicrous interconnected alliance with that arch opportunist scoundrel, and arselicker of Arab dictators and Islamic clerico fascist regimes, Galloway, has already so compromised their political soul, as to make a return to genuine revolutionery politics pretty damned hard to imagine. And that includes all those who recently left the SWP over the rape allegations scandal. Frankly, leaving the SWP only after the rape allegation scandal, but having swallowed and justified all the SWP's other grossly opportunistic, indeed reactionery, behaviours of the last 30 years, is a bit like leaving the Soviet Communist Party in 1936 because you weren't too happy about its line on socialist realist art (only a lot less personally dangerous, obviously) !

 

[emanymton]

sorry i am having masive problems posting from my phone. I appreciate the point you are making but you might want to rethink that final analogy.

 

[belboid]

Callinicos replies to the Dave Renton piece - "it weren't me guv"

https://www.facebook.com/alex.callinicos/posts/10153358803985118

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Callinicos replies to the Dave Renton piece - "it weren't me guv"

https://www.facebook.com/alex.callinicos/posts/10153358803985118

The claims Renton makes that he doesn't directly address are more interesting than the ones he does. Taking Callinicos at his word on all three of these points doesn't really alter the thrust of the argument he's responding to.

 

[chilango]

Something that has just struck me reading the later posts in this thread is the gulf between me and the SWP.

I don't read this from the perspective of being an ex-member. In fact I'd almost forgotten I had been!

...or even thinking of the many many good people I've met over the years who are (or most likely were) SWP members.

Nope. I read this and think, automatically, of the SWP being some distant, alien, entity with no connection to me or mine...and that it's inevitable passing has nowt to do with me.

Oh well.

 

[discokermit]

Callinicos replies to the Dave Renton piece - "it weren't me guv"

https://www.facebook.com/alex.callinicos/posts/10153358803985118

this post is a beaut,

Rostam FarrokhzādAlex, you are an heroic revolutionary leader and the scourge of the capitalist class in the United Kingdom. These rumours circulating are the working of the reformist devil who manifests his evil in the form of feminism, autonomism, ecologism and other forms of post-materialist, anti-socialist deviations. You should be commended for your role, not persecuted. Those who stand beside the reformist oppositionalists will one day look back at their role in destroying the Socialist Workers Party, and see that as the main reason that the British Conservatives were so easily able to attack the working class and undermine all the rights that they had hitherto won. The oppositionalists, the ISN, those many oppositionalists who have defected to the pseudo-Trotskyite, Zionist Alliance of Workers Liberty are working in the interests of capitalist hegenomy. You and those who remain within the SWP are working in the interests of the working class. Solidarity, brother.

 

[killer b]

this post is a beaut,

Rostam FarrokhzādAlex, you are an heroic revolutionary leader and the scourge of the capitalist class in the United Kingdom. These rumours circulating are the working of the reformist devil who manifests his evil in the form of feminism, autonomism, ecologism and other forms of post-materialist, anti-socialist deviations. You should be commended for your role, not persecuted. Those who stand beside the reformist oppositionalists will one day look back at their role in destroying the Socialist Workers Party, and see that as the main reason that the British Conservatives were so easily able to attack the working class and undermine all the rights that they had hitherto won. The oppositionalists, the ISN, those many oppositionalists who have defected to the pseudo-Trotskyite, Zionist Alliance of Workers Liberty are working in the interests of capitalist hegenomy. You and those who remain within the SWP are working in the interests of the working class. Solidarity, brother.

it's satire. isn't it?

 

[discokermit]

it's satire. isn't it?

i hope so. i think proletarian democracy should get comrade rostam writing for workers girder

 

[TremulousTetra]

Probably not. but for those who have ploughed their lives into the creation of what they regard as the only realistic vehicle for fundamental social change, its easy to see why they might want to do their uppermost to salvage something from the remnants?

Personally, i don't think i'd have the staying power, but i remain in sympathyy and admiration of those decent people that might.

from the Labour Party right through to the 'anarchists', I don't think I have come across any genuine politicals, no matter how much I disagreed with their ideas, that didn't evoke in me admiration. Selflessness, in abundance soooooooooo many of them.

 

[belboid]

it's satire. isn't it?

they're a member of Croydon LRC, so i'd have to presume so.


Alex's second point of rebuttal is excellent - 'its wrong to say I led a strategy of calling the opposition feminists and autonomist. I didn't have any strategy at all.' Genius

 

[TremulousTetra]

Something that has just struck me reading the later posts in this thread is the gulf between me and the SWP.

I don't read this from the perspective of being an ex-member. In fact I'd almost forgotten I had been!

...or even thinking of the many many good people I've met over the years who are (or most likely were) SWP members.

Nope. I read this and think, automatically, of the SWP being some distant, alien, entity with no connection to me or mine...and that it's inevitable passing has nowt to do with me.

Oh well.

and yet,,,,,,,,
LOL

 

[chilango]

and yet,,,,,,,,
LOL

...and yet what?

 

[redcogs]

As an ex IS/SWP er in the dim distant past myself, redcogs, I too have some fond memories of that grouplet in better , mainly 1970's ,days (Rank & File Movement, ANL Mk I, its relatively open intellectual atmosphere in the 1970's) but let's not kid ourselves that the last , at least 20 years or so of the SWP's organisational and political history haven't been other than a slightly modified, slightly less dramatic , re-run of the Gerry Healy SLL/WRP tragic political train crash of the mid 1970's onwards. Healey of course actually sold the WRP body and soul to the murderous stalino/fascistic Assad and Gaddafi dictatorships (to the extent of spying on and grassing up left wing opponents of those gross regimes in the UK). In contrast the SWP's utter sellout to Islamic fundamentalism , particularly during the Stop the War and Respect opportunistic episodes , doesn't compare in scale to Healy's degeneration , but it's still some way down that disastrous slope of political collapse - justified in all sorts of "dialectical" verbiage - but actually just aimed at keeping the funds rolling in to support the self perpetuating full time bureaucracy at the "party" centre - who have long assumed that they alone were the arbiters of the true way forward to socialism - no matter how convoluted and opportunistic the route. Tragic, but inevitable - given the crushing impact of 30 years of downturn in the class struggle ,represented by the neoliberal hegemony of the last 30 years, on espoused "revolutionary socialist" groups.

You may still admire all those "decent people" who represented the membership of the SWP over that long period of gross opportunism and stagnation. I'm afraid I have serious doubts about most of those people. ANYONE who was able to swallow all that sucking up to the Muslim clerico fascists stuff of the last 20 or so years , and the ludicrous interconnected alliance with that arch opportunist scoundrel, and arselicker of Arab dictators and Islamic clerico fascist regimes, Galloway, has already so compromised their political soul, as to make a return to genuine revolutionery politics pretty damned hard to imagine. And that includes all those who recently left the SWP over the rape allegations scandal. Frankly, leaving the SWP only after the rape allegation scandal, but having swallowed and justified all the SWP's other grossly opportunistic, indeed reactionery, behaviours of the last 30 years, is a bit like leaving the Soviet Communist Party in 1936 because you weren't too happy about its line on socialist realist art (only a lot less personally dangerous, obviously) !

i share your criticism ayatollah, and the anti marxist hypocrisy of swp members courting dubious reactionary imams for short term advantage ought to have produced internal revolt. And its certainly true that there are quite a few incidences of swp double standards which are now brought to mind by this continuing wreck - and i can recall several arguments with Morning Star supporters for instance (70s & 80s), which were 'won' by us trots on the basis that working class communists who failed to resign from the CP were betraying socialism because they knew of all the horrors of Stalins gulag and the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising .. And, placing politics aside, i have personal criticisms of members i know who are quite unsuited to holding any position of power under any imaginable circumstance, but they remain influential, despite exhibiting character flaws which are so acute that they would probably be excluded from professions where sociopathy is commonly regarded as a significant asset ! (elite banking?).

Yet, despite the glaring political blunders and an internal atmosphere of trenchant bullying and unacceptable stifling of real debate, people have stayed. Some, presumably because they accept the notion of infallibility of the vanguard party (which naturally is always right), others, perhaps because they are so wrapped up in the psychosis of the small group that they cannot conceive of life beyond 'the party'.

At the same time, my experience suggests that there are those within the swp who i always thought were absolutely decent human beings, people who usually regarded it as their role to offer some corrective balance to the cyborg tendencies excesses. Their instincts always seemed fine to me, and if they could construct an organisation which reflected such values it may have some longer term prospect of being influential within the working class for the right reasons.

i'm pessimistic that it will happen of course, but i still wish them well. And i remain convinced that the left would be badly damaged by the disappearance of its most active and vibrant section.

 

[leyton96]

A useful barometer of the organizational health of the SWP is checking the number of branches listed in the 'What's On' section of Socialist Worker. This scanned copy taken from Socialist Worker this time last year (October 6th 2012) lists 68 branches holding events that week. This includes Scotland by the way.

If you look at the branch listings this week in Socialist Worker it has dropped to 46.

So I think it's fair to say that in the last year the SWP has lost one third of the organisation. If Callinicos and Co win the next round of the faction fight I think it's safe to assume the will lose another big chunk of the membership, either through expulsions, resignations or people just drifting away in disappointment.

In the weeks after the conference it'll be interesting to see if the SWP still try to claim they are "the largest revolutionary group in Britain" https://twitter.com/SWP_Britain

 

[TremulousTetra]

A useful barometer of the organizational health of the SWP is checking the number of branches listed in the 'What's On' section of Socialist Worker. This scanned copy taken from Socialist Worker this time last year (October 6th 2012) lists 68 branches holding events that week. This includes Scotland by the way.

If you look at the branch listings this week in Socialist Worker it has dropped to 46.

So I think it's fair to say that in the last year the SWP has lost one third of the organisation. If Callinicos and Co win the next round of the faction fight I think it's safe to assume the will lose another big chunk of the membership, either through expulsions, resignations or people just drifting away in disappointment.

In the weeks after the conference it'll be interesting to see if the SWP still try to claim they are "the largest revolutionary group in Britain" https://twitter.com/SWP_Britain

why?

 

[Pickman's model]

why?

you're quite right. it will be rather dull instead.

 

[TremulousTetra]

i share your criticism ayatollah, and the anti marxist hypocrisy of swp members courting dubious reactionary imams for short term advantage ought to have produced internal revolt. And its certainly true that there are quite a few incidences of swp double standards which are now brought to mind by this continuing wreck - and i can recall several arguments with Morning Star supporters for instance (70s & 80s), which were 'won' by us trots on the basis that working class communists who failed to resign from the CP were betraying socialism because they knew of all the horrors of Stalins gulag and the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising .. And, placing politics aside, i have personal criticisms of members i know who are quite unsuited to holding any position of power under any imaginable circumstance, but they remain influential, despite exhibiting character flaws which are so acute that they would probably be excluded from professions where sociopathy is commonly regarded as a significant asset ! (elite banking?).

Yet, despite the glaring political blunders and an internal atmosphere of trenchant bullying and unacceptable stifling of real debate, people have stayed. Some, presumably because they accept the notion of infallibility of the vanguard party (which naturally is always right), others, perhaps because they are so wrapped up in the psychosis of the small group that they cannot conceive of life beyond 'the party'.

do you remember the SWP support for the Mujahideen? I am not saying no mistakes were made, and no lines were crossed, but is it not possible there was no internal revolt over siding with some revolting people precisely because the debate was had, and the arguments were won. In the generality of the argument, I basically agree with the hypothesis the Muslims now, are the Jews of the 1930s, and so we should stand shoulder to shoulder with them in such as the "Stop the War Campaign". in general I still have no problems working with imans, priests, vicars or rabbis, in a UNITED FRONT.

I'm not for 1 minute denying your experience. your experience is your experience. But that is not one I share . in fact I remember being "bullied " by Alex for failing to raise for debate in a district meeting , something I brought up afterwards. I Also remember feeling " I wish they would debate a little bit less, and act a little bit more.".

the same time, my experience suggests that there are those within the swp who i always thought were absolutely decent human beings, people who usually regarded it as their role to offer some corrective balance to the cyborg tendencies excesses. Their instincts always seemed fine to me, and if they could construct an organisation which reflected such values it may have some longer term prospect of being influential within the working class for the right reasons.

i'm pessimistic that it will happen of course, but i still wish them well. And i remain convinced that the left would be badly damaged by the disappearance of its most active and vibrant section.

I have raised this before, and then people said I was lying, but I do recall at the time of the collapse of the Communist Party/S in the UK, that the SWP did celebrate the collapse of the Russian Empire and the ideology of the Communist Party etc, however it also sounded a similar note of caution as you are there. The collapse of the Communist Party/S saw a whole swathe of working-class activist move out of activity. This meant in pure practical terms, in fighting the fascists, cuts, the bosses there were just fewer active people about, and the fightback's weakend. Similar is likely to happen with the collapse of the SWP. The ACTIVE progressive left, just got smaller, AGAIN! Something to celebrate?

i suppose the main question (for those not wishing to see the end of the swp) will be whether there is an alternative leadership out there, (one far less attached to the current stalinised model) who are willing to endure the inevitable difficulties and step forward?

The bosses are organised to fight us, I would like to see us organising to fight them. Sadly there is little discussion of that, probably because there is little of that happening.

On a brighter note, haven't we had a beautiful summer.

 

[redcogs]

The bosses are organised to fight us, I would like to see us organising to fight them. Sadly there is little discussion of that, probably because there is little of that happening.

Yes, this is the argument that clinches it for me. Our side have been so badly fractured by the past 30 years of overwhelming defeats that we are not in a condition to see any left organisation go down the plughole without serious consequences. The ability of working people to organise and take back the offensive has to be re-remembered, and i see socialist organisation as being essential to such a process.

That said Resistance MP3, for much of that long 30 year dark night, the swp has either been offering various false dawns , ie, 'the upturn is just around the corner' - 'being held back by a supine semi corrupt TU leadership' (at least the party were half right on that!), and/or denying self evident truths - ie, 'the very low level of class struggle is not as catastrophic as it appears', despite all the evidence of a veritable collapse in days 'lost' to industrial action and strikes. It is good to learn that those days of denial are now gone ( "Sadly there is little discussion of that, probably because there is little of that happening").

Maybe, if the swp survives this fuck up, there will be some adjustment towards a new realism which properly recognises the nature and the scale and consequences of the neoliberal assault ?

i do agree with you on the weather BTW, but it is awful cold today.