SWP expulsions and squabbles

[Karmickameleon]

Bollox. and it's cause I really, really don't believe that I won't be replying on FB where people get more excitable and it's harder to remain friendly with people. You don't publish an article about 'integrity' in a hostile magazine run by the sects with an article by seymour bookending yours and warble on about how so many loyalists are in breach of the rule about percentage of facility time and then claim your article isn't an attack on the SWP or an intervention in the faction fight. Complete and utter bollox. the article starts by referencing the main motion at conference for Christ sakes and it's use of the word integrity. And his 'even the SWP' phrase is perhaps the most telling, he's embarrassed to be a member and he is quite deliberately suggesting that the integrity of those involved in this mess is questionable. I used to think he just thought that was true of Smith. Now it's clear he includes the prof, CK and probably most of the original dc apart of course from any who are now in the faction. This moral grandstanding of the opposition gets more shrill and the chest beating all the louder the closer we get to conference and them maybe just maybe having to say something about what their alternative platform for leadership would look like. Their divisions meant they can't so the "we have all the decent people" shite has to substitute. It's just bonkers, totally apolitical and hugely insulting to people who have devoted their adult lives to revolutionary politics.

Don't get your knickers in a twist! To quote Renton in full:

The comrade suggested that by giving this particular example I was throwing "any s*** I could" at the SWP.

No, I wasn't. It was a genuine question.

If I wanted to criticise the party or the individual in that senior role - I would not have stressed their kindness and the genuiness of their socialism. Nor would I have given an explanation for why I think the organisation didn't notice them, "ignorance", ie I genuinely don't think the centre ever knew about them. (The SWP is still, just about, big enough for that to happen).

There's a bigger point. We come from a tradition were every question avails of a simple answer - one campaign is legitimate, another is a diversion from the struggle, etc, etc. Every ex-member is an enemy, and everyone in the leadership is brilliant and talented (until next year's faction fight)

My point was that sometimes it's not like that - sometimes the questions are genuine dilemmas, and difficult to answer.

If comrades haven't grasped even that little from our catastrophe of the last year, then I wonder what they have learned?

What have you learned from the still ongoing SWP car crash??

 

[Nigel Irritable]

What have you learned from the still ongoing SWP car crash??

He's learned not to trust anyone under 40.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Bollox. and it's cause I really, really don't believe that I won't be replying on FB where people get more excitable and it's harder to remain friendly with people. You don't publish an article about 'integrity' in a hostile magazine run by the sects with an article by seymour bookending yours and warble on about how so many loyalists are in breach of the rule about percentage of facility time and then claim your article isn't an attack on the SWP or an intervention in the faction fight. Complete and utter bollox. the article starts by referencing the main motion at conference for Christ sakes and it's use of the word integrity. And his 'even the SWP' phrase is perhaps the most telling, he's embarrassed to be a member and he is quite deliberately suggesting that the integrity of those involved in this mess is questionable. I used to think he just thought that was true of Smith. Now it's clear he includes the prof, CK and probably most of the original dc apart of course from any who are now in the faction. This moral grandstanding of the opposition gets more shrill and the chest beating all the louder the closer we get to conference and them maybe just maybe having to say something about what their alternative platform for leadership would look like. Their divisions meant they can't so the "we have all the decent people" shite has to substitute. It's just bonkers, totally apolitical and hugely insulting to people who have devoted their adult lives to revolutionary politics.

Are you Martin Smith?

 

[SpackleFrog]

Shit, but isn't he right on Renton here, I thought he was suspended from the swp for taking a senior position in a union about 7/8 years ago. Its what I remember hearing in Ireland back then.

Yes, but why was he really suspended? That daft rule was never really a rule, it was an idea that was thought up, never taken seriously and used as "proof" that the SWP, a party which it is now painfully clear drew a lot of strength from hacks in mid level union positions, was "dead rank and file".

 

[discokermit]

never taken seriously

it was.

 

[Karmickameleon]

He's learned not to trust anyone under 40.

Towards the Senile Workers Party?

 

[Before Theory]

So

Are you Martin Smith?

Spackle, I have been thinking that for quite a while. BB has always got "the line" and once said he would bet his mortgage and marriage on Smith not being guilty of rape, who says something like that ? Even the arch loyalists I know have never expressed that level of commitment, they are still clinging to the "hostile forces" argument.

 

[discokermit]

he isn't martin smith.

 

[belboid]

So

Spackle, I have been thinking that for quite a while. BB has always got "the line" and once said he would bet his mortgage and marriage on Smith not being guilty of rape, who says something like that ? Even the arch loyalists I know have never expressed that level of commitment, they are still clinging to the "hostile forces" argument.

dont go there. he isnt

 

[Nigel Irritable]

100% definitely not.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Er yes it's a daft and distracting angle to go down as well as wrong of course.

 

[SpackleFrog]

it was.

When?

Yeah, I know he isn't MS but I'm having trouble understanding why else he would say this stuff. Batshit.

 

[Karmickameleon]

When?

Yeah, I know he isn't MS but I'm having trouble understanding why else he would say this stuff. Batshit.

BB trots out (no pun intended!) the "loyalist" line because:
1) he can wind the rest of us up and
2) he probably believes it. The situation has become so disastrously polarised that even a supposed non-nutter loyalist like Roger Cox has apparently said that he wouldn't mind seeing good old Martin back in the party. But that could be a provocation as well...

 

[articul8]

even a supposed non-nutter loyalist like Roger Cox has apparently said that he wouldn't mind seeing good old Martin back in the party.

Has he? No wonder the SWP round here are struggling so badly

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Don't get your knickers in a twist! To quote Renton in full:

The comrade suggested that by giving this particular example I was throwing "any s*** I could" at the SWP.

No, I wasn't. It was a genuine question.

If I wanted to criticise the party or the individual in that senior role - I would not have stressed their kindness and the genuiness of their socialism. Nor would I have given an explanation for why I think the organisation didn't notice them, "ignorance", ie I genuinely don't think the centre ever knew about them. (The SWP is still, just about, big enough for that to happen).

There's a bigger point. We come from a tradition were every question avails of a simple answer - one campaign is legitimate, another is a diversion from the struggle, etc, etc. Every ex-member is an enemy, and everyone in the leadership is brilliant and talented (until next year's faction fight)

My point was that sometimes it's not like that - sometimes the questions are genuine dilemmas, and difficult to answer.

If comrades haven't grasped even that little from our catastrophe of the last year, then I wonder what they have learned?

What have you learned from the still ongoing SWP car crash??

Sorry but the context of where he wrote it, the preamble about the conference motion and the numerous other digs at people associated with the cc line mean nobody can really take this claim to be asking an honest question devoid of factional intent seriously.

The worst section of the article is the bit on the uaf. The faction have made the uaf a point of issue, cool that's their right to debate its tactics. But the impugning of people's integrity over those tactics is low down mean and dirty politics. When I was at the Exeter demo a few weeks back even those of us who got close enough to abuse the scum verbally didn't breach police lines. It would have been daft to try. When three of us started giving them grief from ten metres away the copper in front turned to me and said "say what you want as loud as you want mate as long as you don't swear and don't try to get past me and my mates." Given the balance of forces I was happy to agree to both his stipulations But the reason I mention it is cause DR crosses a line in this article when he says those who defend the mainstream uaf line are lacking in integrity. We might be wrong, happy to have that argument. But he can go take a running jump if he's going to suggest the reason we're wrong is a lack of moral fibre.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

When?

Yeah, I know he isn't MS but I'm having trouble understanding why else he would say this stuff. Batshit.

What's batshit is pretending that an article with clear factional muckraking intent is just an abstract musing on party best practice.

I'll be totally honest when I first started reading DR on this mess what struck me most about him was his ability to see the good in people on all sides. His most frequent argument with everyone seemed to be remember you're going to have to work together in the future and be careful what you say. But then at each critical point in the process he seems to forget that and let factional needs get the better of him. He did it just before Marxism with an ill judged piece that engaged in crude class attacks on the prof, a piece he pulled after some gentle polite nudging from the likes of me. I think he did it again with his very tendentious and one sided account of the role of the prof and ck in the dc cases, with all sorts of factoids as the prof would call them just thrown about with gay abandon. And now again he's really gone to town in this lamentable piece which goes out of its way to insult most of the people he claims to want to remain in the same party with. I'd love to see the DR I recognised at the beginning of this mess resurface but it's probably too late now :-(

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Can't read through 482 pages, can someone sum it up concisely?

 

[Oisin123]

Can't read through 482 pages, can someone sum it up concisely?

The UK SWP is doomed. Think CP after '56.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

The UK SWP is doomed. Think CP after '56.

I hear there is about to be about to be "a mass exit" of younger recruits from the Brixton branch very soon.

 

[belboid]

Can't read through 482 pages, can someone sum it up concisely?

Callinicos himself sums it up quite neatly

https://twitter.com/alex_callinicos/status/408005075492020224

 

[discokermit]

The UK SWP is doomed. Think CP after '56.

'91 more like.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Callinicos himself sums it up quite neatly

https://twitter.com/alex_callinicos/status/408005075492020224

Wow.

 

[belboid]

last year they apparently had a headline of 'The cover up goes right to the top' without any evident sense of irony

 

[SpackleFrog]

What's batshit is pretending that an article with clear factional muckraking intent is just an abstract musing on party best practice.

I'll be totally honest when I first started reading DR on this mess what struck me most about him was his ability to see the good in people on all sides. His most frequent argument with everyone seemed to be remember you're going to have to work together in the future and be careful what you say. But then at each critical point in the process he seems to forget that and let factional needs get the better of him. He did it just before Marxism with an ill judged piece that engaged in crude class attacks on the prof, a piece he pulled after some gentle polite nudging from the likes of me. I think he did it again with his very tendentious and one sided account of the role of the prof and ck in the dc cases, with all sorts of factoids as the prof would call them just thrown about with gay abandon. And now again he's really gone to town in this lamentable piece which goes out of its way to insult most of the people he claims to want to remain in the same party with. I'd love to see the DR I recognised at the beginning of this mess resurface but it's probably too late now :-(

They're not gonna have to work together in the same party are they though? Because it's fucked. And lets face it - lets look at the real reason, whether you think MS is a rapist or not - it's fucked because the SWP became the kind of party that needed a muppet like Martin Smith to be its national secretary.

Think about that. Go back if you like, check out some of his Marxism greatest hits on YouTube. This moron was judged to be so invaluable to the SWP that he was worth protecting, even if it meant losing members.

That's batshit.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Met someone i like in the SWP at the Brixton Post office recently. Lovely man, successful in his own right, more spotlight than many of us could cope with.
He is a believer in a better world and if i was in trouble i would trust him and know he would help in some small way, like so many others i have met over the years. It's a real shame, a sadness that so many gave their self to an organisation that was dictatorial, misogynist and dirtied the name of socialism.
It did give a lot of hope to people, myself included (briefly) but it was a false hope.
At Thatcher's death party at Windrush Square they collectively snubbed me as they wasted cheap champagne and competed for media attention .
But i had the last word.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I hear there is about to be about to be "a mass exit" of younger recruits from the Brixton branch very soon.

new meaning of the word mass

 

[barney_pig]

The UK SWP is doomed. Think CP after '56.

Wrp after 85, but without the dignity.

 

[leyton96]

Weekly Worker one of the most boring I can remember for a while. Not surprising given the poor material they have to work with.
Guess they're saving themselves for the next two issues!

Incidentally surely the events of Dec 13-15 will warrant a Winter issue of Workers Girder?

 

[redcogs]

The 13 -15 conference appears to coincide with The Southbank Centre Chocolate Festival.

JFYI. Not that anyone will require sweetening up (following the event)

 

[comrade spurski]

Sorry but the context of where he wrote it, the preamble about the conference motion and the numerous other digs at people associated with the cc line mean nobody can really take this claim to be asking an honest question devoid of factional intent seriously.

The worst section of the article is the bit on the uaf. The faction have made the uaf a point of issue, cool that's their right to debate its tactics. But the impugning of people's integrity over those tactics is low down mean and dirty politics. When I was at the Exeter demo a few weeks back even those of us who got close enough to abuse the scum verbally didn't breach police lines. It would have been daft to try. When three of us started giving them grief from ten metres away the copper in front turned to me and said "say what you want as loud as you want mate as long as you don't swear and don't try to get past me and my mates." Given the balance of forces I was happy to agree to both his stipulations But the reason I mention it is cause DR crosses a line in this article when he says those who defend the mainstream uaf line are lacking in integrity. We might be wrong, happy to have that argument. But he can go take a running jump if he's going to suggest the reason we're wrong is a lack of moral fibre.

Seriously, do you ever read what you have typed before you post it?
The SWP leadership and their supporters (including you) have been "impugning peoples integrity" throughout the investigation and aftermath of the rape "investigation" it held...and you have the nerve to throw a hissy fit cos some think that the UAF has shit tactics?
For fucks sake ... how does a socialist seriously believe this bollocks so much that they feel justified in arguing it?