SWP expulsions and squabbles

[butchersapron]

The gloating may seem a bit off putting when it's about something as serious as rape, but the anger is justified. People found the contribution by the one SWP loyalist remaining at Sussex university after the previous SWSS group resigned of how he is using the Sussex campaign as a case study in de-toxifying the SWSS brand. In the pre-conference IB, (nb 2, p.81) he acknowledges that "SWP members face difficult arguments with potential members [...] to explain the events of the last year that have caused many students to leave the party" but then explains that their strategy of targeting "freshers with little political experience", a "conscious decision" "to build outside from the typical hard left on campus" has been successful so far.
Do you think it's surprising that some student activists feel revulsion at being used like this in an experiment to de-toxify the brand? That inexperienced 17 year olds are being targeted? That suddenly 2 out of 3 speakers at rallies are SWP loyalists? It's the typical SWP instrumentalist approach - the sameyouone that led to the SWP covering for comrade Delta.

The SWP stall got turned over and their placards were binned at today's rally btw.

Are you 17? Are many people at Sussex university 17? Are you a 'student activist'? If so how did it "suddenly 2 out of 3 speakers at rallies are SWP loyalists?" Who are you? Who is doing what? Where are they doing it and how, with who?

 

[treelover]

he acknowledges that "SWP members face difficult arguments with potential members [...] to explain the events of the last year that have caused many students to leave the party" but then explains that their strategy of targeting "freshers with little political experience", a "conscious decision" "to build outside from the typical hard left on campus" has been successful so far.

The cynicism is obscene, action taken was correct, imo.

 

[butchersapron]

The cynicism is pir's disgusting re-telling of the IB contribution.

 

[butchersapron]

Before the accusation is raised that the
level of student activity at Sussex in the
past year (mainly the anti-privatisation
campaign and occupation) mean that the
university is a special case, it is worth not-
ing that almost everyone who has come to
the meetings and who came to Manches-
ter were not involved in the occupation or
campaign.

This was part of a conscious decision
made by the SWSS group to make efforts
to reach out to freshers with little political
experience and to those who felt the anti-
privatisation campaign was too isolated.
In other words, to build outside from
the typical hard left on campus. Further-
more, meetings at Lancaster, Leeds and
Edinburgh among others have seen good
turn out and discussion.

The meetings at Sussex have been full of
high level debate – ranging from the nature
of the working class to how to organise
against capitalism - with everyone coming
out feeling impressed and interested by the
political discussion.

 

[treelover]

Rentons article is wrong ... Smith was NOT the east london organiser until 6 months AFTER the BNP councillor had lost his seat on the Isle of Dogs.
Sue Cauldwell was the organiser when Derek Beacon won the election in september 1993. Ade walters was the organiser when Beacon was kicked out in My 1994. Smith took over in nov 1994 when the previous organiser quit.
I dont blame renton for this mistake as the Swp has always led people to believe smith was the organiser in east london throughout this time ...presumably to massage his ego as the 'key anti nazi'

Any relation to Jo?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Not sure why you're addressing this at me as I'm at best peripheral to it.

I'm addressing you as someone I don't know the first thing about.

But yes, you can tell that someone is a loyalist if...

Right and you are saying that all of the SWP members present at that demonstration, operating that stall, handing out those placards, etc, did one of these things? Or is there every possibility that some of them have spent the last year fighting against these things, and you have no way of knowing?

In other words, was their whole "intervention" carried out by this one known loyalist? Or were there people involved you don't know to be loyalists? And if the latter don't you run a small but real risk of actually hassling one of the original complainants in an attempt to express outrage on her behalf? Or a small but slightly larger risk of hassling the complainants friends?

(Those are meant as serious questions by the way, not rhetorical jabs)

Yes that's correct, and he receives the same support and solidarity as the rest of the Sussex 5.

If someone claimed they were acting in solidarity with me while at the same time trying to censor an organisation I'm involved in, I wouldn't be very impressed with their "solidarity".

Does that mean they get the right to impose the SWP brand on the campaign by swamping demos and rallies with placards

They have every right to hand out placards, or leaflets or sell papers. They don't staple them to people's hands. People are perfectly entitled not to take their material, to alter it, to argue with others not to take it, to argue with them. But I get very twitchy when I see small left groups announce that they are going to censor other small left groups and prevent them from organising.

As for where I get the idea that some anarchists are displaying a bizarre and unfounded self-righteousness, I refer you to the tweets that started this conversation.

Do you have nothing to say about the plan to use one of the most exciting campaigns around to detoxify the SWSS brand, using 17-18 year old freshers precisely because of their inexperience?

You are dramatically overplaying the "detoxify" angle. No involvement in any campaign is going to do that for the SWP now. As for the concentration on first years, it's cynical but sensible from their point of view in circumstances where there is an established campus left and it's entirely hostile to them. (For less cynical reasons, putting a bit more effort into trying to recruit first years makes sense for any campus activist group, but that's getting off the point).

 

[pir]

The cynicism is pir's disgusting re-telling of the IB report.

What's disgusting about my retelling it? It's not a report, it's describing a strategy for "Rebuilding SWSS" as the title says, and it's in response to another contribution which stated that the "SWSS brand is destroyed" and that they should only work within other student societies. However existing activists wouldn't touch the SWP with a barge pole, so they take the "conscious decision" to "build outside from the typical hard left on campus" and "reach out to freshers with little political experience".

 

[Nigel Irritable]

"It is also important to emphasise abuse and the protection of abusers is not limited to the SWP, but is endemic across the left. We will fight it wherever we find it."

Is this true?

Which sentence?

 

[butchersapron]

What's disgusting about my retelling it? It's not a report, it's describing a strategy for "Rebuilding SWSS" as the title says, and it's in response to another contribution which stated that the "SWSS brand is destroyed" and that they should only work within other student societies. However existing activists wouldn't touch the SWP with a barge pole, so they take the "conscious decision" to "build outside from the typical hard left on campus" and "reach out to freshers with little political experience".

It describes the general guff that leftists come out with about outreach beyond universities. Nothing else. Are you at the university? How many years you been there? Are you part of the 'existing activists'?

 

[treelover]

Not sure why you're addressing this at me as I'm at best peripheral to it. But yes, you can tell that someone is a loyalist if they (1) attack the opposition in the pre-conference IB for not having faith in the SWSS brand, and (2) if they tell a student occupation they are convinced Comrade Delta is innocent because of the rigorous investigatory process the SWP applied, with lots of women and even a genuine rape councillor on their disputes committee; and if they make out they are a committed feminist who'd never stay in the party if they believed it had actually happened etc. etc.


Yes that's correct, and he receives the same support and solidarity as the rest of the Sussex 5.
Does that mean they get the right to impose the SWP brand on the campaign by swamping demos and rallies with their placards, again targeting "freshers with little political experience"?


Where do you get that idea from? Most anarchists i've seen are careful to point out that this is a much wider problem also found in their circles. Even the are people who burnt the SW paper say very clearly in that very post (not sure how you missed it):
"It is also important to emphasise abuse and the protection of abusers is not limited to the SWP, but is endemic across the left. We will fight it wherever we find it."

Do you have nothing to say about the plan to use one of the most exciting campaigns around to detoxify the SWSS brand, using 17-18 year old freshers precisely because of their inexperience?

welcome to P/P, hope you stay...

 

[butchersapron]

welcome to P/P, hope you stay...

Every single person you say that to goes away.

 

[treelover]

 

[comrade spurski]

Any relation to Jo?

no idea I'm afraid

 

[belboid]

Any relation to Jo?

No. It's Sue Caldwell, not Caudwell

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Meanwhile the ISN are being mean to each other online in a row about whether they should be mean to each other in rows online.

 

[belboid]

Oh, is that what that's about...

 

[pir]

Right and you are saying that all of the SWP members present at that demonstration, operating that stall, handing out those placards, etc, did one of these things? Or is there every possibility that some of them have spent the last year fighting against these things, and you have no way of knowing?

In other words, was their whole "intervention" carried out by this one known loyalist? Or were there people involved you don't know to be loyalists? And if the latter don't you run a small but real risk of actually hassling one of the original complainants in an attempt to express outrage on her behalf? Or a small but slightly larger risk of hassling the complainants friends?

(Those are meant as serious questions by the way, not rhetorical jabs)

Your questions are going in the wrong direction because the target weren't individual members, the target were the placards and their paper. The modus operandi of the SWP is to appropriate campaigns through dominating them in various ways, such as visually by having their placards everywhere, etc. People who are starting to become politically active all too often join the SWP not because they are an organisation worth joining, but simply because they are the most visible.
While this is obviously not new and activists involved in campaigns have been moaning about it for as long as I remember, the comrade delta affair gives the SWP's opportunism and domineering behaviour a new aspect. In a society where sexual violence is widespread (wasn't the 1 in 8 statistic in the news recently?) there are quite a lot of people who feel intensely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, in a campaign dominated by an organisation that has dealt with rape in the way the SWP did. To simply tolerate the SWP's behaviour after everything that's come to light would be to acquiesce in a culture that lets abusers and bullies off the hook, and to acquiesce in a culture that effectively excludes survivors of abuse who often find it very hard to take part in such campaigns.
I think the comrade delta affair has opened people's eyes to where SWP-style instrumentalist leftist politics leads. Why should we tolerate it? The campaigns we organise such as the one against privatisation at Sussex uni are motivated by a sense of solidarity for those we work/study with, and by the desire to empower ourselves to create a better society - there is no space for this crap in our midst, and a lot of people's patience for it has run out.

If someone claimed they were acting in solidarity with me while at the same time trying to censor an organisation I'm involved in, I wouldn't be very impressed with their "solidarity".

Tough. The basis of a solidarity campaign such as this is the idea that "an injury to one is an injury to all". It's not about the popularity of those victimised, it's not about their other affiliations - it is about defending a collective interest and about limiting what uni management in this case can get away with. It doesn't give any organisation the victimised belong to a blank cheque to parasitise the solidarity campaign by using it as a recruiting ground.

They have every right to hand out placards, or leaflets or sell papers. They don't staple them to people's hands. People are perfectly entitled not to take their material, to alter it, to argue with others not to take it, to argue with them. But I get very twitchy when I see small left groups announce that they are going to censor other small left groups and prevent them from organising.

That's a very liberal view for a trot - you ignore the superior organisational power of the SWP which allows them to dominate such events. If they were just politely handing out propaganda then people wouldn't object but the SWP have been taking the piss, in a way that put people off. You misunderstand the situation if you think this is lefty infighting, "Sussex ASN" doesn't really exist as an actual group.

 

[Delroy Booth]

That's a very liberal view for a trot - you ignore the superior organisational power of the SWP which allows them to dominate such events. If they were just politely handing out propaganda then people wouldn't object but the SWP have been taking the piss, in a way that put people off. You misunderstand the situation if you think this is lefty infighting, "Sussex ASN" doesn't really exist as an actual group.

Just out of curiosity was there anything specific they did in Sussex or elsewhere?

Not that I doubt you for a moment just I'd be interested to know exactly what the SWP did that was so piss-taking.

 

[Karmickameleon]

Given that the Faction has only 80 delegates, this is basically an academic exercise but here's their proposed slate for the CC:

1) from the CC's proposed slate:

Michael B; Esme C; Julie S; Joseph C; Paul McG (Tower Hamlets); Brian R (Newham)

2) additional names:

Ray M (Wood Green); Estelle C (Brixton); Pat S (Euston); Sam J (Walthamstow); Ian A (Bury & Prestwich); Anindya B (Tower Hamlets); Riya A (Tottenham); Neil D (Edinburgh); Jen W (Tower Hamlets); Sai E (Tottenham)

Any comments??

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Your questions are going in the wrong direction because the target weren't individual members, the target were the placards and their paper.

1) That's a specious distinction. The placards etc exist to allow those people to spread their views. Destroying them is an attempt to prevent those people from advertising their views.
2) Are you seriously claiming that turning over a stall and burning papers involved no interaction with actual SWP members?

The modus operandi of the SWP is to appropriate campaigns through dominating them in various ways, such as visually by having their placards everywhere, etc.

If you are going to patronise people here about the SWP, you should at least start by getting their different tactics and behaviours and what they are designed to achieve clear. The SWP does not generally "appropriate" campaigns. If it wants to run a campaign, it will in normal circumstances simply set it up in the first place or, if beaten to the punch, set up a rival one. Actually trying to take one over, anarchoid paranoia aside, is rare.

And when they do seek to take one over, it isn't by means of handing out placards. They do that to (a) advertise themselves and their presence and (b) popularise their preferred slogans and demands. They will do this any time, any place and it simply does not reflect a desire to take over a campaign.

People who are starting to become politically active all too often join the SWP not because they are an organisation worth joining, but simply because they are the most visible.

This is, of course true. In a general sense, the answer is that others need to get better organised and more visible rather than moaning about them. In the particular circumstances of Sussex, which has a bunch of larger left groups and less formal currents in place, this is simply ridiculous however. No Sussex student is going to join the SWP without seeing alternatives and if one somehow does, and somehow avoids googling SWP in the meantime, he/she will discover everything there is to know about the Delta cases from other campus left wingers. Within days. And then over and over again.

While this is obviously not new and activists involved in campaigns have been moaning about it for as long as I remember, the comrade delta affair gives the SWP's opportunism and domineering behaviour a new aspect. In a society where sexual violence is widespread (wasn't the 1 in 8 statistic in the news recently?) there are quite a lot of people who feel intensely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, in a campaign dominated by an organisation that has dealt with rape in the way the SWP did. To simply tolerate the SWP's behaviour after everything that's come to light would be to acquiesce in a culture that lets abusers and bullies off the hook, and to acquiesce in a culture that effectively excludes survivors of abuse who often find it very hard to take part in such campaigns.

Lots of slippery language here. What people feel this? How exactly does the presence of a few SWPers in a campaign make anyone "unsafe"? How does the SWP "dominate" this campaign? Are you saying they control it? What "behaviour" are you being asked to "tolerate"? Are you going to extend this kind of censorship to the mainstream political parties, all of which are responsible for crimes on a far grander scale?

I think the comrade delta affair has opened people's eyes to where SWP-style instrumentalist leftist politics leads. Why should we tolerate it?

A rather revealing comment, particularly alongside your earlier one about longer term resentments of the SWP and the tweets that started this exchange. There's such an obvious air of glee about some of this stuff which, despite my general hostility to the SWP and horror at their handling of the Delta disputes, I find distasteful.

Tough. The basis of a solidarity campaign such as this is the idea that "an injury to one is an injury to all". It's not about the popularity of those victimised

Whoever suggested it was about popularity? Rather than about censorship?

That's a very liberal view for a trot - you ignore the superior organisational power of the SWP which allows them to dominate such events.

No I don't. I'm well aware that the SWP are better organised in most ways than most others on the left and that this gives them the opportunity to do lots of things that, for instance, anarchists rarely have the muscle to do. Some of the things that they will do with that capacity will be aggravating or even flat out nefarious. But as I do actually understand how they approach campaigns, I don't conflate them handing out placards or running stalls with them taking over by collapsing various things together under a suitably vague term like "appropriation".

And I don't really have too much time in general for complaints about how unfair it is that someone else is better organised.

If they were just politely handing out propaganda then people wouldn't object but the SWP have been taking the piss, in a way that put people off.

If you have some actual meat, share it and we can all skip a pointless argument. I don't like being soft on the SWP, least of all on this thread.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Given that the Faction has only 80 delegates, this is basically an academic exercise but here's their proposed slate for the CC:

1) from the CC's proposed slate:

Michael B; Esme C; Julie S; Joseph C; Paul McG (Tower Hamlets); Brian R (Newham)

2) additional names:

Ray M (Wood Green); Estelle C (Brixton); Pat S (Euston); Sam J (Walthamstow); Ian A (Bury & Prestwich); Anindya B (Tower Hamlets); Riya A (Tottenham); Neil D (Edinburgh); Jen W (Tower Hamlets); Sai E (Tottenham)

Any comments??

How many of the CC nominees are currently on?

 

[Karmickameleon]

How many of the CC nominees are currently on?

Four by my count, but might be wrong... if so please correct.

Here's the no-beating-about-the-bush rationale from the Faction:

Here is the alternative slate that Rebuilding the Party supporters are proposing for our Central Committee. It acknowledges the mistakes made by the current leadership by removing those primarily responsible for them. It is also a slate that can facilitate the wide-ranging discussions we will need to if we are to rebuild the party next year.

The slate involves a majority of comrades committed to addressing our failings over the disputes and developing a more open and accountable leadership. We believe that the immediate task for any CC elected will be resolving the political fallout from the crisis in the party and making the SWP fit for purpose.

In contrast, the slate put forward by the outgoing CC attempts to federate hostile camps behind a false unity. It keeps in place five members of the secret faction that organised to defend our former national secretary – Amy L, Weyman B, Judith O, Mark T, Jo C – and adds to their number Sue C, one of that faction's key organisers. This is a strategy designed to maintain the unity of the leadership at the cost of severe damage to the party's reputation. This can only lay the seeds for the next crisis.

We remain open to considering slates that include Alex C and Charlie K but represent a clear break with those who have factionalised to defend our former national secretary. However, after extended discussion Rebuilding the Party supporters decided not to include Alex C or Charlie K on our alternative slate. Both have been the public face of the CC's handling of the crisis. They are the authors of the political defence of the CC's strategy of evading responsibility and presenting a false façade of unity. This strategy has turned a difficult situation into a crisis that threatens the future of the party.

The fundamental political issue at stake is whether or not we have properly applied our politics on women's oppression in dealing with this dispute and its fallout. The Rebuilding the Party faction argues that our leadership has failed on this score. That is why we need a proper apology and a genuine political reckoning for what has happened. At conference we will continue to press for an acknowledgement of mistakes made, a clear apology and the holding to account of those who allowed our record as tribunes of the oppressed to be tarnished so badly.

 

[Phillip_Larkin]

Someone brought up Steve Hedley earlier. Has this been posted up already:

http://womensfightback.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/hedley/

Why was Steve Hedley welcome at Socialism 2013 last month if the Socialist Party are against what he has done?

Someone mentioned Janine Booth from the AWL. The actual facts of what went on in the RMT meeting are that there was a procedural motion on the RMT Council of Executives to reject the official report on the Steve Hedley case by referring it back. Janine Booth was part of the minority of exec members who voted to refer the report back. After this move fell, the chair asked if the meeting accepted the report then, but then there was no further vote. So Janine Booth did not endorse it and actually voted against endorsing it by referring it back.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

It's always such a pleasure to have a drive by from the racist AWL.

Hedley is a leading figure in the RMT, the complaint against him was investigated by the RMT, and the SP interacts with him on that basis. If the AWL believe that the RMT botched their investigation and were serious about wanting Hedley boycotted, they would be talking about the RMT, trying to embarrass the RMT, continuously raising the issue with the RMT, externally and internally, demanding that the RMT reopen their inquiry, demanding an investigation into their inquiry process and finally seeking to ostracise the RMT. That they do not do any of that but instead use him to try to embarrass an organisation he's not a member of tells you all you need to know about what they are at.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I see people on Facebook saying that some lad who isn't in the SWP got shouted at and called a rape apologist by some other protesters in Manchester today, who mistook him for an SWP member.

 

[Phillip_Larkin]

You have ignored the part on the link about the comments on facebook that Steve Hedley made to a young woman. He has never apologised for this. Have the Socialist Party got nothing to say about this at all? Are you happy to have people who make sexist comments to young women, and are hardly wet behind the ears, at Socialism? The Socialist Party statement had Hedley calling you comrades, and as far as I'm aware the SP have never had anything at all to say about his contact in making sexist comments.

I believe that a branch of the RMT will be making a complaint about what has gone on with Hedley. But rather than leave it to the AWL or any other group, maybe the Socialist Party could make a statement about his sexist conduct and instead of having him referring to you as comrades and welcoming him to your national event, say that such conduct is totally unacceptable.

 

[Phillip_Larkin]

The Socialist Party will continue to work with Steve on the urgent task of building a mass movement against austerity.

Then take a look at this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-__voxIBF1hw/UWk8VCTPucI/AAAAAAAAALE/cCI_u-yAZRk/s1600/PIPPPPP.jpg

and this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TwGwG8-_5c8/UWlJlwOasNI/AAAAAAAAALc/wr-Dzbdu1E8/s1600/hedley.jpg

 

[SpineyNorman]

Someone mentioned Janine Booth from the AWL. The actual facts of what went on in the RMT meeting are that there was a procedural motion on the RMT Council of Executives to reject the official report on the Steve Hedley case by referring it back. Janine Booth was part of the minority of exec members who voted to refer the report back. After this move fell, the chair asked if the meeting accepted the report then, but then there was no further vote. So Janine Booth did not endorse it and actually voted against endorsing it by referring it back.

Are you sure that's true? Only the story I got from an RMT member - not a member of the SP or the alliance for war and liberalism - that once the referal was defeated she voted it through. I see no reason why he'd lie and every reason why you would.

 

[Phillip_Larkin]

Are you sure that's true? Only the story I got from an RMT member - not a member of the SP or the alliance for war and liberalism - that once the referal was defeated she voted it through. I see no reason why he'd lie and every reason why you would.

Unless Janine Booth is lying herself, which I find it hard to believe, then the version I gave is correct.

 

[belboid]

alliance for war and liberalism

For wankers and liars, shorely?