SWP expulsions and squabbles

[chilango]

The RIL seem to have become Socialist Fight and maybe are in the LRC articul8?

anybody who can be arsed can download a book on the collapse of the WRP for free from their website.

 

[Karmickameleon]

Ian Allinson, Unite EC member, has resigned as well. Thy wont have anyone at all left on union exec's at this rate

Excellent resignation letter on his Facebook. Definitely worth reading.

 

[articul8]

The RIL seem to have become Socialist Fight and maybe are in the LRC articul8?

anybody who can be arsed can download a book on the collapse of the WRP for free from their website.

Yes, one of the main Socialist Fight people is in my local LRC branch (think they only have 2 or 3 others active in the UK) - decent bloke but politically away with the fairies (their statement of support for the Woolwich axe killers was a particular highlight). (NB this is NOT LRC policy!)

 

[articul8]

comrade bala lives

He heard someone mutter "Jesus Christ!" after one of his speeches, and took it a bit too literally

 

[belboid]

(their statement of support for the Woolwich axe killers was a particular highlight).

jesus h!
http://socialistfight.com/tag/woolwich/

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Are the New Communst Party defenders of North Korea still in the LRC?

 

[chilango]

Y'know, reading this thread it's hard enough to see why people have stuck with the SWP for so long, but when you delve into the 2-3 man bands that have doggedly kept going for 20 or 30 years, well, it really makes you wonder.

 

[articul8]

jesus h!
http://socialistfight.com/tag/woolwich/

ah yes that's the one. I was denounced as an imperialist stooge and islamophobe for criticisng that.

 

[chilango]

jesus h!
http://socialistfight.com/tag/woolwich/

That just saddens me.

 

[Scribbling S]

"it's hard enough to see why people have stuck with the SWP for so long, but when you delve into the 2-3 man bands that have doggedly kept going for 20 or 30 years, well, it really makes you wonder." - how indeed could they fill their time with something so wierd and bizarre when they could so much more fruitfully spend their time discussing other people doing that mad stuff on an internet forum. (mind you, I only get a chance to comment here when Comrade Balakrishnan goes to the shops and leaves the computer on).

 

[treelover]

for me, who, I think, count as one of Renton autodidacts, the reason I stayed in for so long was because my internal image of my party was was of one which fundamentally differed from the reality, yet one maintained it in the face of whatever evidence reality could throw at it. At every public or internal party initiative comrades would shamelessly lie constantly about the influence the party had "punching above its weight" Among the working class.
I know I would look at my comrades and know they were lying, and then, when my turn came, get up and lie myself.
Often we weren't even lying to impress outsiders, the most outrageous lies were spoken during internal conferences and aggregates.
The swp was built on a dream of an idealised Bolshevism, free from the bacillus of Stalin, yet to match reality to that ideal involved the construction of an elaborate scaffold of fantasy and lies.
For me the end was the moment when the party decided it was necessary to embrace a popular front with salafists and Baathists in order to engage with the wider movement created by The anti war moment of 2003 and the SWPs Respect turn was too much to swallow.
For others, the bureaucratic horror of a leadership closing rank to defend a rapist, and justifying this as Leninism was the end.
Disgracefully, for some even this is not enough.

some of us were aware of the SWP's failings from the very first time we encountered them.

 

[treelover]

Renton lays out the dynamic - (in an odd way):

Isn't Dave a academic, a barrister, maybe a nice guy, but not an ordinary WC one.

 

[treelover]

...also didnt the SWP flog their printshop?
do any left groups own the kit to mass print a paper or is all contracted out and subject to market forces?

The WRP opened up their print shop to the Dockers/RTS, not sure what happened after.

 

[tony.c]

you missed Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tsetung Thought

And how could you leave out Red Action?

 

[treelover]

I joined the swp in 1985/6 as a 18yr old.
I joined cos I was so fucked off about the tottenham riots, and racism in general.

Throughout my first 3 yrs or so I went to some meetings and was still very involved in the anti apartheid movement but thought the party was too white and too old but on the whole better than anything I came across.

I became more active in 1990/91 around the poll tax and gulf war . I hated the sectarian arguments between different groups and thought too many swp were obsessed with other groups (as they were with the swp) ..there was a local anti poll tax demo in Jan 1990 and only 30 people turned all swp and militant apart from me and my 8 mates from work...each group blamed eachother for the poor turn out and it was only when a mate of mine asked who (other than me) from either party bought anyone with them to the demo that they shut up!

I found the SWP very helpful during a 9 month strike I was involved in in 92 and stayed involved during the campaign against the BNP after the murders of Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal and Stephen Lawrence where I live (Plumstead/Woolwich). I will always be proud of my work in the anti nazi campaign including get the BNP HQ closed and the Welling Demo but again remember so much infighting between groups which was excruciating at times. I made the mistake of once getting drawn in and was ashamed of myself when I realised that I was being angry with other anti racists and wasting time that could and should have been used fighting racism. I made sure that I never behaved in a sectarian way again.

I was even an organiser at one point but quit after about 6 months as in truth I didn't like working for the swp ... it was very cliquey and people thought they were more important as members cos they worked for the party and I felt uncomfortable around a lot of them...once I was asked by one of the Journalists on SW where i went to school so I said st pauls...he got really excited and told me he'd been there and reeled off a list of other "leading" swp members who had also been there....his face was a picture when I said it a school in abbeywood se london instead of the private school he was on about!

I stayed involved in the swp until around 2000 when I got sick of people telling me that me and my partner should be doing more even though we had a baby. I always sold SW in work (10-20 copies a week to mates in the council I worked in) and collected hundreds of pounds a year for different strikes, campaigns and the swp in the council.
throughout my time I looked at the swp as a tool and thought that I'd stay if it was useful.
I continued to do so until 2009 but stayed away from the swp generally...didn't go to meetings or paper sales but always involved in campaigns and was never sectarian. I was for criticised as being a syndicalist or being politically "soft" cos I refused to take part in bitching meetings about this group or that. I finally had enough when they all behaved like twats over respect ... Galloway was treated like God until he pissed off John Rees...it became clear that the swp was not a useable tool so left. That was 5 years ago.

I never slagged the swp off ... i just left as it weren't for me but the disgraceful treatment of the women who said she was raped has made feel

1) really relieved that I left 5 years ago so I weren't associated with their scumminess
2) ashamed to have been a member of them for 23 years.

I hope the swp curls up and dies.

I write this as I think that people stayed in the swp cos they saw it as a tool but watching this horror show unfold it is clear that for many or most it was not about it being a tool it was their life or more accurately a replacement for having a life.

sorry its so long winded...feels like I am back in catholic school giving my weekly confession!

Let us hope young people now never make that mistake again, as I said before plenty of us knew they were poison from day one.

 

[Scribbling S]

I think I'll do my "confessions of", in part as an anti-poison argument.

 

[butchersapron]

Let us hope young people now never make that mistake again, as I said before plenty of us knew they were poison from day one.

You being right - as you have now pointed out twice - does not impact at all on why people felt that joining the swp was the best option for them to get involved in some sort of fightback. If anything it ignores the situations that led to that choice - and the lessons those of us who didn't make it can and should take from that.

 

[treelover]

Anybody care to hazard an educated guess as to the current sizes of the UK Left groups? Nigel Irritable ?

My guess as the size order would be:

SP (around 1000)
SWP (800 ?)
Left Unity (300-400 ?)

And then in no particular order other groups with three figures CPB, AWL, Respect, ISN, SLP perhaps?

I dunno though these days. Everyone is so small that it's too difficult to gauge from any sort of real world presence anymore.

There were 400+ plus at the Nat Conference alone, they have 1000 paid up members, they are the fastest growing left group for better or worse.

 

[frogwoman]

Innit, I don't have much time for the SP's leadership but I still have a lot of respect for a lot of people still in the party and I don't regret my time as a member, I joined the SP because I wanted to be part of a fightback and because they were a large-ish, well known and well respected group with what seemed to be the best politics who actually did get involved at a local level, and although I always had criticisms I could always find reasons to stay in the party, I imagine the same is for the SWP and similar groups.

 

[chilango]

And how could you leave out Red Action?

(At self).

 

[Nigel Irritable]

There were 400+ plus at the Nat Conference alone, they have 1000 paid up members, they are the fastest growing left group for better or worse.

Paid up a few quid. The interesting part will be how many are active in a few months.

 

[chilango]

There were 400+ plus at the Nat Conference alone, they have 1000 paid up members, they are the fastest growing left group for better or worse.

Paid up?

There's formal membership now?

 

[treelover]

Whole book. I think it was the pamphlet i put up. He was supposed to have gone far right at the end of his life. His daughter was well known to the voices we should listen to on the BTF thread.

Anyone read 'I believed', by Douglas Hyde?, another former CP member who went to the (centre?)right.

 

[chilango]

Paid up a few quid. The interesting part will be how many are active in a few months.

Indeed.


The final collapse of the SWP as a serious force means that Left Unity could easily become a major, if not the major, left group. They could just as easily make no impression at all and disappear within the year.

Time will tell.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

http://broadleft.org/gb.htm

There's a snapshot of the left groups around in 2005. Not perfect, but close enough to give a sense. I'd guess half are dead.

 

[articul8]

And how could you leave out Red Action?

Anything about the topic of mad violent doctrinaire hierarchical cults that brought that to mind?

 

[butchersapron]

Anything about the topic of mad violent doctrinaire hierarchical cults that brought that to mind?

Did you ask that in your face to face interview?

 

[articul8]

Did you ask that in your face to face interview?

it was a joke

 

[butchersapron]

it was a joke

As indicated by your smiley.

Give up your day job. Really. Give it up.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

You being right - as you have now pointed out twice - does not impact at all on why people felt that joining the swp was the best option for them to get involved in some sort of fightback. If anything it ignores the situations that led to that choice - and the lessons those of us who didn't make it can and should take from that.

Absolutely.

I didn't join the SWP as a teenager - I made other mistakes instead.