Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
More false binaries.
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
More false binaries.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
You are jumping the gun, Comrade Booth! The pigeon will not arrive until dawn. You risk revealing all our most arcane secrets to the ignorant masses before we have struck the hammer blow and it is too late for the puny insects to resist.
SpineyNorman
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Nope, I'm talking about basic stuff like booking rooms for meetings, emailing members and contacts to let them know about meetings/events - that kind of stuff. We decide what we're doing as a branch and we have a branch committee to work out the nuts and bolts. Fact is the party line/national leadership has very little effect on what we do at a local level, the only exception to that is electoral alliances/platforms.
Unless I was miles away from the party line (as in not a Marxist/socialist) how would you expect the line to affect the way we work? We're still gonna work in the bedroom tax campaigns, unions, etc in pretty much the same way we would anyway.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Very possibly so, but engendered by the glaring contradictions between what you lot are claiming and what I see of your practice in the real world.
SpineyNorman
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Why not tell us about the practice you see in this real world you speak of, something of which I of course would have no knowledge.
leyton96
NGO's selling privilege checking solutions
Those are two mutually exclusive assertions you are making. A bureaucratic centralist regime which you, wrongly, assert is the case with the SP, does not tolerate being ignored.
Having a democratic regime isn't just about voting or structures (all those things are important) It's also about a culture that exists within the organisation. The strongest guarantee of democracy is an educated, confident membership. Your not going to get that if full timers are throwing their weight around all the time and members have no experience of taking decisions. That's why broad autonomy is given to branches to decide what to do. It's not "autonomism" its just common sense.
I think the difficulty many SWPers have is you think the SP is the same as the SWP, just smaller and more boring. I suspect this is part of the cognitive dissonance involved in revolutionaries accepting a totally undemocratic culture. "Well it's bad here but everyone else is the same so I might as well stay" type of thing.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
I in no way subscribe to the SWP's definition of 'autonomism'. It's one of the crimes of which I myself am accused by throwing in my lot (provisionally) with the ISN & I know it's a philistine term of abuse.
Of course I want neither version of your 'false binary'. In some ways what I'd like to see isn't too far from what you're claiming exists in your organisation. The problem is I don't believe it really does or really can within the confines of your structure.
SpineyNorman
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If it didn't I'd say so - I have no problem criticising the party publicly if necessary and have done on more than one occasion - and I wouldn't be a member.
I am many things, most of them negative, but liar is not one of them.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Not saying you are, Spiney. We can all genuinely believe things which turn out to be wrong.
I'm sorry if you feel I'm misrepresenting you or your organisation. I'm honestly just trying to make sense of what you say. I might be a jaded old cynic, but please don't caricature me as some brainwashed SWP hack having a sectarian pop at the SP. I've spent years in opposition to people who say one thing & do another. As a result, I take very little at face value any more.
SpineyNorman
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So I'm not a liar, I'm just suffering from some pretty severe delusions? Much better
Apart from a few vague comments about hackery you've not really said anything to be honest, hence the following question, to which I am yet to receive the courtesy of a reply:
When and where did I do this?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
You seem determined to decide for other people what we are "claiming".
The SP - relative to the SWP - allows its branches a lot of flexibility to determine their own agenda. And again relative to the SWP it has a fairly relaxed approach to disagreement. This does not mean that its a complete free for all, that it has no leadership, that it has no "hacks", that it takes no positions, that the more relaxed approach to disagreement means that there are no limits to disagreements (or just as importantly no limits to behaviour based on those disagreements).
There is a wide spectrum of possible organisational approaches. Being more relaxed than the SWP doesn't say all that much about where you are on it. Most organisations are more relaxed than the SWP.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Oh, please don't be so prickly! I'm not saying my world is any more, or any less, real than your own. We all have different experiences & one of mine is that 'you' (by which I meant your party generically in my experience, not you personally who I've never met as far as I know) in my neck of the woods don't seem to operate that much differently from any other Trotskyist outfit. For example, by initiating or getting involved in campaigns at least as much for purposes of propaganda & recruitment as for the cause itself, thereby often pissing off & alienating more people than they win over. TUSC was very much an SP fiefdom in these parts & SWPers who got involved felt like barely tolerated poor relations there mostly to provide the veneer of a united front. The election results were hardly a stunningly successful advertisement for your party's ways of doing things.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
None of these "examples", taking them at face value for a moment, have anything to do with the organisational issues you've been arguing about.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Oh really?
Your & Spiney's extreme defensiveness & propensity to personalise, distort & take out of context almost anything I say are certainly very reminiscent of an argumentative method I became all too familiar with in the SWP.
Anyway, no hard feelings. Let others judge.
I'm knackered & off to bed.
Nighty night.
The Prof bankrolls the SWP?
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
I'm sure the inheritance helps. Of course, Engels bankrolled Marx, but his was only new money!
barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
There have been a number of significant inheritances, which have helped the swp in recent years.
The Foot estate, for example which was very substantial was assisted by some creative approaches to inheritance tax which boosted its value to the comrades.
I never paid too much in subs, but I know that individual comrades effectively bankrolled entire branches.
My deposit as a S A parliamentary candidate was paid by one individual, an otherwise entirely inactive member.
This is not a healthy situation.
The Foot estate, for example which was very substantial was assisted by some creative approaches to inheritance tax which boosted its value to the comrades.
I never paid too much in subs, but I know that individual comrades effectively bankrolled entire branches.
My deposit as a S A parliamentary candidate was paid by one individual, an otherwise entirely inactive member.
This is not a healthy situation.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
I think he(?) is suggesting that you are like those SWP members who insist it is democratic, when it obviously isn't. I am not sure what the best description of the is, but I don't think they are either liars or delusional. I do recognise the general picture he paints of the SP, but like Nigel says I don't see how that gives any insight the SP's inner life.So I'm not a liar, I'm just suffering from some pretty severe delusions? Much better
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Indeed, in fact didn't Lenin have something to say about this.
barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
Personally, I think bank robbing was a healthier alternative
SpineyNorman
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Although I have no doubt that's true (see, I'm doubting neither your sanity nor your honesty here) it doesn't say anything about how much autonomy branches have or otherwise does it?
SpineyNorman
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What extreme defensiveness? Your apparent desire to paint me as some kind of defend the party at all costs hack is fucking hilarious, as anyone who knows me can confirm. We're talking about one single aspect of the party - the ability of the leadership to control what happens at branch level (and ftr I'm sure they'd love to, just as I think it would be far better if everyone in the party just did what I wanted). If you want to discuss the shortcomings of the SP I can certainly contribute (though this is probably not the thread for it as I'm sure we're already boring the shit out of everyone else) I just don't think this is one of them.
I haven't intentionally distorted, personalised or taken anything you've said out of context. But since you're not really saying anything that has any bearing on what we're actually talking about I'm having to do a certain amount of guesswork here so misrepresentations are a risk.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
The fact that SWPers from all over the country had remarkably similar experiences of TUSC would suggest there was a centralised strategy at work there.
SpineyNorman
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I recognise it too - there's way too many hacks in the SP (personally I reckon hacks are a kind of naturally occurring phenomenon that you're always going to get in any organised group - there's anarchists round here who act just like an SWP or SP hack and the ISN certainly aren't immume, their members in Sheffield could all be sharing the same brain and you wouldn't know any difference - in fact, come to think of it
).
SpineyNorman
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Maybe they're all delusional like me then. When you're the only group that can be arsed to do anything in an electoral alliance it does tend to look like you're controling it. But eg. round here by far our most successful candidate is SWP and they and non-aligneds are invited to planning meetings (again, not our fault if they can't be arsed to turn up).
Besides which, I already said that electoral platforms/alliances are something of an exception.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Our experiences in North London at the 2010 election were somewhat different. As far as I remember, my good mate Jenny Sutton (who at that time wasn't yet in the SWP but was close & heavily backed by the party) was the only non-SP candidate in the area. Unlike your own candidates, she received very little support or publicity from the local SP & I don't think she was invited to many meetings for candidates, was more or less ignored. When we asked if we could put some of her election leaflets on the TUSC stall at the big Save Whittington Hospital demo, the SP comrades running it were rather reluctant. In the event, of course, she received a substantially higher vote than most other TUSC candidates.
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
I must admit you're dead right about too many people in the ISN. They can be extremely cliquey & smug, especially gangs of mates who left the SWP long before the present crisis & have developed their own theoretical hobby horses during the years in exile. This air of intellectual superiority & exclusivity is one of the reasons I'm losing my enthusiasm for the organisation.I recognise it too - there's way too many hacks in the SP (personally I reckon hacks are a kind of naturally occurring phenomenon that you're always going to get in any organised group - there's anarchists round here who act just like an SWP or SP hack and the ISN certainly aren't immume, their members in Sheffield could all be sharing the same brain and you wouldn't know any difference - in fact, come to think of it
SpineyNorman
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Very different here - we've unfortunately not been able to get anyone who isn't aligned to the SP/SWP to stand as yet (though there's one guy we might be able to persuade this year) but the SWP only campaign for their candidate and nobody else (I don't have a problem with that btw, I don't think any of the wards round here are winnable but if any of them are it's that one) and we'll be helping out on their campaign this year and when we held the launch meeting she was, iirc, the only Sheffield candidate on the platform (Dave Nellist was the SP speaker).
SpineyNorman
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On this note of agreement I suggest we end this discussion cos we're threatening to hijack the thread now - happy to discuss it at greater length on a thread where it's more directly relevant though
Vladtheimpaler
Active Member
Fine by me. I've got to go to work now anyway. Have a nice day.On this note of agreement I suggest we end this discussion cos we're threatening to hijack the thread now - happy to discuss it at greater length on a thread where it's more directly relevant though
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