bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Thanks to delroy for reminding me why the SWP will and should survive.
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
benedict
Well-Known Member
Care to elaborate Bolshie? Delroy's description maps on to my experience and those of countless others. Is it just the fact that people are sick to the back teeth of the SWP's parasitical and disruptive style of operating that means in your view the party "will and should survive"?
Oh and since this is the time for "year in review" pieces, do you still agree with what you said on January 7 about how your "sympathies were with the opposition factions in everything [you've] heard about the political debates going on inside the party"? How come you've done a 180 on those supposed sympathies?
Oh and since this is the time for "year in review" pieces, do you still agree with what you said on January 7 about how your "sympathies were with the opposition factions in everything [you've] heard about the political debates going on inside the party"? How come you've done a 180 on those supposed sympathies?
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
What a cock end.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
No benedict of course I don't mean that, I mean it was good to be reminded how much of the hard left animus against the party predates the current appalling mess. It's easy to forget that.
God yeah I've totally changed my mind over the last year. A year ago I thought joining Counterfire might be an option too. The debates around the IS tradition of the last year have helped clarify imho that the swp mostly gets the politics on the working class, on imperialism and yes on feminism right and the diaspora don't. The problem for people like me is that we suspect the party didn't do a very good job of applying it's own politics to the case that started this disaster but (and this is a huge but) unlike quite a lot of the diaspora we still essentially agree with those politics.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
diaspora lol
comrade spurski
Well-Known Member
being an ex member of the swp (I left in 2009) I would disagree that I was complicit in doing damage. Like many others in different groups I worked with others in different organisations or in no organisations around many issues (anti nazi stuff, asylum seekers, strikers support groups, anti war stuff, abortion rights etc. etc.) and never sought to destroy anything that the swp couldn't control. I agree that many did ... can't say I knew it at the time but have read and listened to enough people to know that the members of the swp and the organisation itself (leadership wise) could be and was sectarian. But to be honest the same can be said of many other groups.
Your experience at uni sounds shit and I don't blame you for hating the swp...I had a similar experience here in SE London after the racist murders of Rohit Duggal Rolan Adams and Stephen Lawrence where people parachuted into Plumstead/eltham/thamesmead, dennounced the area as racist, claimed that no black people were safe here and proceeded to undermine all the hard work local anti racists/ political groups/ unions/ community groups/student groups/ religious groups etc. had been involved in but I wouldn't blame everyone who came as many of them did very good work and helped greatly.
I am not seeking to defend the swp but I am not responsible/ culpable/ or complicit in damage that certain members of the swp caused. I am responsible for my actions and my response once I became aware of the negative behaviour being shown.
From the timing of your experiences I think you had joined the Labour party before they wrecked my council pension, before they crushed my wages (no pay rise in 5 years so I still only earn £900 a month as a class room assistant) and before tens of thousands of us were kicked out of our jobs (like my partner) ... however, to accuse you of being complicit in this anti working class attack would be wrong imo... as you said you had reasons to join the Labour party and thought that was the best thing to do but once you became aware that the party was damaging things you believed in you left...the same is true of me in the swp and I guess must be true of others.
I honestly ain't looking for a point scoring row and do not blame any one for hating the swp ... the behaviour displayed towards you and others at your university was outragous...but I think that the left as a whole should not be divided by sectarian "you were in the swp" v "you were in the labour party" etc. type arguments and I think that there is a danger of that in your last post.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
I can see how the whole "no one likes us - we don't care" works in a football supporter context, i can't see how it would work as a response to the kind of criticisms outlined by Delroy for someone who supports a party, presumably on its class politics dimensions?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I actually think that's a reasonable enough collective term. Back in the 70s much of the left consisted of recently ex-IS groups, as the various dissident bits of that organisation were tossed out in preparation for the launch of the SWP. Now the SWP has basically split into five groups in a few years. At this point all five groups still have recognisable SWPish political origins,but they won't for long.
benedict
Well-Known Member
Yes the animus is real and longstanding enough. No doubt the rump will weather the increased hostility. Still don't see how this is the reason the party should survive though.
Interesting that you've changed your perspective so much. Fair play to you for being honest about that. And at least you came round eventually to accepting the case had been horribly mishandled (notwithstanding your recent misjudged remarks). But what prompted your changed stance on the opposition's political positions? Is it more than your understandable dislike of the Seymourites and misty-eyed nostalgia for what the party once was to you? Nothing has really happened in 2013 to suggest the SWP is fundamentally getting its politics right, has it?
benedict
Well-Known Member
Two formative experiences for me as a very naive student regarding the SWP's MO were (1) Being in an anti-war group (about a dozen of us) at uni and stumbling into a secret "caucus" (their word) of the SWSS members of our group immediately before one of our meetings, to determine what agenda they would covertly push. Given the scale of our operations this was rather ludicrous but it did result in a pretty serious bust-up about whether secret caucuses were a decent way of operating. (2) Going to one of the Stop the War "conferences" and seeing what an undemocratic stitch-up the whole thing was (remember, I was young and naive), especially the election of the steering committee. Some Maoist students from Brighton took umbrage at this and tried to mount an insurrection. Chris Harman put down the rebels with gusto, spitting some real venom at the microphone, while Lindsey German gurned with outrage. The whole day was one long lecture from the top table to the stupid proles.
And the paper selling! Why do you need two sellers outside the door of a tiny meeting in a uni classroom? Just to reinforce the point to any ordinary anti-war students who stumbled along that this was definitely something for leftist wacko evangelists? Many of their actions were just totally sabotaging and counterproductive. (At least when Socialist Action tried to recruit me [which I only realized some time later] they had the subtlety not to make this obvious and the good grace to treat me like I was one of the elect.)
Having said all this I have worked alongside some outstanding SWP activists in joint campaigns. One remains a close friend despite being a hardcore loyalist now; a wonderful human being. He's been there since a teenager in the pre-IS days and I can see the personal and psychological investment is too great to break with it now. But he's not been heavily involved in branch or national level stuff. In my experience there's a close correlation between level of party activity and the extent to which an SWP member is badgering, unthinking and insufferable.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Socialist Action tried to recruit you??!!
benedict
Well-Known Member
Believe so, Nigel. Via their student front groups and the Hutchins sisters. I recall being invited to a London "training conference" of about a dozen other students. I was a bit clueless about what the whole thing was to be honest. Somehow they'd managed to fly over a Sinn Fein politician for a session. They also had Paul Mackney there, as well as one of Ken Livingstone's senior advisors. I was perhaps a little too vocal in my disagreements with the line on Cuba, Venezuela and Ireland, as well as showing no interest in NUS bullshit, since they never contacted me again after their previously intense interest. They did continue to court a good friend who'd also been invited though.
There's a whole sociology waiting to be written on these shady and informal networks. They extend well beyond Livingstone's former coterie of advisors.
ETA: Obviously they didn't announce themselves as SA but I learned later that all the key people there were associated with that network.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That's really interesting (also bizarre and a bit creepy). I hadn't realised that they were quite this secretive in their approach - I know that the first rule of Socialist Action is that you don't talk about Socialist Action, but I'd have thought they'd at least have announced their existence to prospective recruits at an earlier point than this.
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
This is the way the party ends: not with a bang but with a whimper.
Soviet Goonboy's must read obituary of the the SWP:
http://sovietgoonboy.wordpress.com/...arty-ends-not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper/
Soviet Goonboy's must read obituary of the the SWP:
http://sovietgoonboy.wordpress.com/...arty-ends-not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper/
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Beat me to it.
benedict
Well-Known Member
Yeah the link into this was, I think, through anti-racist work. They ran/run NAAR and this was before I had properly thought through what anti-fascism should entail (their strategy was to get out the core labour vote) and I went along with it a bit. Anyway I reckon their MO was to suss out potential recruits, gradually bringing them into the inner circles if they proved agreeable and were on board with the program; SA do/did have a lot of front organizations/campaigns that could be used in this way. My friend went further down a road of integration with the via NUS student broad left but was never fully initiated. I was severely out of line ideologically so not too surprising there was no follow through with me. SA seems to function mostly as a network for career building and nepotism in lefty circles. It would be interesting to compare their network to the former RCP crew, if it were possible. Looking back I don't know what I was thinking even finding myself on the periphery of that bullshit
Youthful naïveté I guess. Though getting a glimpse of the wheels within wheels would have been fascinating as a lefty train spotter 
A substantive piece that locates the problems not in the mishandling of an allegation of sexual misconduct, but in the long term structural decline of the SWP. The mishandling of the allegation reflected the CC's concept of Leninism and their misguided attempt to protect the organisation as an institution.
What is left out of the article is much discussion about how the sectarian organisational approach has been reflected in political practice. The practice has been driven by mobilising for the next "big event", where allies are important, so the alliances with sections of the TU bureaucracy. But no reflection after the event so no lessons ever learnt. The Manchester demo in September was supposed to provide the impetus for heightened industrial struggle through the autumn. But it didn't happen. And nowhere have the CC been self critical.
The "big event" model can keep people mobilised for a period - some longer than others - but it also leads to cynicism and demoralisation. Most of the comrades who have left over the last year understand this and are not motivated just be the specific cases.
This is a really really good article. Amongst stuff that really chimes with experience...
something unimportant in the article 40 years ago the IS had 4000 members - is that true? I guess 40 years ago was only 1974. Nonetheless...
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
The figure given is more or less correct. IS went from an organisation of a few hundred in 1968 to something like 4,000 in 1974. But the situation was very fluid with lots of people being recruited but the majority not being retained. What's more not all of those recruited paid subs. If these non-sub paying "members" are included - and in this case they should be as they were often young worker militants who were very active in the industrial struggles of the time and openly declared themselves to be IS members- then we would probably get to something like 4,000.
Jim Higgins (National Secretary at that time) states in More Years for the Locust:
Between March 1972 and March 1974 the membership of IS increased from 2,351 to 3,310. The number of manual workers increased from 613 to 1,155 during the same period. This welcome improvement in the social composition of the Group was not the whole story: during the membership campaigns of 1973 about 750 additional workers were recruited but could not be integrated into IS. During this same period, the Group was trying very hard to develop a factory branch structure. By July 1974, there were a total of 38 workplace branches, organising some 300 members. A measure of the difficulties, and of IS inexperience, in this work can be seen by the fact that from March 73 to July 74 a total of 56 factory branches had been recognised but 18 of them disappeared or were dissolved. (my emphases).
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Karmickameleon: In the above, what does “were recruited but could not be integrated into IS” mean?
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
Good question. You have to realise that this was a period in which a largely student organisation was able to connect with significant numbers of young workers who were engaged in the industrial struggles of that time. They were "recruited" in the sense that they saw themselves as members, they sold the paper in their workplace and defended the politics presented in SW, they brought their mates along to meetings etc However, they didn't always attend branch meetings (remember that the majority of the factory branches had a short life span) and therefore they didn't always pay subs with any degree of regularity (remember that these were generally collected at the meetings in cash).
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that "integrated" means "retained + trained" in this context. Actually, the same would be true of many students who were comfortable being members in a student context, but dropped out when confronted with the world of work and being "integrated" into a geographical branch.
Bakhtinite
New Member
I agree that the article does leave out a discussion of how the internal structure and culture is shaped by the external practice. Becuase of this it falls short of subjecting the SWP to an historical materialist analysis that the article says is needed in the introduction to it.
I do not think that the issue of mobilising for the next big event gets to the heart of it. That too is symptom. The external practice of the SWP has been shaped by the conviction that it is 'THE party'. The SWP culture is to talk about 'the party' as if it was the only one, this is still a hallmark of the contributions of those who are leaving. This leads to a fundamentally sectarian attitude to all its work. I am using sectarian here not primarily as an insult but as a description of the way the SWP has put the interests of its own organisation above the interests of movements it has been part of and so of the working class and the oppressed. What follows from the conviction that it is THE party and its leadership are the most advanced, most far sighted and most knowledgable, is an hostility to any other organised group or tendency and a desire to control anything that it is involved in. It tries to substitute itself for the movements it is part of and so holds back those movements.
Delroy Booth's account in a recent post and many others on this thread as well as elsewhere, give detailed description of what this sectarianism looks like in practice. My own journey out of the SWP began when I found myself running, locally, an SWP front called the 'Coalition against the Criminal Justice Act' - set up to try to grab leadership of what had emerged as a vibrant, fast growing movement that the SWP had initially ignored and had little purchase on. The gap between the SWP rhetoric 'never lie to the class' and the reality of creating a deception to further the interests of 'the party' led me into opposition.
The soviet goon boy piece misses the dialectic of how the internal life of the organisation - manouvering, cronyism, deception, bullying, organisational tricks - is the other side of the external practice of the SWP.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yeah the link into this was, I think, through anti-racist work. They ran/run NAAR and this was before I had properly thought through what anti-fascism should entail (their strategy was to get out the core labour vote) and I went along with it a bit. Anyway I reckon their MO was to suss out potential recruits, gradually bringing them into the inner circles if they proved agreeable and were on board with the program; SA do/did have a lot of front organizations/campaigns that could be used in this way. My friend went further down a road of integration with the via NUS student broad left but was never fully initiated. I was severely out of line ideologically so not too surprising there was no follow through with me. SA seems to function mostly as a network for career building and nepotism in lefty circles. It would be interesting to compare their network to the former RCP crew, if it were possible. Looking back I don't know what I was thinking even finding myself on the periphery of that bullshit
Talking of wheels, when i was in the labour party a trot entryist tried to recruit me into a network he called 'The Wheel'. I never bothered to follow up and uncover whether this was a real thing or just some loons overactive imagination. But i don't think i ever heard it used by anyone else.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
And, as with so many other things, he was wrong.
(Last one liner from me, going to read the goon boy piece now).
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Why not both?
MellySingsDoom
Decimated by the shrapnel of his rhetoric
Have just read the SWP piece in Datacide, and as belboid correctly inferred, the article covers what's already been discussed here.
Three things to note however are: the SWP advising Iranian trade unionists not to go on strike; Gilad Atzmon's ludicrous defence of Martin Smith; and the SWP's interest in the writings of Otto Weininger.
Three things to note however are: the SWP advising Iranian trade unionists not to go on strike; Gilad Atzmon's ludicrous defence of Martin Smith; and the SWP's interest in the writings of Otto Weininger.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
First thought on the goonboy piece (still reading): he makes the good point about there being two reasons for something happening - a good reason, and the real reason (he uses it in relation to splits, but i see no reason why this cannot be extended to other actions). He then goes on to present Cliff's good arguments in 68-69 for the adoption of democratic centralism, but, for some reason, neglects to investigate any possible real reason - and crucially how that real reason would have set the groundwork for the later centralised top down party culture and organisation that he says developed only after 1975.
Oisin123
So Much for Subtlety
As do you.
There are several examples of beliefs held by the SWP, including the one that it was THE party that would lead the revolution, that are involved in his disaster. But if you want to approach the subject as a Marxist, rather than an idealist, you have to look at when, historically, such beliefs became prevalent and harmful and what social groupings developed them.
Personally, I think the starting point has to be Jim Higgin's More Years for the Locust, updated with a yet-to-be-written (and hopefully as humorous) account of developments in the SWP of the 1990s and 2000s. I suspect an examination of the social background of IDOOM members will find a disproportionate number of grammar school boys and girls among them and perhaps a connection to the low levels of the trade union bureaucracy. If so, a decent history (and the drawing of appropriate lessons) would trace the evolution of certain critical party formulations and structures to an interaction with the outlook of such a social layer. Additionally, the question of why IDOOM types weren't simply hoofed out of leading positions connects to the wider picture of a low level of rank-and-file militancy over more than a decade.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You don't expect Jo'H to write it though?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That strikes me as awarding too much foresight to the Cliff of 68, not to mention too long term an outlook. I'm sceptical not because I think the implied Cliff here is assumed to be too cynical or Machiavellian, but because I don't think he had the attention span. So while yes each tightening up of the organisation made the next tightening easier, I don't think the end product was ever the product of a long term plan. Rather we are talking about a series of short term moves, based on short term thinking, often as reactions to short term problems.
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