SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
Scribbling S
Active Member
I guess we are probably going in circles a bit here, and the age thing is only a minor point - but I think it does point to a wider reason the party (deliberately or accidentally) went so badly wrong. The Disputes Committee set themselves up as a pretend police force to "investigate" a charge of "rape" against a "member". Immediately this meant they started thinking things must be proved "beyond reasonable doubt" and "innocent until proven guilty" and "how can we judge" and "what is the truth about consent " and "one persons word against another" in all this - things which they had little power to come to any decision about - which allowed them to find it easier to put "Delta" in the clear (and ultimately put the Party in the shit) .Instead they should have acted in the area they could - they were not a police force or a court, but they were in a position to judge on the more limited matter of whether a leading member had acted responsibly , in a way that is fit for their office, that is not bringing the party into disrepute. You can see something very similar in the Lord Rennard business, and indeed the Mike Hancock issue. (The Rennard business incidentally not very much reported in Socialist Worker)
newbie
undisambiguated
I don't much disagree with that, but what you wrote above was The big clue in there is "age differences", when in fact age difference is a red herring. The DC cannot censure him for entering into an age-difference relationship without also censuring her, and she's done nothing to be censured for. Most older adults might think her choice unwise, but then we think that about a lot of what teenagers get up to.
They can't even censure him for failing to act responsibly by entering into a relationship with vastly different positions of authority, because even that questions her agency.
As with the 'bourgeois' courts, infidelity and age difference have no bearing on guilt or innocence on charges of what you called pestering or assaulting. They do affect sentencing, but since the DC was entirely rotten to the core it never came to that.
They can't even censure him for failing to act responsibly by entering into a relationship with vastly different positions of authority, because even that questions her agency.
As with the 'bourgeois' courts, infidelity and age difference have no bearing on guilt or innocence on charges of what you called pestering or assaulting. They do affect sentencing, but since the DC was entirely rotten to the core it never came to that.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
but authority absolutely does, and raising that in absolutely no way questions her agency
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Do you really think that's how juries actually work?
The SWP position on bourgeois sexual morality is that it's seen as a consequence of patriarchal capitalist property relations. A sexual partner is not a possession. So the SWP wouldn't see it as their remit to consider whether or not someone has been unfaithful when the person concerned may not have been having an affair according to their own non-possessive sexual morality.
However, apparently, this is where their analysis stops. It assumes, within a wider context of gender inequality, equality between comrades. It doesn't take into account power not so obviously related to ownership. It's not interested in any feminist perspectives on relationships. It doesn't take into account our greater knowledge over the past few decades of dv and nor do they consider the maltreatment and abuse of children and young people. It takes no account of the unconscious dynamics in relationships because Marxism, apparently, has no need for a psychology. etc.
So all of this should be in their remit because their own political position is that individual sexual mores are determined by property relations and last time I looked the SWP still lived within a capitalist system. The fact that they don't consider it so shows how it's not just accidental that this took place within the organisation but is inseparable from their stunted and deterministic position on women.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's an excellent summary - much needed as well.
Scribbling S
Active Member
Of course they can. He's in a full time, paid, leading position of the SWP. She isn't. So he has an extra responsibility to behave in a way that can not risk bringing the party into disrepute. It's not complicated: The middle aged leaders of the party should probably think hard before having relationships with teenage members, and if such relationships do arise, they need to take particular care to behave properly (which would put the focus on his social behaviour , around drink for example, rather than hers ) This was in fact the position one member of the disputes committee took. If all the disputes committee had taken the same position, the problem could possibly have been dealt with. But most of the apparatus seems to have thought that him being a leading member meant he should be more "protected" rather than more "scrutinised" (which in turn suggests a deeper problem)
newbie
undisambiguated
I agree. He had leadership responsibilities, he should have thought very hard indeed before entering into a relationship with her, he should have taken particular care. Absolutely.
But the fact of entering into the relationship with her may show him to be rancid but its not something that can be formally questioned without telling her she was wrong to form the relationship. And that's not something some committee can say to her, it was her right to do so, whatever wiser heads might think.
From the point at which she complained, and withdrew her consent, his behaviour and his judgement are up for question. Until then the relationship was their business and no-one elses. Passing age milestones either means something or it doesn't.
Oh, and they, the DC, should have scrutinised his behaviour properly. Absolutely.
butch, I've never been on a jury, somewhat to my regret.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
again, you are completely ignoring the question of to what extent she had genuine 'agency' and the extent to which she was pressured into a 'relationship.' These are clearly relevant. On those grounds it is entirely fair enough to ask her about how it began, and whether she was a 'free participant.' If she answered yes, then further questions might be null and void, but she would have to confirm it was an entirely consensual relationship from the off.
newbie
undisambiguated
You know far more about their theoretical twisting and turning than I. But do any formal investigatory processes see being unfaithful as part of their remit, in 2014? Some explicitly moralistic religious groups might I spose, but otherwise?
If your analysis- stunted and deterministic- is right (and I'm not disagreeing) why have so many women joined, stayed, even taken leading roles through the years and particularly been heavily involved on theDC then idoom/loyalist side of this saga?
newbie
undisambiguated
but those questions apply to an investigation of any relationship about which a complaint has been made. they have nothing to do with age.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
but they do when age and power are so clearly connected. 17, remember.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Sorry but that is a total caricature of the SWP position. It may be a critique of some Marxist accounts of the family and oppression but it's got little to do with the cliff-Harman-German analysis. Just to take one sentence that is plain perverse. You say of their analysis that "It doesn't take into account power not so obviously related to ownership" That is an extraordinary claim when the SWP above all else, with the theory of state cap as the shining example, has done more than other Marxist groups to emphasise how shallow any analysis based on property relations alone is. Almost the first thing theoretically that used to be drummed into new members was how exploitation and oppression are about actual relations of control and power between real people, not legalistic relations of ownership. Anyone who reads Germans Sex, Class and Socialism and her chapter on theories of the family knows how far she is from explaining the continued existence of the working class family by reference to property relations. You're well off the mark here, so much so I'm almost surprised butchers gave you top marks.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
no, i am pointing out that nothing magical happens when you hit 16, and that age is still clearly an aspect of power.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You're making a legalistic argument here. Do you think this is a legalistic issue?
newbie
undisambiguated
yes it does, and yes, as a formal investigatory process, this is legalistic.
the magical thing that happens is that in both the eyes of the law and crucially in the eyes of the young person concerned, they gain the right to consent to sexual relationships. Once she is able to consent no-one can take that away from her ( well, maybe a judge in some mental health type case but that's not pertinent here).
She can have sex with any other adult, if they both consent. And that's it really, no-one else has any formal say- her parents, friends and so on have informal views but there is no way they can actually do anything about it and if they try it's them that's in the wrong, her right is legally enforceable.
So to bring age difference up in a formal, legalistic, setting is simply wrong. Until, that is, he has been judged and found guilty, at which point it becomes relevent to sentencing.
as for age being an aspect of power, do you really think that some teenage heartthrob couldn't exercise power over a fan twice their age?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
well that's contradictory - if its wrong its wrong, including during sentencing.
But I think we both know that if a case like this gets to court, the age difference would be brought up by the prosecution. Repeatedly.
of course they could. but the age would be a part of that power play, would it not?
newbie
undisambiguated
sentencing allows all sorts of extraneous factors to be used as mitigation and er, whatever the opposite of mitigation is. Factors which have no bearing on the guilty or not decision.
do we? Some sort of presumption of guilt, "he's so much older than her, she didn't know what she was doing". patronising, much? A jury able to see both parties might well draw their own conclusions, and who's to stop them, but I doubt a judge would allow that to be explicitly argued. maybe.
do we? Some sort of presumption of guilt, "he's so much older than her, she didn't know what she was doing". patronising, much? A jury able to see both parties might well draw their own conclusions, and who's to stop them, but I doubt a judge would allow that to be explicitly argued. maybe.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
So a non-legal judgment is in order or out of order here? Which is it? can you let us know please?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
but age differential isn't one of those factors, which are clearly set out in law.
a shit brief may put it so crudely, but a better one wouldn't. Just, tactfully, repeating the fact that she was 17 when they first met, for example.
newbie
undisambiguated
fair enough. I think we're all agreed their procedure was flawed. My contention is that they were correct to exclude from their remit the age difference, and I've set out why. I would also say they should have excluded her previous sexual history, but didn't. These procedural factors are prescribed in detail for courts of law, but this process was a long, long, LONG way from that.
No, the word remit was poorly chosen. It was just an example of what they mean by bourgeois morality and what kind of relationships are politically acceptable.
Because I think generally it was a good organisation for women. When I joined women were really pushed to leadership positions, many women were good, confident speakers, it was inspiring. I was never very attracted to feminism and though of myself as a socialist, so their analysis was convincing to me although I always felt that there was something missing.....
I may post more later but the kids are now in bed and I'm going out before I go mad.
I can almost feel the finger jabbing.
oskarsdrum
Active Member
Well this is a disappointment, I was hoping for a load of gossip and semi-founded rumour about Kimber and maybe an ISN update but it's just someone spouting the same old patriarchal myths that have been covered 20x before upthread.
All the same bolshie, Poulantzas wears a little better with time than some of his less agonized contemporaries. Compare the multi-dimensional examination of the capitalist state's reproduction or the analysis on class and subjectivity....to Cliff hailing the upcoming "pre-revolutionary period" and getting set for tens//hundreds of thousand members. Or having to ditch the permanent arms thesis and flip-flopping into 'downturn'. (which was one of the better post-IS moments I suppose, but on the whole Stuart Hall and crew read the same thing more acutely). Granted I struggle to imagine NP inspiring anything remotely comparable to the ANL but hey!
All the same bolshie, Poulantzas wears a little better with time than some of his less agonized contemporaries. Compare the multi-dimensional examination of the capitalist state's reproduction or the analysis on class and subjectivity....to Cliff hailing the upcoming "pre-revolutionary period" and getting set for tens//hundreds of thousand members. Or having to ditch the permanent arms thesis and flip-flopping into 'downturn'. (which was one of the better post-IS moments I suppose, but on the whole Stuart Hall and crew read the same thing more acutely). Granted I struggle to imagine NP inspiring anything remotely comparable to the ANL but hey!
newbie
undisambiguated
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