someone just reminded me even Thatcher had the decency to stand down.
SWP split?
- Thread starter Fedayn
- Start date
someone just reminded me even Thatcher had the decency to stand down.
Rod Sleeves
New Member
When is the AGM?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
He once seriously suggested that branch meetings would be better if we sat in a circle
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
holding hands?
The Black Hand
Unclean
ANybody outside of the old left parties is a 'loose cannon'. Bullshit. Harker may have independent views but he correctly saw that meeting as loaded by the SP and SWP and articulated it. He is sticking to the constitution of the NE SSN and tries to stop the SWP (who are on a North East wrecking mission) and the SP from taking it over. Cos that WOULD destroy it.
The IWW of course took the correct option, that of ignoring the lot of you.
(and that by the way is my personal opinion and not branch policy)Udo Erasmus
Well-Known Member
Dave Harker has controversial views on English folk music articulated in his controversial book FAKE SONG
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
ANybody outside of the old left parties is a 'loose cannon'. Bullshit. Harker may have independent views but he correctly saw that meeting as loaded by the SP and SWP and articulated it. He is sticking to the constitution of the NE SSN and tries to stop the SWP (who are on a North East wrecking mission) and the SP from taking it over. Cos that WOULD destroy it.
The IWW of course took the correct option, that of ignoring the lot of you.
Eccentrics of the world unite.
[
The IWW of course took the correct option, that of ignoring the lot of you. (and that by the way is my personal opinion and not branch policy)[/QUOTE]
What by asking to publicise events on NESSN mailing list and web site. The unilateral refusal by DH being one of the issues leading to the current situation.
The IWW of course took the correct option, that of ignoring the lot of you.
(and that by the way is my personal opinion and not branch policy)[/QUOTE]What by asking to publicise events on NESSN mailing list and web site. The unilateral refusal by DH being one of the issues leading to the current situation.
Silver_Fox
New Member
Sounds like the SWP wanted to get rid of him because he wasn't being a good enough robo trot and the SP didn't like the fact that someone was getting in the way of them sowing up the NSSN so they had some kind of lash up.
A shame about the NSSN because it could have been something good. But as usual the sectarianism of the far left gets in the way and results in it being little more than a front. The last NSSN conference might as well have been a Socialist Party conference.
As for Youth Fight for Jobs, is anyone seriously suggesting this is anything more than the Socialist Party? Others might have signed up on paper but I doubt this amounts to much more than this.
A shame about the NSSN because it could have been something good. But as usual the sectarianism of the far left gets in the way and results in it being little more than a front. The last NSSN conference might as well have been a Socialist Party conference.
As for Youth Fight for Jobs, is anyone seriously suggesting this is anything more than the Socialist Party? Others might have signed up on paper but I doubt this amounts to much more than this.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That depends what you mean.
The Socialist Party established the campaign and provides much of its current infrastructure. That's not a secret and there's nothing wrong with it. I very much doubt however if the 1,200 or so young people at their march/rally this weekend were all Socialist Party members however. Other people and groups are more than welcome to get involved and there are democratic structures in place.
Silver_Fox said:
Sounds like the usual bullshit from you.
The Secretary of the NESSN was exercising his powers in an entirely arbitrary way. So he would advertise "Morning Star" events, but not IWW ones. He'd advertise the events of his own little "Left Unity" political group but not Youth Fight For Jobs. He challenged the right of a victimised trade unionist to voting rights in the network while himself coopting non-stewards to the committee. So the majority of members voted to remove him - all but 6 of the people there in fact. There's nothing more to it than that.
Silver_Fox
New Member
You certainly live up to your name.
I have no doubt that people not in the Socialist Party will turn up to a march they have organised. But will it be like every other far left campaign that is run and controlled by their group with little or no chance of others having a serious input, especially if they are another organised group.
If this is a serious campaign then over the next few months the list of supporting groups will undoubtedly grow. We'll see.
When you say all but 6, were the majority of the rest in the SWP and SP?
The NSSN as a whole has failed to get off the ground and is now little more than a front. A real shame, but not entirely unexpected.
I have no doubt that people not in the Socialist Party will turn up to a march they have organised. But will it be like every other far left campaign that is run and controlled by their group with little or no chance of others having a serious input, especially if they are another organised group.
If this is a serious campaign then over the next few months the list of supporting groups will undoubtedly grow. We'll see.
When you say all but 6, were the majority of the rest in the SWP and SP?
The NSSN as a whole has failed to get off the ground and is now little more than a front. A real shame, but not entirely unexpected.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Well that's just the point: Involving a whole bunch of micro-sects is not a sign of "broadness".
The fact is that even if all of the young people involved in every far left group in Britain, other than the SP or SWP, all simultaneously got involved in a campaign set up by one of those groups, and all worked together as if they were one single organisation rather than occasionally bitter rivals they would still be relatively marginal within the campaign. They don't matter because there just aren't very many of them.
Do the maths. There are for all intents and purposes no young people in groups like PR or SR or the rump WRP. WP is mostly young people, but the whole organisation amounts to about three dozen people in the first place. The AWL won't add many more. The CPB is more substantial than these groups, but is something close to a pensioners society. As is the LRC. The fact is that if we are talking about "another organised group" we are talking about microscopic numbers of young people.
The only way to make them significant to a campaign would be to set up the structures in a way that gives micro-sects priority over other members. And, believe it or not this is very often done to some extent - just look at how many campaigns someone like Jeremy Dewar has been made "vice-chair" or whatever of, despite Workers Power bringing absolutely nothing of substance with them.
With any kind of even slightly democratic structure, the SP or SWP will dominate a nascent campaign numerically unless one of two things happens: (1) The other one of the two decides to get seriously involved or (2) a whole bunch of people from outside the currently organised far left get involved. That doesn't mean that fronts are never set up deliberately, or that there are never problems of control freakery. Far from it. But there is an air of complete unreality about judging "broadness" based on the prominence of tiny far left sectlets.
Given that the SWP clearly aren't interested in getting involved (they set up the Right to Work Campaign a few months after Youth Fight For Jobs started up), the only significant way in which a Socialist Party initiated campaign will achieve "broadness" is if large numbers of young people from outside the organised left get involved. Their ability to put together a protest of 1,200 or more at the weekend is a small, positive, indication on that front but there is self-evidently a long way to go.
Silver Fox said:
I don't know. I would guess so.
Silver Fox said:
This isn't true at all and against stems from your complete lack of connection to reality. In reality, the Shop Stewards Network is slowly developing. The fact that there aren't vast hordes of unaffiliated stewards involved reflects the reality of the labour movement right now - the NSSN is attractive to a militant minority of stewards, and at the moment a disproportionate percentage of that militant minority is in or around a left group. It will be a long, slow, process to rebuild organisation and militancy on a much wider scale..
rioted
redundant
Silver_Fox
New Member
You have mentioned micro sects several times and seem to know a rather worrying amount about them all, I'm really not interested in the ins and outs of the far left for many of the reasons that you yourself give. I'm talking about getting serious organisations on board and indeed any organisation that wants to seriously build such a movement/organisation. You seem to reveal something about yourself that you always turn to going on about far left groups.
Of course you are right about independents, but it's my experience that as an independent you get even more sidelined and because you haven't got a block vote.
And although you list various numbers of various groups I doubt if Youth Fight for Jobs had an AGM (or whatever they have) there would be more than a couple of hundred people in the room.
I've heard all the things you've said before by far left groups, but the fact remains that if you look at the fronts they have all built they have all remained fronts, and are controlled in one way or another, despite claiming to be doing the opposite. There may be a long way to go, but I suspect Youth Fight for Jobs will go down the road of every other front the far left set up.
Exactly.
Well I've been involved with the NSSN both at a national and local level and every other independent steward I have spoken now has a similar view to what I'm saying. The last national conference was terrible.
Again I would agree about it being a long slow process, but the far left continues to have no clue about how to go about it, if they did the national NSSN event wouldn't have been like it was, with it being like an SP rally and pathetic spats between the Socialist Party and the SWP. There are lots of independent stewards who would build things at a local level if they thought it was a serious initiative and not yet another front.
Of course you are right about independents, but it's my experience that as an independent you get even more sidelined and because you haven't got a block vote.
And although you list various numbers of various groups I doubt if Youth Fight for Jobs had an AGM (or whatever they have) there would be more than a couple of hundred people in the room.
I've heard all the things you've said before by far left groups, but the fact remains that if you look at the fronts they have all built they have all remained fronts, and are controlled in one way or another, despite claiming to be doing the opposite. There may be a long way to go, but I suspect Youth Fight for Jobs will go down the road of every other front the far left set up.
Exactly.
Well I've been involved with the NSSN both at a national and local level and every other independent steward I have spoken now has a similar view to what I'm saying. The last national conference was terrible.
Again I would agree about it being a long slow process, but the far left continues to have no clue about how to go about it, if they did the national NSSN event wouldn't have been like it was, with it being like an SP rally and pathetic spats between the Socialist Party and the SWP. There are lots of independent stewards who would build things at a local level if they thought it was a serious initiative and not yet another front.
Silver_Fox
New Member
What are these out of interest?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
WHAT serious organisations?
This is why I keep coming back to your lack of connection to reality? Where are these "serious organisations" that could be involved?
Silver_Fox said:
You are of course correct that independents punch below the weight of a similar number of organised people. That's inherent to being an "independent". However, it's my experience that most campaigns set up by left groups go out of their way to encourage independents to join, to put them on committees and the like. If anything they tend to overdo this.
The problem is that unless there are very large numbers of independents they tend to be relatively ineffectual. That's a problem that can't just be wished away however, it stems from the real balance of forces on the far left.
Silver Fox said:
Sometimes campaigns are designed to be fronts. Sometimes they are not. The latter type will often end up indistinguishable from the former if they fail to take off. If the movement takes off though, that will sometimes change.
Silver Fox said:
So?
Silver Fox said:
In which case, why haven't they already built something themselves at a local level?
The fact is that the vast majority of people don't even know that most campaigns exist. Of the minority who do, the vast majority are not familiar enough with the left to know who is who, what groups dominates what, or anything similar. Certainly not from the outside.
There is no evidence at all that loads of people have got involved in, say, the NSSN and then got pissed off and left because they were fed up with the number of Socialist Party members involved. That simply isn't a problem that the NSSN faces in attracting unaffiliated stewards, as opposed to people who are already in or around the far left ghetto (like yourself). The problem it does face is that only a small minority of stewards are prepared to get involved in anything in the first place.
Take the Stop the War Coalition. The SWP, as we both know, exercised a vigorous control over its apparatus and were actively exclusionary towards (as opposed to mere uninterested in) the rest of the socialist left. But this did not stop very large numbers of people from getting involved, because that particular movement and issue was, for a time at least, very attractive to a much broader layer of society. Now in the case of the StWC you can make the case (although I'd only partially agree with it) that the behaviour of the SWP drove some proportion of those people out. But here's the thing: You can only make that case by starting from the position that loads of people were initially attracted to the StWC.
The NSSN is, at the moment, attractive to a very much smaller group of people. No evidence has ever been put forward, outside of certain people's fantasy lives, that there is some huge number of stewards out there looking to build something along the lines of the old National Minority Movement let alone that such people have taken a look at the NSSN and decided that they don't want to be involved because there are too many SP stewards in it. Building a shop stewards movement will be a long, slow, process.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
So far there's been a national conference and a steering committee and officers were elected. As I understand it, they are currently discussing whether to set up local branches or go for wider regional meetings and committees.
Silver_Fox
New Member
Well firstly there would be involving the trade unions in a serious way. Secondly there are plenty of serious community organisations all around the country which involve young people and might well want to get involved around initiative about jobs for young people.
You are right that far left groups go out of their way to get independents to join their fronts. But they then only encourage them after that if they are no threat to them running the show. The fact is that there are loads of independent left stewards out there, far more than in far left groups. But the fact that you see them as being relatively ineffectual once joining the fronts probably says more about those fronts than the people concerned.
Again I've heard this many times before as a justification for the way far left groups operates. There is always a justification to be found. The reason that many things fail to take off is because of how they are run in the first place.
There are many local initiatives in trade union branches and local communities, I'm surprised you don't think there are. Linking them up in a national network would be a very good idea, but unfortunatley the NSSN has gone the way of so many other far left fronts and the independents I know who tried to get involved are now totally put off. It would be hard for you to measure this, but all I can go on is the independent stewards I know and other comments on this forum and others. The only people who seem to come out to say otherwise are members of the Socialist Party, for obvious reasons.
You can keep saying that I'm in or around the far left ghetto, but I'm not, as I've told you, and have no interest in being so. The reason why a lot of independents don't get involved is because of their experience, and sadly the NSSN has just, yet again, backed this up.
The STWC seemed like another far left lash up. Agreed millions went on the marches, but actually the STWC was run so badly, and in such a top down way that many local groups just fell apart, in many cases I suspect because of the behaviour of far left groups.
You've already said that and I said I agree. The trouble is that the NSSN at such an early stage and involving small numbers of independent stewards is already managing to put them off.
So how many people are on this steering committee and how many are in the Sociaist Party? So outside of this national conference there currently seems no way people can get involved other than turn up on a march.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Do you seriously think that it is in the power of the Socialist Party to "involve the trade unions in a serious way" in a campaign? Really?
The fact is that official union responses to radical campaigns generally fall into two broad categories: Hostility or passive support. All that people setting up a campaign is try to pass resolutions in their unions committing the unions to support it, and try to raise the idea within the union structures more generally. It is then up to the unions how and to what degree they will be involved and believe it or not, most union bureaucracies, even leftish ones with a sympathy for a campaign, are not in the business of encouraging or organising participation in that sort of campaign.
Where the Socialist Party does have the ability to convince a union to do more than passively support Youth Fight For Jobs, it has done so. So the PCS Youth wing actually have a relatively active role in the campaign - but that's because SP members play a leading role in the PCS Youth!
Silver_Fox said:
Are you talking about grant funded youth and community groups here? Because in my experience, such organisations, because they are dependent on state or NGO funding, tend to be very reluctant indeed to get involved in politically radical or oppositional campaigns unless their own interests are centrally involved - like for instance if their own projects or funding is threatened.
Silver_Fox said:
Really? I'm sure that there are loads of stewards out there with left inclined politics, but how many do you really think are looking to set up an activist, shop stewards movement? I'd suggest that the answer is not all that many right now and the evidence for that proposition is the fact that
SIlver_Fox said:
Quite possibly, which doesn't change the fact that there often is a very real justification.
Silver_Fox said:
Name ten. Seriously.
Silver_Fox said:
The people commenting on this sort of issue in this forum are, almost without exception, current or former members of left organisations. Let me suggest to you that this demographic plus a couple of your mates is not exactly a representative sample.
Silver_Fox said:
What experience? How many shop stewards do you think have been actively involved in some left campaign or otherwise, have then been repulsed by the experience and have then learnt to see the signs that some new body is a "left front" without actually being involved in the first place? Some undoubtedly have, but we are talking about a small minority.
Silver_Fox said:
To me and you, yes. To the 99% of people who have never been involved in a prior "far left lash up", not at all! People are not born with a special antenna which allows them to divine what the SWP is and what an SWP front looks like until they've actually encountered one for a time.
Silver_Fox said:
The point is that thousands and thousands of people got involved in local StWC groups. They didn't just go to marches, as an even larger number of people did, they turned up to local meetings. Now you can make a case that the fact that most of them gradually drifted away was down to how things were run - and you'd be right although only to a limited and secondary extent - but the fact is that they turned up and got involved in the first place!
The NSSN is not a body that attracted tens of thousands of activists because of its central idea and then drove them away. It is a body that is, right now, capable of attracting a very much smaller audience than that. No matter how the NSSN is run that would be the case. The issue of how the NSSN is run only becomes a factor after people have chosen to get involved in the first place. And there is no evidence at all that the people who have been attracted in the first place, from outside the far left ghetto, have been driven away. Far from it in fact.
SIlver Fox said:
I don't know. If the steering committee reflects activist numbers, it would presumably have a solid SP majority. If it doesn't have such a majority that would be because the SP chose not to have one.
Silver Fox said:
There have been national activist meetings. At the moment, people can join the organisation, can attend national activist meetings and the conference and can be elected, if they have support, to the steering committee. They are, as I undersand it, currently deciding whether to go for local or regional structures beneath the national ones, and that would presumably depend on the number of people looking to get involved.
Do you think that campaigns land, fully formed, from the sky or something?
Silver_Fox
New Member
I know that the union bureaucracy are no friends of radical campaigns. But I think more could be done to involve local branches. This is the only way that ordinary stewards and members will get involved at present.
As for community groups I was more talking about anti-privatisation groups, groups defending social housing, tenants groups (which granted don't have that many young people on board, but do have some from time to time) and other campaigns fighting against attacks on services.
There is some truth in what you're saying about the state of things at the moment, but I think it becomes a self-justifying argument of why the far left is the only place anything goes on and why that's why there has to be fronts everywhere. There is also the point that the way new campaigns are run by the far left also puts people off.
But again this is a self-justifying argument. The reason the NSSN isn't doing well is because of the way things are. Nothing is looked at from the point of view of the NSSN itself putting people off.
Well my branch has actively mobilised stewards to oppose housing sell offs, support an anti-academies campaign, support the local CWU support groups and that's just my branch. So I'm sure in the thousands of TU branches around the country there might be more than 10!
That's not true. Some of the people commenting on U75 are independents. Also the independent stewards in my branch did genuinely want to get involved and were even quite enthused. They're not anymore, and I take no pleasure in saying that, it's actually quite sad. Ironically the only people who still turn up to NSSN stuff are the stewards who are in far left groups (who are nearly all good activists by the way, but obviously have a certain agenda to keep going). I can't believe that the experiences I've had are unique or totally unrepresentative.
But as you say, the amount of independent stewards who got involved was a small minority, even more reason to make sure they aren't put off. I've also seen this happen in many other campaigns (Defend Council Housing, STWC etc)
But that's the point, they did encounter it in STWC and it put them off, whether or not they'd gone through that experience before. Obviously people got put off by the fact that the movement was defeated and the war went ahead, but I don't think you should underestimate the reasons of the way things were run and the fact that everyone was encouraged to just passively carry out decisions from above which were themselves very uninspiring, mostly revolved around lets just do another march, and another, and another.
Well that's not my experience. Maybe others have different experiences, but from what I've heard others say I certainly don't think it's unique.
But I guess we've both said our piece on the matter.
As for community groups I was more talking about anti-privatisation groups, groups defending social housing, tenants groups (which granted don't have that many young people on board, but do have some from time to time) and other campaigns fighting against attacks on services.
There is some truth in what you're saying about the state of things at the moment, but I think it becomes a self-justifying argument of why the far left is the only place anything goes on and why that's why there has to be fronts everywhere. There is also the point that the way new campaigns are run by the far left also puts people off.
But again this is a self-justifying argument. The reason the NSSN isn't doing well is because of the way things are. Nothing is looked at from the point of view of the NSSN itself putting people off.
Well my branch has actively mobilised stewards to oppose housing sell offs, support an anti-academies campaign, support the local CWU support groups and that's just my branch. So I'm sure in the thousands of TU branches around the country there might be more than 10!
That's not true. Some of the people commenting on U75 are independents. Also the independent stewards in my branch did genuinely want to get involved and were even quite enthused. They're not anymore, and I take no pleasure in saying that, it's actually quite sad. Ironically the only people who still turn up to NSSN stuff are the stewards who are in far left groups (who are nearly all good activists by the way, but obviously have a certain agenda to keep going). I can't believe that the experiences I've had are unique or totally unrepresentative.
But as you say, the amount of independent stewards who got involved was a small minority, even more reason to make sure they aren't put off. I've also seen this happen in many other campaigns (Defend Council Housing, STWC etc)
But that's the point, they did encounter it in STWC and it put them off, whether or not they'd gone through that experience before. Obviously people got put off by the fact that the movement was defeated and the war went ahead, but I don't think you should underestimate the reasons of the way things were run and the fact that everyone was encouraged to just passively carry out decisions from above which were themselves very uninspiring, mostly revolved around lets just do another march, and another, and another.
Well that's not my experience. Maybe others have different experiences, but from what I've heard others say I certainly don't think it's unique.
But I guess we've both said our piece on the matter.
Silver_Fox
New Member
By the way I don't think the far left does any of this in a deliberate way, I'm sure they all think they are doing things for the best. I just think it's decades of operating in a certain way. In a way I feel bad laying into the far left because I know most of them are dedicated and genuine people, I guess I just get frustrated with seeing the same thing over and over again.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I think that you are misunderstanding the situation in which the left operates, quite fundamentally.
This encapsulates why:
SIlver_Fox said:
It is absolutely impossible to build a significant campaign on a youth issue using these sort of groups as building blocks. Even where they aren't themselves the creation of left groupings, or aren't myopically focused on their own single issue, they are relatively small and scattered and the demographics are all wrong. And yet this is the most viable alternative you've come up with.
The left - or anyone who actually wants to do something - has to start from where we actually are. If a left group wants to start a campaign, its only real option is to go ahead and do it. There are, in most circumstances and on many issues, no stronger organised forces we can involve at much more than the level of passive support.
Rod Sleeves
New Member
Just to be clear this was a motion proposed and seconded by two non voting members, and the ammended version was carried by a majority of the 25 members present (out of 111 voting members in the region) at a regular meeting, not a properly constituted EGM.
This was an entirely non democratic stitch up.
The regional secretary may well have been acting in a bureaucratic measure, but this was not the way to get rid of him. - He is constitutionally correct to ignore the motion and carry on.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
You think it's more "democratic" that an official who can only scrape up 6 votes supporting him, including his own, should carry on in place despite the clearly expressed will of the majority? Not a big believer in that "instant recall" idea anarchists are usually so fond of, are you?
Rod Sleeves
New Member
I would support a recall if the vote was announced in advance and an extraordinary general meeting convened with plenty of notice so that as many voting members as possible could attend if they wanted and participate in the related discussions and decision making.
I do not support ad-hoccery and especially not ad-hoccery that allows non voting members who are not even stewards or branch officers to ambush a regular meeting and un-constitutionally vote to remove someone, who was elected at a properly convened general meeting.
There may well be problems with the democratically elected secretary - but this is not the way to deal with it.
25 people of whom several were non voting members do not have the right to dictate to the 111 voting members.
The Black Hand
Unclean
[
The IWW of course took the correct option, that of ignoring the lot of you.
What by asking to publicise events on NESSN mailing list and web site. The unilateral refusal by DH being one of the issues leading to the current situation.[/QUOTE]
That wasn't my point, my point was that the Tyne and Wear IWW de facto ignored your meeting by not turning up.
The Black Hand
Unclean
u dun it again.Tho i shudn't get too surprised by old lefty in old lefty shock...
The Black Hand
Unclean
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
The other 76 members have every right to turn up at the next meeting and try to reinstall the bureaucrat if they wish. They won't however.
Maybe the Black Hand will show up to offer his (non-voting) support however.
Rod Sleeves
New Member
So you support the sort of woolly minded sub-anarchoid nonsense that allows any random group of people to turn up at an organisations meeting and vote in a new set of officers?
You may well be right that the other voting members (which is more than 76 as not all members present were voting members) will not turn up not that they need to (as he is still secretary) to reinstate him, but that does not make this sort of alienating political manipulation and total ignoring of democracy correct.
Will we now see the NESSN be dragged into the same level of irrelevance and sterility as the network is nationally?
Would the SP not have criticised the undemocratic nature of this action if it had been CPBer and SWPers ganging up on a secretary of their choice?
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