The Socialist Party

[cockneyrebel]

Saw this about Cardiff SP. Maybe the Socialist Party are growing. They certainly seem to be more of a force in challenging the SWP. I wouldn't be surprised, if things carry on as they are, that they could take over the SWP as the biggest revolutionary left group in the not to distant future.

They're claiming 300+ paper sales in Cardiff alone, which I might take with a pinch of salt were in not for the fact that their window posters are in the majority in my area, displayed in working-class homes which have had nothing up since Vote Labour in 1997.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Where's that quote from cr?

 

[cockneyrebel]

From an email someone sent me!

 

[dennisr]

I don't understand. You argue you can't possibly join an organisation you disagree with because it is led by the SWP, and that doesn't represent anything (ie Respect). I then point out that that's exactly what your comrades in Scotland have done (ie joined Solidarity). You then say that you "have to go along with the views of my scottish group" even if they are not particularly happy with it ... it's a contradiction you have to live with not me.

But I never said anything of the kind FG - I talked about the structure of Respect - internal democracy, the opportunity for dialogue between different socialist viewpoints. I did not say "because it is lead by the SWP".

Now I simply did not see where you said 2000 - and apologised for the fact that I implied you had not answer the question. Will you do the same for re-writing ('re-interpreting'?) completely what i actually said (which was a sight more serious in its consequences FG...)?

I don't rule out any alliances - I simply do not see the practice of any genuine alliance in respect at the moment (this is why i would also query your presence in this organisation). Do you??

 

[dennisr]

Saw this about Cardiff SP. Maybe the Socialist Party are growing. They certainly seem to be more of a force in challenging the SWP. I wouldn't be surprised, if things carry on as they are, that they could take over the SWP as the biggest revolutionary left group in the not to distant future.

I'd like to think so but would not like to sound too hopeful - whether that can be translated into electoral results in Cardiff depends on the size of the electoral area. We may well have a high level of support concentrated in a smaller area within this. The same is true in Southwark where an 11% vote was actually much, much higher in the small area where the candidate is based (an estate where she plays a leading role in the TA) - and lower in other bits of the ward. This reflects our small physical presence nationally - but also what is possible in the future on a much wider basis I would hope.

I honestly don't know the layout of the Welsh Assembly boundaries - how it works. Now thats the sort of thing I would trust FG to be able to come back on well - he likes this sort of detail...

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I'd like to think so but would not like to sound too hopeful - whether that can be translated into electoral results in Cardiff depends on the size of the electoral area. We may well have a high level of support concentrated in a smaller area within this. The same is true in Southwark where an 11% vote was actually much, much higher in the small area where the candidate is based (an estate where she plays a leading role in the TA) - and lower in other bits of the ward. This reflects our small physical presence nationally - but also what is possible in the future on a much wider basis I would hope.

I honestly don't know the layout of the Welsh Assembly boundaries - how it works. Now thats the sort of thing I would trust FG to be able to come back on well - he likes this sort of detail...

The SP and Respect are contesting the Regional List seats which are huge - eight parliamentary constituencies for the one including Cardiff, South Wales Central, electorate nearly half a million.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/welshasssembly_english/html/region_24.stm

 

[Fisher_Gate]

....

I don't rule out any alliances - I simply do not see the practice of any genuine alliance in respect at the moment (this is why i would also query your presence in this organisation). Do you??

Of course it is a genuine alliance, not a very democratic one I grant you, but neither are most organisations. I was once in the LPYS controlled by Militant and NOLS when it was controlled by Clause IV and I certainly don't think they were any better. One has to fight to make organisations democratic, not walk out when a decision goes against you.

I support the SSP too and would be in that if I lived in Scotland, despite the SWP's foolish absence.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I remember an open letter to Militant from the SWP when they were being witch-hunted out of the Labour party. In good faith, as SWP members we went around to Labour party constituency meetings arguing against the witch-hunt. I even put posters up around where I live saying 'No to the Witch-hunt of Socialists in the Labour Party'. The response from Militant was the usual hostility and just being plain stupid to be honest.

Hostility - I suspect you were completely ignored? After all, you were "sectarians on the fringes of the labour movement", not even worth replying to. Where do you think the Judean People's Front sketch came from?

 

[butchersapron]

Oxbridge

 

[Fisher_Gate]

The main differences between Respect and Solidarity - Scotland's Socialist Movement are:

1) SSSM is openly socialist in it's politics, while Respect think that abandoning any concept of socialism will help it win votes. It's wider politics are still developing but are mostly based on those of the pre-split SSP. Such politics are certainly flawed but they are a long way better than those of Respect. It also clearly aims to base itself on the working class, rather than seeing the working class as one possible support group amongst many.

2) SSSM has, so far at least, been democratic in its internal operations. You talk about it being led by the SWP, but there is little evidence of that. They are in a minority and do have some influence (more than in the old SSP but nothing like the total dominance they enjoy in Respect).

Even though SSSM is better than Respect in politics, class orientation and internal democracy getting involved in it would not be an automatic decision. We don't look for unity for the sake of unity but instead judge wider collaboration on whether or not it can play a positive role in advancing working class representation and organisation. SSSM, I think, represents the only chance of salvaging something from the gains (and there were gains, as well as losses) of the old SSP.

Strange - I've just delivered 300 leaflets for a Respect candidate with the word 'Socialism' very clearly on it. The leaflet was focussed on fighting privatisation and attacks on the NHS. I think you believe what you choose to, rather than actuality on the ground.

Did you know your electoral work in Stoke had gone belly-up btw, Nigel, with no candidates this year?

 

[butchersapron]

Was the 'Socialism' bit as part of the title RESPECT or was it talked about as either your position/general outlook, as an aim, as an independently good thing, or just as a word, as a component part of the RESPECT. S= socialism.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Strange - I've just delivered 300 leaflets for a Respect candidate with the word 'Socialism' very clearly on it. The leaflet was focussed on fighting privatisation and attacks on the NHS. I think you believe what you choose to, rather than actuality on the ground.

No Fisher_Gate, having attended a range of Respect meetings and having heard with my own ears its leaders tell a crowd that Respect isn't a socialist organisation, I choose to believe both my own experience and their clearly expressed words. The whole point of Respect is that it is not a socialist organisation, nor does it have general politics which are as left wing as those of the SSSM/SSP milieu.

Did you know your electoral work in Stoke had gone belly-up btw, Nigel, with no candidates this year?

I knew that the councillor who had defected to the Socialist Party there had left again, because it was announced by one of the English SP's Stoke branches on one of our internal email lists. I'm actually surprised that dennisr didn't know. I didn't know that the Stoke branches weren't standing a candidate this year, but then again, I'm a member of the Socialist Party in Ireland, a different organisation.

It's a setback if they aren't, but I have to admit that I'm at a loss to see why there was anything wrong with admitting a Labour left councillor who was loudly stating that he agreed with our politics into the organisation. Perhaps you can enlighten us? That the brothers concerned left again soon afterwards is irritating, but nothing in their records suggests that they were inappropriate candidates for membership of a socialist organisation. Far from it.

In fact, I think it's a bit cheeky of you to be gloating about a councillor with an entirely solid record of left wing council votes joining and leaving the SP, when I read only a few hours ago that Respect have added an ex-Tory councillor to their list of ex-Lib Dems.

 

[nightbreed]

Where do you think the Judean People's Front sketch came from?

The activities of the WRP and Healy in particular.
From what I remember Life of Brian was released in 1980/1 and the open letter thing was started if my memory serves me correctly in the mid 80s. Still I get your point.

 

[nightbreed]

No Fisher_Gate, having attended a range of Respect meetings and having heard with my own ears its leaders tell a crowd that Respect isn't a socialist organisation, I choose to believe both my own experience and their clearly expressed words. The whole point of Respect is that it is not a socialist organisation, nor does it have general politics which are as left wing as those of the SSSM/SSP milieu.

Nigel, I would add that Respect isnt a workers party either even though trade unionists are members of it.

 

[dennisr]

The SP and Respect are contesting the Regional List seats which are huge - eight parliamentary constituencies for the one including Cardiff, South Wales Central, electorate nearly half a million.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/welshasssembly_english/html/region_24.stm

as I thought - unfortunately

 

[dennisr]

I'm in Respect, despite the fact that I disagree with the leadership, because I believe it is necessary to unite the left as much as possible and Respect is the best show in town, inadequate though it may be (though actually that's a bit unfair - some things about it are pretty good; I saw Ken Loach yesterday and he was excellent, kept out of the spotlight too long in my view).

To humour you further...

I have no problem being in organisations i disagree with - the Militants were part of the LP for rather a long while. I do not mistake 'unity' as hanging on to the coattails of an organisation that has no space for dialogue and democratic discussion. Thats not 'unity', and is part of the reason it does not provide the space in which genuine 'unity', with the wider working class, can be built - hence the SPs lack of much hope for the development of Respect.

But your organisation is hardly in a position to lecture others about democracy when it doesn't inform members one of its leading electoral interventions (Stoke) has gone badly wrong, or let them say what they think about the strategy of a linked but independent organisation (Scotland). It is especially ironic given that the "principle" on which you (wrongly) left the SA was the right to stand your candidates, when on other occasions you drop doing so without a moment's thought by your members.

If i don't bother reading everything sent to me - does not mean an entire organisation can be written off by such a mute point? You are doing what you always do FG 'protesting to much' - which does not help or add to your arguements. As for Scotland - a year long open international discussion was had - its all online. Pretty ironic, given your attempts to imply the opposite.

Nevertheless I do think it would be better for the whole left if both the SP and SWP could co-exist inside a limited electoral alliance at least.

The SP has attempted to work with the SWP on plenty of occasions. One of the problems we face is the idiocy of small groups like your own who were happy to abandon a genuine alliance in some desperate attempt to get the SWP on board without prior democratic discussion and agreement - the SWP destroyed the Socialist Alliances that had existed for the 3 years prior to thier late entrance - but this was only possible because of the voting away of basic rights for minority groups within that organisation by groups such as yours - and then some of you had the gall to blame us for leaving you to an organisation you had destryed as a result of your desperation - oh the irony. Why no complaints about the role the SP played for 3 years prior to this - when the SP as the numerically dominant organisation could have behaved in exactly the same way as the SWP - it did not though, in fact it argued for the checks and balances that had previously existed in the structure of the SAs, primarily to ensure that genuine trust and a genuine alliance could be built. It did the same in the foundation of the original SSP - a structure that means the late arrival of the SWP into that organisation could not have the effect it had in the SAs... (it took the various 'leaders' to do that, sadly...)

You see the SP does not have the same model as you and your organisation FG - it is working to build genuine 'unity' - it sees this as the only practical way to begin a genuine re-alignment of the working class as a whole not just a disparate collection of little left groups all claiming to be 'more revolutionary than thou' but not embedded in the working class and not seen as fighting alongside, for and with the working class (something like that is the 'unity' of fools) - Hence the approach in campaigning for for a new workers party

 

[audiotech]

Hostility - I suspect you were completely ignored? After all, you were "sectarians on the fringes of the labour movement", not even worth replying to. Where do you think the Judean People's Front sketch came from?

Now, the SWP as I said organised a petition against the expelling of socialists from the Labour party. I would have thought that is a concrete example of how not to be a 'sectarian'.

I recall one Militant supporter refusing to sign a petition against his own organisations expulsion ffs? Is that a concrete example of how to act like a 'sectarian' do you think?

Fraternally yours.

 

[dennisr]

I recall one Militant supporter refusing to sign a petition against his own organisations expulsion ffs? Is that a concrete example of how to act like a 'sectarian' do you think?

Your one off story of one individual (which we simply have to accept as truth..) being equated with an entire organisation's attitude is a somewhat empirical basis for your viewpoint. Donthcha think?

Maybe this (possibly existing...) individual thought your petition was feckin irrelevent to the situation s/he (possibly, if this individual existed...) faced?

But, hey, thanks for the support - we really owe you that one...

 

[audiotech]

Your one off story of one individual (which we simply have to accept as truth..) being equated with an entire organisation's attitude is a somewhat empirical basis for your viewpoint. Donthcha think?

Maybe this (possibly existing...) individual thought your petition was feckin irrelevent to the situation s/he (possibly, if this individual existed...) faced?

But, hey, thanks for the support - we really owe you that one...

Sadly it's true and if you've ever read Hattons book you will realise that attitude reflected the whole organisation that was Militant.

Your sarcastic last para indicates no change.

 

[dennisr]

Sadly it's true and if you've ever read Hattons book you will realise that attitude reflected the whole organisation that was Militant.

Your sarcastic last para indicates no change.

So Hatton (the ex-Militant) and his daft book (written long after he became an ex-Militant) is now the voice of the organisation??

Please excuse my cynicism MC5 - but i hope you can see the reason why its exists?

"sold down the mersey" remains my all time great example of your 'solidarity' and lack of sectarianism

(pleae don't force me to recall the full list which shows a genuine organisational trend over decades rather than an 'attitude' personally witnessed or read from hatton's book)

 

[audiotech]

So Hatton (the ex-Militant) and his daft book (written long after he became an ex-Militant) is now the voice of the organisation??

Please excuse my cynicism MC5 - but i hope you can see the reason why its exists?

"sold down the mersey" remains my all time great example of your 'solidarity' and lack of sectarianism

(pleae don't force me to recall the full list which shows a genuine organisational trend over decades rather than an 'attitude' personally witnessed or read from hatton's book)

I said that was Militant and Hatton did represent the voice of that organisation.

The workers of Liverpool were sold down the mersey by an organisation then who used them as a stage army.

 

[audiotech]

Your one off story of one individual (which we simply have to accept as truth..) being equated with an entire organisation's attitude is a somewhat empirical basis for your viewpoint. Donthcha think?

Btw, being a Marxist you should know that the chief defect of empiricism is that it views experience passively, whereas in order to retain a consistent materialist understanding of experience it is necessary to recognise that it is the practical activity of people changing the world which is the condition and source of knowledge.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

So Hatton (the ex-Militant) and his daft book (written long after he became an ex-Militant) is now the voice of the organisation??
...

Are we talking the same book here? 'Inside Left' by Derek Hatton, pub 1988 by Bloomsbury?

The one where Hatton says:

"I still financially support Militant - and always will. ... Its ideas are rooted within the (Labour) Party ... Militant supporters will never argue they should be outside ... There are all too many stupid groups on the fringes who have achieved nothing, and never will ... What Militant says is little different from the things said by Keir Hardie when he founded the Party ..." and so on ... (page 172)

1988 certainly wasn't 'long after' Hatton became an ex-Militant and I think the book paints a fairly accurate picture of the positions Militant and the Liverpool 47 were pushing.

 

[dennisr]

I said that was Militant and Hatton did represent the voice of that organisation.

The workers of Liverpool were sold down the mersey by an organisation then who used them as a stage army.

Hatton was not a representative of Militant when this book was written. This book was never ever endosed by that organisation.

For christ sake - do we have to go through the entire history of the Liverpool struggle for the enth time to please some tedious idiot who despite their clawing devotion to their old organisation are not even willing to actually act on the ideas they defend and claim to believe (and probably have not done for a bloody long time)? At least your comrades in Liverpool had the guts and gall to stand up and say that in Liverpool (even if members of Militant had to interveine to stop them being ripped apart physically when they came out with such rubbish by the very workers who had fought tooth and nail to build for a strike... Including me the 'sectarian with a heart' I suppose?)

I said earlier that - at this time and in the present vacuam the cynical voices of those who have always stood on the sidelines waiting to condemn every attempt that has been made (with their preconcieved excuse for remaining inactive and doing jack shite in practice) with their inaine shout of 'sellout' sound louder. I also mentioned that their presence is largely felt only on bulletin boards rather than in real life. And you come along MC5 to do prove the point.

In your fantasy world - along with the SWP - you would have had your 'stage army' out on strike as a minority and they were going to bring out the majority who had voted against the strike - beating the mass media, government and loyal opposition in thr process. Unfortunately we were working with REAL people and REAL events rather than your fantasy ones... (recogniseing "that it is the practical activity of people changing the world which is the condition and source of knowledge" and all that...)

As usual you break wind and consider it a political intervention with your irrelevent side issues and insinuations - if only a bad smell could improve real peoples lives. Unfortunatly it cant

 

[dennisr]

Are we talking the same book here? 'Inside Left' by Derek Hatton, pub 1988 by Bloomsbury?

The one where Hatton says:

"I still financially support Militant - and always will. ... Its ideas are rooted within the (Labour) Party ... Militant supporters will never argue they should be outside ... There are all too many stupid groups on the fringes who have achieved nothing, and never will ... What Militant says is little different from the things said by Keir Hardie when he founded the Party ..." and so on ... (page 172)

1988 certainly wasn't 'long after' Hatton became an ex-Militant and I think the book paints a fairly accurate picture of the positions Militant and the Liverpool 47 were pushing.

And along comes FG to back up his fellow cynic - the Militant would have have little time for Hattons little 'me, me me' tome.

So do outline what this has to do with MC5s arguement that - apparently, some person didn't sign his wee petition and this proves the Militant and CWI are 'sectarian' because these individuals didn't have much time for some pillock standing on the sidelines and calling this 'solidarity'?

You lot really have nothing better to do than this pathetic tittle-tattle to call your 'political' outlook', do you? Is it any wonder folk like me have more time for the genuine folk on this thread who are at least arguing thier reasons for being in the LP? Honestly - don't you ever look at yourself and wonder why you bother?

 

[dennisr]

Btw, being a Marxist you should know that the chief defect of empiricism is that it views experience passively, whereas in order to retain a consistent materialist understanding of experience it is necessary to recognise that it is the practical activity of people changing the world which is the condition and source of knowledge.

thankyou *doffs cap*

A marxist does not take some mindlessly small personal experience and blow this up into an analysis of an entire trend/force/group. MC5 does. Come on, admit it the only 'non-passive' thing you do is typing irelevent crap on bulletin boards, man

 

[Fisher_Gate]

And along comes FG to back up his fellow cynic - the Militant would have have little time for Hattons little 'me, me me' tome.

So do outline what this has to do with MC5s arguement that - apparently, some person didn't sign his wee petition and this proves the Militant and CWI are 'sectarian' because these individuals didn't have much time for some pillock standing on the sidelines and calling this 'solidarity'?

You lot really have nothing better to do than this pathetic tittle-tattle to call your 'political' outlook', do you? Is it any wonder folk like me have more time for the genuine folk on this thread who are at least arguing thier reasons for being in the LP? Honestly - don't you ever look at yourself and wonder why you bother?

I'll take that as "Yes it is the same book" then?

 

[dennisr]

I'll take that as "Yes it is the same book" then?

Indeed

 

[treelover]

how on earth can u include JM with Brown and Blair, he has voted against everything the Blairites have leglislated for


Sue said

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John McDonnell -- all as bad as each other in my opinion

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Indeed

Which was published in 1988?

And we are talking about the same Derek Hatton who in a book published in January 1988, Peter Taafe and Tony Mulhearn, speaking about events in 1986/87, described as follows:
"even out of office, Derek Hatton managed to proselytise on behalf of Marxism ... (when) he appeared ... on the Wogan show .. he managed a partial explanation ... of the ideas of Marxism" (Liverpool: A City that dared to fight, p 456)?

All I can say is you have a strange idea of "long after".