What's the Spartacist League up to these days?
- Thread starter Idris2002
- Start date
planetgeli
There's no future in England's dreaming
Ex-SL members parody SL shocker.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You wasted your life lads. Don't waste the retirement.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window. 
I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.
I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window.
I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.
excellent pumpkin tho'.
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
One of the interesting things where we struggled for a long time was why did the long bow go out of use in favour of the musket at a time when there was far more range and far more accuracy…why did all the armies of Europe, two hundred years before a good military rifle in WW1 would be superior to a long bow. The answer is very simple [actually not], anybody can be …you have to start when you’re about 8 years old and practice every single week of your life to be proficient with a longbow. A country that would today teach its children the longbow would find that it still presents a very deadly force…But the masses – in fact, one of the great things that the Black Douglas of Scotland was known for was his humanitarianism. Usually when the English and Welsh longbowmen were caught by enemies, they were executed because they were so valuable. But the Black Douglas simply cut off the right hand and put out the right eye…thus he fulfilled his great humanitarian role. Who knows what happened after that?
You ever watch a whale on the surface – it dives, it comes up in spurts and then goes under again. We cannot ignore the Labour Party. It’s the political repository of what passes for working-class consciousness.
You ever watch a whale on the surface – it dives, it comes up in spurts and then goes under again. We cannot ignore the Labour Party. It’s the political repository of what passes for working-class consciousness.
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
One of the more lucid passages.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
I read the whole thing. It's amazing.If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window.
I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
I went back to it. You know it's a genuine transcript, 'cos no one could make up that stream-of-cult-leader-consciousness.
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
It would be interesting to know what the conference attendees were saying to each other after that. Like I was at an SWP rally where delegates made fun of once of the CC members afterwards. Would Sparts have done the same?
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Nobody made fun of Robertson, not even in private. I was at that meeting. At the time I was particularly confused by Robertson's claim that he could have overthrown the Sri Lankan government. And reading it now I'm still confused. The Sparts had 5 or 6 people in Sri Lanka at the time.
It's typical Robertson, rambling and incoherent for sure, but effective as a series of narratives which mythologise and dramatize mundane events. It's an affected and deliberate style, intended to suggest there's deeper meaning there if you could only grasp it.
JeffTipps4
New Member
I always remember the leaflets from the IBT about Robertson and the Kurds are Turds scandal but thought they were perhaps over egging the polemical pudding. This is far far worse imo and would definitely indicate a very unhealthy regime.
I don't see how these comments can be defensible. Not even pub talk but a lead off at a conference!
I don't see how these comments can be defensible. Not even pub talk but a lead off at a conference!
MagicMikey
New Member
There’s been a lot of negative things written here on the Sparts so I’d like to offer a few of my own recollections.
I joined the SL/B and another European section in the nineties and was a member for several years (5 or 6?). I had a largely positive experience and I think I got a lot from my involvement. I got the self-confidence to get up and speak in front of a crowd – albeit mainly hostile crowds where I was denouncing their leadership and program (!) I got to be influenced by the several female leaders who challenged my somewhat sexist attitudes – and some other regressive attitudes too. And I got a classical Marxist education – something which has served me well since – and which would have been virtually impossible for someone of my background otherwise.
While I was denounced more than once internally for different things I wouldn’t characterise any of it as abusive. Nor did I see abuse of any type taking place, including sexual coercion. There was some unusual sexual activity and relationships, but nothing outside the bounds of the types of open/polyamorous relationships now common among millennials/Gen Z in the UK today.
I was never in much of a leadership position so I wasn’t privy to CC meetings and the like. But women in the SL/B during my time there were largely well respected and important part of the leadership – and that was quite unusual on the British left then, which was mostly led by white middle class men. (Incidentally, this still seems to be largely the case).
Regarding the denunciations - yes they were a regular part of internal life, but I never felt they were personal, they were about things people had said or done. They were supposed to sharpen political perspectives for all sides. Someone might be denounced for writing political formulations that were too soft or too sectarian on the Labour Party for example (usually the former of course!).
They did put enormous pressure upon you, but, it also forced you to fight your corner and arguably helped clarify the issues for both sides. This type of hard debating style is not unique to the Spartacists by the way - I have seen this taught to evolutionary biology students by some American professors for example.
Moreover when I look at twitter today I see massive arguments and denunciations made with an ad hominem nastiness that far exceeds anything I witnessed in the Spartacists.
Now I’m not denying other people’s experiences, but seeing as it looks like the organisation has virtually disbanded and this forum might be one of the last places where anything is said about them, I thought I’d just add my own to the mix.
I joined the SL/B and another European section in the nineties and was a member for several years (5 or 6?). I had a largely positive experience and I think I got a lot from my involvement. I got the self-confidence to get up and speak in front of a crowd – albeit mainly hostile crowds where I was denouncing their leadership and program (!) I got to be influenced by the several female leaders who challenged my somewhat sexist attitudes – and some other regressive attitudes too. And I got a classical Marxist education – something which has served me well since – and which would have been virtually impossible for someone of my background otherwise.
While I was denounced more than once internally for different things I wouldn’t characterise any of it as abusive. Nor did I see abuse of any type taking place, including sexual coercion. There was some unusual sexual activity and relationships, but nothing outside the bounds of the types of open/polyamorous relationships now common among millennials/Gen Z in the UK today.
I was never in much of a leadership position so I wasn’t privy to CC meetings and the like. But women in the SL/B during my time there were largely well respected and important part of the leadership – and that was quite unusual on the British left then, which was mostly led by white middle class men. (Incidentally, this still seems to be largely the case).
Regarding the denunciations - yes they were a regular part of internal life, but I never felt they were personal, they were about things people had said or done. They were supposed to sharpen political perspectives for all sides. Someone might be denounced for writing political formulations that were too soft or too sectarian on the Labour Party for example (usually the former of course!).
They did put enormous pressure upon you, but, it also forced you to fight your corner and arguably helped clarify the issues for both sides. This type of hard debating style is not unique to the Spartacists by the way - I have seen this taught to evolutionary biology students by some American professors for example.
Moreover when I look at twitter today I see massive arguments and denunciations made with an ad hominem nastiness that far exceeds anything I witnessed in the Spartacists.
Now I’m not denying other people’s experiences, but seeing as it looks like the organisation has virtually disbanded and this forum might be one of the last places where anything is said about them, I thought I’d just add my own to the mix.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Just wondering, why did you leave the Spartacist League?
MagicMikey
New Member
By the late 90's even the Spartacists admitted there wasn't likely to be a revolution anytime soon, and I wanted to do other things with my life. Lack of progress and a need to focus on other things is why most people leave the active left in my experience.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
It's not very useful to discuss in the abstract, but I'll just observe your choice of words. Debate and denunciation are not at all the same thing. Debate can be measured and respectful, denunciation is about shaming someone (for what they have said or done). Maybe you think denunciation is a legitimate part of political discussion, I don't know. And I doubt evolutionary biology students are encouraged to denounce each other.
Robertson routinely used his authority to elicit sexual favours from women who wouldn't have given him a second look outside the context of the Spartacist League. And beneath the veneer of "sexually liberated" behaviour there was a lot of emotional damage being done, mostly to the women. I also recall how David Strachan, who you probably know, casually referred to a couple of women he didn't like as "the gang of two bitches" and another young woman who had displeased him as a "dizzy c*nt". But never mind, there were women in the leadership.
Of course there are people who positively liked being a Spart, but this doesn't change what was actually going on. I don't know what you wrote in your resignation letter (or if you wrote one at all) but many leave the Sparts with an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame - I wonder why this is.
MagicMikey
New Member
Denunciation is used widely in society – especially in politics e.g. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro denounced for joining pro-dictatorship rally
Ideas are also regularly denounced in science e.g. https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/27/hear-scientists-different-views-covid-19-dont-attack-them/
Regarding sexist language, using words like “bitches” and “c*nt” would be a serious offence when I was a member in the 90’s and I never heard anyone use them. Even words like “twat” were specifically proscribed. Perhaps things were different in the 80’s but the sparts were very modern in their language by the early 90’s – and also in their attitudes towards sexism. However given the existence of the women and revolution journal and the multiple senior female leaders who I never saw take shit from anyone, I suspect even in the 70’s and 80’s the Sparts weren’t quite the bullying misogynist sex cult you portray.
I’m sorry you are so bitter and angry about your time there. I don’t think anyone left on good terms. I certainly didn’t – you were either with them or against them it seemed and thus they didn’t have much of a periphery.
Guilt and shame are emotions I’m very familiar with – I certainly felt them when I left the sparts, and also to some extent as a member. But the sparts didn’t invent these emotions or pioneer their use. Parents use them all the time and they are essential ingredients to social development and political socialisation. I can’t think of an organisation that doesn’t use them to some extent, whether an employer, community organisation, charity, political party. And of course – famously – religion of all types.
Abuse is something I’m also familiar with, having suffered psychological and physical abuse as a child – something most people of my background also experienced to some extent. Abuse is something I never experienced or witnessed in the sparts during my time though. Perhaps there was abuse – perhaps it was even endemic as you imply. In which case there’d have to be evidence, right? Surely you’d have evidence before you levy such serious allegations?
Have I missed the evidence in this forum? If so I’d be much obliged if you repost the links.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Posted too soon!
Last edited:
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I didn't say denunciation wasn't used in society, I said its purpose was to shame people, which is different than debate.
Glad to hear they cleaned that up. The language though was only a symptom.
During a break in conference, I along with many others, watched Robertson grope a female IEC member while shouting lewd comments. Nobody objected. I wonder why not.
I'm sorry to hear that, there were a lot of damaged people in the Sparts.
If you want evidence of abuse in the Sparts there it is. The constant denunciation you describe in your first post, which produces often intense guilt and shame, is a form of psychological and emotional abuse. These feelings shouldn't be a normal part of life.
MagicMikey
New Member
Guilt and shame are used for control by oppressive institutions and regimes. Christian churches use them to enforce repressive sexual practices. Governments use them shift blame from themselves or capitalism to the general population. Various cults have used them to terrorise memberships and perpetuate cycles of abuse.
But these emotions are also a normal part of life. When a child takes a toy from another child behind their back, when you forget your partners anniversary or your mother’s birthday, when you dump some trash instead of recycling, when you watch an advert about starving children in Syria. Perhaps they shouldn't be part of life, but they are and there are good reasons for thinking they are evolutionarily evolved mechanisms to assist pro-social behaviour, co-operation and to enforce social norms. e.g. The Motivational Foundations of Prosocial Behavior From A Developmental Perspective–Evolutionary Roots and Key Psychological Mechanisms: Introduction to the Special Section
So the existence of the emotions of guilt and shame in ex members is not evidence of abuse per se.
It also depends upon your definition of abuse. On one end of the spectrum, the rape and sexual coercion of children over decades by members of the Catholic Church was clearly the most terrible abuse. On the other end, psychologists wrongly characterised so-called refrigerator mothers as abusive and responsible for autism in their children. “Misgendering” is now considered abuse by many activists today, with some activists claiming their feelings of being “intellectually threatened” by some lecturers are also a form of abuse.
Bullying is a bit easier to define: “seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable).” I never saw anyone in the sparts seeking to harm or intimidate another member. Indeed the beginnings of such activity were shut down by the leadership pretty quickly. This sometimes led to feelings of guilt and shame and resignations including in a leader I was close to. Coercion is a bit more tricky, there was enormous pressure put on you to change you mind if you had a minority position, but this was done with arguments and the social pressure of being in a minority which anyone feels in any situation/organisation. There were no threats to expel or discipline people for having minority views for example.
There was of course coercion to follow the party line publicly – the threat being expulsion from the party. But this is called Leninism and its pretty widespread, even in bourgeois political formations.
But there were no physical threats, financial threats, sexual threats, never mind any physical violence, theft, or sexual assault that I witnessed or was aware of throughout the 90’s
You claim to have witnessed a very public sexual assault and you claim to have knowledge that sexual coercion was rife. Maybe you are correct, but do you have any evidence other than your witnessing of this one incident? Testimony by a former alleged victim for example? Or at least supporting testimony for your claim of the public assault?
Like I say I wasn’t there in the 80’s, but the your characterisation of the organisation is not one I recognise from the 90’s. So either the organisation radically transformed form the 80’s to the 90’s or one of us is wrong.
But these emotions are also a normal part of life. When a child takes a toy from another child behind their back, when you forget your partners anniversary or your mother’s birthday, when you dump some trash instead of recycling, when you watch an advert about starving children in Syria. Perhaps they shouldn't be part of life, but they are and there are good reasons for thinking they are evolutionarily evolved mechanisms to assist pro-social behaviour, co-operation and to enforce social norms. e.g. The Motivational Foundations of Prosocial Behavior From A Developmental Perspective–Evolutionary Roots and Key Psychological Mechanisms: Introduction to the Special Section
So the existence of the emotions of guilt and shame in ex members is not evidence of abuse per se.
It also depends upon your definition of abuse. On one end of the spectrum, the rape and sexual coercion of children over decades by members of the Catholic Church was clearly the most terrible abuse. On the other end, psychologists wrongly characterised so-called refrigerator mothers as abusive and responsible for autism in their children. “Misgendering” is now considered abuse by many activists today, with some activists claiming their feelings of being “intellectually threatened” by some lecturers are also a form of abuse.
Bullying is a bit easier to define: “seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable).” I never saw anyone in the sparts seeking to harm or intimidate another member. Indeed the beginnings of such activity were shut down by the leadership pretty quickly. This sometimes led to feelings of guilt and shame and resignations including in a leader I was close to. Coercion is a bit more tricky, there was enormous pressure put on you to change you mind if you had a minority position, but this was done with arguments and the social pressure of being in a minority which anyone feels in any situation/organisation. There were no threats to expel or discipline people for having minority views for example.
There was of course coercion to follow the party line publicly – the threat being expulsion from the party. But this is called Leninism and its pretty widespread, even in bourgeois political formations.
But there were no physical threats, financial threats, sexual threats, never mind any physical violence, theft, or sexual assault that I witnessed or was aware of throughout the 90’s
You claim to have witnessed a very public sexual assault and you claim to have knowledge that sexual coercion was rife. Maybe you are correct, but do you have any evidence other than your witnessing of this one incident? Testimony by a former alleged victim for example? Or at least supporting testimony for your claim of the public assault?
Like I say I wasn’t there in the 80’s, but the your characterisation of the organisation is not one I recognise from the 90’s. So either the organisation radically transformed form the 80’s to the 90’s or one of us is wrong.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Well, this is kind of my point. The rest of your thesis is irrelevant. Of course we will sometimes feel guilt or shame over something we do, while we learn or fail to learn a lesson. But someone who uses guilt and shame to manipulate and control others is an abusive individual.
The most public case of someone being driven to a nervous breakdown by this kind of behaviour in the Spartacist League is that of Ian Donovan. He's written about it himself and I knew him at the time. He tried to defend a sick woman who was being denounced by Len and Eibhlin and the ensuing torrent of abuse led to him suffering a breakdown and losing his job and home. You can contact him yourself if you're so interested in the truth. I'm sure you can find him with a Google search.
You are asking for testimony but providing none yourself. You make a series of legalistic assertions and academic arguments and ignore the impact constant shaming and guilt-tripping, at times hysterical, can have on someone over a period of several years, especially the angry but vulnerable types who for were drawn to the Sparts. Do you think it is an accident that you, with your background, ended up there? You admitted how difficult you found it to leave. I'm guessing guilt and shame probably kept you in the organisation for about 2 years after your expiry date.
I've made the point a couple of times on this thread that the abuse was collectivised. So the leadership didn't just yell at you and tell you what a traitorous, counterrevolutionary miscreant you were. They also did this to others, and when they did you got to join in, going to the front of the room to reiterate whatever the current great leader had said. And the problem is, if you accept this behaviour was abusive then you are an abuser. So you go to great lengths to rationalise what happened. Others, for example the Bolshevik Tendency, get around this by claiming the organisation became abusive only when it turned on them - previously everything was just fine, all we did was talk about politics.
I did indeed witness "a very public sexual assault." Unfortunately I didn't have one of those old video cameras ready at the time, so I was unable to capture it on film. You can believe or dismiss what I say as you wish. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. Robertson's coterie of women and his practise of propositioning any female who crossed his path was hardly a secret in the organisation. But I've also encountered those who claim the way he used his authority to get the girls into his bedroom wasn't abusive. You can take a look at my exchange with Jim Creegan on the Fischerzed blog (link somewhere in this thread) for more on this.
Changing tack slightly, do you not think there was something deranged about denouncing people because of a supposedly poor formulation about the Labour Party? Just asking.
MagicMikey
New Member
I have provided testimony above - those are my recollections and reflections on life in the SL/B as an ordinary member in the 1990's. I don't think it had an abusive or bullying internal culture. They are completely different from your recollections and intepretations from the 1980's.
That's fine - both views have been recorded now. Peace.
That's fine - both views have been recorded now. Peace.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Peace, Land, and Bread 
Not a big fan of bothsidesing 
but never mind.
Not a big fan of bothsidesing but never mind.JeffTipps4
New Member
Although we have mainly been talking about Jim Robertson, what's the score with Joseph Seymour?
I'm not a Spartacist but have a number of their pamphlets several of which are transcribed from talks that he did and I found them very useful. Always seemed very lucid and relatively accessible. Is he still in the central leadership?
I imagine that was a cracking meeting when he debated Ernest Mandel!
I'm not a Spartacist but have a number of their pamphlets several of which are transcribed from talks that he did and I found them very useful. Always seemed very lucid and relatively accessible. Is he still in the central leadership?
I imagine that was a cracking meeting when he debated Ernest Mandel!
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
This is truly magnificent. A barely comprehensible, almost unreadable, typed-directly-onto-the-stencil leaflet produced by an ex-Spart, ex-WRP, ex-WSL threesome (a polygamous marriage made in heaven). I give you the Revolutionary Labour League. You have to wonder how many pints of warm beer they drank while writing this. They can't even spell Pabloism correctly.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Kevin Oakleigh
New Member
I was present at a internal meeting in the 1970’s where Robertson exclaimed we had half the time the Bolsheviks had to build a revolutionary party before decisive revolutionary situations would arise. Seymour in that period toured the US with a lecture on the origins of world war 3. Certainly in the 1970’s we believed the objective situation was ripe to build a party through a propaganda perspective of splits and fusions with leftward moving tendencies in “ostensible revolutionary organizations” to resolve the “crisis of revolutionary leadership”. We would have a chance in our lifetime. Iran looked like Czarist Russian and Portugal was on the brink. As someone in the BT wrote Robertson wanted his rank and file super active and “frothing at the mouth” That was my experience too.
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