THE SWP’S DEBATE AND THE EXPULSIONS
Chris Harman is circulating internationally a draft article about the crisis in Respect, that seems to be intended for the next issue of the theoretical journal he edits.
One section of this document refers to the way the internal dispute was handled within the SWP. I publish it here, and I also publish in full the correspondence from Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden to the SWP central committee. They did not a receive a reply to any of these e-mails.
According to Chris Harman:
“Once it became clear just how serious Galloway’s attacks were we circulated his first document and our reply to our members, and called a meeting for all London members. The meeting was chaired by an experienced member, who had argued for an alternative slate for the central committee to the one proposed by the outgoing leadership at the 2006 party conference. There was open debate, with alternate speeches from those who supported and those who opposed the central committee’s interpretation of events.”
The “central committee’s interpretation of events” was in fact based upon the assumption that an article in the East London Advertiser about the leaked letter from George Galloway to the National Council was from a source close to George Galloway, and was therefore authorative. Indeed, the implication was that the source was Rob Hoveman, at that time a loyal member of the SWP.
In fact, Rob Hoveman was able to determine the real source for the East London Advertiser article. As Rob and Kevin informed the central committee by e-mail on 10 September 2007
“Ted [the journalist who wrote the article] confirmed that he had picked up the letter on two websites, one run by sad sectarian Dave Osler and the other by right wing Tower Hamlets New Labourite John Grey. Ted had also read comment on the letter on those websites and the key paragraph five was based on what he had read there.
“There are links to these two websites from the New Statesman website. Osler’s website, in particular, has a plethora of kremlinological entries from assorted sectarians. Ted’s interpretation Ted’s is clearly based on the comments on this blog by a character called “Tim”. He is an obsessive acolyte of New Labour’s Louise Ellman. He trolls around the internet attacking George and the SWP and slandering leading party trade unionists in an effort to get them disciplined. Needless to say, his analysis carries no authority whatsoever.
“We have two further points to make about this. Firstly, the issue of whether anyone on George’s staff was responsible either for giving Ted the letter or giving him comment on the letter could have been easily resolved with a phone call to either of us. We find it extraordinary that very serious allegations of bad faith could be made against SWP members without checking whether the allegations were true. Worse, these allegations were thrown out as innuendo in front of 200 party members and left hanging over our heads, where they remain. “
Martin Smith the National Secretary of the SWP claimed verbally to Kevin Ovenden that he had replied to this e-mail. But neither Kevin nor Rob seem to have ever received this reply, despite asking about it again on 17th September.
Chris Harman then describes the Party Council meeting (Party Council is a delgate meeting between annual conferences):
“A series of members’ meetings in each locality followed and then a national delegate meeting. Again, those who disagreed with the leadership’s position were able to speak without hindrance—including three non-delegates who were invited as the only observers so they could make their points. At the end of the meeting a vote was taken in support of the leadership’s reply to Galloway’s arguments and it was carried overwhelmingly in a room containing more than 200 people; there were only two “noes” and four abstentions.”
It is worth comparing this to Nick Bird’s eyewitness account of the same meeting:
“Some reports of the Respect National Council meeting on 29 September suggest that an amicable compromise was agreed and that all is well. That was not the impression given at the SWP’s Party Council meeting held the following day.
“Over 200 delegates gathered in central London for the meeting, the core of the SWP’s cadre from across the country. On arrival we received a document containing all the main documents so far published in the Respect debate – from the SWP Central Committee, John Rees/Elaine Graham Leigh, George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob and Alan Thornett/John Lister, plus (for good measure) a view from the SWP in Ireland (an uncontroversial piece agreeing with the British leadership). This was the first time the party had circulated the non-SWP documents, though clearly many members would have seen them on various left websites.
“Unfortunately it quickly became clear that this was not a meeting for examining the complexities of this debate. It was a case of: which side are you on? (I believe Chris Harman put it in those exact terms). Pat Stack announced from the chair that after the debate, the meeting would vote on the CC and Rees/Graham Leigh documents. No amendments would be accepted. (And clearly no alternative documents could be heard, since no agenda had been issued and no call for such alternatives had been made.) As usual, the CC speaker who introduced the debate (Rees) had twenty-five minutes to elaborate the CC’s position, while everyone else had four minutes, making it difficult to present a coherent case.”
It must be remembered that the SWP Party Council happened the day after the Respect National Council meeting of the 29th September. Let us remind ourselves how Alan Thornett described that meeting. It is worth quoting this at some length because this explains the political context in which Party Council took place.
“The crisis came to a head around two critical meetings of the Respect National Council one on September 22, which failed to complete its agenda, and another the following week on September 29 to complete the business.
“The meeting moved on to discuss the practical proposals in George Galloway’s letter, which he moved in summary form. His most controversial proposal, as far as the SWP was concerned, was for a new post of national organiser to function alongside the national secretary (aimed at broadening Respect out at the top).
“The SWP, however, saw this as a direct challenge to the authority of John Rees and therefore to the vertical control which is implicit in both the method of the SWP and its model for Respect as one a number of united fronts in which they work. It was this which made a simple proposal emerge as a pivotal issue.
“George Galloway’s proposals were therefore accepted with the proviso that the apparently vexed issue of the authority/constitutionality of a national organiser alongside the national secretary would be discussed by a working group comprising Ger Frances, Lindsey German Linda Smith and myself in an attempt to find solution.
“We met but failed to agree. I could agree with everything Lindsey German wrote with the exception of the last three words “and individual officers”. These words reversed the proposal (that both officers are responsible to the EC) and put the national secretary back in charge.
The first item on the agenda on the 29th was Respect’s approach to the looming general election. It was a good discussion. It is clearly crucial the left is able to mount a credible challenge to new Labour under Brown in a snap poll. And that means Respect because no other left grouping has the ability to ripple the surface of the water.
“The meeting then returned to the issue of the national organiser. The old debate began to re-run but it was difficult to sustain. When I said that I could accept all Lindsey German was proposing other than the last three words she said that she had no problem in deleting them. John Rees said the same and that was it. The two would work side by side and report to the elected committees. We had an agreement which we could have had a week earlier.”
As Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden point out in their unanswered e-mail to Martin Smith, the SWP CC simply did not tell party Council what had happened at the Respect national Council the day before!
“The CC clearly feel that the vote at [Party Council] has somehow vindicated their handling of the issue. We would beg to differ. The vote was on two documents that had been superseded by the discussion and agreements made at the Respect National Council meetings of the previous two Saturdays. It was bizarre to vote on these documents given what the party leadership had conceded at the two Respect NC meetings. This included a) Lindsey German conceding to George Galloway that his original letter did not constitute an attack on the left in Respect from the right “even though many SWP members interpreted it that way”, b) the CC first accepting George Galloway‘s proposals for a number of changes in the way that Respect operates nationally, based on the criticisms contained in his original letter and then c) accepting the post of national organiser not subordinate to individual officers, and above all the National Secretary, but to work alongside the National Secretary, subordinate, as with all officers, only to the Executive Committee, the National Council and the Annual Conference. This last issue is the one that Martin Smith had warned the leadership would go nuclear over when it was first raised prior to George sending his letter to the Respect NC and it was the issue over which the CC had chosen to fight. The Party Council were, extraordinarily, simply not told that the CC had decided to make this massive concession.”
But the central committee had also engaged in a campaign of whispers and character assassination against Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden, who had both been loyal members of the SWP since 1984, as Rob and Kev wrote to Martin Smith:
“In addition, CC members have quite wrongly claimed that George Galloway demanded John Rees’s resignation. This is untrue. They have also accused and encouraged comrades to accuse Salma Yaqoob, Abjol Miah, etc of communalism and pandering to communalism, an outrageous accusation which should be withdrawn. Worse than that, a small number of comrades made entirely unwarranted and unsupported attacks on ourselves. Helen Salmon implied that we had been giving George Galloway confidential party information about the London SWP members meeting held two Fridays before. These entirely untrue allegations have been part and parcel of a campaign of innuendo and character assassination launched against us by members of the CC and others over the last few weeks. These include a number of CC members telling SWP members and those outside the party that we were to be expelled, whilst avoiding the courtesy of telling us the same, suggesting we were part of a Galloway-led conspiracy to undermine and split the SWP, that we were his paid lackeys and took his line, that we are his spies, that we had encouraged George to believe there was a Galloway faction in the party and so on and so forth. Mike Simons, who spoke at the Party Council, is one of a number of comrades who have somehow been led to believe that Kevin took up his post in George Galloway’s office against the wishes of the CC, when the opposite, as you know, is the truth. We regard this word of mouth campaign as a thoroughly unprincipled way of conducting the political debate in the party over the appropraite response to George Galloway’s original document and subsequent documents and over the past and future direction of Respect. But it is not only unprincipled, the allegations that have been made against us have been entirely untrue.”
Let us return to Chris Harman’s account:
“One particularly sad thing in this whole sorry saga was the behaviour of three SWP members, who had every right to put their arguments to the party, and had done so at the meeting of London members, in the party’s internal bulletin and at the first national delegate meeting. Two of these members, who had both been in the party for a number of years, had taken employment as Galloway’s assistants. They chose to ignore the overwhelming feeling at the SWP’s national meeting and not only lined up with him, but also helped orchestrate the attacks on the SWP and the left councillors in Tower Hamlets.”
In fact the CC did not meet with Kevin Ovenden at all over the entire period from GG’s letter going to the Respect NC and two of them, Bambery and Rees, saw Rob Hoveman twice simply to offer him a job with the SWP! yet one of the charges against them is that they allegedly didn’t represent the SWP’s position adequately to Galloway. That is ridiculous as the SWP CC did not talk to Rob and Kev to discuss what the SWP’s positon should be.
Rob and Kev did finally get a joint meeting with Smith and Bambery which lasted four minutes in which they were made an offer by the SWP that they could, in conscience, only refuse - to resign from George Galloway’s employment or from the SWP.
In response to this ultimatum, Rob and Kev sent an e-mail to Martin Smith rejecting the political basis for it:
“Resigning our jobs or party memberships would also fly in the face of the party’s behaviour at the Respect National Council meeting of 29 September which evinced to others a willingness to compromise and build bridges.
“Our expulsion, equally, would seriously damage the credibility of the CC in Respect and beyond.
“Secondly, we are not resigning from the party for the additional reason that we do not accept any of the charges made against us, difficult though they are to ascertain. The email sent by Martin Smith to George Galloway seeking to justify the CC’s ultimatum to us contradicts the argument put by the CC to the party.
“His email tells George Galloway that the CC believe we have:
“made an already difficult period in the relationship between you and the SWP worse than it needs to have been over recent weeks. We feel that our position in these discussions has not been adequately expressed to you by the two SWP members with whom you work most closely and that your positions have not been adequately represented to us.”
“The charges against us at the five minute meeting we had with Martin Smith and Chris Bambery were that we had damaged Respect and the party and that we had failed to carry the SWP’s political line to George Galloway or reported back on the reception of that line. This is delusional. The considerable damage caused to the SWP over the last few weeks has been self-inflicted thanks to the CC’s wrong reaction to George Galloway’s original letter.
“As for our failure to carry the line, again not one example was provided. The fact is that John Rees has failed to engage in any meaningful discussion with either of us about the party’s strategy towards Respect and George Galloway for the last 18 months.
“Over the last weeks the CC have singularly failed to discuss with us the approach the party and we should take in Respect. The last discussion Kevin had with CC members prior to the ultimatum on 12 October about how we should proceed was on Sunday 26 August. Rob had had two discussions: both were about whether he would return to working for the party full time; neither were about handling the arguments within Respect or what line to transmit to George Galloway. “
Returning to Chris Harman again:
“Arguments on both sides in the debate within the party were then printed in an internal bulletin; all the arguments within Respect were circulated to party members; further local aggregate meetings took place and then another national meeting, attended by about 250 people, which voted with two against and a handful of abstentions to endorse a central committee document.”
It is true that contributions from Nick Wrack, Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden were published in the Internal Bulletin. (It is worth perhaps mentioning that SWP Internal Bulletins are often difficult to get hold of by members.) But before publishing these critical voices the CC had sought to discredit them by publishing lies about the comrades in the SWP’s internal mailing, Party Notes.
Again, as Rob and Kev complained to Martin Smith:
“We have just been forwarded a copy of the section of party notes concerning ourselves. We refer you to the two lies contained in that brief report:
“1) “Also over the last year there have been a number of meetings between the CC and Rob and Kevin. At these meetings the CC raised major concerns with the way both these comrades worked in Respect. We believe that they were more concerned with promoting George Galloway’s line in Respect than the SWP’s position.”
“2) “More seriously they have denounced the SWP to individuals and organisations outside the Party.”
“On the first point, there have been scarcely any meetings between us and the Central Committee over the last 18 months. At none of them has the CC expressed concern that “we were promoting George Galloway’s line in Respect [rather] than the SWP’s position.”
“Secondly, we have not denounced the SWP to any individual or organisation outside the SWP. These charges have never been laid in front of us before. In particular, these were not the charges brought against us at the five minute meeting with you and Chris Bambery where you issued the ultimatum which formed the basis of our expulsion. Therefore we have not had a chance to refute either of these lies. “
Some observations.
It is utterly remarkable to learn how the SWP central committee operates.
John Rees, national secretary of Respect and a key member of the SWP leadership hardly communicated with two SWP members who held key jobs in Respect, over a period of a year and a half!
The SWP CC relied upon blogs and the Weekly Worker to divine George Galloway’s intentions in preference to picking up the phone and asking their own long established comrades working alongside Galloway!
The SWP CC work out their position without any consultation with the knowledgable comrades close to the action.
The SWP CC made a compromise agreement with the Respect National Council on 29th September, and then on the 30th September they didn’t mention this to a delegate meeting, that then voted to endorse a CC document that had been overtaken by events, and which effectively committed the SWP to war in Respect.
The SWP did not meet with the comrades or telephone them to express their concerns, but gossiped about the possibility of theiir expulsions with other SWP members, and indeed non-members.
It is hard to avoid drawing the conclusion that the prestige of individual members of the SWP CC was a more important consideration than the best interests of either Respect or the SWP. Everything since has been an ex post facto rationalisation to further defend that prestige
It’s hard for SWP members to get hold of internal bulletins, but easy for you. And easy for you to get hold of unfinished, unpublished articles written by Chris Harman.
It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?
Comment by KrisS — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
Indeed Kris
It is a paradox that when I was in the SWP i found it hard to get the IBs, even when I was periodically in favour, and now I have left I find it quite easy, and in fact over the last few years I have been able to give them to some SWP members, who can’t get them thorugh proper channels.
I remember having an argument with Martin Smith about this about five or six years ago, when I was active in the SWP, with an active Socialist Alliance and I was on the SA national exec. But no IBs were sent to Swindon. I asked Pete Jackson three times by phone for them to be put in the post to us, and e-mailed several times. But none were sent. I then phoned Martin, National Secretary, and he put the phone down on me, after saying we could have an IB when we got to conference.
Comment by Andy — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
Whereas I never found it hard, though that was much longer ago than you are talking about, I think. And since I left, I’ve never tried.
Comment by KrisS — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
BTW Kris I am not going to say what my source is for the harman document, except that it is not from anyone you would be likely to ever guess.
Comment by Andy — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
I can be a sucker for gossip, once I get sucked in, but it takes a bit to suck me in.
I probably don’t even know who the person you’re talking about is.
Comment by KrisS — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
It is a lot easier if you live in one of the main urban centres AND if you attend meetings.
Although I have heard some stories that this year getting the IBs has been more restricted than normal.
Comment by Andy — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
It’s difficult to know who to believe in all this. Do we take the word of a couple of ultra loyal SWP members of longstanding or do we trust a bureaucratised clique?
Comment by Liam — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
Interesting to see the name of my old mucker Pete ‘trainers’ Jackson one of the least political individuals I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. When I was active in the same branch as Pete he was hyper active and unthinkingly loyal to the leadershp but totally unable to even think about politics if that meant doing more than regurgitating the line as laid down by the CC. The same was true of his frends in the branch not one of whom remains active in politics today and now this leasant but ineffectual individual is one of the ‘elect’!
Comment by Mike — 11 December, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
Well, if you don’t attend meetings, why would you want the bulletins anyway?
Comment by KrisS — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
What of those members who work shifts or have other commitments and cannot regularly attend meetings? Are they to be disadvantaged in comparison to students and sociology lecturers?
Comment by Mike — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
Funny really, elsewhere I was just arguing the same point, about a different kind of meeting altogether.
People who can’t go to meetings are at a disadvantage, yes of course. I can’t imagine being able to be a member of something like the SWP and yet not joining in some kind of regular activity.
Comment by KrisS — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
“sad sectarian Dave Osler” to blame? As opposed to happy non-sectarian Andy Newman, who first published extracts from the SWP IB that alerted everyone else to the story? Or happy non-sectarian Liam Macuaid, who went ahead and published the entire document?
Oh, sorry, I forgot you two are close political associates of Rob and Kevin. Now there’s a coincidence ;-). I don’t mind taking the rap, really I don’t. But less of the gratuitous insults, please.
Comment by Sad Sectarian Dave Osler — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
That’s a point actually. I didn’t publish the letter, I merely supplied links to the bloggers who did. And we know who those bloggers are, don’t we, children?
Comment by Sad Sectarian Dave Osler — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
This one could (and should) run and run.
Hopefully truth will out and those who have been duped (by whomever), at least up till now, can make up their own minds.
Comment by Halshall — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
Dave Osler said: “sad sectarian Dave Osler” to blame? As opposed to happy non-sectarian Andy Newman …
Dave, it’s unfortunate that phrase was repeated here, but its appearance doesn’t imply that Andy endorses it.
I’m afraid the phrase is normal internal SWP-talk; I doubt that Kevin or Rob would use it today, but at the time it would have sounded suspicious within the SWP if they didn’t prefix your name with some such phrase (the same would apply to anyone outside the SWP who has been known to publish material critical of the SWP).
Sorry that you picked up a belated ricochet in the cross-fire. I don’t suppose it would help to say it was nothing personal.
Comment by babeuf — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:48 pm
I’m actually losing interest in all this. I must have got a life.
Comment by Phil — 11 December, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
#16 Phil,
surely the question should be Phil, ‘will there be life left in the Left after the Respect split?’
Let all those who aspire to a future socialist society fervantly continue to hope so and work to that end.
I know that risks sounding platitudinous, but don’t let that make you give up the struggle comrade.
Comment by Halshall — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:03 am
Liam (#7) said: It’s difficult to know who to believe in all this. Do we take the word of a couple of ultra loyal SWP members of longstanding or do we trust a bureaucratised clique?
Halshall (#14) said: Hopefully truth will out and those who have been duped (by whomever), at least up till now, can make up their own minds.
The major point here doesn’t require you to choose between Kevin and Rob on the one hand and various SWP CC members on the other.
That point is that SWP CC members who negotiated and agreed to a compromise at the Respect NC meeting of the 29 September then spoke at an SWP Party Council the following day, and not only failed to inform delegates - members of their own Party - of the compromise, but put forward a motion that was exactly the opposite.
There were a lot of witnesses to this, and the content of both meetings has been well attested (as I said, nothing to do with who to trust among a handful of individuals). For me, this was the beginning of the end - I couldn’t see how the political aims of the Party were compatible with such duplicity (note: I’m not a moralist - we can lie to the ruling class where tactically appropriate, but we’re not talking about the ruling class here).
Comment by babeuf — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:09 am
Getting sucked in for a moment - were Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden at the SWP party council meeting?
(Incidentally, it’s bothering me too - why, Andy, do you always capitalise the “O” in johng’s name”?)
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:14 am
We keep hearing how Harman is the great theoretical genius of “The Party”. Can we please nail this once and for all?
What use is this sort of “theory” to anyone?
Comment by Madam Miaow — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:19 am
#19
Were they at the Party Council? - Yes.
Why the capital “O”? Because Andy is a dactylographic disaster area. He often types two initial capitals instead of one. If you’re genuinely worried about this, I suggest you get him a Mavis Beacon CD for Christmas.
Comment by babeuf — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:20 am
I’m not so worried, no, just think it’s a bit odd.
So how did the other delegates to the party council react to their explanations of what had happened at the Respect NC meetings?
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:22 am
(my advice would be to write johng’s name as he does himself, then it wouldn’t happen)
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:23 am
Hi, Madam Miaow. (#20)
CH a “theoretical genius”? I don’t know about that, but he’s being astute enough in his theorising here, so long as you understand that to be the theory of ensuring that the Party’s full-time apparatus can still be paid for the forseeable future. Becoming more deeply immersed in Respect endangered that. Making a clean withdrawal from Respect also endangered it. Hence the present course of action. And who better to theorise that course of action than CH?
By the way, in case you don’t know, the figure involved is the best part of £1 million.
Comment by babeuf — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:28 am
KrisS (#22) said: So how did the other delegates to the party council react …?
Heckling mainly. Others were more pensive - I think most of these are no longer members.
Comment by babeuf — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:30 am
So the delegates to the party council heard what the two comrades said had happened, and chose not to believe them? Mostly, anyway?
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:32 am
Madam Miaow: … the wages of spin …
Great pun - worth using again if you can find the context.
Are you still doing stand-up?
By the way, if you drop Andy a line, he’ll give you my e-mail address. I had a request and didn’t know how to contact you (without broadcasting details).
Comment by babeuf — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:42 am
The “prestige of individuaul SWP members” may, indeed, be an issue: but so is the more important battle of Socialim against communalism. The SWP is hamstrung in that debate because of their previous support for communalism (aprticularly in muslim communities in Britain) - but now that they, thankfully, have begun to break from that, then maybe socialists can have a debate about whu communalism is the reactionary enemy of everything that working class socialists stand for?
Comment by Jim Denham — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:00 am
Andy denounced Harman for not addressing the arguments of his critics by quoting their actual words. However, it was not until I exposed his rank hypocrisy that Andy decided to actually print a substantial section of Harman’s draft. Unfortunately, Andy still only manages to quote an apparently small section of Harman’s draft. Furthermore, he devotes (by my-back-of-an-envelope calculations) exactly three and a half times as many words to crtiquing Harman as he printed of Harman’s own words. Andy, you can hardly boast about your “pluralist” attitude towards debate when you deny Harman equal opportunity to put his case. I look forward to reading the rest of Harman’s article. In the meantime, although I do have some problems with the extract, I find Harman’s case a damn sight more convincing than all his detractors on this blog.
Comment by Tom — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:15 am
At 10:44pm, Andy insisted he was “not going to say what my source is for the harman document, except that it is not from anyone you would be likely to ever guess.”
Andy, you boast about your having access to internal SWP documents before members manage to get to see them, and refuse to identify your sources because you know that leaking internal documents to the sworn enemies of the SWP (and that is what you are) constitutes grounds for expulsion. Liam pleads that we should all take the word of “ultra-loyal” SWP members like Ovenden and Hoveman when they deny the charges against them! This stretches the definition of ultra-loyalty somewhat. Anyone who examines the behavior of Ovenden, Wrack and Hoveman knows full well that no party describing itself as Leninist (legitimately or otherwise) would dream of tollerating such treacherous behavior. Even if SOME of the charges laid against these people do indeed remain unproven, there is more than enough admitted that these expulsions were always open and shut cases. And it is astonishing that members of Galloway’s fan club try to justify their scabbing on their own party. It exposes not only the lack of understanding of Leninism by those who have never pretended to be other than social democrats (if that: Galloway, Yaqoob, Miah), but also just how far members of the British section of Mandel’s group from Leninist norms. The fact that poisonous enemies of Harman (and the rest of the SWP central committee) boast about their infiltration of the SWP means that no SWP loyalist (nor anyone else) will take them at their word when swear that those who leak to them are not those being charged with leaking.
Comment by Tom — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:45 am
Quite incredible story about the bureacraic distribution of SWP IBs. How do members put up with this? Says something about their mentality and has all the hallmarks of a sect. This looks as if it’s going to another long post with lots of contributions. The number of contributions on this site seems to be inversely proportional to the importance of the subject to the class sruggle! One reason why sadly, the left in Britain is an insignificance to the working class and oppressed.
Comment by RedRaph — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:59 am
I should also say that the quote just provided by Andy (to the effect that his deep throat in the SWP is not someone “you would be likely to ever guess” suggests that his source must be relatively well known within the SWP, and possibly outwith it, and is also someone who has no been openly critical of the SWP majority line, is indeed probably on the surface a loyalist. Andy would, thus, be suggesting that his sources in the SWP lack the integrity to make their case logically, prefering instead to act as a cancer in the party. It also undermines all his criticisms of those who argued one thing inside Respect’s national council while putting an opposite case at the SWP’s party council. However, however damaging this interpretation of Andy’s words is, it is not by any means the only interpretation. It is possible that Andy hopes that Harman and others will look for the spy in the wrong places. It is certainly in Andy’s interests to make Harman and his closest confidante’s looking at each other with suspicion. Either way, there is no interpretation that can be put on Andy’s words that suggest his attitude towards the SWP rank and file is not motivated by anything other than dishonesty and malice. Harman and the rest of the SWP leadership are going to have to find a means of constructing their party that does not rely on ultra-loyalty. Leaks in the party are going to be a fact of life from here on in. The best defense is now to take on Galloway’s hangers-on in open debate. Let Andy’s leakers put up or shut up. Open up the pages of SW, SR and ISJ to the anti-Leninists. Let them make their case, and see how far it gets them. If they have any support, then let them flush themselves out. Let them vote with their feet. The SWP will be better off without these people. An open debate will allow SWP loyalists to refine the best of Harman’s arguments. Harman should not simply tollerate criticism of his document, and subsequent documents, but positively welcome them.
Comment by Tom — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:05 am
Christ,
I can’t keep up with this.
Whose ‘Babeuf’ again? And the ‘East is Red’ chap?
Anybody fancy doing a Cliff Notes version of all of this? The British working class would be incredibly grateful for the time and effort.
Comment by Darren — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:42 am
IB’s go out with papers. “Incredible Bureacratic distribution”. How else would they be distributed and in “unbureacratic” distribution preferable? What would that be like?
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:37 am
JohnG
Well they could be posted to individual members. This is the way most membership based organisations work.
If you live in a small town, actually you often get say 20 papers sent to you every week by post, and the IBs are not sent to you - from my experience.
But in the larger urban connurbations, IB distribution is reliant on someone getting them to the members, which normally only happens if the members go to meetings. You know that many of the SWP’s most rooted working class militants don’t go to meetings. LOng term trade unionists, people with familly commitments, eve people who are a bit tired and don’t go to meetings, or a bit dissillussioned at the momebt - none of them usualy get IBs, under the current distribution method.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Well its not my experiance Andy. If you are in that situation, you ask you get. Sending to each individual member would be enourmously costly. In any case this is a somewhat surreal discussion where even the way we distribute our own material to our own members is now being held up as an example of a monstrous conspiracy.
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:12 am
It is not a “monstrous conspiracy”, it is just indicative of an atrophied culture of internal discussion, and a low priority given to democratic participation and empowerment by the centre.
Your argument about postage is ridiculous, as a member you get mailed stuff frequently about the appeal, about marxism, occassional mailings with petitions about various disputes, etc. Most members pay high subs as well, which would presumably covert the postage.
In my experience actualy if you ask, you don’t get. BUt that is not the point, you shouldn’t need to ask. And the members who are less intergrated into the day to day life of the branches (often the case with some of the most well established militants and campaigners) wouldn’t necessarily know the IBs were avialable to ask about them.
The result is that people don’t feel part of the decision making process, and end up with a passive realtionship with the party.
Comment by andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:22 am
Internal Party discussions and collective decision making revolve around participation in the internal life of the Party. My experiance of periods of inactivity is people going out of their way nonetheless to ensure that I was kept involved and given such material. To hold this up as a symptom of atrophy or anything else is an example of the ludicrously hysterical atmosphere being generated by this discussion.
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:27 am
In any event this is trolling by you to divert the discussion onto a peripheral aspect.
What do you think of the fact that the SWP CC lied in party Notes about why Kev and Rob were expelled?
This in particular was a brazen lie: “Also over the last year there have been a number of meetings between the CC and Rob and Kevin. At these meetings the CC raised major concerns with the way both these comrades worked in Respect”
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:34 am
Johng
Give us a your constructive SWP view and stop retreating into the long grass
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:41 am
Its not me who raised the issue Andy its you. So its not trolling. Personally I think the letters are evidence that Kevin and Rob were moving away from our politics, and I think this was probably clear to those involved at the time. Given that little more then a few weeks later we have letters written to the East London Advertiser desribing the SWP as a group of sectarians trying to take over TH Respect, I think discussions of the ins and outs of how these political differences came up is largely superfluous.
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:01 am
So to clarify.
You regard the e-mails as evidence that Kev and Rob were moving away from the politics of the SWP - well you are entitled to an eccentric interpreation if you wish.
But, the issues are not so simply dismissed are they?
Martin Smith wrote in party NOtes that “over the last year there have been a number of meetings between the CC and Rob and Kevin. At these meetings the CC raised major concerns with the way both these comrades worked in Respect”
But Rob and Kev say that there were no such meetings.
And what do you say about the fact that the SWP CC did not inform Party Council on 30th Sept of their own willingness to compromise at the Respect NC on the 29th , and the fact that Lindsey German had told the Respect NC that George’s letter was not a left/right issue?
You say: “I think discussions of the ins and outs of how these political differences came up is largely superfluous”
But it is only superflous if you wish to bury your head in the sand and keep the idea that the SWP CC handled this sensibly.
During those few weeks the SWP CC managed to lose political trust and credibility with almost every ally they had in Respect. Of course to discuss that is superflous if your aim is to preserve the prestige of the SWP’s leadership, and you have no interest in either truth or building long term relationships.
Welcome to Gerry Healy’s world, John.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:15 am
“Thousands of people with a record of activity in the working class, anti-war and anti-racist movements had access to all the different arguments and followed them attentively before coming to a conclusion. They decided overwhelmingly that they would not be “Russian dolls” for Galloway as he tried to turn Respect into a vehicle for furthering the political careers of people who shared few of its original values.”
This is from Harman’s document and what a bizarre statement it is.
My experinence in talking to many SWP members in the last few months is that they haven’t read the papers from both sides - most hadn’t read Galloway’s original letter but were happy to join in the slander. One long-standing SWP member in Manchester said he ‘wouldn’t read anything written by a homophobe like Galloway’.
The documents from both sides of the dispute were certainly not circulated within the SWP. And if “thousands of people with a record of activity in the working class, anti-war and anti-racist movements had access to all the different arguments and followed them attentively before coming to a conclusions” why did so few of those thousands fall for the cynical witch-hunt nonsense and sign the petition - or more importantly, if they did think it was a wicth-hunt why didn’t they bother to try and gain allies for themselves against this serious attack?
If thousands “had access to all the different arguments and followed them attentively” and had decioded not to be ‘russian dolls’ surely they would have been signing up to Respect-SWP in droves and then flocking to the Westminster Conference to show their support as Observers.
The trouble for Chris Harman is that once again reality become a very inconvenient truth.
Comment by Clive Searle — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:24 am
JohnG
“Kevin and Rob were moving away from our politics”
There is nothing to indicate that other than working for GG for 18months. A situation that JR and The SWP cc accepted until the August document from GG.
You are one of the biggest trollers on this blog when you dont want to face the facts
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:24 am
1. Re johng and Andy’s differing views on the internal bulletin: my experience, FWIW, was that it all depended on where you happened to live and how well the local distribution network was functioning. Cock-up rather than conspiracy.
2. Re Tom’s comments on ‘Leninism’. I think he confuses the SWP’s bureaucratic centralism with genuine Leninism. The SWP base their organisation on Leninism in its most restrictive form - that adopted as a temporary measure at the Tenth Congress in 1921 in conditions of collapse following the Civil War. This was NOT the form that Leninism usually took (see Liebman, ‘Leninism Under Lenin’).
3. Re johng’s comments on Rob and Kevin. I’ve never met Kevin but I did work with Rob for a couple of years in south London. He was a dyed-in-the-wool party loyalist. I find it implausible that he would have “moved away” from SWP politics, and indicative of the sectarianism and incompetence of the current leadership that he could be lost to the party.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:28 am
Thanks jay.
I never alleged a conspiracy - but the fact that distribution is so haphazzard is evidence that the SWP doesn’t take internal democracy seriously.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:31 am
#46 Yes, I’d agree with that Andy, at least during my period of membership (mid-80s to mid-90s) democracy was not exactly top of the agenda, and was often seen as a distraction.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:37 am
There is no evidence that Rob and Kevin’s politics had or have changed one iota in terms of their adherence to revolutionary socialism. This is an old, trusted technique of people who don’t want to debate the actual issues at stake, which in this case are the rationality or otherwise of the SWP leadership’s actions in the dispute that tore Respect apart. If you want to divert attention from that, invent non-existent differences and repeat them insistently to such an extent that maybe someone will believe they are true and that they are the ‘real issue’, not what the dispute was actually about.
What political differences with revolutionary socialism are revealed by Rob and Kevin’s letters? I can’t see them.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:38 am
Andy,
On 15/11/07 you started a thread in the following way…
“The following article by Mark Steel was written for the SWP’s Pre-conference Internal Bulletin (IB). It has now appeared on the Urban 75 site, so I reproduce it here. I would not have published it without Mark’s permission before it had entered the public domain.”
Have you gained Chris Harman’s permission to produce extracts from his draft before reaching the public domain? If not, why do you afford a different standard of courtesy to Mark Steel?
And whilst on the topic, why have you only produced a small extract of CH’s draft yet the whole content of RH’s and KO’s contributions? How can you accuse others of being manipulative if you act in the same way?
Would the production of the whole draft not at least enable posters to discuss some politics rather than reducing every thing to the level of sectarian gossip which ultimately damages all of us on the left?
Comment by stuart — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
Re #42 (Andy): “But Rob and Kev say that there were no such meetings”. And we are supposed to believe the gallowayites rather than the SWP because..?
Andy: “During those few weeks the SWP CC managed to lose political trust and credibility with almost every ally they had in Respect.” Excluding Andy, obviously, since he wasn’t a member of Respect until a few weeks ago.
By the way, did you ask for Harman’s permission to publish out-of-context bits and pieces from what you yourself states is a draft, circulated within the SWP and their international comrades?
Comment by Concerned socialist — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
My problem is Andy, that first of all, Kevin himself has talked on this blog about meetings with Martin Smith. Its very unclear to me what counts as a meeting and what doesn’t count as a meeting. He was working for George which is fine (although after this, I think we should not allow comrades to get into this kind of situation), but there seems to have been an overblown idea about the his consequent political role vis. the party (this is not me being nasty its just how it looks to me). There then seems to have been an idea that their position meant they were going to rescue the party from itself etc. This is just all a bit wierd to me.
Secondly however, however many meetings, conversations or discussions did or did not happen, the notion that anybody whether a “dyed in the wool party loyalist” (not my description) or someone who is not, cannot be pulled politically, is simply alien to my idea of politics. Effectively this kind of talk is designed to introduce mystical ideas of infallibility, which equally mysteriously, only ever apply to long standing comrades who fall out with the SWP. When the explanation as to why there was no warning of the bust up to come is that these comrades were not ’spies’ for either side, I would get extremely concerned. Its also true though that the letter to the East London Advertiser simply makes any other discussion irrelevent. For all the talk of ‘the tradition of Foot and Hallas’ writing a letter like that, and suddenly turning on a dime like that, simply because you felt you’d been dealt with a bit unfairly is not part of the tradition of Foot and Hallas. As a departure its not an improvement.
In any case I don’t understand what the purpose is, in a blog which clearly is now concerned with Respect Renewal, endlessly having discussions on whether or not the CC were unfair to Kevin and Rob. They’ve made their political choice. Whats the political point of this kind of a discussion? The pretext was a leaked article by Chris Harman. A tiny bit is produced out of context and for the rest its an enquiry into the relationship between the CC and two expelled comrades. Again, whats all this for?
The difficulty for many comrades was that whilst they felt very sad that such longstanding comrades were expelled, they really were not convinced by the political arguments put foward, and nor were they very happy with the comrades behaviour afterwards.
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:29 pm
I am not a ” lumpem” uneducated blue collar worker. I am angry part of the masses that have put their lifetime to loyalty to socialism.
We had hopes and still do hold to the aspirations of broad left and progressive movement ideals. It might be okay for you to attempt having civilised debate with the SWP.Not me.
I can only express my anger as I see many of us slipping into what Thatcher coined as the under class,
and part blame for this lies squarely at the door of the SWP for causing the current organisational mess in Respect.
The SWP are the brutal sado-masochists of everything political in lust that we don’t want in our movement.
You get Johng trying to whip us into believing that all of us have got in all wrong. He is living in a parallel world.
And you get people saying more or less that people like me should not be allowed into the blog because I am trolling. I find the troll aside insulting.
I cannot express my anger and mockery on people that obviously troll to evade the truth suffiently. Get used to it. “We are many you are few” and you are going to get you come uppance more and more because your trolling lies and distortions are being exposed on this blog
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
Concerned socialist
There were hardly any such meetings over the course of 18 months. The outcome of one of the two or three, in February of this year, was genuine shock on the part of some Central Committee members that John Rees was simply not talking to George Galloway. When I told Chris Harman this informally he went very quiet and said “well, I don’t know the facts about that”.
Johng and others who have some familiarity with the way the leadership of the SWP is currently configured know in their heart of hearts that that situation is more than plausible.
As for later meetings as the crisis erupted - I had one meeting with Martin Smith on 23 August, an impromptu discussion with him and Lindsey German on 26 August at the Bookmarks garden party, a phone call with Martin Smith the following day (during which, in a surreal moment, he pretended he was talking to a PCS member because John Rees had entered the room at his end) and then nothing until Martin Smith and Chris Bambery met me and Rob for four to five minutes on 11 October to give us an ultimatum - walk out of George Galloway’s employ or be expelled from the SWP.
The central point we made in reponse was that either us resigning our jobs or being expelled from the SWP would signal a split in Respect, something which we urged the CC to avoid. We wrote on 13 October:
‘We reiterate: for us to resign from working for George Galloway would be to leave Respect’s sole MP without a political staff. It would signal a widening chasm at the heart of Respect - something we do not believe is inevitable. It would weaken Respect, when the public position of the party is to strengthen it. It would undermine our party - a strategically central concentration of revolutionaries in Europe. For all these reasons we have decided not to resign either our jobs or party memberships and we would ask you, in the interests of the party, to reconsider the ultimatum you gave us two days ago.’
We also challenged the instrumentalist and bizarre reasoning the CC had conjured up to justify its change of line.
‘In some ways worse, the assessment of the period and our perspective have been conjured up ex post facto in order to justify a lurch in the line taken towards Respect. On 7 September the CC was emphasising the “Brown bounce” and the ongoing withdrawal of British troops from Iraq as factors vitiating Respect’s immediate electoral prospects and, through an unsupportable chain of suppositions, as the explanation for George Galloway’s supposed turn to an alliance with right-wing/”communalist” forces. By 8 October the Brown bounce, such as it was, had splattered and his ill-starred trip to Basra, together with the successful Stop the War demonstration to parliament, had underscored the ongoing salience of the Iraq war, which we had highlighted on 7 September contra the CC. Changing the view of reality to shore up an analysis that no longer fits is the kind of sectarian, self-deluding method our tendency was founded upon rejecting.’
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
On the question of publishing.
Stuart/ concerned: I have no wish to get comrades in trouble with the party, that is why i am reticent in publishing stuff by grassroots memebrs of the SWP for internal consumption.
This document is neither written by a grassroots member, nor is it for internal consumption only, indeed even before I got it the document was already circulating internationally among comrades not in the SWP or its sister groups.
JOhn G:
This is rubbish. The whole point of my argument is precisely that comrades can be pulled by political pressues, the SWP CC and full timers are pulled by the short-term institutional interests of the SWP and their personal prestige within th organistain into making judgements that are not necessarily in the best interests of the SWP, Respect or the workers movement. The “mystical infallibility” is the myth that the SWP CC handled this crisis well.
Actually, The extract I published is not “out of context”, it is a complete and contextualy non-dependant subsection of Harman’s document.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
John, you make a passing reference to my comment about Rob in your latest post, and implicitly castigate me for invoking “mystical ideas of infallibility”. I think you miss the point. I was simply saying that from what I know of Rob I find the accusations about his shift of political allegiance implausible. You may disagree, but then I find your tendency to take these things on the word of the current CC (rather than on the basis of any hard evidence) rather depressing. By the way, I would suggest that an inclination to fall for “mystical ideas of infallibility” rather more accurately characterises the pro-CC side in this debate!
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 12 December, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Just to clarify on the question of political pulls. My point was that where you have comrades operating in the movement those pulls are always real ones. In a situation where individuals position in the movement is dependent on their employment with leading figures within that movement these pulls will be very strong indeed, particularly when there is, by all accounts, tension building between them. I would imagine its quite a difficult situation when it gradually becomes clear that such comrades are increasingly not behaving like SWP members, but effectively representing the other side of an argument outside the SWP, inside the SWP, and increasingly see this as their political function. At the same time I suspect that this was not consious for the comrades concerned (its something that happens), but in the situation of deepening political tensions I therefore don’t find it very surprising that there was a breakdown of trust.
That a very short period after this the comrades could sit quite happily alongside George calling the SWP ‘Russian Dolls’ (not just the leadership mind you but locally active comrades in a meeting where their arguments were being attacked), could obviously be deeply involved in organising the internal faction fight in Respect, etc, raises rather serious questions about the proceeding period for most SWP members. That all this is justified on the basis that a few leading SWP members were a bit curt with George Galloway, is to me a bit disorientating.
But again, more politically, Kevin’s arguments which he reproduces above I just don’t find convincing. They seem to be premissed on the idea that the SWP was moving away from United Front work politically (I don’t buy this), an argument which could then be used to pretend that it was not the case that part of the insecurity that led to the bust up was the knowledge that we faced in the short term a difficult situation. And with George attempting to blame us for this, and it obviously being the case that Kevin had bought George’s line on this, and it equally, more and more obviously being the case that a fight was in the offing, I really don’t see how the Party could do anything but ask them to resign those positions.
This would be entirely normal in situations where comrades face similar difficulties in the Trade Union Movement. It does’nt mean its ever a pleasent situation to be in (I wouldn’t wish it on anyone) but its not bizzarely exceptional. The other side of it is that any comrade who has’nt experianced being pulled in this way has probably never been involved in any meaningful political work. But then thats why in the SWP traditional we believe you need organisation as well as politics.
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
Yawn!
Comment by Santa Claws — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
Frankly I dont quite see the point or sense in continually raking over the flak that has flown between all sides in this tiresome acrimonious convoluted perverse dysfunctional faction fight.
Isnt it more important to sort the present riduculous and wholly unsustainable and untenable situation whereby we have two groups calling themselves RESPECT and ‘not the finished article’ and neither side seems to appreciate the insanity of the situation. Sort it out!
Comment by Santa Claws — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
Santa, what’s the point in intervening in a discussion to tell everyone how bored you are with it? Is someone FORCING you to log onto this bit of the blog?!? BTW - while you’re here - are you taking requests for presents at the moment?
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
Santa
My boy wants a playmobil bat from you, but this is a bit of a problem because Playmobil don’t make a bat. He is confident your elves will make one, do you have any suggestions what we should do?
And yes, the name and other issues need to be sorted out, but probably we wn’t get any sense sorted until the new year, when everyone has taken stock of where they are and where they want to be.
And yes, the detail is tedious, but Harman’s as yet unpublished document is an escalation of hostilities, so it does need to be addressed politically. I suggest that you just skip the posts about resepct if you are not interested, plenty of other stuff gets published on here.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
#28 Usual denunciation of Galloway from Jim Denham - gets a bit boring for the 100th time;
but what we all want to know is whether the AWL decided at the weekend to instruct their members to join SWP-Respect, to offer their ’solidarity’ and ‘help’ in the battle against ‘the muslim comunalists’? Will Jim himself put his money where his mouth is and join up?
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 12 December, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
Johng
Don’t let the facts get in the way of dogmatism. How exactly was John Rees’s refusal to engage in any meaningful discussion with Rob and myself about strategy and tactics in Respect part of keeping the two of us on the straight and narrow (of course, Rees and the CC don’t require such an anchor - it’s only the benighted individual comrades who face the evil influences of “the real world”)?
As for moving away from revolutionary politics, John. You really are becoming more and more pompous. You have no evidence for that whatsoever. We disagreed with the CC splitting Respect and were expelled because it was necessary in order to carry this ill-conceived split through. That does not amount to moving away from revolutionary politics.
As for our behaviour after our expulsions: what appears to irk is the fact that we have refused to be driven out of politics. You appear to be going along with the quite absurd line of the CC that the proper behaviour of an expelled member of the SWP is to retire, profess their undying fealty to the organisation and to quietly plead for readmission.
Well, we’ve refused to do that. That is not some crime against the SWP or its tradition.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Andy #54,
On 6/3/07 you wrote this…
“I wish to apologise for publishing what I believed to be a press release from the Independent Irish left, whereas it was in fact a draft document in circulation that had not been agreed by all the parties involved.”
So you take particular care in reproducing draft documents? What assurances do you have that the CH document has been ‘agreed by all the parties involved’?
And to take up your reply to me, you write..
“Stuart/ concerned: I have no wish to get comrades in trouble with the party, that is why i am reticent in publishing stuff by grassroots memebrs of the SWP for internal consumption.”
In what way is Steel at risk of ‘getting into trouble’ in the way that Harman isn’t?
Comment by stuart — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:27 pm
Darren 33#” Christ, I can’t keep up with this…Anybody fancy doing a Cliff Notes version of all of this?
Who can? I suspect Andy thinks that his latest yellow-press style expose has some damaged the SWP but this is a complete mess.
The only deciferable item in today’s Socialist DisUnity blog is the claim that Rob and Kev somehow did not have major differences with SWP position in Respect and as employees for Galloway they had not put themselves, as party members, in a compromising position. Is this a joke?
Comment by Kevin Murphy — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
Stuart
The Irish document was entirley different, as it was a draft agreement about a joint slate in elections between socialists and progressives from different traditions and organistains that had not in fact been agreed, or even seen by all the people whose signatures were appended to it.
It was sent to me in good faith by an Irish comrade ho believed it was a document ready for release. When i was advised of the mistake I withdrw it from the public domain.
My experience of the SWP is that no-one is going to get in trouble for publishing something that argues that the CC are entirely justified and vindicated, particularly if the person publsihing it is Chris harman. Harman was happy enough with this document in its current form to distribute it widely enough so that it came to me; and not from one of the more obvious contacts that I have.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Well Kevin, to me your letter below, published in the East London Advertiser, was simply a right wing attack, not only on the SWP, but on councilers with politics to the left of you. I’m sure you don’t see it that way. But its certainly nothing to do with the ‘traditions of Hallas and Cliff”. I include the reply to it from those who were attacked in the letter you signed.
Galloway’s Respect party split by SWP’s ’stranglehold’
05 November 2007
IT IS extremely regrettable that a fundamental division has occurred in the Respect between the leadership of a very small organisation called the Socialist Workers Party and almost everyone else in the party (East London Advertiser, November 1).
The SWP acquired a stranglehold over our organisation, which has caused a deep rift at national level.
Our MP George Galloway (Bethnal Green and Bow) raised criticisms of the direction the national organisation was heading in August. Instead of a reasoned response from senior SWP members, the criticisms were met with growing hysteria.
This has finally come to a head, with the SWP leadership seeking to undermine the democratic structures of Respect and abusing many of its leading members.
The SWP has also sowed the seeds of division which have seen four Tower Hamlets councillors turn their backs on Respect after trying to stage a coup against the democratically-elected group leader.
Two of these councillors are SWP members and the other two are the SWP’s closest allies.
If they had any principles, they would stand as SWP candidates. But they know they would get no votes.
That’s why they are also trying to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats on Tower Hamlets council in a completely unprincipled attempt to gain personal advantage.
An attempt to achieve an amicable settlement was undermined when the SWP leadership walked away from talks. There is no alternative now but to separate from the SWP.
We are holding a Saturday conference in the Bishopsgate Institute in the City on November 17. Speakers include George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob.
Kevin Ovenden and Rob Hoveman
Parliamentary assistants to George Galloway, MP
House of Commons, Westminster
Cllr Abjol Miah
Respect Group Leader
Tower Hamlets Council
IT IS indeed extremely regrettable that a “fundamental division” has occurred within the Respect Party.
But it is not true to say that it is between the leadership of the SWP and everyone else in the party, as Rob Hoveman, Kevin Ovenden and Abjol Miah state(see Galloway’s Respect party split by SWP’s ’stranglehold’, Advertiser website letter sent last night).
A small number of people, including Hoveman, Ovenden and Miah, have split from Respect after trampling on every democratic norm and are now openly sponsoring a new and rival organisation.
A thousand members of Respect both inside and outside the SWP have signed a statement during the week demanding our democratic structures are adhered to, including that the long planned, democratically constituted national conference going ahead.
The conference is the correct forum for any discussion to be had. Decisions on the future of the organisation lie with its membership.
We have not acted hysterically. We are not the ones who have called an alternative conference on the same day as the scheduled national conference.
Nor are we the ones who have changed the locks on the Respect offices in Bethnal Green.
Respect is a coalition, born out of the hugely successful anti-war movement.
We are proud of our achievements in Tower Hamlets, brought about by the work of many people representing different strands within the organisation.
We have always striven at every level to ensure every aspect of the coalition is represented and challenge anyone to show this has not been the case.
Sadly, with success comes opportunism.
Over the past two-and-a-half years, Respect in Tower Hamlets has been subjected to cynical membership drives from individuals whenever there is an internal election or candidate selection meeting in the offing.
Such meetings are then packed by people, some of whom have admitted they do not know why they are there!
George Galloway and his supporters have begun to use the term SWP pejoratively to encompass anyone who does not agree with them.
The “fundamental split” in Respect is largely due to disagreement over democratic processes.
It was not the SWP, but this sort of anti-democratic behaviour which drove councillors Lutfa Begum, Ahmed Hussain, Rania Khan and Ahmed Hussain to resign the Respect whip on Tower Hamlets council.
Our vision of Respect remains that of a pluralist organisation to the Left of New Labour, against war, privatisation and discrimination, upholding the structures of democracy.
We will continue to fight for this as we always have done.
Cllr Oliur Rahman (Tower Hamlets Council)
Jackie Tuner
Joint Branch Secretary, Tower Hamlets Respect
Brokesley-street, Mile End
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
*56
And I thought I wrote long-winded shallow rubbish.
Comment by Barbara Cartland — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
“councilers with politics to the left of you”! John, you must be mad.
Ahmed Hussein - who said the main form of racism in Britain is between different black and minority ethnic groups, to the left of us?
Lutfa Begum - who told the east London GLA selection meeting that she was sick of the number of eastern Europeans coming here, to the left of us?
Oliur Rahman - who’s stated reason for resigning the whip is his failure to remove Abjol Miah as the group leader, voted in as against Oli by the members at an AGM, to the left of us?
But then again, John, facts are not your strong point, are they.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
It is useful to remind ourselves of what Galloway was saying in the summer of this year. “without the SWP there would be no anti-war movement in this country” being one almost surreal quote, given current contretemps.
The point about this being that at this time, whatever backstage animosities that existed, these were rightly subordinated, not to say marginalised, by wider more political realities. What changed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SmtLrmPDao
Comment by johng — 12 December, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
John, what changed was that following the poor performance in Southall and the factional approach to the selection of the candidate in Shadwell, George Galloway wrote a letter to the Respect NC outlining some organisational proposals to revamp Respect. Four days before that letter was written, Martin Smith told a caucus of 20 or so London SWP members that if such a letter were written the party would “go nuclear” - and so it did.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
john
No one has argued that the SWP is without good points.
The SWP represents a considerable investment in cadre development and theoretical development, and has a large number of dedicated and organisaed militants. It very strong side is organisatioonal ability and elan that are great for getting campiagns up and running over the short haul. No one denies these facts.
A key weakness of the SWP, and this is often acknowledged within the party as well, is with sustaining activity in campaigns and maintaining relationships with other people over the long haul. As the temptation is to drop the last campiagn and move on to the next one, what did Cliff call it, Campaignitis?
Now to a certain degree this strength and weakness are related, but at root there is often a clash between the long-term strategic interest of patient wowrk woth people who are never going to join, and the short term organisational tactical interest: where there are a lot of full timers to feed, papers to sell, bums to be put on seats, etc.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
You are selective with the facts and that has never changed Johng
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
Ovenden wrote “You appear to be going along with the quite absurd line of the CC that the proper behaviour of an expelled member of the SWP is to retire, profess their undying fealty to the organisation and to quietly plead for readmission.”
Not that you ever did anything along those lines Kev?
Comment by Mike — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
Talking of Shadwell, this made me laugh from Chris harman:
I assume that among those who don’t have such a modicum of political analysis, he had in mind John Rees. Listen Rees’s speech about Respect at Marxism 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QilzH55DI_0
He describes the Southall by-election as “Red Thursday”, and predicts that Respect will make Gordon Brown regret having called the by-election. Rees describes the by-election as crucial for Respect as a “springboad for the GLA elections”. He clearly thought they were going to do much better than they did. But at the time he was speaking thr Brown bounce was in full flow, and he knew how little time there was for the by-election.
Incidently neither the Brown bounce nor the short campaign stopped the BNP retaining their deposit in tSedgefield on the same day.
Comment by Andy — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
Andy
Rob and I both criticised the notion of a “Brown bounce” at the London-wide SWP meeting on 7 September. I cited John Curtice’s analysis that showed a) the polls overstating Labour’s actual support and b) the bulk of the poll gain having come in the three weeks after Blair’s departure, with a secular decline following that. I remember saying “things are likely so turn ugly for Brown very quickly”.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
‘Right wing Tower Hamlets New Labourite John Grey ‘(actually spelt Gray) is a thoroughly nice bloke. I bet he’ll p*ss himself when he sees he’s been mentioned in internal SWP discussions.
Comment by another Tom — 12 December, 2007 @ 3:51 pm
From this month’s Red Pepper
CAR CRASH ON THE LEFT
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article731.html
Comment by Paris — 12 December, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Andy #65,
You say..
“It was sent to me in good faith by an Irish comrade who believed it was a document ready for release. When i was advised of the mistake I withdrw it from the public domain.”
Without wishing to labour this point too far, the CH document is not ‘ready for release’. The fact that some individuals may have seen it does not make it so.
My argument is that you purport to host honest debate under a banner of ’socialist unity’ yet you most clearly operate in such a way as to deny anything resembling a level playing field. Do you believe that you act fairly or in the spirit of unity?
It would be far better if you were honset enough to declare your partisanship and state very clearly that you are an anti-SWP blog with an objective of undermining the SWP because they ‘deserve’ it because….
And then make it clear that you will apply different standards and criteria in respect of how you report things.
Comment by stuart — 12 December, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Four days before that letter was written, Martin Smith told a caucus of 20 or so London SWP members that if such a letter were written the party would “go nuclear”
I might have missed this in the melee, but the timing is new to me. The ‘nuclear’ threat (or promise…) came before Smith had seen the letter? If so, what does ’such a letter’ mean?
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
Phil
My apologies if this was not clear. What happened was that at an SWP caucus on Sunday 19 August discussed the fact that George Galloway was reportedly planning to write a document outlining his concerns about the state of Respect following Southall and Shadwell. No one had seen the letter: it was sent to the Respect NC only on the afternoon of 23 August. Nevertheless, Martin Smith told the meeting that if George Galloway did write such a document then the party would “go nuclear”. In other words, his position was to “go nuclear” even before he or anyone else had seen the document. So much for pursuing a calm and considered course.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
#66 - Jackie Turner et al’s letter.
“A thousand members of Respect both inside and outside the SWP have signed a statement during the week demanding our democratic structures are adhered to, including that the long planned, democratically constituted national conference going ahead.”
A provable lie, since of course anyone reading the statement (still on the SWP’s website here http://www.swp.org.uk/respect_appeal.php) can see that a great many of the signatories of this petition against the imaginary witchhunt were not Respect members, which is why they identify themselves as ‘Respect supporter’.
Amazing that such a brazen, obvious and verifiable lie can appear in a letter signed by SWP members and sympathisers maligning expelled members to a bourgeois newspaper. Since the lie is indeed verifiable, it publicly taints the people who put their name to it. Not very smart.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 12 December, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
Ah, I did not notice that the extended list of signatories has now been removed, and replaced by the words “The appeal has been signed by an additional 1,139 people”. Which of course obscures the embarassing fact that a great many of the signatories do not identify themselves as Respect members.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 12 December, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
# 84 well Ian that what we call “switch doctoring” The Swp cc are found out again.
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
Kevin, you have been a very good comrade. I especially appreciate your input into the SWP. But why is it necessary for the CC to discuss strategy with you and Rob? We elected the CC democratically to lead the SWP. Why then should two members of the SWP think they can influence the CC and party strategy when the vast majority of us want the CC, who we elected democratically, to make decisions about party strategy?
There are democratic channels of feedback to the CC in the SWP. What happens on the ground and branch activity very much influences party strategy. But I have never heard of and nor do I accept that the CC should be held accountable to individual comrades who disagree with strategy. If that were that case then any member could ring up and request the CC change it’s decision. That is not democracy - it lobbying by individuals to change party strategy.
On the issue of access to IB’s. According to the membership of the branch enough copies are sent out with SW. It’s up to the branch to distribute them. Every branch I’ve been a member of has had a system of dropping off papers to comrades that can’t or won’t make the branch meetings. We take this very seriously because members who can’t make the branch meeting, for what ever reason, should not miss out. I have personally dropped off papers and IB’s so I know this to work in practice. As for posting out IB’s, some members do not want to receive information by post in case it falls into the wrong hands, exposing their address and other personal information. We don’t post out SW to everyone even though it is very important that comrades receive SW regularly as it contains information that helps inform the issues raised in the IB. Considering that joining the SWP involves attending meetings and being involved in activity rather than sitting in an armchair posting on blogs there are plenty of opportunities to receive an IB from fellow members.
Posting Harman’s article isn’t going to inform debate on this blog because Andy’s aim is to attack the SWP in order to excuse the fact that RR split Respect and was helped by two very good comrades who thought they could dictate to the CC. Thankfully, democracy in the SWP prevents this type of sectarian factionalism.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
Unity is Strength said:
“But why is it necessary for the CC to discuss strategy with you and Rob? We elected the CC democratically to lead the SWP. Why then should two members of the SWP think they can influence the CC and party strategy when the vast majority of us want the CC, who we elected democratically, to make decisions about party strategy?”
And therein lies so much of the problem: it is unnecessary for the CC to discuss with comrades who are centrally involved in an area of work the strategy and tactics in that area of work. Why? Because they are elected to lead and that means making decisions which the party follows. And this policy is conjured up… without reference to the experience or reflections of the comrades involved.
There was a time in the SWP when a high pitched exuberant voice would have cried out with its inimitable interpretation of the Third Thesis on Feuerbach: “but who teaches the teachers!”
Now, we have the sorry sight of SWP members believing that it is Leninist to regard one part of the party as standing separate, over and above the rest while gifted with a privileged access to truth.
Pitiable.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
Martin Smith told the meeting that if George Galloway did write such a document then the party would “go nuclear”.
How did Smith know what kind of concerns Galloway had? (Setting aside the actual substance of the document, which - like you - I think could very easily have been handled in a constructive and comradely way.) I’m starting to get this picture of Galloway calling Smith’s bluff by producing something that couldn’t possibly call for such an extreme reaction - “Comrades! We demand Fairtrade coffee (caffeinated and decaffeinated) at all NC meetings from now on! If this demand is not met we shall not hesitate to mutter discontentedly, and reserve the right to pass notes around when John Rees is speaking!”
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
The SWPs differences with Galloway are a red herring as are the expulsions of members in Respect strongholds. On the basis of a false perspective the CC has been haemorraging membership hand over fist. Driving members into the ground and making them feel inadequate as Mark Steel says. Obviously then, those who were actually successfully carrying out SWP policy in those areas where the SWP perspective was actually though accidentaly correct were bound to fall under suspicion. Either they were opportunistically accommodating to reformism or they were police agents. What else could possibly epxlain their success whilst everybody else was going under? The tortured explanations of how comrades have changed over night by the likes of JohnG are revolting and an abdication of a revolutionists duty to get to the bottom of things not to mention very irritating. That is how centrism works and what centrist paranoia is.
Comment by David Ellis — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
some members do not want to receive information by post in case it falls into the wrong hands, exposing their address and other personal information
Good grief. Can somebody take this person on one side and explain that
a) we’re not in a pre-revolutionary period; possibly as a result, the SWP is neither illegal nor clandestine
b) the SWP engages in organisational and agitational work, in which members are expected to participate
c) even if you’re sworn to secrecy vis-a-vis SWP membership, it’s a bit hard to agitate and organise without letting on that you’re a member of some organisation (if only the sectoral organisation or united front that you’re trying to build)
d) the Special Branch employ people who spend their working lives tracing which Leninist sect is involved in which sectoral organisation or united front, making it a bit childish to think you can shield your involvement with the SWP from the prying eyes of the state by not having the paper delivered at home.
Alternatively, have you thought of using plain brown envelopes?
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
#89
Very funny ha ha!
The original docs were described as forgeries in an in-depth article in the Guardian well before 2005, quoting three top independent experts in the authenticiy of such docs.
And how do you think GG won his defamatory case in the High Court against the Telegraph ?
By offering the Judge shares in Haliburton ?
Comment by Halshall — 12 December, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
Kevin, you and Rob are teaching the teachers? And you’re the one criticising the CC for being arrogant and unaccountable! What about all the many members of Respect and SWP who disagree with your perspective do we just knuckle under and accept your decision to defy the CC and carry on working for Galloway because you say it’s right. Who elected you to make those decisions?
@ 91. So you don’t think it’s important to respect the wishes of people who don’t want to receive information through the post? If, as you rightly claim, people are agitating by getting involved in activity what prevents them receiving the bullitin from other comrades they engage with? I wonder whether access to the IB has been something that Kevin has found to have restricted party democracy in the past? It seems to be a phenomenon that a few unaligned sectarians have concocted today to legitmise further attacks on the SWP. They’ll stoop lower than a snakes arse in order to justify the creation of the undemocratic RR.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
So you don’t think it’s important to respect the wishes of people who don’t want to receive information through the post?
Since that’s not the point you made, it’s not the point I responded to.
If, as you rightly claim, people are agitating by getting involved in activity what prevents them receiving the bullitin from other comrades they engage with?
They may not know any other SWP members in the areas where they’re active. There may not be any other SWP members in the areas where they’re active. There may be other SWP members who prefer not to advertise the fact that they’re members of the SWP (I think this would be silly and self-defeating, but I’ll include this argument because you apparently think it’s a good one). There may be other SWP members, but nobody who the centre trusts to receive and distribute the IB. And so on. Really, posting it out would be a lot simpler and more straightforward; it would also make it harder for unscrupulous people to be selective about who got it, which would be another benefit.
Just for the record, do you think it’s important to respect the wishes of people who do want to receive information through the post?
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
it would also make it harder for unscrupulous people to be selective about who got it
Just to clarify, I’m not suggesting that this has ever actually happened. But you can’t be too careful where inner-party democracy is concerned.
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
Re no 82: “Ah, I did not notice that the extended list of signatories has now been removed, and replaced by the words “The appeal has been signed by an additional 1,139 people”. Which of course obscures the embarrassing fact that a great many of the signatories do not identify themselves as Respect members.”
Interestingly, I noted that one of the ‘Respect supporters’ was one John Game of SOAS. I wonder whether he remains a non-member, preferring to pontificate on blogs on the basis of an absence of experience on the ground, or whether he joined the last-minute pre-conference membership rush - one of those notorious (as Jackie Turner put it) ‘cynical membership drives…whenever there is an internal election or candidate selection meeting in the offing’.
Comment by steph — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
This just gets weirder and weirder. the SWP is an activist organisation. If people aren’t active, they aren’t members, in my book.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
And as for this pish about “Respect supporter”, we scotched all that nonsense ages ago.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
KrisS said:the SWP is an activist organisation. If people aren’t active, they aren’t members, in my book.
They are however members according to the SWP’s books.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
Yeah I imagine they are. Which is daft, to my mind.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
If people aren’t active, they aren’t members, in my book.
Even if that were a criterion for membership - which it apparently isn’t - it would be perfectly possible to be an active SWP member without actually working together with any other SWP members, let alone coming into regular contact with a full-timer.
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
It seems pretty unlikely to me. But I’m sure you could construct such a scenario.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:13 pm
@ Phil, considering you’re aren’t even a member of the SWP or Respect nothing qualifies you to comment on the internal distribution of the IB. None of the points you raise show the slightest understanding of internal democracy because you see nothing wrong in an internal document meant for party members being published on a blog by sectarians outside the party. The irony of this probably passes over your head. You are outside the organised left carping from the sidelines so you have know idea how to distribute any information except asinine invective on a blog.
johng why do you waste your time with so-called, “debate”, about the SWP on this blog? It’s just another hatchet job organised by sectarians who think that fighting collectively is beneath them unless they are leading from behind. They bemoan the SWP’s so-called “failure” to work with others on the left and then launch into another attack on the SWP. Again, the irony is like a sledge hammer on the head but they do not feel it.
The reason I’ve posted is because I hope that Kevin still has a glimmer of fraternalism left before he completely sinks into the arms of these irony free sectarians.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
KrisS - it may not be a terrifically likely situation; I admit I’m getting a bit off home turf here. Maybe Andy can come in on this one.
Phil, considering you’re aren’t even a member of the SWP or Respect nothing qualifies you to comment on the internal distribution of the IB.
Just a pedantic point, but it’s not being a member of the SWP that would disqualify me, surely? They’re not quite the same thing.
None of the points you raise show the slightest understanding of internal democracy because
wait for it…
you see nothing wrong in an internal document meant for party members being published on a blog by sectarians outside the party.
Oh, I see. The points I’ve made are all undermined by something I haven’t said. A less charitable person would suspect you didn’t want to debate with me.
irony free sectarians
“Irony-free”? Now that hurts.
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
“Unity is strength” - it’s astonishing that you feel that the leadership of the SWP (which surely you count yourself as part of, or are we still living this fiction that you’re just some ordinary member?) does not have an absolute duty to consult with key people involved with the day to day politics of the movement?
Like, y’know, surely John Rees will have consulted with SWP RMT tube workers before meeting or writing to Bob Crow, just to get some feel for things on the ground?
Hmm, I see your point. I hadn’t spoken to Rees personally since 2005 (and we only spoke then about leafleting in Bethnal Green). He had never asked my opinion - me, as the lead person who meshed the RMT with Respect for Galloway’s election, getting members and supporters alike over to Bethnal Green, which led to the SWP being confident enough to organise “trade union days” for canvassing, which led to post workers and firefighters coming over to BG&B. Yeah, the person who led all that, never had any contact with Rees or anyone really over what direction we thought the party should move in over the RMT.
Which is probably why 3 CC members sat there telling me and 3 other tube workers recently that Bob Crow was “unscrupulous” and was simply pitting the left against itself for some unstated nefarious purpose. If you don’t talk to the people on the ground, you’re prone to being pulled in all sorts of reactionary directions.
Anyway, if we’re revolutionaries, we’re all leaders. The job of the CC of the SWP is to always be talking, listening, understanding - and then taking the decisions.
Y’know, like I do as a rep who has to be elected once a year. I talk to the people on the ground about how they see things going, what their perspectives are, what ideas they have. Cos they’re right in the centre of things, and their experience should shape my perspective.
You don’t think that’s the way leaders work. Well, replace “leaders” with “rulers” and you may have a point.
If that’s not what you mean, then you have provided a very good reason why the SWP’s reputation lies in ruins (and that’s without taking into account the disgust many trade unionists now feel after John Rees’s attempts to continue the witch-hunt led by opportunists in the FBU against Linda Smith).
Comment by tonyc — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
I never saw a copy of an IB unless Kev brought one round from the centre.
In the tube group, we were never sent copies. When we organised our own paper sales and distribution, we were never sent copies. We were formed into our own branch, so we didn’t attend outside branches; no organiser ever brought IBs to us. If the idea is that in addition to us working rotating shifts we can only get IBs by going to additional meetings, it shows the contempt for the activists on the ground.
I’ve seen more internal SWP documents since I was pushed out of the party than when I was in it.
Even this year, just before I left, we had several caucuses at which no IBs were supplied to us (even though Party Notes says you get them from your local branch, which, er, we were) - even when we had more than one CC member at the caucus.
Comment by tonyc — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:15 pm
Why is it that people feel the need to make “and all my mates agree” arguments? Not just here, all over the place. Not just in politics, everywhere.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:16 pm
Has anyone done a bar chart on the respective number of posts on the different threads here? I think it goes something like this: threads on solidarity with victimised union members: average posts 3.2. Threads on the split between Respect and Respect Renewal: average posts 4 million….er or something like that. I wonder why.
Another thought: what if this split is in fact a re-run of all the other splits between all the other far left groups in all the other countries? So really what’s happened is that there was a script for what each of the people and groups would do. What’s happened was already written down and people were just playing the parts. Blimey, it couldn’t have been that, could it? Could it?! Nope. No chance. Phew, that’s solved that one, then.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
#89 “E8 to SE3″ is of course Martin Smith’s source of information on errant cadre and apparent inspiration in his new career of baiting Respect candidates as alleged Islamic extremists, one Tim Robinson, acolyte of ultra-Zionist New Labour MP Louise Ellman. His scribblings will soon be deleted so there is no point debating with him.
And ‘Unity is Strength’ is a parody of the Vicar of St Albion’s, or perchance the editor of the parish newspaper as has been observed before.
Quite amusing how the SWP leadership count long-lapsed members as still being SWP members. One suspects that method of counting also accounts for some of the anomalies on the ’stop the witchhunt’ petition where non-members of Respect suddenly metamorphose into members for the purpose of less-than-honest letters to the bourgeois press.
One wonders how often similar tricks were pulled in terms of the delegations to the SWP-’Respect’ conference? Given the rah-rah claims of more delegates attending than ever despite the boycott of the same conference by half the active leadership of Respect and a sizeable chunk of the members.
What of course they didn’t quite realise it that, whereas all kinds of bureaucratic tricks can be pulled against SWP members who are under bureaucratic-centralist discipline to take it, members of Respect who are loyal to Respect and not those SWP leaders who are out to wreck it, steal its name and drag it through the mud, are under no compunction to do any such thing.
“Unity is Strength”, eh? How about “War is Peace”? “Truth is Lies”? “Black is White”? etc. That is closer to the truth, isn’t it?
Comment by Ian Donovan — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
I don’t find it hard to imagine most of these posts originating from a team in an open-plan office in a certain big building in Vauxhall. Who else would be interested?
Comment by Jock McTrousers — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
@ 106 There you go perpetuating those delusions of grandure again. As if the CC would waste their time on a blog run by sectarians. Sorry to disappoint but I’m just one of those mugs you like to believe blindly follow the leaders. You delude yourself into believing that any SWP member who doesn’t agree with you has to be a member of the CC. Is that because you see the rank and file members who agree with the CC as either hacks or morons? It doesn’t even enter your arrogant head that you could be wrong. Based on how you boast about your activity and fail to acknowledge the input all the other people involved in these campaigns it seems that according to you some revolutionaries are leading more than others. This kind of refutes your patronising, “we’re all leaders”, riff.
The sectarians on here can descend ever further down into the abyss of witchhunting fellow socialists for all I care. My hope is that Kevin will respect the CC’s decision to lead as they were democratically elected to do by our members.
If this blog ever had a mix of different views on it that’s been completely undermined by collaborating with this witchhunt. Apart from a few bloggers who feel it’s necessary to counter the lies, virtually the only people who bother to post on this blog now are the usual suspects belonging to that sectarian cabal of unaligned ego massagers who spend their lives baying for SWP blood. How representative of the class is that? The majority of people who I’ve worked with politically treat sectarian rants with a great deal of caution because they know that they could be next in line for attack should they fail to massage sectarian political egos.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
It’s always entertaining to see (now former) SWP types call others “sad sectarian”. Physician, heal thyself…
It’s also nice to note that the comments on this post far outnumber others over the last couple of days.
Do you ever tire of staring at your own navel?
Comment by Graham Day — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
I like to think, Graham, that people who post here go out and do their real politics elsewhere, and just come here for the gossip.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
I am not a member of the SWP CC
Comment by Jimmy Hill — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
I certainly hope so.
Though, I also hope that their “real politics” is not reflected in their contributions to this forum, because if it is, we’re all screwed…
Comment by Graham Day — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
My previous comment was @ 114. Sorry, I’m not usually so sloppy.
Comment by Graham Day — 12 December, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
you weren’t to know that the searing wit of “Jimmy Hill” was going to intrude.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:01 pm
“There you go perpetuating those delusions of grandure again. As if the CC would waste their time on a blog run by sectarians. Sorry to disappoint but I’m just one of those mugs you like to believe blindly follow the leaders. You delude yourself into believing that any SWP member who doesn’t agree with you has to be a member of the CC.”
I haven’t heard any other of the anonymous SWP posters on this blog being accused of being on the CC. It’s pretty obviously not true, in most cases. Only ‘Unity is Strength’ has been so accused. I wonder why?
“to that sectarian cabal of unaligned ego massagers who spend their lives baying for SWP blood.”
Love the ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ imagery here. Unfortunately, it aint true … most of the most prolific ‘anti-SWP’ posters (not in fact anti-SWP at all but anti-current-SWP-leadership) posters are recent former SWP members, or people who have spent the past severak years collaborating with the SWP very closely and are now being slandered as hardened anti-SWP sectarians.
The only real SWP-haters who regularly intrude on this blog are the likes of the AWL, who are now joining the fake Rees-led ‘Respect’ because they reckon sections of that phoney outfit are beginning to share their taste for Muslim-baiting. Anti-SWP anti-Respect rats are joining John Rees’s sinking false-flagged ship … who was it who was saying that ’sectarians’ are ‘irony free’?!!!
Comment by Ian Donovan — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
@ 109 I and others have made this point before. When engaged in a so-called, “debate”, that allows sectarians to witchhunt other socialists they lose all concept of solidarity with others. That’s if they ever had it in the first place.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
Am not not sectarian may be a wee bit anti social
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
I still have yet to see any convincing arguement of the witch hunt. Perhaps Unity is Strength could elaborate. Is it now comments on a blog that constitute a witch hunt?
Perhaps UIS could respond to the witch hunt of an FBU trade unionist, the witch hunt against Kevin and Rob and the fabrications put out by the SWP CC that are the subject of this post?
Comment by CHAB — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
Chab can pigs fly
Comment by Teddy Boy — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
#122
You’ve seen the arguments, and you aren’t convinced by them. There we go. Do you think that because you aren’t convinced, people have to change their mind? Or do you think they should be quiet about what they think, out of politeness?
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
@122 So that’s the point of this thread? I thought it was part of a sustained attack on the SWP over the last month that really reminded me of a witchhunt.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
Hmm @109, we seem to have a similar perspective, except that I would say that the general weakness of the left is a symptom of the general triumph of imperialism in the modern world following the collapse of European socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
“Revolution” is not on the agenda at the moment. We need to be building fundamental Marxian Socialist understanding.
Comment by Graham Day — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
124. I didn’t claim that people should be quiet, just address the points. I have yet to see an arguement that explains how there has been a witch hunt. Just comments like ‘it has the characteristics of a witch hunt’. A total failure to address the issues
126. So you think that a blog that has been commenting on the split is a witch hunt?!!?? Well, that goes some way to explaining the embarrasment of the witch hunt loyalty oath. Are the Harry’s Place crowd also witch hunters? What is your definition of a witch hunt?
Comment by CHAB — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
@127 Do you need to rethink your numbering?
Comment by Graham Day — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
Like I said, you’ve seen the arguments, you aren’t convinced. That’s the end of it really. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in this loop.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
a sustained attack on the SWP over the last month that really reminded me of a witchhunt
I’m at a loss to see why (and no, Kris, we haven’t seen the arguments - at least, not the arguments for believing that there’s a witch-hunt in progress). If there were a witch-hunt, wouldn’t there be people denouncing all members of the SWP, or refusing to work with any member of the SWP, or at the very least calling for anyone associated with the SWP to leave something?
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
You haven’t seen what you believe to be convincing arguments. I’m happy to accept that.
Comment by KrisS — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
I really wish people would not post under ‘names’ like ‘unity is strength’ or ’socialist’! This is so bland and anodyne on a socialist blog!
Now a little mouse called ‘Unity is Strength’ tells us that the CC should NOT have consulted with Kevin and Rob on relations between GG and the SWP within Respect. Instead they should simply ‘lead’, presumably from pure inspiration or astrology, or maybe by just reading the Marxist classics - but should never get information from their comrades involved in that section of the struggle.
I would hope that a revolutionary parties leading organ such as the SWP CC would learn from all comrades in a particular section of struggle. Lenin was always corresponding with supporters all over Russia - always writing letters demanding to know the exact details of what they were experiencing. So today, for example, a central committee, should consult with and learn from leading comrades in particular unions and industrial struggles. Then they can still lead, on the basis of having listened and weighed the evidence. After consultation they can then issue better suited advice and instructions.
That’s the dialectic between leaders and lead, between party and class. (The dialectic Kevin remembers Cliff insisting on, the dialectic that Marx wrote about in his third thesis on Feuerbach). That means a fluid relationship between ‘leaders’ and ‘lead’, with mutual teaching and learning, rather than a mechanical, one-sided and bureaucratic relationship. Only on this dialectical basis can we have leading organs in the class struggle which accumulate real knowledge and authority, (and avoid the twin perils of anarchism and stalinism). Ah, those were the days, eh?!
Comment by Larry R — 12 December, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
No, I haven’t seen any arguments. I’ve seen a lot of people use the word ‘witch-hunt’, but at no time have I seen anyone answer the question why it’s being used (and they’ve been asked plenty of times).
“I believe it’s appropriate to talk in terms of a witch-hunt because…” Complete this sentence, as many words as you like. (Not you specifically, Kris, it’s an open invitation.)
Comment by Phil — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
You’ve really got an obsession about being witch-hunted, Unity is Strength. Nearly as much as an obsession as you appear to have with Kevin Ovenden. What’s that about? All this to rescue Kevin Ovenden’s soul?
Comment by Nas — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
@ 132 I offer no apologies that this insignificant little “mouse” has the audacity to challenge the Witchfinder General and his minions. The rank and file are often characterised as insignificant by sectarians like you because you think we’re supposed to leave decision making to our so-called superiors like unelected Rob and Kev. This top down mentality is hardly suprising coming from sectarians who believe they are legends in their own lunchtime.
The fact is that us mice voted for our CC democratically and expect them to make policy not Rob and Kev, two unelected members, who unfortunately have sided with sectarians who began a witchhunt against us. What’s at stake is a viable political organisation on the left of labour not the career of Galloway or the reputation of two ex-SWP members who would not abide by the democratic structure of our organisation.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
But there is no witch-hunt, UiS. YOu are the ones who’ve been expelling people and controlling the apparatus of Respect. Now, how about answering the points about the SWP CC engaging with its members?
Comment by Nas — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
I think Mike Rosen is being a bit unfair apparently inferring something negative from the number of posts here compared with the thread on Karen Reissmann. I support Karen Reissmann, but I’m not sure there’s much to say on a blog about it.
Comment by Nas — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
#108 Mike Rosen should keep his mind as tidy as he claims his bedroom is.
#89 & # 92:- Tim you’re well sussed. Do you think you can do any better than Norm Coleman ?
Comment by Halshall — 12 December, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
@134 Having been a member for many years and worked with Kevin I respect him but I have no respect for the sectarians who spend a disproportionate amount of time attacking the SWP and spend hardly any time on this blog focusing on important political issues like building a left alternative to labour. It’s their distorted priority of attacking the SWP rather than focusing on how to move forward that demonstrates that this is a pointless witchhunt.
If Kevin wasn’t linked with Galloway these sectarians wouldn’t give a tinkers cuss about him being expelled. It’s an opportunistic ploy to gather support around their anti-SWP contingent led by Galloway. They are manipulating this situation to do as they’ve always done - attack the SWP. Of course, they’ll patronisingly claim that they like some SWP members and will work with them begrudgingly but it’s the leadership they claim is really their target. This is disingenuous because as soon as a member like me disagrees with them instead of engaging in fraternal debate they descend into vitriolic attack. These sectarians pretend to be a friend of the rank and file in the SWP but really they despise us because we elect our leadership democratically and an attack on them is an attack on all of us in the SWP.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:04 am
Unity is Strength is dodging the issues yet again. Throwing terms around like sectarian and witch hunt does not make them true. And as for a top down mentality, surely you can see the irony on a comment like that?!?
Don’t you think t might have been a good idea to discuss strategy with Rob and Kev to inform the direction and decision making process? Seems like a good idea to me.
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:06 am
So critics of the SWP are “sectarians”.
Comment by paulm — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:06 am
and witch hunters seemingly
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:08 am
@ 132 I don’t have to answer to you for anything. You’re the one making accusations so it’s your responsibility to explain to me what you are talking about and give evidence.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:13 am
So where is the evidence of the witch-hunt, UiS? And what makes you think that Galloway is motivated by hatred of the SWP? And why do none of you punting this desperate SWP CC line ever bother to acknowledge that Salma Yaqoob, Ken Loach, Linda Smith et al are all opposed to it as well?
Comment by Nas — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:16 am
@ 136 What issues am I dodging? Provide evidence. Otherwise carry on with your campaign of lies and innuendo.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:16 am
UiS is right: witch-hunt denial is itself a form of witch hunting.
Comment by in terms of it — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:21 am
@ 140 Ken Loach supports Galloway - well the games up for the CC then isn’t it? The fact that a film director supports Galloway is proof that the SWP are to blame. Come on! You can do better than the tired old ploy of using associates to make a wrong decision appear right! Stalin had a field day using that ploy.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:24 am
@ 137 They are sectarian when they lead a witchhunt to drive the SWP out of Respect.
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:29 am
#78
I really want to nail this ting about a double standard. Stuart accuses me of withdrawing a document from Ireland but publishing one from Chris harman, and alleges this is due to a double standard.
In fact both documents originated with the SWP, one from the Irish SWP and one from the British SWP. The difference is that the Irish document cocncerend political alliances, and not all of the people whose signatures were on the document had actually seen it.
Chris Harman’s document is undoubtedly by him, and also has actually been distributed arpund the international left, and wider than the SWP’s own international sister organistations. I refer to it as a draft document only in the sense that it has not yet been formally published to the SWP’s own membership. It is not up to me to publish the SWP’s documents, they have their own outlets.
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:30 am
NOt just Loach, UiS - Yaqoob, Thornett, Searle, Parkes, Lister, Britain, etc. And they are not siding with Galloway. All these people were much more openly critical of Galloway than you in the SWP were.
In any case, no one can take your protestations of a witch-hunt seriously when you refuse to provide any evidence at all of one.
Incidentally, did you work with Kevin Ovenden on Socialist Worker? Or is that yet another question that you won’t deign to answer?
Comment by Nas — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:33 am
141. Issues - Evidence of the witch hunt. Whether it is ok to witch hunt FBU members. If it is ok to attack Kevin and Rob - and anyone else who disagrees with the SWP CC and if you think it would be sensible to have spoken to Kev and Rob to inform the decision making process.
There are some to start with and I did ask before but received no answer. And there is one of s peddling lies here and it’s not me. And it’s hardly a campaign is it?
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:34 am
I think in reality the SWP witch hunted themselves out of Respect
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:35 am
Looks like Stuart has caught you hoisted to your own petard and it’s got you all indignant hasn’t it Andy? I told you this witchhunt would turn round and bite you on the arse.
I’ll leave you to wring your hands a bit longer in this thread followed by a few unfraternal posts from your hatchet people filled with mockery towards me and the SWP before you close the thread feeling vindicated.
Another day in the pit draws to a close…
Comment by Unity Is Strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:38 am
Unity is Strength said : @ 137 They are sectarian when they lead a witchhunt to drive the SWP out of Respect.
Hold on, UiS, glad to see you holding the fort on the witch-hunt thing, but you’re going a bit far now: the bottom line is that we are Respect and that it’s the sectarians have broken away. You can’t abandon that just for the sake of bolstering the witch-hunt stuff.
Now we’ve cleared that up, carry on.
Comment by How dare you assume I'm a CC member? — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:40 am
I think in reality the SWP CC thought in late August/early September that they would be able to drive Galloway out of Respect. When he walked out on 22 September at the National Council meeting they must have thought they had succeeded.
But then he came back. And the line of division inside the National Council was not Galloway versus SWP and the rest, but the SWP up against all the other significant figures and forces. That’s where it all went wrong for Rees and German.
They really overestimated their support. Anyone who’s witnessed John Rees speak can see easily how such narcissism could take hold.
Comment by Nas — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:41 am
#149 One last time, UiS: can you give any plausible argument supporting the with-hunting claim. Y’know, one that would make sense to comrades who were in the militant in the 1980s, or socialists in the electricians union before that, or SWP members in Unison like the guy in Plymouth.
Comment by Nas — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:44 am
# 150
S/he said “lead”, not “led”, and made no suggestion that it was succesful. Your very silly idea that if an attempt at a witch hunt is unsuccesful, then it was never a witch hunt in the first place is, well, it’s very silly, isn’t it?
Dead funny on the names you post under though - ooh my sides.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:47 am
I think we can draw our own conclusions from the consistent evasion of the issues
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:47 am
Indeed. As we all do, all the time. I draw conclusions from Andy’s repeated failure even to be able to have an opinion on whether or not the Galloway group should take Respect to court for its name, for example.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:49 am
Damn, Nas, I think UiS has gone this time. What are we all going to do now? There’s no witch hunt after all the witches have gone.
Comment by Tilt the fool's head to the left — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:50 am
Carry on with your dead funny funnies, I reckon. They could keep anyone up all night.
This “I know you are, but what am I?” stuff really is riveting, isn’t it?
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:51 am
The Galloway group as you call them don’t need to. We are the legal owners of the name. If you don’t believe me check the Electoral Commission website. So there is no need for us to take any legal action. But I am guessing that you already know this.
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:51 am
Oh for heavens sake. I wish this witchhunt would stop.
Obviously the CC have been elected by the members because they have the most solid experience and judgement. I am sure that most of the CC members have many years of active militant trade union experience behind them. They have read far more Marx and Lenin than I have, and that is the best grounding for making tactical judgements in complex situations: after all Britain today is very similar to Russia a hundred years ago. It would be ridiculous for the CC to cloud their judgement by talking to the people involved in the detailed work, as that would compromise their high level over-view.
Look at the success the CC have made over the last few years. The SWP is bigger and more respected now than it has ever been. We have recruited hand over fist in the anti-war movement, and Globalise Resistance is widely respected among the anti-globalisation activists.
Let’s face it. The SWP is the largest and most successful socialist organisatioon in the world. For example we are the only ones who can explain really clearly where Hugo Chavez is gettinig it all wrong. So to criticise us is the same as witch-hunting.
Comment by Christian Rakovsky — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:52 am
Indeed, CHAB. I think many SWP members who might have gone along with the witch-hunt dross now realise they’ve been had. We are left with the likes of UiS and Johng playing the victim. But even they don’t seem to believe it.
A witch-hunt where the only people who’s reputations are trashed are those who’ve been expelled from the SWP - yes, Johng, that’s what you are doing.
And UiS - any answers at all to whether you worked on Socialist Worker or why you seem so concerned to save Kevin Ovenden’s soul.
Comment by Nas — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:52 am
Nah, KrisS is a bit too … B-list. I’m off to sleep.
Comment by Tilt the fool's head to the left — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:53 am
The Electoral Commission has made a ruling recently?
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:54 am
Yes, KrisS, in fact I can’t take the excitement and am heading over to the Guardian’s Comment is Free for some well-considered and polite debate. Andy must be so proud.
Comment by socialist monster — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:54 am
It seems that Andy actually is proud though. Which is the oddest thing.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:57 am
Linda Smith holds the name Respect as the National Chair and Nominating officer. The only way that the Electoral Commission will make a ruling is if someone takes them to court to try and claim the name. The only people that could do this would be the SWP, therefore, as already stated, there is no need for the ‘Galloway group’ to take anyone to court.
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:58 am
Not surprised, Kris, he gets a tenner for every comment, you know. Keep ‘em coming.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden's soul — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:59 am
What is this a shift change? Unity is strength clocks off and Socialist Monster clocks on?
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:01 am
Right, so when you say the Galloway group own Respect, what you mean is that Linda Smith is registered as the party leader and nominating officer. Which we all knew anyway, but thanks for pointing it out again, that’s very useful.
The EC will either register the change of officers following the decisions at conference or it won’t. That will be, effectively, a ruling. We’ve done all of this before though. And it wasn’t that exciting first time round.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:02 am
Kriss, So why bring it up again then?
They haven’t registered the changes yet and I am not sure if the SWP have informed them. If they haven’t, I’d be asking why considering they are supposed to be standing in Preston pretty soon.
Comment by CHAB — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:04 am
Maybe you should report them to the Electoral commission?
It was the first example of Andy pointedly and repeatedly refusing to say what he thought about something that came to mind, that’s the only reason I brought it up. In he context of talking about avoiding the question, which you brought up.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:06 am
CHAB, with all these comments you’re writing, how are you going to finish your essay in time for that paper sale tomorrow?
You forget I know everything.
Comment by tim — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:06 am
Yeah I am thinking of moving to Cambridge, i might meet babeuf.
Comment by tim — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:14 am
I doubt it. Babeuf will probably be dining at his local business association or chairing the communalist homophobe society meeting.
He is such a sectarian, and he shops at Tesco.
Comment by Supercock — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:20 am
Salut, CHAB, i força al canut!
Comment by in terms of it — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:22 am
#173
Supercock??? Is that just boasting?
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:32 am
what a difference a day makes, twenty four little hours
JR sings that song when he reflects on his actions of self destruction.
We will be also accused of witch hunting members out of the SWP even after their walk out of the talks or “the split” as they want to call it.
When people lack accountability they are seen to do desperate things such as the stated expulsions of Kevin and Rob or encourage councillors to walk out or put around a dodgy petition or get their scape goaters onto this blog. What a sad pathetic excuse for socialists they are.
Comment by Teddy Boy — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:46 am
He’s a fine upstanding socialist who doesn’t deserve to be maligned by a cyber-Kerensky like you. The witch hunters of East Anglia will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history, but he will remain firm.
Comment by How dare you assume I'm a CC member? — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:46 am
#176
I see the ancient rabid attack-dog of the witch hunters has snapped his chain again. Have him put down!
Comment by johngee — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:49 am
Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians Sectarians sectarians sectarians sectarians
Comment by Ignorance is strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:51 am
24 hours hours that shook the SWP. Starring GG and Salma produced and directed by the SWP cc
Comment by Teddy Boy — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:55 am
GG and SY wouldn’t play the villains, so we’re having to make do with Sean Connery and Shilpa Shetty.
Comment by How dare you assume I'm a CC member? — 13 December, 2007 @ 2:02 am
Johngee the truth is hurting you more than my lightheartiness. I am not the forgiven type on people like you that are out to destroy an inspirational movement. So fuck off.
Comment by Teddy Boy — 13 December, 2007 @ 2:13 am
don’t you people ever sleep?
Comment by Ignorance is strength — 13 December, 2007 @ 2:14 am
Teddy Boy (#182) said : … so f**k off.
Comrades like to take a bracing dip in the limpid mountain-stream clarity of my argumentation, but I’m also widely toasted for my sparkling Moët-et-Chandon wit. And that’s what you embittered sectarians most lack.
But Teddy, what I’m not known for is adding “ee” to the end of my name. A case of friendly fire? Think it over.
Comment by johngee — 13 December, 2007 @ 3:19 am
If there’s a really, really funny name used at the bottom of a really, really funny post, I tend to assume it’s babeuf. He’s a prankster, and no mistake.
Comment by KrisS — 13 December, 2007 @ 7:31 am
JESSSSUS! I can’t believe I bothered reading through all this! It starts off with some interesting points being made but after 1/2 way through descends into nuttyness.
Would it just be a foolish waste of time to ask people (on both sides) to calm the fuck down and try to concentrate on making concrete political points rather then throwing crap around?
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 13 December, 2007 @ 9:05 am
‘Would it just be a foolish waste of time to ask people (on both sides) to calm the fuck down and try to concentrate on making concrete political points rather then throwing crap around?’
Afraid it would (though not foolish).
I think some of these threads show why e-debate is just so crap, anyone can throw any mud, and you can’t judge peoples words against their pratice, cos you’ve no idea what they do.
Comment by Muon — 13 December, 2007 @ 9:22 am
and you can’t judge peoples words against their pratice, cos you’ve no idea what they do.
Apart from Andy Newman, Kevin Ovenden, Ian Donovan, Neil Williams, Michael Rosen and one or two others, who post under their real names - a practice I’d recommend to all sides in this.
Comment by Phil — 13 December, 2007 @ 9:31 am
Spot on Joe!
The thread was Chris Harman’s draft doc on the split, in case anyone got lost in the blizzard.
Of course trolls have every intention of creating confusion. When the truth about the phoney war / non-existant witchunt starts coming out just throw more dust up, cry havoc etc and get everyone running around like Cpl Jones.
Don’t Panic! etc; and above all don’t let anybody think or reflect.
However it doesn’t work so well anymore and many more are reflecting.
BTW Mike got your number wrong it’s #105 and you no doubt really have a tidy bedroom. But your logic is flawed. If you claim to think so little of all the comments on all the blogs, why are you bothering to comment at all?
And Tim you really should wake up, does anyone believe anything you say anymore about GG or anything else?
Your cover (and your alternative one)is well and truly blown.
As for all the other trolls you’ve overdone it and you’re so well known by now that the effect is near zero.
You can do one of three things:
1. Keep on trolling and be increasingly ignored.
2. Give up and find a life elsewhere.
3. Open up your closed minds and join the discussion.
Like what is the value of CH’s article ?
Does it shed any real light on the split, or is it a sad reflection on an increasingly isolated sect ? ( Unitentionally of course).
Perhaps we do need to see the full article, but until then why not have the debate on what we have now ?
Comment by Halshall — 13 December, 2007 @ 9:45 am
#186-189 Is this the hangover club?
Wash a few e pills down with a bottle of whisky and get rollin again.
If not, you can always join the little-known third faction of Respect for grouchy old bastards:
http://www.respect.gov.uk/
Chillax, dudes!
Comment by IanP — 13 December, 2007 @ 9:58 am
After looking at the contributions to this thread can anyone convince me the SWP isn’t sinking into HealyWorld? The issue of IBs is a case in point. Honestly, the intellectual somersaults and convoluted arguments justifying the hapahazard distribution (or, rather, non-distribution)are Mad Hatters tea party stuff. When I was in the SWP (late 70s/early 80s) in a small Midlands branch we all regularly received Party literature of all kinds, including all IBs, Industrial Bulletins etc. Whatever, in hindsight, it’s other faults may have been, back then the Party didn’t seem to have a problem in training/educating its members in Marxist politics. Nowadays, you can even have Party members who actually deny the existence of class! And apparently you can be a member without actually doing anything, including paying subs. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Comment by Doug — 13 December, 2007 @ 10:22 am
Doug your assuming that this isn’t still the experiance of the overwhelming majority of SWP members. If there have been some problems with distribution its purely the result of some weaknesses in new branch structures which are entirely connected to the shifts inside the Party over the last period in transforming the organisation into the backbone of the anti-war movement and Respect. As most of those contributing here know full well.
Gerry Healy? Don’t make me laugh.
Comment by johng — 13 December, 2007 @ 10:26 am
Phil, I did have my first name on comments and was asked to change it because another blogger felt it clashed with his.
Johngnee. You swing between calling us communalists or sectarians when all your arguements are exposed as flawed.
In the commentary before the post, the history or background of why comrades were expelled in the most simplest format. Some bloggers like you troll out rubbish to evade these facts.
I know the truth is an alien concept to you or maybe I should make the allowance that your single digital IQ cannot comprehend it.
I should not get angry with you. Read the documents by RR and the SWP cc on this subject.I should pity you and the others with The half witted notion that oily JR and his board can ride out the storm.
I would prefer to put all of you on a luxury liner and anchor you in the middle ocean as the broadleft would progress and advance unhindered without you SWP cranks
Comment by Teddy Boy — 13 December, 2007 @ 10:26 am
Opportunistic, sectarian, intellectual summersaults to justify the new line. The world of Healy’s lies to justify the latest turn. Thinking up some quassi new theory or analysis to justify some irrational action. Intelligent people brainwashed. Some members seeing the light and saving themselves and still commiting to socialism. Yes SWP is WRP II. The SSP split had all the hallmarks. The SWP ended up setting back the fight for socialism for a generation. You got off lighly with Respect. Save as many people as you can!
Comment by RedRaph — 13 December, 2007 @ 10:58 am
“Johngnee. You swing between calling us communalists or sectarians when all your arguements are exposed as flawed.”
To be fair to John G, I dont recall him calling anyone in Respect ‘communalist’. When it is pointed out that this kind of thing is being said, he tends to avoid the point and look for other positive things in what his comrades are doing. I get the impression John is somewhat embarassed over the recent ‘turn’ to this kind of invective.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 13 December, 2007 @ 11:01 am
I am not Johngee, thought I’d just like to point out.
Comment by johng — 13 December, 2007 @ 11:04 am
Having read Chris harman’s dicument, I think the SWP is going to be an uncorfortable place for comrades who have defended the absolutely correct tack of working with Muslims over the last few years. It is like reading Jim Denham or “Tim”. All quotes from Chris Harman
“Our only precondition was that principled socialists had to have the right to argue within Respect’s democratic structures against opportunism and Tammany Hall communalism. “
“some of Galloway’s allies in the Islamic Forum of Europe have connections with the Bangladeshi group Jamaat-i-Islami. Founded in pre-Independence India, this group developed as a very tight knit politico-religious organisation in both West and East Pakistan. It was involved in the military suppression of the Bengali liberation movement in 1969, before developing separate Pakistani and Bangladeshi wings, both of which still use force to drive the left from university campuses. Until recently the Bangladeshi Jamaat was in government with the right wing National Party, while the Pakistani Jamaat has been part of the alliance that has governed in coalition with General Musharraf’s supporters in one province.”
“This is what is known in US cities as Tammany Hall politics, or “vote bloc” or “communal” politics when practiced by the -pro‑capitalist parties of the Indian subcontinent. It is something the left has always tried to resist. But it was this that began to appear in Respect in Tower Hamlets. “
“many local people in Birmingham, Muslim as well as Hindu, Sikh, African Caribbean and white, must have been that of the sister of one Pakistan-born SWP member who said that she had voted Respect previously, but would not do so again because it was a “communalist party”.[17] No doubt one of the other parties spread this slander, but events on the ground could be seen as confirming it.”
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 11:26 am
#193 I send a coupla posts to this cool blog here, and some poor guy called “johng” starts taking a whole lotta flak. He’s done nothing to deserve it - so give him a break, Teddy Boy etc. We only have five letters in common.
Comment by johngee — 13 December, 2007 @ 11:54 am
This is, of course, why the Alliance for Workers Liberty are joining SWP-Respect. Which is of course another political proof that Rees/Harman’s ‘Respect’ is a phoney, and has nothing to do with Respect’s original purposes, one of which was to wage an all-out political fight against Islamophobia, and draw Muslims from a range of different trends who had become open to working with the anti-imperialist left, into just such an alliance.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 13 December, 2007 @ 11:58 am
It’s very hard to follow this tread when some comments refer to comments made in the future!
Unfortunately I do not own a time machine so this is not very helpful.
Andy: Would it not be better, if you have to remove a comment, to simple delete the text. Then the numbering other commentators have used would remain valid?
Comment by timothyMN — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
TimothyMN
That is a very good idea, and I will do that in future.
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Ian, your quite obsessed with this issue about what the AWL decides to do are’nt you?
Comment by johng — 13 December, 2007 @ 12:26 pm
Not at all. Its what they signify politically that matters. I am just as antagonistic to other people with similar views, like HP trolls and the like. But their getting involved in SWP-Respect is very important symbolically - they wouldn’t touch the original Respect with a ten-foot pole - I’m very glad to say.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
But who cares Ian? and what has it got to do with Respect or the SWP?
Comment by johng — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
There is a piece on their blog encouraging SWP members to leave in groups and arrive in batches in the AWL. I think your view that the AWLs statements on this are ’symbolically’ important have about as much connection with reality as their ‘intervention’ does.
Comment by johng — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
I think if you examine some of the recent writings of say, Martin Smith in Socialist Review, or Chris Harman as quoted by Andy above, to give two examples, you will see what has changed to draw them toward SWP-Respect. They think elements in your camp are beginning to evolve in their direction. While these things are as yet very underdeveloped and embyronic, they are not wrong about that.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 13 December, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
I don’t think we are going to get any more constructive commentary on this thread now, so i am closing it off before another round of disruption by SWP loyalists starts.
Comment by Andy — 13 December, 2007 @ 2:00 pm