De-constructing The record: The Socialist Workers Party and Respect will probably be a doctoral thesis in a couple of years. It’s not possible to do it full justice. You could sum it up in the words of Marie who commented on an earlier post:
“It’s funny that the democratically elected conference is somehow not legitimate because there may or may not be ‘mostly SWP’ members there. SWP members who are also a part of Respect, no?
Let’s be honest here – the conference is (laughably) being painted as not legitimate because those attending have decided to respect the constitution rather than flock to Galloway’s side and mindlessly join in with the anti-SWP hysteria. End of.
SWP-haters would argue that the sky was red if it meant being on the opposite side of the argument to the SWP.”
It fully expresses the sense of victimhood that the SWP’s leadership is portraying to the world. They have been red baited, witch hunted and slandered. What follows is a highly selective series of opinions on passages that stood out when I read the document. It’s highly selective because some of the claims are so obviously absurd that they have to be challenged and because I have a chicken in the oven.
It alleges that the SWP is trying to fix the outcome of the Respect conference…Such allegations are false. They can be refuted simply by talking to many non-SWP members in Respect, as well as the SWP members against whom they are directed.
This is a lie. The accusations are true. I saw the SWP trying to get itself about thirty delegates in one branch. Party Notes instructed branches to cram the delegations. The Southwark SWP organiser wanted the comrades to take all the delegates’ places but was overturned by a caucus. There are similar stories from all over the country.
For the Socialist Workers Party has a long record of working over a wide range of issues with people and organisations with different views to our own.
Well sort of. The only problem is that they have to control everything. How’s about Globalise Resistance, the abysmal People Before Profit in Ireland, the majority of Respect branches? Party members conceal their political affiliation, describing themselves as branch secretary of this of activist in the other but they caucus beforehand as SWP members, decide as a bloc what they will support, who they will vote for and starve the organisations of any real internal life,
But the mud has never stuck because we have no interest in manipulation. We cannot fight back without persuading other forces to struggle alongside us, and we cannot win some of those to our approach without reasoned argument. People have known we have always been open about our politics at the same time as going out to build unity with those who do not agree with us. They have known that we do not attempt to smuggle in our own views by the back door or impose them on others.
See above. In any case the mud has stuck. The SWP has become renowned in the English speaking left because of its infatuation with bureaucratic control and manipulation. The Respect split is a direct consequence of it.
Stop the War coalition was formed after a highly successful central London meeting, initiated by the SWP but involving other people like George Monbiot, Jeremy Corbyn, Bruce Kent and Tariq Ali
The STWC has registered some big successes. It also has major limitations. It’s level of branch activity is low. It has not politicised of hegemonised the left in the way that CND did in the 1980s when there were diverse,active branches all across Britain.
our capacity to work out through debate within our organisation what needed to be done and then to win others to it was a precondition for creating one of the most effective campaigning organisations in British history.
This could be re-phrased as “we decided what we wanted to happen and then made damned sure it did”. And if it’s one of the most effective campaigning organisations in British history how come it’s still me and the same faces who end up leafleting the tube station when there’s a public event?
This method of the united front has underlain our approach in Respect all along.
No it hasn’t. The approach was to accumulate a body of support for the project. This support would necessarily and correctly be politically heterogeneous and the SWP acquired something like forty percent of national council places thus ensuring its line would always be carried. Cromwell insisted on a self denying ordinance. Respect would have benefited from something similar.
We had tried with only very limited success to promote this through the Socialist Alliance. We now saw the feeling against the war as providing much bigger possibilities of doing this.
I vividly remember standing with four other SR supporters handing out Socialist Alliance placards at one of the early demonstrations. The decision to use the anti-war movement not to build the SA was a major mistake.
There were sometimes quite sharp arguments inside the SWP about making sure non-SWP members were candidates.
Well if you teach people that their current needs to dominate everything it’s not surprising when some of them get carried away.
Then he suddenly did lunge into the attack with the document of mid August, which anyone capable of looking a little below the surface could see was directed against us.
It wasn’t directed against the SWP. It was directed at a particular method of working. Only the fear of pluralism and democracy could have generated the response we’ve seen.
Respect had done poorly in the Ealing & Southall by-election. This could be explained by people with a modicum of political analysis by the timing (it was called and two and half weeks notice), by the fact that it was in the middle of the short-lived “Brown bounce”… Galloway contrasted it with the success of Respect in the Shadwell by-election and drew the conclusion that the only way to win seats was to follow the methods which had begun to take root in Birmingham and parts of Tower Hamlets.
Or maybe Ealing was a shambles because people see no reason to vote for a party that only has a profile at election time. In Tower Hamlets, Newham and Preston it is a feature of local politics. This is referred to in the pre-conference discussion with an acknowledgement that local involvement in Respect is not a continuous process in many parts of the country.
attempts we had encouraged to reach out to new supporters through the Organising For Fighting Unions conference.
This was a real low point. Precisely the sort of Pyongyang charade that turns people away in droves.
Liam redux 
Leave a reply to babeuf Cancel reply