SWP Crisis: Anna Chen, Nick Cohen, Women, Jews and the Legacy of Beyond the Fragments.

Relevant Reading for Today.

In the Observer Nick Cohen writes,

The far left cannot face up to rape and its ignorance is killing it. The willingness to excuse the humiliation of women has already destroyed the reputations of Julian Assange and George Galloway. Now it is destroying the Socialist Workers party, which is not only Britain’s largest Marxist-Leninist group but the most unscrupulous gang of hypocrites I have ever met.

Cohen cites comrade Anna Chen,

Anna Chen saw the misogyny up close. She stopped working as a comic and poet in the early 2000s to devote every waking hour slaving for the Socialist Alliance, Stop the War and other SWP front organisations. “Because the revolution comes first, human beings are just disposable,” she told me. “I was struck by how sexless and ugly the leading men in the SWP were. But they always had women. If you slept with one of them, they promoted you. It was as basic as that.”

He then launches into a no-holds barred attack on the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ left.

This term is usually reserved for Maoists, or at a pinch, orthodox Communists.

Cohen implies that the ‘M-L’ model is held by a very diverse collection of groups and individuals to the left of the Labour Party.

This is not only false, but ‘Marxist-Leninists’ are today the fringe of the fringe of the fringe.

Commenting on those in the SWP who have had the bottle to stand up and be counted, he says,

But for all its naivety, the assault on left misogyny remains an optimistic moment and not only because you should always listen to people who stand on principle, however belatedly. The far left isn’t a separate entity. It is a fairground mirror that reflects the faults of the liberal mainstream in grotesque forms. If even the brainwashed minions of the SWP can rebel, maybe one day timid liberals will find the courage to condemn a “liberal” legal system that, for reasons of political correctness, has failed to prosecute a single case of female genital mutilation.

Attacking – rightly – George Galloway and Julien Assange is on thing.

But the assumption that the SWP Central Committee “is misogynist and anti-Democratic” and that this is  representative of  the rest of the ‘far-left’ is false.

And what ‘distorted mirror’ of liberalism is that?

The kind that shows a thin man fat, that is its opposite?

This charge – flatly – just not apply to many members of the SWP.

It is, to say the least, completely wrong about the left as a whole.

If there is something we share with liberalism it is democracy, which we claim to support more consistently than many of them.

Democracy is in our blood and our blood is up!

Anna Chen: Things not Treasured by the SWP.

Anna Chen’s assesment  of the SWP (essential reading) shows exactly how democratic socialists think and act,

When you treat human beings as disposable things in the name of la causa, when appropriation of activists’ labour and good will is the norm, when exploitation of your own side goes unchallenged, sexual abuse is one probable outcome.

She offers an insight into how the SWP operates.

On the most important initiative of the Socialist Alliance Anna notes,

When a Jewish socialist group requested platform time to speak against the war, they were refused on the grounds that their presence would alienate Muslims. The guy who’d made their case protested and was told that “you people” were “too sensitive.” I was banned from doing the press on the day but went ahead and worked from home, getting Bianca Jagger and Americans Against the War followed on the march by ITN, doing what I’d been doing all along … Oy veh, it got FUGLY.

That huge demo was built on the spine of the SA and yet the SA chair was denied a place on the platform while Lib Dem Charles Kennedy was welcomed with open arms … and then promptly supported “our boys” once action started. And where’s it all gone, anyway? If the SWP, Counterfire and STWC claim 1 to 2 million were on the march, then they have to give a good account of where they’ve all gone, ’cause it’s not into the left movement.

Who needs this crap?

I know the comrade who made the suggestion to invite the Jewish Socialist Group (and the partner of the then Chair of the Socialist Alliance).

He also described to me  how hard it had been to get a condemnation of the 9/11 murders out of the STWC – it was like wrenching a tooth out.

Anna describes the formation of Respect,

Head honcho took an axe to the Socialist Alliance to get into bed with the Birmingham mosque and then Respect. Then he did … er … more stupid things in Respect and, several years after I’d pointed out some questionable behaviour and been stuffed for it, he and his mates had to leave the SWP to form Crossfire or Counterfire, whatever the splinter’s called. But I get ahead of myself. And the class should never be premature for then down comes the big Monty Python foot.

Head Honcho, John Rees, and the SWP’s  strategy has been described by Tendance Coatesy in Chartist Magazine in 2008.

Detractors were not slow to point out the faults of Respect, or Galloway’s sulfurous and erratic reputation. The SWP’s political culture – described as permanent hysteria and disregard for democracy – particularly irked. Complaints rested on the conflict between the SWP’s version of Leninism, and democratic practice. The Party claimed it was in a ‘united front’: it, the ‘revolutionary’ element, allied on equal terms with those who opposed racism, exploitation and war. In reality the leadership took decisions with other notables, Galloway to the fore, above the membership’s heads.  On a range of issues, from calling feminism a ‘shibboleth’ to downgrading LGTB rights, to opposition to secularism, Respect alienated the left.

I went onto make this observation.

A real bone of contention was Respect’s description of itself as ‘the party of Muslims’. In their dash for electoral gain the party had compromised with the Islamicist bullies described by Ed Husain in The Islamicist (2007). De facto alliances, now admitted by the SWP, had been forged with right-wing Islamicists, such as supporters of the reactionary Jamaat-i-Islami party present in the East London Mosque. Secular Bangladeshis were not slow to point to the bloody role the Jamaat played in opposing independence and suppressing the left in their country. Communalist appeals led to a growing electoral rival amongst Afro-Caribbean voters in the East End, the Christian People’s Alliance. Salma Yacoob associated with Birmingham mosques that played host to ultra-conservative preachers.

Any attempt to oppose this approach was met with cries of ‘Islamophobia’. In municipal politics Respect increasingly relied on ‘community leaders’ (including wealthy businessmen) of a Muslim background (Bangladeshi in East London, Pakistani in Birmingham) rather than socialists or trade unionists. Nor was this the only difficulty. Their councillors often operated as councillors frequently do: vying for position, and standing up for ‘their people’ first, squabbling, switching sides, and puffing themselves up, regardless of their party’s instructions.

Anna concludes,

We need a strong left that is able to counter the coalition’s attacks on the working and middle classes that are looking like something out of the Enclosures. However, like anyone else who ever looked at the disgusting state of the world and wanted to do something about it, I never signed up for SWP abuse and I certainly never signed up for their omerta that they go around imposing on errant former members on pain of The Treatment. It is important that this stuff gets aired for so many reasons. If they can’t, after all this grief, look at themselves honestly, then they deserve everything they’re getting. And the working class is better off without them.

More on this (2003) by Anna here.

Feminism: Leading the Fight for Democracy.

Which brings me to  Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. Sheila Rowbotham  Lynne Segal and  Hilary Wainwright (1979,  reprinted in book form in 1980).

This book had an immense influence on the left (my close comrades were deeply affected, amongst thousands of others) during the late 1970s.

In my circles I, and others, were involved in,  from the International Marxist Group (not least because Hilary had been a member)  to Big Flame and other libertarian Marxist and – also- anarchist, groups, its impact was immense. The SWP even had, briefly, its own women’s paper, Women’s Voice. This extended right to the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The Women’s movement had already become extremely important, campaigns on abortion rights and gay rights were only amongst many grass-roots based activities that corresponded to a flourishing network of women’s groups.

But Beyond the Fragments was perhaps the most directly political contribution to the left-wing politics.

It brought, or rather helped bring,  feminism ideas into the heart of  left, not without resistance from old established left group’s leaderships.

Sheila Rowbotham  began by saying,

I want to begin to explore the challenge I think the women’s movement is making to the prevailing assumptions of how revolutionary socialists should organize. These involve how theory is conceived, how the· political organization sees its relationship to other movements, how consciousness is assumed to change, how the scope of politics is defined, how individual socialists see themselves and their relationship to other people, now and in the past.

She described the  feminist movement as follows,

Our politics have tried to allow expression of vulnerability and openness to every woman’s feelings which consciousness raising at its best implies. We have rejected central organization, hierarchical structures and a leadership. This has not meant that we have no organization, for example, regional networks, women’s centres, conferences, publishing groups, theatre groups, folk and rock bands, film collectives, trade union caucuses, food co-ops are aspects of the women’s movement. The structures which have arisen have been seen as serving particular needs. The making and communication of ideas have been an extraordinary collective process in which thousands of women have contributed. The organizational initiatives which have been spread through the movement have been extremely diverse, involving women in quite different ways. The women’s movement has touched many areas of politics socialists have neglected and its hold goes deeper. It absorbs more of your being.

Her comments  on the International Socialists (IS – forerunner of the SWP) seem relevant today.

My real involvement was with the emerging Women’ Liberation Movement but this closeness to IS meant I was forced to try and understand the leadership’s resistance in the early 1970s to discussing aspects of oppression which were not directly related to class exploitation. I went to the first IS women’s conference as an observer and identified strongly with the women arguing for women’s liberation. It was a particularly confusing situation because many of the first women’s groups outside London were started by women in or close to IS.

At first it seemed enough to put resistance to women’s liberation down to the bias of a male-dominated leadership – though the picture was never that simple as some women in IS opposed women’s liberation and some men supported it from the beginning. The effort to change the direction of IS and orientate towards working-class economic struggles also certainly contributed towards a dismissal of women’s liberation as middle class – the pot being disposed to call the kettle black. But by the mid seventies neither of these seemed adequate explanations for the greater overt sectarianism shown by IS than by the Communist Party or the International Marxist-Group to the women’s movement.

The reader of this can see: the SWP’s sexism has long-standing roots .

When we look at the anti-democratic  way the Central Committee  functions, this is also not new.

Rowbotham says,

In its early days IS really did try and break with sectarian traditions and with the windbag rhetorical rituals on the left. But this hardened into a refusal to talk about the politics of what they were doing within the left. Martin Shaw has described how IS members came to feel they were above sectarianism. But the refusal to deal with dogma meant that in trying to go outwards they dismissed other socialists. In rejecting some of the obvious pretentions of orthodox Trotskyism, righteousness grew within.

It was as if they had a special calling which was never stated and was somehow invisible. Their politics became those of a chosen elect. They could never do everything themselves hut felt no one else could be relied upon to do anything worthwhile. Under this strain their ideas were held in abeyance. There was no time to learn from new developments. Increasingly their theories did not fit new realities outside IS so they stiffened into dogma and became defensive. Ideas and open debate became almost suspect as inherently middle class. They seemed to be regarded as a waste of time with ‘the Crisis’ upon us. The instinct towards criticism was to attack the opponents for their class or lack of activity. Paranoia mounted as secret internal documents inevitably leaked. If the circumstances of the mid seventies could produce this change, the mind boggles at what a civil war and famine would have done – Uncle Joe apart.

The SWP are Bourbon Socialists.

As  Talleyrand is said to have remarked of Bourbon dynasty:  “ls n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié  (They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing).

It may be that some things have indeed been forgotten.

But what have the SWP  learnt from the 1970s and 1980s debates on feminism and democracy?

Absolutely nothing.

Update: This, The SWP crisis: some reflections is very much worth reading.

Black Bloc in Egypt, Anarchism/Autonomism Emerges in the Arab Revolt.

There have been reports in the last few days (see notably this) of the emergence of an Egyptian Black Bloc.

Albawaba has just reported, here.,

In 2013, an anarchist group called the Black Bloc appeared on the Egyptian revolutionary scene and got incredible media attention. Despite their very low numbers (maximum 100 combined in all incidents all over Egypt), the media went into a state of utter frenzy over this new group and the circus started in earnest, culminating in the appearance of one Black Bloc member on a TV show with a sock on his face. The fun thing about this absurdity is that everyone seems to be taking them seriously, but the dangerous thing is that it might continue.

The article suggests, no doubt correctly, that this benefits the Muslim Brotherhood regime,

The genius of turning the Black Bloc into the new enemy is how perfect they are for it. An anarchist group that targets the police, public structures and roads, juxtaposed against the Brotherhood who are always calling for stability. It doesn’t hurt that the Black Bloc has no real structure, charter, spokespeople or leadership.

Nevertheless it is interesting to see that autonomist/anarchist politics have finally breached the frontier of the Arab world.

And there is this: in the Guardian on women sexually assaulted during the anti-Morsi demonstrations.

“Two middle-aged women were guided around the tent to us – the men protecting us had rescued them from the mob. While we were being urged into the field clinic, the group moving out of the square included remnants of the Egyptian Women for Change march, mostly women over 40, which had been attacked and dispersed in the square. Many women made it away from Tahrir, but a few got stuck in the throng – including the women now with us.

One woman, shaking and crying, put her head on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around her. Her companion screamed and yelled. Gameela pleaded with her to save her energy; we had no idea what would happen next, or how long we would stay out of sight – and reach – of the mob. Another woman, also rescued from the mob, soon joined us, crying and yelling.

Suddenly men wearing black ski masks and carrying long knives and clubs were jumping the fence to our left. It was impossible to tell which side they were on, but they turned out to be from the Black Bloc and joined those protecting us. Some of them were now trying  to rescue another woman stripped naked by the mob metres away.”

I think better, a lot lot better, of the Black Bloc after reading that.

Comrades of the Year.

As is traditional with all the internationally respected media Tendance Coatesy publishes a New Year’s List of Comrades of the Year.

• The Strop. Stroppy Bird has been going through some hard times recently. She is now in the process of  ‘prendre pied‘  in East London. The whole working class and international movement hopes  she will flourish. Apart from anything she was the person who introduced us to Blogging and Facebook.
• Dave Osler. The much-loved Strop’s partner and a bulwark of the left. For reasons too obvious to mention.
• Louise. Now installed in Bristol she had kept the Red Flag, or rather Red Camera, flying. Anybody who thinks taking photos of left events and nature is an easy matter will only to compare the pics on my mobile with Louise’s.
• Jim Denham. Anybody who inspires such bile from certain quarters has to have many good points. These were shown in Jim’s robust intervention in the Israel Shamir‘ affair. A quart of ale on us comrade!
• Dave Broder. For finally prompting the Marxist internet achieve to translate comrade Juan R Posadas’ s  historic work on UFOs.

We leave the rest of this list open, that is when the Polish kids sitting next to me stop yelling and I can write properly….

On the Briefing ‘Original’ and ‘Islamophobia’.

” Hello Andrew,

Appreciate you are probably with the LRC, but thought you may be interested to see these.

Merry Christmas.

John Stewart.”

Enclosed two “Original” Briefings.

Certainly ‘interested’.

I have great respect for the comrades who produce this journal (this is not made up)

It’s always good news to learn that Bob Pitt of  Islamophobia Watch and ex-WRP is still spilling bile against secularism.

One would  have though that the Arab Spring, and the relentless  fight of Egyptian democrats against his old mate Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Muslim Broherthood would have led him to shut  his gob.

Apparently not.

Liberty, Equality and Islamophobia is his latest offering to the only left journal willing to give him space.

Pitt has got this theory that there is some kind of ‘left-wing’ wave of Islamophobia going on in France.

On the basis of some tiny crank orgs who have recruited a couple of former far-left individuals (Cassen and Engleman - yes I underlies a couple that is 2 people) he manages to suggest that there is some kind of widespread turn to the far right of French secularist lefties.

But the bite is in the tail.

“there are hardline secularists in Britain too, some of them active in the labour movement, whose claim to oppose all forms of religious belief doesn;t prevent themselves with the right in portraying  Islam as a particular threat to civilisation”.

Now we know that Bob is referring to one main target who is tapping away at the keyboard now.

Readers of the ‘Original’ Briefing will not be any the wiser as to who the other ‘hardline secularists’ are by reading the obituary of hardline secularist Terry Liddle in the same issue.

In  Stalinist style it does not mention Terry’s secularism once!

Clamp Down on Poor Drinkers: Protest and Revive the Skeleton Army!

Better a Country Free than a County Sober!

The BBC says,

Ministers are to unveil plans later for a minimum price for alcohol in England and Wales as part of a drive to tackle problem drinking.

The Home Office is expected to publish a consultation on the proposal, which was first put forward in the government’s alcohol strategy in March.

A price of 40p per unit was suggested at the time.

But pressure has been mounting on ministers to follow Scotland’s lead, where 50p has been proposed.

The aim of a minimum price would be to alter the cost of heavily discounted drinks sold in shops and supermarkets. It is not expected to affect the price of drinks in pubs.

The Times predicted a 45p per unit minimum would be set and it said this would raise the price for the average can of beer or cider to £1.12.

According to the NHS website the average can of 4.5% strength lager contains around two units of alcohol, while a small glass of wine contains 1.5 units.

This will affect one group: poor drinkers.

Let us ignore all the ‘medical’ concern about alcohol and binge-drinking.

This is not true. Earlier this year this was published

There has been a long-term downward trend in the proportion of adults alcohol intake, as in 1998 75% of men and 59% of women drank in the week prior to report’s survey compared to 68% of men and 54% of women in 2010. Furthermore, the average weekly alcohol consumption for all adults was 15.9 units for men and 7.6 units for women and  26% of men reported drinking more than 21 units in a typical week. For women, 17% reported drinking more than 14 units in a typical week

The measure is all about cracking down on “”drunken mayhem” on Britain’s streets.

Or, to put more clearly, about dealing with the rabble.

In recent months Ipswich – apparently a ‘model’ for what could become the norm across the country – has ‘encouraged’ (a visit from the rozzers) off-licences not to sell super-strength lager and white cider.

There has been a hysterical campaign in the local media about street drinkers sipping tinnies of Special Brew and Frosty Jack near the centre of town.

The Council, and all local political parties, have joined in.

To cite a recent story from the Ipswich Star,

As the war on cheap super-strength alcohol is stepped up in Ipswich, a Star investigation has illustrated the size of the task facing the authorities.

Reducing the Strength

The Reducing the Strength campaign was launched in the town in September.

The campaign aims to stop the sale of cheap super-strength beer, lager and cider from off-licensed premises.

The campaign is a joint initiative between Suffolk Police, NHS Suffolk, Ipswich Borough Council, Suffolk County Council and the East of England Co-Operative Society.

Reducing the Strength asks off-licence owners to voluntarily remove super-strength products from their stores.

Yesterday police began rewarding shops which have signed up to the Reducing the Strength initiative, aimed at ridding Suffolk’s county town of the scourge of ultra-potent beers and ciders.

But high-alcohol beverages are still easily found in Ipswich.The Star was able to buy a three- litre bottle of cider – costing just £3.99 and containing more alcohol than the weekly recommended allowance for a man – within minutes of trying.

The 7.5 per cent proof Frosty Jacks cider contains 22.5 units – more than health experts’ 21-unit limit for men.

The cost per unit of 17p is less than a third of the 50p limit which prime minister David Cameron wants to impose.

Now there is a problem with street drinkers in Ipswich, as in many towns and cities across the country.

Why has it grown?

Policies of successive governments, known as ‘neo-liberalism’, or the free for all – for business – have excluded many people from the labour Market.

The Dole these days is only given to those who satisfy an increasingly rigorous set of criteria, turn up to bogus ‘employment’ schemes (3,5% success rate), and have their lives under constant surveillance.

Many, in the words of my mate Neil, say “fuck it, and go and drink cider in the park”.

Alcohol is only one of their choices.

Most mix the booze with even cheaper tranquilizers (Temazepam), and, frankly, any drug going.

The Left and Alcohol.

Some on the left agree with this clamp-down on poor drinkers.

Some cite the Scottish experience of raising prices. They claim it has been needed because they are particularly afflicted.

In Ken Loach’s The Angel’s Share there is a scene in that land where out-of-their-brains  youngsters snaffle down a 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jack.

You can see this round here every day. I have left my gaff at 9 in the morning and seen people swigging Tenants Super at the end of the street.

This will not go away if the cost is raised. The hard-core  will just beg and, possibly, shop-lift more.

But what is really behind the thinking of those on the left calling for the less well off to cut down on drinking?

In Britain there was a strong teetotaler movement inside the late Victorian and Edwardian labour movement.

Henry Hyndman though not a non-drinker (he liked his Bordeaux vintages) frowned on the workers imbibing strong drink. He once wanted to snatch a bottle of whisky away from SDF members playing cards on a post-Party meeting train.

Against this prejudice Robert Blatchford  felt obliged to make a defence of moderate drinking in his popular Merrie England (1894).

The ILP initially  made it policy for members to sign the non-drinking ‘pledge’ .

I can’t imagine my Whisky drinking Scottish ILP forebears liking that.

The policy  lasted precisely a year.

Today we see people on the left who have given up changing the world and prefer to try to change (that is cajole) people.

Their attitude is often the same as Hyndman.

They can drink fine wines, good quality real ale, and cider.

But the rabble in the streets need ‘reforming’.

The Anarchist journal Now or Never replies,

With heavy drinking increasingly attacked by the Government and media, Tug Wilson suggests we look to history for guidance, and that it is once again time for drunkards everywhere to march under the banner of the Skeleton Army.

During the late 19th Century the recently formed Salvation Army were taking their message of virtuous clean living to the streets of Britain, deliberately targeting drunks, gamblers, prostitutes and other ‘undesirables’.  The Salvation Army’s unconventional approach was abrasive to both the Christian establishment and many of those they were preaching to.  In choosing to attack popular working class pastimes, they whipped up a violent grassroots reaction and their provocative style of disseminating their message often resulted in public disturbances.  Towards the end of 1881 in Weston-Super-Mare a rag-tag bunch of libertines, drunkards, publicans and brothel-keepers began an organised opposition to the Salvation Army; the Skeleton Army.  Very soon Skeleton Armies started appearing throughout the country.

The present anti-alcohol  lobby is the modern temperance movement.

This measure is ill-intentioned, ill-conceived and will be ill-executed.

Join the new Skeleton army!

As Kevin has commented (below) I shall add this further example of hypocrisy, which I cut-and-pasted from his Blog,