Archive for the ‘SWP’ Category
Susan Watkins, Casting Off. Brexit: a world-historic turn. Alex Callinicos. Assessing Brexit from the Left.
Socialists must be internationalists even if their working classes are not; socialists must also understand the nationalism of the masses, but only in the way in which a doctor understands the weakness or the illness of his patient. Socialists should be aware of that nationalism, but, like nurses, they should wash their hands twenty times over whenever they approach an area of the Labour movement infected by it’.
Isaac Deutscher, On Internationals and Internationalism. Cited in The Left Against Europe. Tom Nairn. New Left Review. 1/75. 1971.
La terre nous donne une discipline, et nous sommes les prolongements des ancêtres
Nous sommes le produit d’une collectivité qui parle en nous. Que l’influence des ancêtres soit permanente, et les fils seront énergiques et droits, la nation une.
The soil gives us a discipline, and we are the extension over time of our ancestors….We are the product of a collective life which speaks in us. . May the influence of our ancestors be permanent, the sons of the soil vital and upstanding, the nation One.
La terre et les morts. Maurice Barrès. 1899. (1)
Susan Watkins, Casting Off (New Left Review 100. July-August 2016). Brexit: a world-historic turn. Alex Callinicos. International Socialism. Issue: 151. 2016.)
Casting Off, in the latest New Left Review begins by observing that the “surprise” of the Leave vote in the June Referendum went against the wishes the “ruling class” “much of the intelligentsia” and “much of its youth”. In a choice expression she compares lamentations about the result on Facebook to a “Wailing Wall”. Those beating their brows at the loss of the EU Jerusalem “in one account” were full of “nightmares of xenophobia”. “Britons having ‘voted to make foreigner-hunting legal, if not an actual duty.’”. Many people in Europe, she notes, that is, Germans and French, were unconcerned. Only a third of Germans and a quarter of the French were “unhappy about Brexit”.
Was this the result of the “ressentiment”, bottled up rancour stewing amongst “globalisation’s losers”? An ” insurrectionary protest against neoliberalism, globalism and cultural contemp” as Paul Mason put it (le Monde Diplomatique. July.) ? Or more simply was a revolt of the left-behind, spearheaded by the working class, the unemployed, the casualised, and the poor. In Brexit, Alex Callinicos has written that, “All the polls show that the poorer you are the more likely you were to vote Leave. This means that millions of working class voters have gone unrepresented by the mainstream of the labour movement”. He trumpets his own group, the SWP, which backed the Leave campaign on a ‘left’ basis (Left-Exit, lexit). “Lexit offered a political voice, albeit a small one, to working class people who wanted to reject the EU on a class basis.” (2)
Anti-Globalisation?
For Watkins the result was not a rebellion against the distant mechanisms of finance capital and the world market. It has domestic origins, in British government policies laid down since the 2008 banking crisis, Gordon Brown’s turn to fiscal rigour, and the Liberal Conservative Coalition’s austerity programme. As a result scare mongering about the potential negative effects on the economy of Brexit had little impact on those already at the bottom of the pile. In “the Leave districts that have been depressed since the 1970s, with gdp per capita less than half inner-London levels, and now hardest hit by cutbacks in services and benefits, bleakness and desperation appear to have trumped economic fear.” She continues. “Anti-globalisation, then? Of a sort, if globalisation means not just deindustrialisation and low pay but disenfranchisement and politically targeted austerity.” In the south the ‘anti-Globo stand was different, “Their economic interests had been carefully nurtured by the Cameron-Osborne governments and their vote was more purely ideological: fear of change overcome by reassertion of ex-imperial national identity. Britain had never been conquered by Germany, so why was it ceding powers to Brussels?”
In this vein both Watkins and Callinicos play down the role of xenophobia and, more specifically, anti-migrant worker sentiment, in the referendum. Both note the mainstream Remain campaign’s supporters, beginning with the Prime Minister David Cameron’s “talking tough” on migration. For Callinicos, “at least as powerful a force is likely to be an alienation from the economic and political elite crystallising the experience of 40 years of neoliberalism and nearly 10 years of crisis expressed in stagnant or falling wages, unemployment, dwindling social housing and a shrinking welfare state. The EU as the incarnation of neoliberalism and contempt for democracy is a perfect symbol of all these discontents. London, site of a global financial hub, may have voted to Remain”
The pair concur on one point, “….the main reason given by the bulk of Leave voters—49 per cent—was the notion that ‘decisions about the uk should be taken in the uk’, a more ambiguous formulation that could include democratic, sovereign and nationalist perspectives. “ (Watkins), “Lord Ashcroft’s referendum-day poll found that nearly 49 percent of Leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”, compared to 33 percent who gave the main reason for leaving that it “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.” (Callinicos).
There are three central problems with these claims.
Racism.
Firstly, it is absurd to compare the Conservative Remain campaigners’ talk of ‘control’ of migration in the same breath as the blood-and-fire rhetoric of UKIP and their echo-chambers on the Leave side. To dismiss the issue by ranking its importance on the basis of an opinion poll is to assume that one motive trumped the other rather than coalescing with it.
As Kim Moody has argued, immigration was at the centre of the campaign. “A majority of all those who voted Leave ranked immigration and border control as their 1st or 2nd reason. Those in the top social rank were less likely to give this as their first reason than others, but all groups were the same for 2nd choice and all Leave voters put immigration high on their list. Anti-immigrant and xenophobic views were prevalent in all social groups. This is not meant to be a comforting conclusion.” (3) Furthermore, “One section of British corporate capital that threw its majority weight loudly behind Brexit was the daily press.” “The Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star, Daily Telegraph, and Sun, all known for their anti-immigrant bias and with a combined daily circulation of just over 5 million, supported Brexit.”(Ibid)
It would not have taken long, a visit to the pub in less well-off areas, would suffice to hear people publicly repeating the right-wing tabloid’s anti-migrant propaganda melded with their own prejudiced anecdotes. Perhaps it would have taken longer to visit Ipswich market and see the UKIP placard carrying crew sitting on the benches ranting about Romanians. But such sights were not rare. Anywhere.
Few could doubt that cosmopolitan pro-European hipsters would shy from these displays. But what exactly drove the minority who followed Lexit to cast their ballots in the same way and how do their asses their achievement in bolstering the nationalist right? Callinicos asserts that “The emergence of the Lexit Campaign, advocating a left, internationalist opposition to the EU, was one of the successes of the referendum. Not because it swung a massive number of votes, but because it brought together a significant spectrum of forces on the radical left to campaign for a Leave vote on an anti-capitalist and anti-racist basis that (unlike some earlier left anti-EU campaigns) had no truck with migrant-bashing.” Really? Is the Socialist Party’s call for control (by trade unions?) of the entry of migrant labour, joined by the Morning Star-Communist Party of Britain, part of this “anti-racism”? Does the SWP really have that much in common with the CPB who push a barely revamped version of the 1970s Alternative Economic Strategy, completed – and why not? – with capital and import controls? Was it a ‘success’ to see New Left review, the SWP and all the others, cavort on a Camden stage in the company of a – suitably disguised – supporter of the French ‘Lambertist’ current, one-time Trotskyists who having sipped from that poisoned cup have become ultra-nationalists? (4)
Austerity.
Secondly, what were the “non-immigration” issues behind the Leave vote? Casting Off describes “the slow, still inchoate politicisation that had been taking place in the aftermath of the financial crisis”, and “the Exit vote would not have happened without the financial crisis and skewed, class-based recovery.” Callinicos talks more broadly of UKIP’s rise as part of “ordinary voters’ revulsion against the entire political and economic elite.” The “very unanimity of establishment opposition to Brexit is likely to have goaded many people into the Leave camp simply as an act of defiance.”
Absent is any account of the mass, country-wide, left and trade union austerity campaigns, co-ordinated by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity (PA) Had this no effect in channelling ressentiment against the ‘elite’ towards progressive solutions? Did its protests, marches, conferences, pickets and pressure on local councils, count for little?
It is true that their impact was decreasing in the run up to the Referendum. An April London March barely attracted 20,000 – despite the freedom that the end of Police estimates gave to the organisers to claim an attendance of 175,000 (in a half empty Trafalgar Square). Clearly this ‘incipient politicisation” has drained away in a different direction. A look at how the politics of protest are foundering might throw up the reflection that the victory of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party indicates that political institutions can be the focus of change, rather than the street. The hard task of getting Labour local authorities to oppose austerity, not just because of the legacy of Blair’s accommodations, but as a result of an armour-plated legal budget controls over councils, has begun. The problems this turn to Labour creates for those, like Callinicos, and his former comrades in Counterfire, the majority of the active leadership of the PA, begin with the recognition that the Brexit vote as a “representation” of opinion, which more walking about in the roads, attempts to bathe in Corbyn’s reflected glory, and calls for general strikes, are unlikely to revolve.
Sovereigntism.
Thirdly, the Brexit result was a boost to sovereigntism, the belief that politics has to focus on nations, and on the ‘people’s’ control over the national body politic. In this respect Chantal Mouffe’s declaration that the vote was a “salutary shock” is less significant than her immediately following words. The Belgian political philosopher stated, “That’s because I am one of those so-called ‘left-wing Europeanists who are not sovereigntists but instead demand a democratic refoundation of Europe” Pleasure with the damage to the City and neo-liberal forces is one thing, but what harm did this create to ‘sovereigntism”? (5)
The evidence against rash claim lives in Downing Street. Yet, against Mouffe for many it has reinforced the illusion, that in some form sovereigntism can be the basis of left politics. To cite the most obvious source of how far this ideology has crept into leftist circles: the conclusion of Mouffe’s jointly-authored of Podemos (2016) Iñigo Errejón has called for the construction of a “..we the people “that demands sovereignty and a new social contract”. To build this we have “to think about the effective, mythical and cultural commonness of any identity construction”. Or, in an even more abstract vein, to follow Frédéric Lordon, politics based on “un commun passional” bound to “une certaine appartenance” (belonging) not to a hypostatised nationality but to “la nation politique” a political construction. (6) In other words, in contrast to Barrès, a newly minted sovereign feeling, without the clamour of ancestral voices, embodied in institutions. They would surely be able to take “decisions about the UK in the UK.” The evidence is that those appealing directly to the dead voices of our forbears, the racist populist right, have had more success in the sovereigntist venture.
Callinicos, with customary grace towards those who disagree with him, outlined the choices for the left at the start of the campaign, “between the neoliberal imperialist monstrosity that is the EU, strongly supported by the main echelons of British capital, and the xenophobic and racist Thatcherites that dominated the Leave campaigns.” In his conclusion he opines, no doubt to warn those not averted to the possibility, that British capitalism is “entering very stormy waters.” The defeat of an invigorated Tory party under Teresa May, at the helm of state, will doubtless be the coming work of a mass movement conjured from the depths.
Democratic Refoundation?
Those who chose to vote for the “monstrosity” as “not worse” may well still feel unhappy at the result – for all the tempests in the global capitalist oceans. Many of our legal rights, consolidated in EU law, are now to put to the test of a sovereign Parliament for which we have ambiguous passionate feelings. The democratic refoundation of Europe, if pursued, and developed by forces such as DiEM25, will take place without our directly interested participation. We risk becoming further stuck in our backwater.
But for others there is this consolation. Our “sub-imperial” “far from prefect Hayekian order” has taken a blow. Watkins speaks of a victory for British (English) nationalism, in a “a semi-sovereign state” Yet the defeat is clear, for several – scattered – targets, “ For now, though, it is plain that Blairised Britain has taken a hit, as has the Hayekianised EU. Critics of the neoliberal order have no reason to regret these knocks to it, against which the entire global establishment—Obama to Abe, Merkel to Modi, Juncker to Xi—has inveighed.” (7)
The prospect of the “actuality of revolution” by “critics of the neoliberal order”, a “world-historic turn”….still leaves them shaking in their boots….
For the rest of us, Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, expressed our view (Morning Star 12th of September),
The Brexit vote was a defeat for the working class in Britain as well as internationally. It was a defeat for internationalism and collectivism. Brexit was a victory for populist demagogy, xenophobes and racists. Brexit has already had detrimental economic effects and worse is likely to come.
******
(1) On Barrès and his concept of the “people” and nation see the illuminating, Le peuple chez Maurice Barrès, une entité insaisissable entre unité et diversité. Brigitte Kurlic. SensPublic. 2007.
(2). See also: The internationalist case against the European Union. Alex Callinicos. International Socialism. Issue: 148.
(3) Was Brexit a Working-Class Revolt? Kim Moody. International Viewpoint. 14th of September 2016.
(4) Both the Morning Star’s CPB and SPEW advocate immigration controls and socialism in one country, notes Mike Macnair. Weekly Worker 15.9.2015. In report here: Paris Anti-EU Rally: French ‘Lambertist’ Trotskyists Receive Backing from UK ‘Lexit’ Campaign.
(5) A Salutary Shock. Chantal Mouffe. Verso. (From Mediapart 27th June 2016)
(6) Podemos. In the Name of the People. Iñigo Errejón in Conversation with Chantal Mouffe. Lawrence and Wishart. 2016. Imperium, Structures et affets des corps politiques. Frédéric Lordon. La Fabrique. 2015.
(7) See: Prognoses. In: The New Old World. Perry Anderson. Verso 2009.
SWP Calls for Campaign for Corbyn to Organise a ‘Left-wing Brexit’.
British ‘sovereigntists’ demonstrate en masse for Left Brexit.
The various Trotskyist groups in the UK, strengthened with growing mass support and popularity, have been offering Jeremy Corbyn well-meant advice recently.
Socialist Worker has just penned a carefully worded letter to those backing the Labour leader.
Letter to a Jeremy Corbyn supporter.
Charlie Kimber National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party offers many tips but this is the most important one:
The best way for Jeremy to beat back the right and win the next election is to head up a much higher level of fightback in the workplaces and the street.
Take note the TUC!
He follows up earlier advice to the Trade Unions – at the end of August he stated, “Pressure to repeal the Trade Union Act should be part of the debate about Brexit.”
Take note, David Davis!
Indeed, should being a modal verb with all kinds of potential meanings, chiefly, what ought to happen and is not happening now.
Or in this case, unlikely to happen at all.
Kimber offers this suggestion.
…he could set out a programme for a left wing Brexit and call meetings and demonstrations to battle for it.
What do we want? Left-wing Brexit now!
It trips off the tongue… It sets hearts glowing.
You can visualise a sea of demonstrators, SWP placards, and….Jeremy Corbyn.
Who campaigned against Brexit.
Kimber finishes his letter with this sage advice,
..in the end power doesn’t lie in parliament. It lies in the economic ownership and control by the bosses and the unelected army, the police and the state.
The only way we can combat economic sabotage from the multinationals or the reaction of the state would be mobilisation of workers on a vast scale.
It would need strikes and occupations and monster demonstrations.
It would require politics dragged from the parliamentary chambers into the streets. That’s why I think we need independent revolutionary organisation.
We await the long drag.
Tories in “Chaotic State” as Counterfire calls for “crucial stand off” at Birmingham Conservative Conference.
Posadists Call on Allies to Help Kick out Tories.
As support for revolutionary socialism grows in Britain, the Posadists in historic breakthrough, The League for the Fifth International (formerly known as Workers’ Power) emerging from decades of underground struggle to publish Red Flag (‘The Voice of Labour’s Revolutionary Change’), Bermondsey Republican Socialists proudly fighting for Annual Parliaments and the Abolition of the Corn Laws, and the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International well on the way to the “re-creation of a World Party of Socialist Revolution“, the class struggle is heating up.
Conditions for revolution, the strategists of this movement declare, are not only ripe, i.e. not rotten, but in a historical crisis within which a vanguard leadership can resolve the problem of insurrectionary guidance… Counterfire.
In a key statement (soon to filed on the Marxist Internet Archive) David Moyles wrote for Counterfire on the “actuality of the revolution”
He noted,
there are those who think that however static and stable things may seem, capitalist society is fundamentally pretty chaotic.
Quite so.
The leaders of the British revolution have now issued this careful assessment of the conjuncture and the possibilities it offers for the left,
Mick Wattam begins by blaming opponents of Jeremy Corbyn for the failure to seize the opportunities offered at the “very moment when the Tories were in disarray over the Brexit vote”.
So divided Theresa May was elected without a contest…
That is, after, as Nick Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union noted – against the assessment of Brexiters like Counterfire,
The Brexit vote was a defeat for the working class in Britain as well as internationally. It was a defeat for internationalism and collectivism. Brexit was a victory for populist demagogy, xenophobes and racists. Brexit has already had detrimental economic effects and worse is likely to come.
Brexit has resulted in a more right-wing government. It means an already difficult period ahead will be even harder for the trade union movement and the working-class communities we represent.
Still, Hope, Wattam writes, lies in the proles – undermining the “system”.
Although Corbynism threatens to destabilise the way the political system has worked for a long time, with its reliance on a muted opposition from Labour, we will need a much bigger and more inclusive struggle to bring about real change.
Put simply, Corbyn needs the unions…for what?
The new politics spearheaded by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are certainly worth fighting for, and call for a revolutionary change in how our society is run. But if it is limited to participating in wards and constituencies in order to win positions in the Labour machine, the energy will soon dissipate. There has to be a call for action in the trade union movement where the thousands of new people inspired by Corbyn can make a difference.
To repeat: for what?
Wattam continues, almost, rationally, that there may well be a few obstacles in the way,
If the Tories are able to stack up the victories through this new government which has not even won an election, then they and the people they represent will be jubilant. They will be invigorated by their reversal of the major achievements of our labour movement in the 20th century, which were won through the culmination of long and bitter struggles over many years.
Although the consequences of such Tory victories will inevitably lead to less opportunity and more misery for ordinary people, this may not necessarily lead to a growth of support for the left and Corbyn. It could easily lead to more support for the right within Labour under the guise of unity at all cost against Tory attacks.
He then draws out this alternative..
The only way of propelling forward the Corbyn revolution is to build the movement on the streets and support for the important strikes due to take place in the coming weeks and months. The defeat of the Tories cannot come too soon, and it can only come from our actions.
How “Our actions” “in the streets” and “strikes” (at an all time historic low) are the way forward is left hanging. In the air. Or the wind.
But who cares about boring elections!
Look at this…
The demonstration at the Tory Party conference on Sunday 2 October, called by the People’s Assembly, has to be a huge rally in support of the Junior Doctors, against the reintroduction of grammar schools, and a loud and united notice from all sections of our movement to Theresa May’s government that we are determined to kick them out of office.
How? What is this “crucial standoff” outside the Tory Conference? A situation in which one force or party neutralises or counterbalances the other and further action is prevented; a standstill: a standoff between demonstrators and the police? A tie or draw, as in a contest? That is however determined it may be, a deadlock.
If the People’s Assembly Rally (perhaps I have missed this, but it is not going to be that large at all) is unable to ‘defeat’ the Tories in Birmingham will it be the task of the “Corbyn Revolution”?
How?
All the words about ‘fight’ and “kick them out” cannot disguise the emptiness of this sound and fury.
To cite the classics of the workers’ movement:
Alex Callinicos, of the rival Socialist Workers Party, perhaps signals the thinking behind the idea that the Conservative Party might be pushed out (Socialist Worker).
Speaking of divisions over Grammar Schools he writes,
the whole business confirms what a chaotic state the Tories are in, despite the impression of stability May created by taking over and putting the stamp of her authority on the government. But this authority will be tested very severely in the months and years ahead.
Authority…test…. chaos, chaotic states, complete disorder and confusion.
One solution: Revolution!
Cameron Gone: Another Victory!
He’s Gone….
Counterfire held off the threat of a Tory coup in 2015.
Counterfire joins calls to confront ‘Tory coup’ on the streets May 6th 2015.
John Rees, from radical left activist group Counterfire, said confronting a possible “Tory coup” will require action “on the streets”.
He told CommonSpace: “Astoundingly, the Tories and their supportive press are not only trying to paint the SNP as illegitimate but also to declare illegitimate any Labour administration that relies on the SNP for support. This at the same time as the Tories are willing to rely on the deeply reactionary DUP and UKIP for support.”
“The immediate task will be to confront a Tory coup, if this is what happens, on the streets,” Rees added.
Socialist Worker advocated before the EU referendum,
The struggle has paid off:
David Cameron resigns: Former PM quit over Brexit and did not want to be ‘backseat driver’ says aide.
Oddly this resignation letter does not mention the SWP and Counterfire contribution to his disappearance.
Typical cowardly bourgeois politician.
Labour Party and Trotskyism: Spotting Marks for David Aaronovitch’s BBC Four Progamme.
Trotskyist Groups in the UK (to be Updated…)
Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyites was on Radio Four last night.
The central committee of Tendance Coatesy gives the programme:
- 7 out of 10 marks for intelligibility Dr Bert Patenaude , historian of Trotksy,.
- 8 marks to Michael Crick for saying as many nasty things about Militant and the Socialist Party as he could in a few minutes.
- 1 Mark for the history of British Trotskyism and the International Marxist Group (IMG), for – well-established rumour has it – ex-IMGer Prof John Callaghan.
- 1o out of 10 for fun to Amy Leather of the Socialist Workers Party, for her breathless rant delivered in an authentic, and touching, Mockney accent
- Zero points to David Aaronovitch because he failed to repeat his funny dinner party story about International Marxist Group’s (IMG) Earth Mothers and Hip Acid trippers during his brief time as Oxford (was this just forgetfulness or because of something people have since reminded him of?).
The claim that Trotskyist groups are peripheral to Corbyn’s success, tiny in number, and peripheral to politics, may well be true.
It might nevertheless still be a slur on comrade Gerry Downing, The Posadists, Red Flag (of the League for the Fifth International), the News Line, and indeed the Brent Soviet, that their august opinions were not solicited on this, and many other, vital points.
But more important issues, on which they have little informed comment to make, are at stake.
The Central Committee wishes to let it be known that the programme, ostensibly about Trotskyist entrists in the Labour Party, had one big gap, and that gap has a name, Socialist Action.
Socialist Action is a small Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom. The group was founded in 1982 when the International Marxist Group entered the Labour Party and changed its name to the Socialist League. It became generally known by the name of its publication, Socialist Action, which first appeared on 16 March 1983…………
From the mid-1980s Socialist Action became an entryist organisation, attempting to take over other organisations, with members using code names and not revealing their affiliation. It maintains a website but no publicly-visible formal organisation.
The organisation was linked with the 2000–2008 Greater London mayoral administrations of Ken Livingstone, although Livingstone was never a member.[Four of Livingstone’s key advisers were Socialist Action members; all made the “top 25” in the Evening Standard‘s 2007 list of the most influential people in London.
Fast forward to the present,
Following Jeremy Corbyn‘s election as Labour Party leader and Leader of the Opposition in 2015, it was claimed (by former member Atma Singh) that Socialist Action were building “a real power base” around Corbyn. Simon Fletcher – who according to Singh had been on the SA central committee – was appointed Corbyn’s Chief of Staff while John Ross has been linked to Corbyn’s inner circle. Former SA member Kate Hudson also works closely with Corbyn as president of CND, with Corbyn now vice president.
Now we happen to know that this account is not entirely accurate.
But was this elite entrist group mentioned?
No it was not.
We were mortified to learn that the only person John Callagham and the rest of the people on the programme could recall from our halcyon days in the IMG was poor old Liberal Democrat voting Tariq Ali.
Or so it was claimed.
Was Callaghan a member of IMG Tendency B? Were any others involved in the broadcast members, ‘sympathisers’ or ‘moles’?
We think we should be told.
SWP’s Marxism 2016. We Publish Some of the ‘List of Shame’.
The List of Shame.
Tariq Ali
Speaks on The American Empire and its Discontents Fri, 4.15pm
Moazzam Begg
CAGE Outreach Director joins our opening rally.
The full list is too long to reproduce but these are particularly worthy of note in view of the post that follows:
Judith Orr
Author of “Marxism and Womens Liberation” on fighting sexism today.
Nahella Ashraf
Panel to discuss fighting sexism and Islamophobia.
Natalie Bennett
Leader of the Green Party debates “Where next after the EU referendum?” with Joseph Choonara.
Maz Saleem
Panel to discuss fighting sexism and Islamophobia
Full list: Marxism 2016.
This is obviously something the above chose to ignore:
Why I don’t buy Socialist Worker
Posted on 22/05/2016.
In 2010 a man called Martin Smith (“Comrade Delta”) was the National Secretary of the SWP, its day to day leader, the person who employs the other party workers. In July of that year, a 17 year old woman (“Comrade W”) complained that he had mistreated her. She didn’t use the word “rape”, but the people who met her and heard her knew what she was talking about.
From the start, Smith’s supporters (including Weyman Bennett,
(Weyman Bennet. Marxism 2016.
Analyses the state of the Nazis and the far right in Britain)
who worked with him on the SWP’s anti-fascist campaign) put pressure on the women who helped Comrade W, calling one of them a “traitor”, ostracising and dismissing them and forcing them out of the SWP.
The complaint was investigated by Charlie Kimber, who is now the editor of Socialist Worker. He met comrade W, told her that he believed her and that disciplinary action would be taken against Martin Smith. The extent of the punishment was as follows: Smith was demoted from his position as National Secretary but remained in the SWP’s full-time leadership on its Central Committee.
Smith’s demotion was eventually explained to the membership at the SWP’s 2011 conference, where it was introduced by Alex Callinicos who complained about outside forces reporting on internal difficulties within the SWP. He said there was a complaint, he didn’t explain its seriousness and he said that Smith himself had asked to be moved to a different role. The session ended with delegates clapping, stamping their feet in Smith’s defence and shouting, “The workers united will never be defeated.”
….
At the start of 2013, the SWP conference narrowly approved the disputes committee report; from then on large parts of the organisation operated a loyalty test: if you were willing to back Smith, you could remain in the party. if not, you were told to leave. The atmosphere, at its worst, was as hostile as could be. Members of Smith’s personal anti-fascist bodyguard, men in the late 40s, spat in the faces of a woman in her 20s who disagreed with them. Smith’s supporters threatened to beat up another young, male critic. People were silenced, jeered, told to their faces to leave.
The second complaint was eventually heard. It was in writing. It too, has never been published. In careful, painful detail, it described further improper sexual conduct by Smith. This time, and for the first time in the entire scandal, the SWP’s leadership decided that a degree of damage limitation was necessary. A fresh panel was convened and Martin Smith resigned rather than face investigation.
In the SWP, you will be told that Martin Smith was vindicated. He wasn’t. The last panel to investigate his complaint found that there was enough evidence of sexual harassment that if he was to ever seek to rejoin he would have to explain his conduct.
In the SWP, you will be told that the leadership’s critics were a few malcontents, people who were on the verge of leaving the organisation anyway. They weren’t. At least 700 people left, or around a quarter of the SWP’s subs-paying membership. Among those who left were people who had given twenty, thirty, even fifty years of their lives to that organisation.
In the SWP, you will be told that this incident belongs to history, that the SWP has learnt from its mistakes. It hasn’t, the party continues to have to discipline its prominent members for sexual harassment. The men who attempted to cover up a crime are all still in leadership positions.
Socialist Worker: After Brexit, Our Turn!
Brexit Will Need Revolutionaries to re-read the Classics.
Tory splits provide the opportunity of a lifetime.
Says Socialist Worker in what must be the most inane headline since….
Well most of us are sick to the buck teeth with strained analogies with that them there ‘itler’s time….
Meanwhile the paper is beside itself with joy:
“Tories in meltdown” ran a headline in the Sunday Times newspaper last week. The story said, “As party unity crumbles, Boris Johnson may be back to seize Cameron’s job”.
The Tories are tearing themselves apart over the European Union (EU) referendum, with bitter rows every day.
The blood-spilling will continue right up until the vote on 23 June—and beyond.
This is the moment to step up the exit campaign from the left. It should oppose racism, the EU bosses’ club, the pro-corporation trade deals and stand for internationalism and workers’ unity.
The Remain camp has mobilised the forces that spectacularly plunged the world into recession in 2008 to say leaving the EU would spell economic disaster.
Last week Tory chancellor George Osborne said the Treasury had begun contingency planning to shore up Britain’s financial system should the Leave vote.
What excatly will this opportunity provide?
The SWP’s paper says,
We need independent politics against the bosses on both sides.
Socialist Worker supports the Leave campaign from the left.
We don’t share platforms with the Tories or Ukip and we argue against those who say that migrants are a problem.
Er, that it: Sell Socialist Worker and join the SWP….
Meanwhile in the drab colourless world we, unlike the SWP, live in:
Priti Patel reveals Leave campaign agenda to reduce workers’ rights, says TUC.
Commenting on a speech today at the Institute of Directors by pro-Brexit MP Priti Patel, in which she argued that leaving the EU would be an opportunity to cut EU social and employment protections, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:
“Leave the EU and lose your rights at work – that’s the message that even Leave campaigners like Priti Patel are now giving.
“But which rights would go – your right to paid holidays, your right to parental leave, maybe protections for pregnant workers?
“The EU guarantees all these rights and more, and it’s why Brexit is such a big risk for working people.”
NOTES TO EDITORS:
– In her speech today, Priti Patel said: “If we could just halve the burdens of the EU social and employment legislation we could deliver a £4.3 billion boost to our economy and 60,000 new jobs.” The TUC does not accept her claim on jobs and the economic boost of reducing these EU-derived rules, but notes her overtly hostile agenda towards workers’ rights.
– The TUC commissioned an independent legal opinion from Michael Ford QC on the consequences of Brexit for UK employment law and workers’ rights. A full copy can be found atwww.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Brexit%20Legal%20Opinion.pdf
– Michael Ford QC’s legal opinion suggests that, based on past history and extant policy documents, the workers’ rights most vulnerable to repeal are:
- Collective consultation, including the right for workers’ representatives to be consulted if major changes are planned that will change people’s jobs or result in redundancies (as have been used in recent major announcements in the steel industry).
- Working time rules, including limits on working hours and rules on the amount of holiday pay a workers is entitled to.
- EU-derived health and safety regulations.
- Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE), i.e. the EU-derived protections to the terms and conditions of workers at an organisation or service that is transferred or outsourced to a new employer.
- Protections for agency workers and other ‘atypical’ workers, such as part-time workers.
- Current levels of compensation for discrimination of all kinds, including equal pay awards and age discrimination.
See paragraphs 3 and 107 of the opinion for an overview, and paragraphs 27 to 80 for full details.
As Michael Chessum says on the New Statesman site,
Lazy left-wing Brexit supporters are endangering the left’s future
The social and political forces driving Brexit are deeply reactionary, and only the most naïve, wishful thinking could imagine either that there is some undercurrent of “left-wing” ideas in the motives of most Leave voters, or that it is the left that would gain the most political space from Brexit.
But most of the political tendencies represented in the Lexit campaign – the SWP, and leftwing fragments either from or influenced by the old Communist Party – never expected or supported the rise of a left leadership in Labour. Deep down, they are in a state of strategic crisis as a result of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory. As a result, they are left repeating decades-old slogans – “the EU is a bosses’ club” – devoid of context or tactical thought; and they are running with the losing strategy of creating chaos on the Right’s terms in the desperate hope of gaining ground.
In the coming weeks, the British left will have a serious historical responsibility foisted upon it. It is vital that the left’s voice (which is overwhelmingly pro-Remain) does not become subsumed within David Cameron’s pitch – that we campaign on an unapologetically progressive platform, for freedom of movement, for social justice, and against the status quo in Europe. And those tempted by Leave should seriously question whether Lexit is a viable option at this referendum, or just a convenient cover for the very worst aspects of the British right.
