SWP: Expelled before conference begins

international | rights and freedoms | other press Thursday January 03, 2013 13:08 by Peter Manson

Once more the SWP central committee has acted to silence critics and cut off debate,

How the SWP Junta treat their members with contempt. Peter Manson writes on how dissidents are treated.

Commenting on the contributions from a minority of Socialist Workers Party comrades in the second of this year’s Pre-conference Bulletins, I wrote: “It is most encouraging that these … comrades … are clear-sighted and courageous enough to make such far-reaching proposals - proposals aimed at transforming the SWP into a genuinely democratic-centralist force, capable of playing a leading role in the struggle for the mass party we so desperately need”. I concluded: “It remains to be seen for how long they would be tolerated if their ideas began to make headway” (‘An anatomical investigation’, November 8).

Unfortunately, however, even before those ideas have had a chance to make such headway, the central committee has responded in the only way it knows: by summarily expelling two of the comrades who had written such powerful criticisms, together with two others who are alleged to be involved in “secret factionalism” alongside them.

Expelled, but not from heaven

The four expelled members are Paris Thompson (Leeds), Tim Nelson (Bristol), Charlotte Bence (London) and Adam Marks (London) - the first two had contributions published in the Internal Bulletins, as the documents are known. Ironically, temporary factions are permitted during the three-month pre-conference period and we are in such a period right now (the 2013 SWP conference will be held in London over the weekend of January 4-6). But the SWP constitution stipulates that the central committee must be notified of their formation in a document signed by “at least 30 members of the party”.