SWP trying to cosy up to SP
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Wednesday July 10, 2002 16:42
by Concerned Socialist
I've just read the Socialist Worker. I'm sick of the SWP trying to link themselves to the Socialist Party. They continue to do it because their methods have failed.
In the latest edition of the Socialist Worker the SWP are trying to get credit out of the SP's success in the elections.
"THE SOCIALIST Party and the Socialist Workers Party fought win a hard left vote. With the exception of Socialist Party candidates Joe Higgins (21.5 percent and re-elected) and Clare Daly (12.5 percent), their vote was squeezed by the rise of Sinn Fein."
The Socialist Party were not part of an alliance or pact with the SWP. The SWP represent nothing in terms of electoral support. SWP are Ireland's best known political sect, not a party. Most people are completely turned off by their opportunism and their inability to work in genuine campaigns.
SWP even claim credit from the base of support the SP gained!:
"Nevertheless, in areas where the socialist parties had a record of local campaigning they established a small electoral base for the future."
I think that SWP should replace 'the socialist parties' with 'the socialist party'. Nowhere did the SWP build up a base. The SP have a serious base in Dublin West, Dublin North. SP are also have good bases in South Dublin, Tallaght, and Cork. In the next local elections I think the SP will make gains in these areas and win council seats. SWP wont win any seats.
SWP stop trying to scab off the SP! Why don't you just realise you will never get support from ordinary people because of your methods and opportunism. SWP are pathetic and will not play any serious role in the formation of a New Mass Workers' Party.
Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6What concerns me is that you have been buying and reading "Socialist Worker", this could have a very negative effect. Is Joe Higgins aware of what you have been up to??
You shouldn't bother having a go at the SWP for trying to link themselves with the Socialist Party. It's almost sweet really.
I think you will find the Socialist PArty do not stop it's members from reading a wide range of material whether published by SWP or not.
This is unlike the SWP. The SWP try to keep their members ignorant of other left groups and of their own history.
On the SWP cosying up to the SP, Well I suppose it's a form of flattery! We should be flattered, we must be doing something right!
Whats the point of the above topic? Rather it would be better to begin a serious discussion on whether or not the potential to build a new workers party exist at the present moment in time. I personally think it's difficult to see where the forces would come from, inevitably struggles will take place over the coming months and years which will force new layers of people to take action - at that stage I think the idea of a new political voice absoloutely comes on the agenda. But I don't think amalgamations or 'cosy ups' with the SWP (which is a path to disaster or mental breakdown) is something that should dominate this discussion.
The LCR obtained the best electoral results of its history, not with its traditional candidate (the eternal "rebel youth" Alain Krivine) but with a union leader, Olivier Besancenot, who got 1,200,000 votes (4,3%), and has called "to defeat Le Pen" in the second round of the elections. The "anti-globalization" movement, of which the LCR wanted the become the political expression, was more honest and straightforward and called, in the person of the peasant leader Joseph Bov*, to vote for the right-wing Chirac, who according to the opinion polls will get 80% of the votes. The LCR calls for an "anti-fascist front" which would include, of course, the republican right, whose main representative is the RPR of Chirac. In other words, the LCR has grown only in order to declare itself openly integrated to the moribund regime of the Republic, grotesquely repeating the tragedy of the "(popular) anti-fascist fronts" of Stalinism in the 1930s and 1940s. The anti-revolutionary nature of the "United Secretariat" has been thus fully revealed. The Lambertist PT, with a little over 130,000 votes, or 0.5%, gives a "theoretical" vent to the same policy, calling to "re-conquer democracy" (adding: "that of 1789"), i.e. they behave lie the shadow of counter-revolutionary apparatuses.
LO, with Arlette Laguillier, obtained 1,630,000 votes (more than 5.7%) retaining its achievements in the presidential elections of 1995 (1,615,000 votes). Its stagnation, which benefited the LCR, was due to its zigzags and vacillations around the issue of the workers’ party (which it first called, and then refused, to build) as well as to its sectarian attitude towards the activists and the mobilizations of the "anti-globalization" movement. For the second round it called not to abstain and put instead a blank vote: "Many will incline to vote for Chirac in order to stop Le Pen. We do not believe that the workers are interested in turning the election of Chirac into a plebiscite that would indorse all the reactionary measure that will be adopted as a result of his triumph. We must not forget that, without Le Pen’s ideology, Chirac will govern with an eye to Le Pen’s voters rather than to the left voters that will support him. The workers must not fall into this trap. Chirac will most probably be elected, but this representative of the big capitalists must not triumph with the votes of those he will oppress during five years" (Declaration of Arlette Laguillier, 22/4).
Actually you will find that the Socialist Party are in fact the Gauche Révolutionnaire of Ireland. Gauche Révolutionnaire is the French section of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).
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