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SWP & PBPA
 national |
miscellaneous |
news report
 Monday March 19, 2007 21:53 by Activist
The following is a document presented to the SWP leadership prior to the founding of PBPA. Building The New Left
1. The centre point of our strategy over the next few years must be the development of a new Left. It is vital to understand why.
2. We have entered a unique period in the history of capitalism that may be characterised as follows
a) the system is far more unstable than at any time since the late 1940s. The end of the Second World War ushered in a period of huge growth for the world system. This was known as the Golden Age of capitalism and it created the material conditions for the nearly complete hegemony of reformist ideas. Workers expected that their sons and daughters would do better than themselves and they wanted a welfare state to moderate the worst excesses of capitalism.
The Golden Age came to an end in the recession of 1971 –73 and there was an important period of change.. The US increased the military leverage on the USSR and forced its collapse – but simultaneously they developed important weaknesses themselves. The removal of the dollar as the anchor of the financial system in 1971, symbolised the US’s relative decline against Germany and Japan. Since then the rise of China as an economic powerhouse has added to its future woes.
The US responded to this in three ways:-
- it used its political clout to gain leverage over rivals. So, for example, it forced the re-valuation of the yen and helped to trigger off a decade long decline of Japanese capitalism in the 1990s.
- it adopted the strategy of globalisation – using the IMF, World Bank WTO to open up new markets while US capital sought extra competitive advantage by locating in developing countries and promoting ‘dollarisation’ to gain rentier income.
- Backing all this up, however was a strategy to play the military card to force its allies to tow the line
There has been growth in the world economy since the nineties – but it is profoundly uneven and it is leading to ever more tensions and pressures. The localised spurts of growth do not in any way resemble the Golden Age. Far from it – there is debt induced growth; growth that is linked to growing inequalities; growth accompanied by more pressure on workers. The stimulus to much of the growth is an extraordinary level of US debt that is fuelled by the willingness of the Chinese state to invest in US capital markets and keep its currency pegged to the dollar. Hardly, a reciepe for the stability.
b) the greatest imperial power in the world is locked down in Iraq.
The strategy of the US empire of compensating for declining economic influence with military power is not working. It is locked down in a war in Iraq it cannot win. The early rhetoric of the neo-cons about a ‘revolution in military strategy’ has failed and instead an old truth has re – asserted itself - empires can easily defeat small countries but it takes far more to successfully occupy them.
US deaths and injuries are escalating to Vietnam style proportions and, crucially, recruitment to the US army is drying up. The US is not able to fight on two or three fronts at once – as Rumsfeld and Chaney had hoped. Their problem, though is that they have to. They cannot defeat the Taliban –only to see them re-take significant sections of Afghanistan. They cannot destroy Saddam – only to allow Iran to increase its influence in the area.
The lock down of the US has given Chavez a chance to breathe. It has also created the space for countries like Brazil, India and Argentina to stand up to IMF/World Bank demands. But the beast of the US empire will be back – more bloody and deadly than before.
3) The political cadre of the working class movement has been diuluted.
It is difficult to over-state how important this is. Working class politics since 1948, as been dominated by the twin poles of Stalinism and social democracy. The core networks that sustained a class perspective came in one way or other from these two poles.
Today, Stalinism is dead. The old Communist Parties of the world are rudderless and in many cases their supporters are open to revolutionary influence.
The leadership and apparatus of social democracy has embraced social liberalism. The basis of reformist politics was to make capitalism work – and then to grant reforms. The new phase of capitalism, however, has made this far more difficult as almost every major reformist demand comes up against the limits of the system far more quickly. The result is that once social democrats come into office, the apparatus of social democracy turns on its own supporters in a more profound way than in the past.
This is not to suggest that social democrats cannot maintain a working class base by tacking left on occasions. The German SPD attacked capitalists as ‘locusts’ and rhetorically embraced an anti-war position. But their room for manouevre in office is much less and their grass roots membership is in decline.
4) The working class movement is tentatively starting to fight – but without a political backbone.
Workers fight in a much more general ways than in the past – because they have to. Whether on pensions, social security or against the McCreevy directive, vast numbers mobilise on issues that attack the very heart of the system.
This is very different form the sixties when there was a huge, confident militancy – but it was a sort of ‘do-it yourself’ reformism where you fought your individual boss and did not take on central pillars of the system itself, in many cases.
Today, a weakened working class movement has to fight in a hugely political way for the most basic of rights.
3. Whatever about the bad habits that our tendency picked up in the long period of working class defeat, the key to the SWP tradition is starting with the political needs of workers.
Everything we have argued up to now indicates that the key task for the moment is the creation of a new political home for tens of thousands of working class activists whose ideas are in flux.
The creation of such a political home is a process – it cannot be declared by small groups; it cannot arise from any one blueprint – it will be messy and surprising.
Because of the scale of capitalist instability and the political dislocation of the working class, that political home has to bring together revolutionaries and reformists who want to fight. In other words, it is not about re-grouping an old far left but of opening out to new forces who have come in through social movements.
Within that formation revolutionaries have immense opportunities provided they know what they are doing.
If they play an active role in bringing this new alliance into existence, they will help shape the ideas of many. It will not happen automatically and we will have to argue – but we will learn how to argue and gain a respect that will give our ideas a hearing they did not have before.
It is, therefore, not a question of collapsing revolutionary organisations into such formations – but of building trust so that we can both build these new formations and maintain our own distinct position within them.
In Italy, for example, we need to be building Refundatione Comunista – but we have to fight hard against a leadership that wants to enter coalition.
In Britain, we need to build Respect – but after the Big Brother debacle we need to quickly establish the party beyond Galloway.
4. The SWP in Ireland has experienced huge difficulties making the turn to a New Left. The essential reason is that for more than a decade our strategy has been to combine general propaganda with episodic mass campaigns on single issues.
The methods that flowed from this has become crust or protective shell.
It was a highly successful strategy in the nineties. We campaigned on the streets for the idea of a minimum wage – and got huge support. We took up the issue of Iraq from an early stage and helped build an anti-war movement. We built support for strikes and got big audiences.
Internally, though, we combined this a high level of politics. Our members were the best politically educated activists because we had no fear of discussing every possible issue.
But there was a gap – between a small propagandist group – and the mass campaigns which won temporary support.
The weakness in the method was that it did not put us into an enduring organic relationship with layers of people who did not agree with us – and who we had to win over patiently.
From this has flowed a style that we now have to fully jettison. This includes forms of substitutionism, where we believe we are the only ‘movers and shakers’. Or vagueness and imprecision over detail because we are not held accountable for our actions. Or long abstract forms of speechifying that do not connect to practical problems.
What is at the heart of the battle within the party over the New Left is breaking fundamentally form these methods.
5. The methods of operating as a small propaganda group while engaging in mass single issue campaigns is no longer sustainable.
We need clear strategic goals that link together and give direction and sense to our work.
Over the next period, we shall therefore operate in three major domains.
a) we will help develop a wider anti-war movement that is focussed on March 18th and beyond.
b) We shall seek to give political expression to the wider movement of the past few years through developing the building People Before Profit.
c) We shall engage in a major recruitment campaign to renew and expand the SWP branch network.
The rest of this document focuses on the second of these goals.
4. The idea of People before Profit has mass appeal because tens of thousands of workers sense that Pat Rabbittte is a Tony Blair in the making – and they do not regard Sinn Fein as their political voice.
Rabbitte’s desperate bid to capture a soft racist vote by calling for work permits shows his political bankruptcy. His attacks on socialists such as Declan Bree shows there is already a price being paid for coalition with Fine Gael.
Sinn Fein have gained from this – but there are major contradictions at the heart of the party.
Firstly, Sinn Fein supporters have already established a beach head position within the business elite. The Northern Catholic middle class have moved towards Sinn Fein and with that comes money. Not just US money from companies like Coca Cola but home grown money accumulated through property speculation and construction companies.
Second, while the party seeks to opportunistically express the anger of workers it has no tradition of promoting working class self organisation. The result is that it associates itself with struggles – but does not build them. This can work for a period but the more people move into struggle the more scrutiny SF politics come under.
Third, the wider strategy of the SF leadership is that a united Ireland will come through being in coalition both sides of the border. Their spokesperson Caoimhin O Caoilean has made it clear that ‘coalition is a nettle that Sinn Fein wrasp’.
For as long as the armed struggle was in place, these contradictions could be contained under the need for ‘loyalty to the leadership’. But with the transformation of the IRA into a commemoration society and the revelation of spies at leadership level, they no longer can cement over the cracks.
In February, SF is due to revise its party programme at their Ard Fheis. They will dilute their radical policies – arguing, for example, for a mere 17.5% corporation profits tax to align themselves to a consensus that has already emerged in the ESRI circles.
As the spotlight falls on Sinn Fein economic policies, the space for a further left alternative will grow.
5. The argument for a New left applies as much to the North as the South. As we predicted there has been a rise of sectarianism because of the Belfast agreement. Indeed the argument that Eamonn McCann championed about institutionalised sectarianism has now almost become a common place.
With the rise in sectarianism and the revelations about spies, there has also been a profound growth of cynicism and a tendency for individuals to withdrawal from political life.
But while these are important obstacles, revolutionaries also need to be dialectical.
That means understanding that workers have contradictory ideas – pulled by the zero sum gain of which ‘community’ gains over the other but also sensing and wanting to hear people who talk about class.
In addition new spaces are opening up to debate issues which are held in check during the war years. The Make Poverty History rally and the good attendance at the Belfast conference on social justice and globalisation shows this.
On top of that the overall agenda of the British state to run down state spending constitutes a major threat to the living standards of workers. The decision of NIPSA to ballot for all-out strike action over Hain’s offer of 0.2% to civil servants (no – that is not a misprint) shows what is in store.
All of this means that a space has been created by which a minority of activists initially can be won to a New Left alliance. The trick is to move from global issues where the left has won a hearing to developing popular class arguments about the North itself.
5. We face, however, serious obstacles to the building of a new left – and unfortunately, they will not be solved overnight.
The first is the appalling sectarian legacy of the Irish Left. The largest component, the Socialist party, have retreated from broad based movement to concentrate on an internalised form of party building. Their perspective is crude in the extreme – they want to elect a second TD and then become the centre point for the re-alaignment of left-right politics. The problem is that even if they succeeded in getting a second TD, their sectarian methods will become a bigger obstacle in future. The Gama dispute shows precisely why..
Here Joe Higgins played a magnificent role in following up and exposing the conspiracy to defraud workers. But once it was exposed his party refused to broaden out the struggle to other activists. The result was limied impact in SIPTU – the main union the workers belonged to. A simple strategy of calling together a network of activists within SIPTU could have put far more pressure on the leadership.
The second problem is that the independents who have posed as left wing are now lining themselves up for coalition. To take an example: we engaged in discussions with Finian McGrath about becoming part of People Before Profit and he was at first positively disposed but later there was a friendly brush off. We have now learnt the reason: he and Jerry Cowley have been promoting the independent block as possible coalition partners – as long as they get a government Ministry!
Finally, if this was not enough, the grouping around Seamus Healy refuse to work with the SWP and are also quite demoralised.
Given all these difficulties it might be tempting to retreat to a nineties style perspective where we sought to lead single issue campaigns while trying to build up the SWP.
However, this is not practical either in terms of the wider trajectory of the working class politics or creating the environment where revolutionaries develop a style and a practice that is in tune with large numbers of activists.
6. Our aim therefore over the next year is to build People before Profit through a combination of forging a united front from above – and developing real groupings from below.
In the first phase of this process, we have engaged in extensive discussion with a wide variety of people on the left. In the new phase, we need to focus on developing an electoral challenge.
Over the past few weeks and months we have engaged with our allies and built up trust. There has been no manoeuvring or short sighted attempts to impose our view from above. Rather, we have taken seriously our own injunction to ensure that People before Profit looks, smells and sounds different to SWP.
Not everyone within the alliance was initially agreed on election and some still are not. Our aim, however, should be to convince a minimum of seven strong candidates candidates to emerge in the coming months.
Most of our energy, however, now needs to go into developing groups at local level. These groupings need to start by a serious, well prepared initiative whereby activists from different campaigns send out a letter to people in their areas to call an initial meeting.
Where this is done properly, we would expect 20+ to found the local groups on a constituency basis.
Once this has occured, it is vital that the groups become self sustaining through an alliance structure that allows others to make an input. At all costs, SWP need to avoid seeing itself as the shadow force that decides what PBP is doing. We are not interested in fronts or name changes but creating a space for activists from different backgrounds.
The local groups need to meet monthly and develop a programme of a activity which SWP needs to adjust to.
Finally, we need an island wide strategy rather than simply adapting to local city conditions.
The bourgeois forces on this island are co-ordinating strategies and preparing to set the agenda for a united Ireland in the future – one where sectarian blocks feed nicely into the hegemony if right wing parties.
We cannot have one strategy for the South, one for Derry and one for Belfast.
Our strategic goal must therefore be to develop People Before Profit into a all Ireland movement. For an initial period this may mean working under the auspices of the Socialist Environmental Alliance in Derry and developing a new left formation in Belfast.
But within both, we should be arguing for a pulling together of the left forces throughout the whole country.
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Comments (58 of 58)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58If this is really an SWP document and not a spoof then it's gotta show the SWP are out of touch with the real world. They live in a fantasy bubble. They say Joe Higgins/SP did not play a positive role in the GAMA struggle! madness. With this kind of analysis of Irish society and politics they are destined to continuing failure.
I'd be absolutely blown away if that isn't an authentic SWP document - it is such a lengthy, plausible and downright boring exposition of their thinking that you'd have to believe there is somebody who both cares enough and is smart enough to put such a vast amount of effort into faking it. Personally, I find that exceedingly difficult to believe.
However, having said that, the introduction just says that this document was "presented to the SWP leadership". It doesn't say that they adopted it, nor whether it represents the thinking of a single member, or of the executive committee. The document could also do with some commentary, as it it's just a very long and boring political statement of interest only to leftist trainspotters. Most people won't have a clue what this story's about.
The Irish 'leaders' have recieved the new edicts from London. The Irish comrades must be beat into line. That's what comes from having no democratic structures in their so-called International.
And as for the SWP having the best political activists, a leading member in Belfast has said he would gladly enter into a 'united front' with Al Qaeda. So much for the political needs of the working class, never mind women, gays and lesbians.
"a leading member in Belfast has said he would gladly enter into a 'united front' with Al Qaeda"
and were is your evidence for this
Unfortunately I didn't have my wire on me at the time but he said it to me at a 'Global Justice' meeting in White's Tavern just after the G8.
"Unfortunately I didn't have my wire on me at the time but he said it to me at a 'Global Justice' meeting in White's Tavern just after the G8"
well at least we can put that one to rest. You are a very sad individual
"From this has flowed a style that we now have to fully jettison. This includes forms of substitutionism, where we believe we are the only ‘movers and shakers’. Or vagueness and imprecision over detail because we are not held accountable for our actions. Or long abstract forms of speechifying that do not connect to practical problems."
jayzus, i thought for a moment there the SWP were going to get all humble, you know, like Tony Blair apologising. But Then I read on...
there is going to be another :::::RECRUITMENT DRIVE:::::: build the party, build the party, build the party, build the party, build the party, build the party
AND they are going to build a mass party (PBPA) capable of being recruited from BUT not like those nasty SP trotskyists because they are sectarian against the rest of the revolutionary left and the SWP are not.
No sir, the SWP are NOT going to follow the SP's hopeless tactic of trying to get another TD elected, but instead follow the Respect coalition's genius tactic of getting an MP elected (miao, miao) and Eamonn McCann's visionary tactic of trying to get an MLA elected, even though he fared worse this time round than last time, which was far from any electability threshold - it is a pretty dire indictment of electoralism as a tactic when your most likeable and least 'party apparachic' face can't muster enough electoral support to save face.
Think of all that energy wasted that could have been used building the anti- water charges campaign.
Of course, the element singularly missing from the SWP's analysis is libertarianism. It's like the elephant in the room. For all the incisive analysis of Stalinism and Social Democracy, there was nothing about the authoritarian elitism and vanguardism of these as models of socialist Party Organising. To offer that analysis would be to expose the SWP to the possibility of being criticised along similar lines. The warning against substitutionism, being the only "movers and shakers" etc, is a warning for the SWP not to appear to be what they are - a Leninist vanguardist party- in front of an emerging global anti war and anticapitalist movement that is rightly suspicious of leninism and vanguardism in all their forms (bolshevik, reformist, insurrectionist, guevarist...) and combines non hierarchical forms of organisation with a class analysis of capitalism. The structure for sustaining a fight back is already being built - the pieces of the backbone are already there, it's just they don't look like they did in Trotsky's imagination; they are libertarian in character, that is, non-authoritarian and non-vanguardist.
still it's great to read the edicts from the politbureau
Actually it was meeting talk, the meeting just happened to take place in a bar. I don't think the person concerned would plead drunkness as an excuse.
Sorry if being disturbed by a 'socialist' saying they would work along side fundamentalists (of any kind) makes me sad in the eyes of the cyber warriors.
Sounds like they got an audit from a bloke in a bowler hat from London (note the mistake that the Irish franchise was organising for March 18th.) who concludes by recomending American pyramid selling marketing strategies.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/664/swp%20ireland.htm
Weekly Worker's review of Marxism and People Before Profit here.
“tens of thousands of workers sense that Pat Rabbittte is a Tony Blair in the making – and they do not regard Sinn Fein as their political voice.”
A quarter of a million of them, or thereabouts, do so. How many see the SWP/PBP that way?
“Sinn Fein have gained from this – but there are major contradictions at the heart of the party.”
This from a party that claims to be socialist and oppose a worker’s wage for worker representatives, described homosexual rights as a ‘shibboleth’ and embraces all sorts of extreme Islamist views on the grounds that if they’re anti-American they must be progressive.
“Firstly, Sinn Fein supporters have already established a beach head position within the business elite. The Northern Catholic middle class have moved towards Sinn Fein and with that comes money.”
Does it now? Well, it must have been them that paid for my solid gold keyboard in fairness.
“home grown money accumulated through property speculation and construction companies.”
What evidence is there of this?
“Second, while the party seeks to opportunistically express the anger of workers it has no tradition of promoting working class self organisation.”
We have 30 years of such a tradition. We built struggles while the SWP parasitically tried to hi-jack them. An up to date example is the efforts by the SWP, in particular Brid Smith, to hi-jack the Rossport campaign while all other parties, including Sinn Féin, work together.
“The result is that it associates itself with struggles – but does not build them.”
Remove yonder mote from yonder eye.
“Third, the wider strategy of the SF leadership is that a united Ireland will come through being in coalition both sides of the border. Their spokesperson Caoimhin O Caoilean has made it clear that ‘coalition is a nettle that Sinn Fein wrasp’.”
Leaving aside the misspelling of his name, is the SWP/PBP argument that Richard will lead 83 TDs into Leinster House and have an overall majority not requiring coalition? While state power is not the zenith of republican objectives, it is an important tool in advancing both towards unity and the interests of the working class.
“They will dilute their radical policies – arguing, for example, for a mere 17.5% corporation profits tax to align themselves to a consensus that has already emerged in the ESRI circles.”
Actually we argue for 17.5% in the South and the same in the North for smaller companies while retaining a 30% rate for business in the North. We believe that business needs to pay it’s fair share, but likewise we know that foreign direct investment is an economic necessity. Over time, Corporation Tax can continue to be increased, but massive overnight increases will lead to foreign direct investment pulling out. An increase of 5% is radical, while at the same time economically sustainable.
As for dilution btw, this has been standing policy for some time.
If this is indeed an internal SWP document, it’s a frankly terrifying insight into the capacity for self-delusion. Personally, I suspect it’s being put up here to counter accusations that SWP/PBP is anything other than an SWP front.
This must be the twentieth discussion document I've seen from the micro left that trumpets the need for a "new departure" and a "united left front" and all that jabber.
Might I suggest you actually go out and do it then, rather than talking endlessly about it?
Well, if the intention is to throw dust in people's eyes in order to make People Before Profit appear anything other than an SWP front, the reality 'on the ground' (such as there is any) is contradicting this on a daily basis.
Five PBP election candidates thus far announced: four SWP members (Heane, Smith, Boyd Barret, Kenny) and one other (McKenna).
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...it's a fair guess that it's a front.
And of course the recent People Before Profit candidate in the northern assembly elections was...whisper it....an SWP member.
It would be nice to have a date for this document (if genuine) to find out whether it was written before the PBPA started calling itself the People Before Profits /Michael Davitt League . The Davitt League bit seems to have been dropped recently without any explanation .
The following passage suggests that the SWP is not a genuine party of the Irish left .
“In Britain, we need to build Respect – but after the Big Brother debacle we need to quickly establish the party beyond Galloway.”
No mention of what “we” need to do in France ,America , Germany or anywhere else ,but Ireland is expected to coordinate its activities with the need to build the SWP British section. Interesting that Respect is referred to as “ the party” .
The SWP are parroting the appraoch of others on the left who are hostile to the SP and yet are forced to give grudging credit to Joe Higgins. Thus they therefore insinuite that Joe is an effective workers' representative despite belonging to the 'secterian' SP.
GAMA alongside Irish Ferries together are the most referenced struggles in recent years and they both became a source of pressure on the union leaders and the government who were forced to concede on increasing the Labour inspectorate etc etc. That however is no substitute for effective union organisation. There is a also wider question of the control of the career bureaucrats in the trade union movement which I don't have time to go into so I want stick with the specifices of GAMA.
Let us consider the facts:
Why didn't the SWP raise any quibbles about being excluded from solidarity for the GAMA workers at the time, in their newspaper or any other forum for that matter?
Answer: because the accusation is pure nonsense.
A genuine campaigning committee, the Turkish Workers Action Group was established at a mass meeting of the workers and included SP members who were very active on the issueand other genuine union activists in the construction industry and officials such as Paul Hansard.
Effective pressure was brought to bear on the SIPTU bureaucracy. Consider that the blocades/pickets were for a long time unofficial and yet as Lisa Maher describes on the Gama DVD the TWAG was able to get financial resources from SIPTU to sustain the struggle.
Bear in mind that only a few weeks earlier the unions were in virtual denial that this was an issue and they were collecting subs off the Gama workers for the preceding four years while this rip off was taking place. A remarkable turnaround in a few weeks! The resolve of the workers to get the money they were owed was so strong that the SIPTU leadership were left with very no room to mainouevre to actively sell this struggle out.
And yet the SWP say that more pressure could have been brought upon the SIPTU leadership. Well if so they kept it a secret at the time!
A key role for native Irish activists was standing shoulder to shoulder with the GAMA workers on the picket lines from as early as six in the morning. The SWP, apart from Ballymun from the third week onwards, and other activists who have since insinuated that they were kept at arms length were rather thin on the ground.
I find the SWP's belated criticisms of our approach to GAMA risible given that at the time I was on the steering committee of the IAWM and probably had more direct formal and informal contact with leading SWPers than any other member of the SP. I recall conversations with KA and RBB specifically about fundraising efforts they were making for the strike and yet not once did any one of them raise a criticism of our role in the dispute.
In fact Aoife Ni F at an IAWM public meeting which I addressed from the platform on behalf of the SP (to launch a mobilisation at the MPH event in Edinburgh) got up and on behalf of the whole meeting (at least half of which were SWP members) congratulated the SP (not Joe Higgins mind, the SP) for our role in the dispute. This was some two or three weeks into the dispute and I announced the details of where the picket lines were taking place at the end of that meeting.
SWP members played a role in raising some money for the dispute which deserves to be acknowleged but once SIPTU were presurized into sustaining the workers in stuggle financially (this took place early in the struggle) money ceased to be the critical issue when compared to ensuring that the pickets remained solid in Dublin and were extended to Tynagh.
I addressed another meeting on behalf the SP of trade union activists in the ATGWU office co hosted by Jimmy Kelly and Mick O'Reilly . Jimmy, who chaired the meeting acknowledged that people in the room (including members of the SWP, Socialist Democracy, WSM) had differences with the SP but that we (not Joe Higgins but the SP) 'played a blinder' on this issue. The struggle was quite advanced at this stage and I explained the outstanding issues that were being negotiated in terms of back overtime pay (GAMA had conceded everything else at that stage).
There were still pickets going on at this stage, the details of which I announced at that meeting. A specific question was raised by Joan Collins in the discussion about what role wider activists could play. Apart from coming to the pickets I specifically suggested to her and to a member from SD who I think works for Dublin city council to find out if GAMA was in line to get any Dublin City Council contracts.
Incidently SD outdid the SWP for begrudgery in singling Joe Higgins out for criticism in their website, yet they didn't take their opportunity to raise their criticisms with me at the Trade Union activists meeting
The document quoted above is apparently an SWP conference document and therefore the people being misled first and formost are rank and file members of the SWP. For a full and accurate account of the GAMA struggle I can recommend to them the DVD and pamphlet written by Mick Barry available through the link below.
I wouldn't take this stuff about Gama to heart. The SWP instinctively diss anything that they don't control or play a prominent role in. They seem to prefer that strategy to dealing with the actual reasons for their own marginal position.
Interesting to see that SWP support Partito della Rifondazione Comunista in Italy. I met some activists from this party and they told me that they regard Sinn Féin as their sister party in Ireland. In the Euro Parliament they sit with SF in GUE/NGL.
Shinner - Refondizone is a broad party. There may be people in it that would be more conservative and pro-nationalist and genuinely see SF as a sister party. Similarly there are people in RC that would see the old CPs as sister parties. Similarly there are people that see SWP, SP, etc. as sister parties. There is no official sister party for the RC in Ireland. The European Parliament 'parties' are only for administrative reasons in parliament and do not necessarily show full political agreement. PS: Michael O'B from SP seems to hit the nail on the head about the revisionism and/or lack of information the person writing that document has.
"There may be people in it that would be more conservative and pro-nationalist and genuinely see SF as a sister party."
These guys didn't seem too conservative or nationalist to me to be honest, but there you go.
Perhaps I'm hanging around with the wrong type of Italian, and they were just humouring us by joining GUE NGL when they could have joined with whatever group the SP or the SWP belong to in the European parliament. Remind me, which one is that?
This is a fascinating document for people with an interest in the Irish far left. Not because of the brilliance of its argument, I'm sad to say, but because it gives us a detailed insight into the thinking of one of the larger left currents in this country. Those of us who are no longer or were never supporters of the SWP have ready access to their public press but normally our only way of working out their real thinking is to compare their writing for public consumption with their actions. A document which is clearly intended for internal consumption only gives us an insight into their real attitudes. That's not to say that everything in it can be taken at face value. Honest self-delusion is common on the left, not to mention the fact that some less than honest spin may be necessary even for internal consumption.
Here is my initial attempt to assess this document and what it reveals. All of this discussion should I think be read alongside the thread below, which features a detailed look at the organisational decline of the SWP in recent years: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78246
The provenance of the piece
There can be little doubt that this is an authentic SWP document. It would take someone with extremely detailed knowledge of the SWP's politics, limitless time on their hands and the inclination to use it to fake SWP documents, to create such a believable forgery. It fits extremely closely with everything else we know about the organisation. What's more, the SWP activists here would be all over this thread pointing out that it isn't real and doesn't fit with their real views. Their absence speaks volumes.
The original poster describes this as the document presented to the SWP leadership prior to the foundation of People Before Profit. That is entirely believable, or it could be a conference document. We can take it for granted that this is a real SWP document in any case.
The rest of the left
The part of this document which was always going to attract the most comment is the part commenting on the rest of the left in Ireland. Too many of the people concerned read indymedia for the various sniping comments the piece contained not to get a response or thirty. The most interesting thing about this section is that, in the midst of an argument about the need for unity on the left it roundly puts the boot into everyone else on the left. Mostly it swings wildly, sometimes it actually connects accurately but the tone is uniformly hostile. It must be enlightening for those groups and individuals which the SWP has been courting for its alliances to read what the SWP really thinks of them.
The Campaign for an Independent Left for instance are described as a demoralised group around Seamus Healy, which refuses to work with the SWP. Now some observers might think that this assessment isn't too far from the mark, but either way it is hardly likely to win the SWP many friends. The document reveals that Finian McGrath was approached about People Before Profit. His refusal is described as a result of a desire for coalition government. Again that may be so, but it never seems to have dawned on the SWP that the reluctance of these forces to entangle themselves with their latest get rich quick scheme may have more to do with an assessment of the SWP as untrustworthy and politically inconsequential then with any disappointment or desire for coalition.
The Socialist Party by contrast is unlikely to be much vexed by criticism which calls it "the largest component" of the Irish left and which concentrates on its role in the GAMA strike. I have heard it said that the most honest way to attack a point of view is to attack its strongest point. Evidently the SWP have taken this attitude a bit too much to heart if they think it is a good idea to base its criticisms of the SP on an episode which even those observers with no time at all for them almost universally regard as their finest hour. Attacking the SP for not adequately using the strikers to further the cause of the left in SIPTU is, like much else in the document, unlikely to win the SWP many friends.
The account of the SP's "crude" perspectives is similarly strange. As any observer of the left here could tell you, the SP have been keen to downplay any emphasis on elections in recent years, which was one of the factors leading to disputes in the anti-bin tax campaign. What's more they go on at great, great length about how they are not themselves going to be a new mass party. Putting the boot into your rivals is a long tradition on the Irish left, and the SWP practically froth at the mouth when talking about the SP, but it is traditional to criticise your opponents for the things they do say rather than inventing ideas for them.
The most entertaining part of this section is the all too-honest part about the possibility of Clare Daly joining Joe Higgins the Dail. This is described in completely negative terms, as something which would provide an even bigger obstacle to the birth of a new left in Ireland. It undercuts at a stroke all of the talk of left unity which they direct towards the SP and I would be very surprised if that sentence wasn't endlessly quoted back to the organisation. That part as much as anything else indicates that this was intended for internal consumption only.
Missing from this rogues gallery of the Irish far left are the Workers Party and the anarchists. The former is strange only because another recently leaked document indicates that the Workers Party have been involved in discussions around a possible left slate in the next elections. This tends to indicate that they weren't exactly figuring prominently in the thinking of their would be allies on Henrietta Street. The absence of the latter is more interesting.
The anarchists are obviously not interested in elections so they wouldn't be part of any electoral calculations. But on the ground they are perhaps the most closely linked faction of the left with what passes for a global justice movement here. They are also expanding a little, which partially involves moving into space once occupied by the SWP by recruiting amongst university students. The WSM may only have three dozen members, but it has a wide periphery which taken together has already proven able to compete with a diminished SWP over things like the EU summit protests. At any previous stage in its development the SWP would have reacted vigorously to these developments and would have been mounting a ferocious defence of its territory. That this is not a priority indicates that they really do think that they have bigger fish to fry elsewhere.
Labour and Sinn Fein
The part about Labour is brief and rather confused. Its central point is that Labour doesn't appeal to people on class grounds anymore and that this potentially leaves some space for the left. the way this is expressed is rather strange though. The shameful treatment of Declan Bree has nothing to do with coalition with Fine Gael. Bree after all has been a TD in a coalition government and as a mere councillor his unfortunate unwillingness to ditch every last left wing principle isn't likely to cause any difficulties. There is no organised movement against socialists in Labour, primarily because there are no organised socialists in Labour.
The Sinn Fein section is also less than tightly argued but it does contain one sharply expressed and interesting point, namely that SF are willing to associate themselves with working class struggles but don't do much to actually build them on the ground. Anyone familiar with the SF approach to the unions and with their involvement with the bin tax and water tax issues would be hard pressed to disagree with that. The document is much less sharp on the prospects of Sinn Fein "exposing" themselves in power. Yes they want government, North and South, but a quick look at the history of Fianna Fail, which started out with a similar style of populism shows that, the desires of the far left aside, there is nothing automatic about such a party losing its working class support because of involvement in government.
Now that the inevitably controversial parts of the document are out of the way, I'll deal with what the document tells us about the state of the SWP in my next post.
Self assessment
One of the most revealing sections of the document is its assessment of the SWP itself.
Yes, it contains some standard issue self congratulation. SWP activists were the best educated (please, no sniggering about students and lecturers at the back, in some ways this was probably true at one stage). It sometimes managed to gain "huge support" on single issues. The strategy was once "very succesful". The usual stuff in other words. But even this self congratulation is limited to the past. In fact the phrasing implies that its activists are no longer the "best educated" and explicitly makes the case that its former strategies are no longer succesful or appropriate.
This is clearly expressed in what is a remarkably honest list of the SWP's faults, even if they are described in a more charitable way than some would be inclined towards. The style which has to go includes forms of substitutionism, where we believe we are the only ‘movers and shakers’. Or vagueness and imprecision over detail because we are not held accountable for our actions. This startlingly enough, is a mildly phrased acceptance that the SWP has a long record of employing sectarian and undemocratic methods in its campaigning work. So what can we take from this admission?
Well one obvious point is that this document confirms what most leftists outside the party have long considered obvious. The SWP was knowingly and consciously sectarian in its political methods. Its leaders believed themselves to be the only real movers and shakers, they were used to not being held accountable for their actions and consequently they failed to build any enduring organic relationships with other long term activists. This kind of admission makes it difficult for them to defend practices in a limitless range of areas over the years with a straight face. This, though, was fairly obvious to all of those who have been around the left.
The other, more significant, point is that these admissions are part of a battle within the SWP. I am not talking about a battle between organised groups with different political perspectives. Nobody, other than the leadership has the right to even form such a group outside of the brief pre-conference period. There is no evidence to suggest that there is some coherent opposition to the SWP's change in tack and that this is a polemic targeted at them. In fact it is difficult to even imagine such a coherent opposition emerging. No doubt the SWP leadership will detect "conservative elements" holding back the new turn and some people will find themselves regarded as these elements as some people always are in SWP turns, but this is not really about defeating some political resistance. Instead it is about reorienting the whole organisation.
Is this just another wheeze?
The SWP has been through innumerable changes of line, often doing their best to pretend that the old line never existed. They have also launched so many fronts and pushed so many next big things that other leftists tend to just assume that this new turn is as cynical as many of the others. An absolute dedication to party building, conceived as selling the paper and recruiting, was a constant thread running through each and every one of their previous shifts. This turn however is an attack on that core way of doing things.
The SWP is trying to reconceptualise itself. No longer is it to be the propaganda group, which may take initiatives of various sorts itself from time to time but which is fundamentally a peripheral organisation trying to intervene into a larger existing movement. Instead it is to take on itself a major role in shaping, in creating, a new movement. This is an enormous task to be taking on, and strangely enough the SWP is trying to do so at a time when they are organisationally weaker than they have been for many years.
Organisational problems
The document is rather less forthright about the state of the SWP organisationally. This is hardly surprising. A bald admission of shrinkage would risk undermining morale and the SWP leadership has never been in the business of doing anything which might dim the enthusiasm of the rank and file. This is a huge new opportunity to make a huge new breakthrough and detailed analysis of the disappearance of activists and branches and the reduction in newspaper frequency would undermine that message.
Some things do slip through however. The document admits that the organisation had found it extremely difficult to make this turn. This is ascribed to bad habits accumulated under the previous methods of the party. However it is reasonable to assume that organisational difficulties are intertwined with these problems. Organisational decay is making it more difficult to turn towards these new areas of work and at the same time organisational weaknesses are flowing from the turn. This is why the document contains as one of its three central proposals a new recruitment campaign. Such a campaign, focused on the organisational needs of the SWP, after all seems on the face of it to be the last thing that would flow from the overall argument of the document. It is there not because it is an obvious consequence of the argument, but because the SWP risks a more rapid decline without it. Note the phrasing of the call to renew and expand the branch network. It needs renewal because many branches have disappeared or are only barely intact.
This impression is further reinforced by the very modesty of the organisational targets set for People Before Profit. Here the target is to be "20 plus" people at a monthly meeting, organised on a constituency basis. Given that the SWP and its allies have so far been able to call any kind of meetings in only a small number of constituencies, the minumum target seems to be to involve perhaps 140 or 160 or 180 people. Now, this is the bottom end of the range. Clearly the SWP plan for this to expand over time. But the starting target for SWP members, SWP supporters and all of their allies combined at monthly meetings is a fraction of the numbers the SWP used to (inaccurately) claim as its own members not all that long ago.
As it happens those targets are themselves a multiple of the numbers which PBP have actually been able to muster at its national gatherings so far. If anything they have been too optimistic rather than too pessimistic.
Up North
The document, towards the end, explains something which has confused even seasoned gatherers of sectariana. In the last Northern assembly elections, two SWP members stood. One was a candidate of the Socialist Environmental Alliance in Derry. Another stood for People Before Profit in Belfast. What was this madness? Had the SWP managed to get confused as to what front they were meant to be operating?
It turns out that the SWP plan to drop the SEA but evidently felt that it was too soon to do so in Derry where the SEA had some name recognition, just before the election. It is unclear if this delay was an idea stemming from Henrietta Street or if it came from the Derry branch (one of the only relatively strong branches remaing outside of Dublin). Nor is it clear if the Derry members want to drop the SEA in the longer run or if they are just being told to do so, like it or nor. The emphasis given to this issue seems to suggest that there is some reluctance locally to ditching the SEA banner, but that's far from certain. Whichever is the case, it looks as if the mourners can get their suits ready for the SEA's funeral in the near future.
Having looked at what the document tells us about the SWP's attitudes towards the rest of the left and then what it tells us about its attitude towards itself, my third post will look at its attitude towards the political situation in general.
This is an interesting document that seems fairly frank and self-critical about the SWP's flaws. One could be cynical but perhaps it is the case that they are trying to pull away from their previous sectarian methods. However, if so, some of the leading members will need to take a course in 'people skills' in order to at least give the impression that they don't disrespect all those activists who are not, and don't intend to be, members of the SWP.
Speaking for myself, I might have considered joining the SWP at various times but was put off by their bad reputation. Even before coming into contact with them, I was warned off by a fair few sensible people (activists) who have been personally burned by the SWP. I suppose, if you make enemies of widely respected activists, it will come back to bite you. The SWP never seems to have understood this and this has left them with with few friends outside their immediate orbit. It can't be a bad thing if they intend to work on their manners and become less obviously sectarian in their methods.
I see hope in this document for the far left in general. Let us hope that it is seriously meant and not just more sectarian positioning.
Can't help wondering that this document was obtained some time last year with the plan to release it to this forum in the attempt to cause maximum damage to whatever moves have been underway for at least some kind of left slate in the elections, don't you think?
Bit dodgy if you ask me
How did the belfast branch get a fairly good vote in the elections if it has 4 members acording to the link provided. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me
Does noone from the SWP have any comment to make?
Where are all the SWP members? They are hiding. All of their regular posters here will have seen this but they don't know how to respond. Their primary tactic will be to hope it goes way. As the thread goes on, no doubt there will be some contributions, apparently from unattached people, nitpicking at this or that analysis. There probably won't be any serious contributions unless one of their leading figures posts.
The SWP in Belfast? 700 votes and more isn't bad in Northern circumstances but it's similar to their tally in Artane in the South and quite a bit less than they got in Clondalkin. In both of those cases they had only a handful of members on the ground too. A small branch, friends and relatives of the candidate, some normally inactive supporters or sympathisers who get their finger out for an election, that's easily enough to run a campaign on this kind of limited scale. As for whether the Belfast branch has four active members, that's probably a bit low. It could be six or eight or even ten if you really want to be generous. But not very long ago there were four branches in Belfast...
Why was this leaked now? That's an interesting question. It could be as simple as the leaker having recently left or become disenchanted. It could be something else.
I believe that if it is a genuine document it should not have been put up on the site. The reason being that it, if genuine, is internal and was not meant for public circulation. I wonder if any other left group would appreciate their internal documentation being publically broadcast. This happened earlier this month with a CIL document and i didn't agree with the attitude of the editorial group of Indymedia refusing to withdraw the document despite the appeals from the source.
Indymedia is bad enough with the petty bickering that passes as debate without stooping as low as being a peddler of confidential information. Groups write assessments of their current position, analysis of current conditions, assessments of their progress, etc. Usually they are written in less diplomatic language that they would use if the document was going public.
Anyone from a serious left group will have done similar work and possibly been even less tactful than the author above. So the comradely (we are all comrades are we not?) thing to do would be to ignore the above unless the SWP decide to declare it ot be theirs.
What we should be asking ourselves is, what were the motives of the person that put this up in the first place? If it is to damage the SWP a group he/she is a member then this is pathetic. If it is an attempt to 'fit up' the SWP then its shameful, either way its content should be ignored unless, as I already stated, the SWP openly declare it to be theirs.
BTW, if the poster is a SWPer then he/she should leave the SWP, join another left group or set up their own. If you do decide to leave, I wouldn't boast to the group you decide to join what you have done because I doubt if you will be handed any sensitive documentation even if they are stupid enough to accept you as a member. I dont know what you hoped to achieve by breaking the confidentiality entrusted to you as a member but you have managed to do damage if that was your intent.
I am not a member of the SWP or the SP so save your smart ass responses and consider how your group would feel if you had a member in your ranks that would do the above?
"I am not a member of the SWP"
And the cock crowed three times.
You are confusing two different things here JJ. Whether it is reasonable behaviour for someone to leak this here and whether the Indymedia collective should publish such leaks.
I don't know the circumstances of the leak. It could be that an ex-member of the SWP is pissed off with the party and wants to put the boot in. It could be that someone in one of the organisations it attacks got hold of a copy somehow and wanted to expose the SWP's real attitude towards the rest of the left. It could be that someone in the SWP leaked it for some other reason. I'd be interested in knowing.
The attitude of the Indymedia collective is an entirely different issue. If something newsworthy, and on the far left this certainly is newsworthy, why should they take it down? If someone were to leak a Fianna Fail strategy document here, should they collude with Fianna Fail to have it covered up?
"The SWP in Belfast? 700 votes and more isn't bad in Northern circumstances but it's similar to their tally in Artane in the South and quite a bit less than they got in Clondalkin"
The vote in Belfast, Artane and Clondalkin (and incidentally, Ballyfermot) has nothing to do with the strength or activity of the SWP, it's down to the issues that they are piggybacking on - water charges in Belfast and bin charges down south. These are issues of real concern to ordinary people. It will be interesting to see if they can hold that vote in the cold light of a General Election.
For those of us involved in building an independent revolutionary youth movement in the 32 counties this document comes as no suprise.The advanced sections of tne Irish working class don't need more left unity what they need is a revolutionary clarity.The SWP's refusal to fight for a revolutionary programme in People Before Profit shows the bankruptcy of their politics.The problem is that the SWP document doesn't identify the opportunities of the pre revolutionary situation and limits it contribution to STW by calling for a popular front. This and the refusal of them to call for an International Brigade to Iraq has parlaysed and demoralised the best activists in the movement. However , despite our small resources it would be totally sectarian not to give our critical support and join PBP ,The Campaign for an Independent Left, and the SP but also to reserve our right to argue openly as a revolutionary faction.
"This and the refusal of them to call for an International Brigade to Iraq has parlaysed and demoralised the best activists in the movement."
Oh yeah, the reason the best anti-war activists in the movement are demoralised is because the SWP hasn't called for an International Brigade to Iraq. What insight.
Why don't you call for one? Would that involve you actually going and taking part in one? I'll chip in a tenner towards your plane fare if it does.
il give 20 quid towards it.
Wel get u on that plane to iraq in no time
I'd like to congrtaulate Amerigo on the quality of his contribution. I look forward to reading his third instalment. I check Indymedia regularly but usually slope away dismayed at the low standard of the analysis and the high incidence of sniping and yahbooing.
It's good to encounter a comrade who takes the trouble to read the source document and to engage in a thorough analysis and commentary. I must confess I raced through the SWP source document and then galloped on to the comments section to see the SWP get a kicking from the usual suspects. Amerigo's piece sent me back to the source document and illuminated some interesting new twists in the SWP mindset which I would have missed without his intervention. Up with this kind of thing and let's have more......but well done, also, to Michael O'Brien, for his necessary and measured defence of the SP's role in the GAMA campaign. When they sling mud, someone must rouse himself to wash it off, so thanks to Michael for that.
jackwhite: I think you may have failed to spot an obvious joke.
Yes, it should be pretty obvious that the remark above isn't really a contribution to a discussion on the need for a socialist youth movement by Dexy's dress wearing genius. It's a moderately amusing pisstake.
I'll try and get the third part of my article up in the next day or two.
This is as has been said before , an interesting document.
Although they love to show themselves as revolutionaries this is about as realistic as the Republicanism of Fianna Fail. Their actual policy is lobbying. Jack O Conner a SIPTU boss is invited to a meeting of their “Another Europe is Possible” front.
The means of ending the flow of US logistics through Ireland is going to be another big demo and nothing else, The same old shite year in year out ,
The overwhelming objective, which motivates them most, is that of building a cadre of professional (hardworking, capable produce quality work , be able to manage) revolutionaries who will be disciplined (obey the central committees direction). Its a proposal for a priesthood and is not so very different really to the actual religious cults like the Catholic Church). Anybody who is read their history will understand this position; this is essentially what the Bolsheviks did in Russia. They were a part, not even the largest part of the revolutionary movement but they made up for their numbers with the quality of their internal organisation. These were the glory days which all Leninist parties look back to.
Remember to them the party is the revolution or they are at least it natural leaders so anything or anyone that endangers party control endangers the revolution. They are viewed as lost souls who have not seen the light. It’s a fantasy world of course, but all cults religious or otherwise live in a fantasy world. Their cult status is not because of their stated beliefs but rather in the constant repetition of this utterly failed idea which does them more harm than good in the long term. They operate like Fianna Fail, constantly looking to the next stroke, except Fianna Fail are better at it and have critical mass, the SWP have none.
Irish people are too educated to be sucked into following any group that is stupid enough and docile enough to allow the SWP to run it around in circles. In passively allowing the SWP to drive a wedge into their internal organisation they spelled their own doom and in a
How an SWP front works and is how it is continued.
1. Above all else the SWP will make sure that there are “independents “ involved who are not members of the party, this is absolutely vital. The “independents” will be invited by the SWP to get involved and will be flattered by what seems to be a compliment. Usually the candidates who are either liberal or apolitical and who have worked with the SWP before. They will be normally people with little contact with the wider activist community and certainly not be people who are critical of the SWP. Their attendance at meetings will often be absolutely minimal which means that their numerical majority is overrated . Anyway no records of attendance are ever given out to members. As common sense people know, 3 or 4 organised people working as a team who control the chairing can very effectively control a meeting of 3 times that number if the other people are totally disorganised and never meet separately to discuss the strategy as the SWP will do. They will like as not argue among themselves or simply be pretty much out of the loop as they often are.
The SWP will not publish the list of the members of the committee and if they are pressured to publish it make sure that it is soon out of date.
2. The email contact list for the organisation will be arrogated to the SWP as will be the control of the website and often the finances as well like as not.
3. Make sure there are few or little rules. No clear guidelines. Everything must be governed using “Structereless Tyranny”. No or few rules for convening meetings, few rules for nominating and notifying or information. Essentially there will be few constraints on the prerogative of the SWP to do whatever they like.
4. The SWP will make sure that they control the meetings. Make sure that the chairmanship is in their hands, specially a talented manipulative chair like Boyd Barrett. In a crisis that can mean a lot.
5. Make sure the rules for membership are loose and structureless. Give virtually anybody a vote regardless of any test. This of course effectively removes the “threat” of members actually controlling their own organisation. The SWP can then pack their members into any meeting they like because of their rigid internal control over them . At a meeting of an SWP front like the IAWM or PBPA their members will swarm like busy bees, regardless of whether or not they actually do anything in the front. If the numbers are not looking good the party bosses will get on the phones and get them in. Because the voting rules on voting are totally loose rights are its easy to pack meetings and they do it again and again and again.
6. The same rules apply to groups or branches. Set up branches and groups but make sure their is no means of validating their existence or their numbers or how often they meet. Because of this they can do a Lazarus job before an AGM or important decision making meeting. The list of affiliate branches was taken down in 2004 after they were caught out gerrymandering a vote in a general meeting and never put up.
7. DO not hold actual democratic elections, Get the slate of nominees (most of whom are selectees) adopted on mass.
8. Make sure there is little or no wider structures that will dilute power. Everything must be arrogated to the central committee just like in the SWP. NO decision of any importance whatsoever is taken outside of the little committee which is supposed to run it. The SWP control the committee and through that the front.
9 Keep everything as secret as possible . DO not publish reports or minutes to members, DO not allow members to attend anything other than the meetings which are pre controlled and organised in advance and chaired by a party boss. The SWP have a policy of very rarely giving their true affiliation. SO you would have to watching them very carefully to know that they are in fact SWP members and will rarely express an opinion which conflicts with the "party" line. This is called the principle of democratic centralism. All political parties do this, but the SWP are absolutly rigid on it.
10. If their is an important meeting which you can not avoid make sure that huge amounts of time are taken up with general political discussion which is essentially a distraction from important decision making business. Leave the first half the agenda to this end. People will waffle on as they always do and then their will be so little time to discuss the real business. The rest will be left up to the “Steering Committee”
Look as the document so clearly shows, almost no experienced activist of the left right or centre are willing to work with the SWP and the reason is because they simply cannot be trusted on any level.
This is not a matter of political difference, although they always claim it is.; Usually their response to criticism is to claim that they are "under attack"
Take the advice of experienced political activists, so many of which are berated in the document.
The SWP are essentially a political sect. Involvement with fraudelent plitical fronts and co-operation with them should be avoided at all costs. Its simply not worth the trouble. The political naivete of the Irish left helps them enormously, in fact without the political stupidity of the left none of this mess would be possible
Essentially the SWP is a major danger to the growth and development of the Irish left. Its energertic and constant repitiion of fronting naturally leads to a level of suspician as to what the motivation behind it is .
http://www.schnews.org.uk/mr.htm
http://www.schnews.org.uk/sotw/monopolise-resistance.htm
The document is genuine. It was a discussion document circulated to our members before our conference a year ago. The conclusions and orientation of the document were agreed at that conference. Why it was leaked, and for what purpose, are interesting questions I will return to. But first some explanation of the document.
As a democratic organisation the SWP membership discusses and decides policy through a process of internal debate with votes at our conferences. This was a pre-conference discussion document seeking to orientate ourselves in a period when anti-capitalist and anti war sentiment is widespread, internationally and at home.
The revolutionary left has a contribution to make both to the building of those movements and to their direction. It was not intended for publication. Its tone is candid so its discussion of other groups and individuals was frank and undiplomatic. In any event in the past year the situation has moved on and there are signs of shifts among those who hitherto might have been reluctant to engage in discussions with us over projects for broad anti-capitalist movements and electoral alliances, etc. (with the obvious exception of the SP).
The thrust of the document argues that the situation calls for political representation for the movements on a broad basis and alliances in which political parties like the SWP play a minority role working alongside others of diverse opinions. Committed as we are to this strategy it was also necessary to discuss what changes we needed to make in our style of work to help make this a reality. The People Before Profit Alliance and the Electoral Left alliance initiatives arose out of discussions in which we were involved with a number of others.
Now it is possible to argue that the time is not right, that the SWP’s characterisation of the current situation is wrong, that there is no crisis of representation and no need or realistic opportunity therefore for community, anti war, anti capitalist activists, those fighting the corporations like Shell, trade unionists and socialists to come together in some broader formation. It is possible to argue this but it is not a view the SWP shares. We believe in fact that this is absolutely essential in the current period. As the document notes, this process will not be without its problems, it is “messy”. And socialists used to swimming in a small pool also have to adapt.
This is why we look to the experience of PRC in Italy, Respect in Britain, the SSP and now Solidarity in Scotland and similar developments in Germany and Portugal to help us draw lessons. In particular the PRC (and we might add the German Left) shows the need to both work alongside others but fight for a basic orientation, without destroying the basis of the alliance---not an easy thing to achieve. The Respect reference is unremarkable common sense.
Whatever else it shows, the document, written over a year ago, clearly establishes our commitment to this project and repudiates the charge of “frontism”.
Michael O’Brien of the SP reacts in an exaggerated way to the comments on the Gama dispute. “Dub” (clearly close to the SP if not a member) wrote “They say Joe Higgins/SP did not play a positive role in the GAMA struggle!” No we didn’t---read the document!!
First of all, the document and (as has been noted, many of our members publicly) praised the role of SP TD Joe Higgins in publicising this scandal. The charge of “mudslinging” in a document not published by us is therefore misplaced. We are not in the habit of publishing mudslinging attacks on Joe Higgins or the SP in relation to the Gama fight or anything else.
The SWP document does however contrast the essentially SP campaign in support of the Gama workers with the style we believe is appropriate. By broadening out those involved in organising the fight beyond the hand-picked SP members and nominees, the fight would be stronger. Michael objects that our misgivings were not raised with the SP. But as those following debates on Indymedia and elsewhere will know, the SP has specifically rejected calls from the SWP for us to engage in formal discussion to co-ordinate our work in campaigns, elections, etc. (A chat over a pint after an Irish Anti War Movement committee meeting---a movement from which the SP has since withdrawn---is fine, but this is hardly serious co-ordination.) Some years ago our approaches for just such formal contacts resulted in the SP producing a pamphlet denouncing the SWP, demanding that we first engage in a fruitless argy-barge about our positions on the North and the nature of the Stalinist state---precisely the issues on which we would never agree and which could be held up as a dealbreaker to any such co-operation.
Formally and informally over the years talking with SP members we have been reluctantly convinced that the SP has no desire to enter into any dialogue with us (hardly a stupendous insight in the light of the frequent comments by SP members on this site), still less join with us and others in helping to create a broad anti-capitalist alliance. That is their choice. We would welcome any change in this position. Michael says we didn’t raise our criticisms in our paper. Limited in space and resources, we see our paper’s main job not as attacking other socialists but raising support for the main issue---the Gama workers in this case.
An example of this is that we called in our paper not only for support for Eamonn McCann and Sean Mitchell in the recent Northern Assembly elections, but also explicitly called for support for SP candidates too. If this attitude was reciprocated the left in Ireland would be in a better state of health I believe.
The point is often argued, here and elsewhere, that to strive for a broad based alliance and to seek to build one’s own party is dishonest. A related criticism is that the SWP is moving to the right by not insisting on a full revolutionary programme for such an alliance.
The SWP is the only radical Left party to have been consistently pushing for an alliance in the past few years. Obviously any alliance will involve a programme on which all can agree. To insist on everything one believes is to destroy the basis of the alliance. This is messy and can cause problems. Yes but if you want absolute tidiness forget alliance. But it is precisely because, to use the Italian example, the PRC (an broad organisation that has in the past played a huge role in giving expression to the anti-capitalist and anti-war movement in that country), has been faced with choice of supporting a government sending troops to Afghanistan or breaking with the government coalition, that the revolutionary left must have a strong voice. Therefore the need to build the forces of the revolutionary left. Being part of any alliance does not mean you do not seek to recruit to your own organisation among those who have worked alongside you, have seen your record, read your literature and got to know something of your politics.
Anarchists and libertarians oppose parties on principle, refusing to see a difference between those that are an integral part of the status quo and those committed to fighting it. But for many others the question of political organisation is contingent on what they see those parties actually doing. That is why the document talks of our commitment both to build the movements and the SWP.
We are not ashamed of this document. It represents in broad strokes our strategic orientation. But the question arises, why was it leaked?
It is obvious that this sort of stuff fascinates a number of contributors to Indymedia, for whom punditry and gossip are substitutes for political activism. In reality there not a great deal in the document that you can’t read in our published material like Socialist Worker, New Left Journal or hear discussed at our public meetings. One poster even pretentiously titles a section of his/her thoughts “The provenance of the piece” as though someone had claimed to find tablets from a lost civilisation or Hitler’s diaries. For others it is an opportunity, Monty Python style, to give the SWP a kicking and to make bald and untruthful statements seeking to blacken the SWP. (examples “a priesthood ,,, religious cult… like the Catholic Church”; “piggy-backing issues”; “The SWP instinctively diss anything that they don't control or play a prominent role in.”; “the SWP is not a genuine party of the Irish left”, etc).
All good, knockabout stuff. I can’t suppress a suspicion that through the leaking of this, and another document on Indymedia recently, it is hoped to sow mistrust and obstruct the development of broad alliance within the Left. We in the SWP hope the needs of the movement and the willingness of activists from diverse political background to discuss co-operation despite long-held differences and suspicions will survive these inevitable difficulties.
Kevin Wingfield
Last night Vincent Browne had Kieran Allen and Brid Smith on his radio show. But not as SWP members, KA was on as a sociologist and BS was representing PBPA. No mention of the SWP.
Is VB really so naive?
Kevin accuses me of pretentiousness. I'm not sure if this is because he objects to long words like "provenance" or if he objects to the idea that it was necessary to start an analysis of the document with an assessment of its status. Given that no SWP member was willing to confirm or deny that it was an authentic SWP document for three days (despite a significant number of SWP members having read the thread), people commenting had little choice but to first think about whether it was likely to be real.
I was going to launch into a wider response to Kevin's post, but despite it's length there doesn't really seem to be much actual content to it.
Kevin Wingfield says the GAMA committee was only picked by the SP. I watched the GAMA DVD recently and you will see that all committees were elected by the Turkish workers. In fact, during the struggle there was a re-call of a number of Committee members that had accepted deals with the Firm. Kevin Wingfield does not know what he is talking about. On the GAMA DVD the SP said that they did not agree with the course of the Dispute at all times but still fully backed those workers. Hardly some kind of SP dictatorship. I'm a SIPTU member and I was asked by a Left-Wing activist (also not SP) during that dispute to show solidarity with the GAMA lads and to put pressure on the arse-holes in Liberty Hall that refused to give them strike pay. I contacted Liberty Hall and was told to "stick to affairs of my own branch". My point is that there was solidarity and pressure on the Bureaucrats. The SWP were caught off gaurd on the GAMA issue and were never fully a part of it in the same way as SP and other Union Activists. Face up to that lads and realise that you need to be more in touch with Unions and working class people in general. Your inability to be genuinely engaged is not because the SP or ISN or Anarchists took your ball away! it's because you're out of touch and have serious organisational and political difficulties.
I remember the height of SWP's involvement with the GAMA workers was handing out free Socialist Workers and giving them forms with title "Join the Socialists". I was particularly disgusted at this as these lads did not know much English and you were deliberately trying to confuse them. You do it normally to English speakers (remember "Free the Socialists, Join the Socialists") but it's worse knowingly doing it to them lads.
I am entertained that the only point Kevin Wingfield of the SWP takes up at all, apart from complaining about the more extreme characterisations of his parties front tactics in recent posts, is the point Michael O'Brien of the Socialist Party made about the GAMA strike. It's curious that Kevin seizes on this as the issue to make his stand on, so let's have a closer look.
The original SWP document, in arguing that it would be a bad thing if the Socialist Party wins another seat, uses as its only justification a criticism of the SP role in the GAMA strike. It argues, and Kevin repeats the argument, that the SP should have set up some kind of support network of left wingers for the strike and implicitly compares such a network favourably with the Turkish Workers Action Group.
Michael O'Brien responded to this part of the document in a calm and reasonable way. He points out that throughout the strike the SWP never once raised this criticism of the SP. This criticism appeared in no articles abd in no leaflets. No letter was written to the SP outlining this apparently vital criticism. No phonecall was made to the SP office. No approaches were made to SP members about it, even in circumstances where SP members were speaking about the strike at public meetings. In fact at two seperate public meetings two different prominent SWP members specifically praised the role of the SP from platforms. None of this is disputed by Kevin in his response.
So the SWP apparently had what they regard as a very significant disagreement with the SP over the strike, yet at the time they kept this a complete secret, observing a code of omerta to a degree which would make a Mafioso proud. Now the SWP are many things, but shrinking violets, unable to make their views known, they are not. Given the undisputed nature of the SWP's silence we are left with two options. Either the SWP really did have what they regarded as an important strategic difference with the GAMA strikers, the TWAG and the SP yet they kept this criticism to themselves. Or alternatively this was not a serious issue at the time and this is just a rather typical example of the SWP trying to dismiss a struggle they played no significant role in for sectarian reasons. The first option is nothing less than an admission of a total dereliction of the duty of socialists to provide necessary leadership and strategic advice to workers in struggle. The second, and in my view more likely option, means that the SWP leadership were simply embarrassed at a "rival" leading a succesful struggle and felt the need to justify their status as the real revolutionary organisation to their members.
It is difficult to take the allegation remotely seriously, given the facts outlined above. But, just in case any of this nonsense confuses anyone, let's look at it seriously. When the GAMA issue first came to light, it was due to long work undertaken by the Socialist Party, in particular Cllr Mick Murphy and the Dublin South West branch. Incidentally it was not as the SWP imply in the usual dishonest manner of sectarians trying to distinguish between the wonderful Joe Higgins and the nasty Socialist Party, simply the work of Joe Higgins, although he certainly did play a vital role in the affair. This work was necessarily carried out in a careful way, seeking to build links and trust with workers who were in a very difficult situation and who were understandably nervous. This work, incidentally, was completely succesful. Trust was built, the GAMA workers developed the confidence to tell their story, evidence was obtained and the issue was brilliantly publicised in the Dail.
Later on, when the GAMA workers came out on strike, they elected a committee of their own known as the Turkish Workers Action Group. This committee, which was democratically chosen and subject to recall, played the leading role throughout the strike, making sure that the the union bureaucracy couldn't reach any "compromises" without the approval of the workers. The committee consisted in the main of GAMA workers, along with a small number of SP members trusted by the workers and, later, a small number of other Irish union activists trusted by the workers. This was the GAMA workers strike and the GAMA workers committee, not the property of the Socialist Party. And, let's be clear, this approach was entirely succesful - utilising it the GAMA workers won the greatest strike victory this country has seen in many years.
I am, to be frank, little less than appalled by the suggestion that some coalition of far left groups, none of which had earned any trust from a group of workers who were, remember, under serious pressure from the company, would have been a better idea or would have done a better job than the TWAG. This is an attitude which reduces real working class people's struggles to a ball for left groups to play with and, in this case, a complaint that the SP wouldn't let you play with the ball.
There was a role for left activists to play in this struggle. We were all asked to help in leafleting sites, attending protests and most importantly bulking up the pickets. As Michael notes, SWP activists were notably thin on the ground when it came to this solidarity work, although Kevin himself was an honourable exception in that he did help raise some funds. This it seems is the way solidarity works for the SWP: The workers had better give them a seat at their top table or the help will be half-hearted at best.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and...3.stm
My remarks on the leaked document were by way of situating the thing in the context of a project for a new left, discussion of which dominated last year’s SWP conference. The responses evade any serious discussion of this.
I haven’t had a lot of time to respond to the original leaked document nor this response. I and my comrades in the IAWM, are busy making last minute preparations for Saturday’s CityWest demonstration.
Nonetheless in a long document with just a couple of lines on the SP and Gama strike, SP members chose to comment at length creating an entirely erroneous impression. Here is the only reference I can see of the SP and the Gama dispute in the document:-
“5. We face, however, serious obstacles to the building of a new left – and unfortunately, they will not be solved overnight.
The first is the appalling sectarian legacy of the Irish Left. The largest component, the Socialist party, have retreated from broad based movement to concentrate on an internalised form of party building. Their perspective is crude in the extreme – they want to elect a second TD and then become the centre point for the re-alaignment of left-right politics. The problem is that even if they succeeded in getting a second TD, their sectarian methods will become a bigger obstacle in future. The Gama dispute shows precisely why..
“Here Joe Higgins played a magnificent role in following up and exposing the conspiracy to defraud workers. But once it was exposed his party refused to broaden out the struggle to other activists. The result was limied impact in SIPTU – the main union the workers belonged to. A simple strategy of calling together a network of activists within SIPTU could have put far more pressure on the leadership.”
Nonetheless if that is what they want to discuss, here goes.
Mark P of the SP says, “The original SWP document, [argues] that it would be a bad thing if the Socialist Party wins another seat.” Now Mark P is quick to accuse others of dishonesty in argument but this is scarcely a scrupulous summary of the lines in question. Indeed the document he refers to makes no such argument. Read it again---I have helpfully reproduced the paragraph.
Of course the SWP would welcome the election of a second SP member to Leinster House. The SWP will certainly call for a vote for SP members in our publications. We have on every other occasion. The problem the document points to which is clear from a careful reading is that any success will encourage the SP in their belief that they are the only important force on the left. Senior members express this view with some subtlety, but other SP posters on this site, particularly those too modest to use real names, express it with more candour. This attitude is already an obstacle to the creation of a new left. Despite the unquestionably positive development a second seat would represent, go-it-alone tendencies would be increased also. Which is only to say that reality can be contradictory.
On Gama. Would a calling together of SIPTU activists and others have strengthened the campaign? We believe yes it would. That is opinion. Now a question of fact: Was there a calling together of SIPTU activists, etc, to build the pressure? No there wasn’t and nobody has claimed otherwise. The SWP document is therefore correct.
Mark P characterises any idea of a broadly-based trade union activist support group as “Reduc[ing] real working class people's struggles to a ball for left groups to play with and, in this case, a complaint that the SP wouldn't let you play with the ball.” This sounds awfully like the SP claiming to guard the gates of genuine working class struggle from incompetents and no-bodies. This is said without any blushes just a couple of years after its National Secretary resigned from the SP followed by what became a very effective socialist councillor, largely through the SP’s soccer in the Bin Tax campaign.
This is the difference of approach the document wanted to highlight. Not SWP good, SP bad. We are all flesh and blood. But coalitions, alliances, mutual co-operation is better than know it all arrogance, of which we’ve all been guilty at some time or other.
We are accused of not raising our different approach with the SP. Well, the SP does a particularly good line in cold shoulders, we know that from experience. Believing, as they appear to, that they are the fount of wisdom and others, particularly the SWP, are messers and useless, there wouldn’t appear to be much point. Our attempts over the years to open lines of communications have been firmly rebuffed (see my last posting). Neither would the SP ever approach us in such spirit of mutual respect and fraternal disagreement. For our part we in the SWP would, even now, welcome such a development, but we won’t hold our breath.
Finally, I was singled out as an “honourable exception” in solidarity work on Gama. This is a “compliment” I am unwilling to accept. Many members of the SWP were involved in supporting the Gama strikers. In Ballymun where many of the strikers were based and where I live, there was from the beginning a magnificent response from the community, despite the fact that there was a lot of local unemployment and some local people had been fooled into blaming “foreigners”. There had been a (thankfully) small number of racist incidents on Asians living in the area. The opportunity to link the struggle of the Gama workers with trade union rights for all was politically important. Local people (including the SWP branch) joined the pickets on a regular basis, brought refreshments and cigarettes, visited the strikers in their compounds, made lasting friendships and did what we could to help keep up morale. By contacting the volunteers who ran a meals service for pensioners, as well as the Women’s Resource Centre, we were able to secure food when the strikers were cut off in their compound. This wasn’t the doing of one good egg but the collective effort of SWP members and local people, community activists and trade unionists. SWP members organised with others on an inclusive basis a successful fundraising social for the strikers. We called it a multi-cultural evening. SWP members from within the area and outside and others found entertainers and dancers who would give their services for the cause. The event was important not so much for the money raised as the political solidarity it built between locals and Gama strikers. Joe Higgins was in attendance and, of course, was asked to speak. After the strike was over one of our members helped some of the former strikers get work and visited SIPTU official with them. I mention this not blow any trumpets but to indicate the style of organising we believe to be important and how the left needs to change. It also answers the insinuation that “the SWP didn’t do anything”.
No doubt others will want to make their rejoinders and I’m not sure I’ll be able to respond quickly or at all. But until we in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea meet the Judean Liberation Front again for tea and cucumber sandwiches I wish you all the best.
Kevin Wingfield
Question for 'sectarian..moi?' Kevin Wingfiled. Why did the SWP (unsuccessfully) try to persuade a person involved in a local campaign to run as a PBPA general election candidate against John O Neill, the ISN candidate in Finglas, where he has already created a base, winning 800 votes in the last local elections and where the ISN has an established record of campaigning. It was'nt even a case of Kevin running in the same constituency basing himself in Ballymun where he's worked for many years but simply trying to undermine another candidate of the left. Pure and simple sectarianism.
I think the ISN are well capable of making their own arguments and if you have any knowledge of debates on this forum you will know that they have said to the SP, SWP and WP that they are more than entitled to run whomever they want, when they want, where they want. The ISN to my knowledge have never run a candidate in Ballymun and that is half the Dublin North West constituency.
The SWP through Kevin and whatever other SWP members there are (if any), are more than entitled to fly their flag. I doubt that it will be through the medium of the PBPA due to the background of that name there. If you are going to make arguments against the SWP, use your own. Don't try to use another group as a proxy.
I am very interested to learn that the SWP have an annual conference. If possible, I think it would be interesting to attend.
The Sinn Féin Ard Fheis is open to observers from other parties and members of interested groups like unions, singel-issue campaigns etc. The press office encourage reporters, including indymedia, so that the debates and voting are as widely reported as possible. Sister parties like Refondazione from Italy often send representatives too. This is common for all the parties I think (although of course Labour don't have any voting).
The SWP conference must be a bit different because I was unaware of its existence until now. Where was last year's and how do I get information about this year's? Does the Socialist Party also have a conference?
Out of curiousity, the SF agm might have been an open invite but was the prior PIRA convention even open to SF members. Just wondering, like?
I don't think the IRA is a political party is it? Do you know any physical force revolutionary groups that have open meetings?
PIRA are no longer a physical force revolutionary group.
But they are still a clandestine force within a political party. They may no longer rob banks or do hit jobs but they are a still a force. Not much different to OIRA, Group B or whatever you are having yourself.
The future of SF will be a tightrope act of convincing the nua brigade of the complete divorce from PIRA but even Gerry and Martin are no Blondins. The lines will be blurred, not every bad news story will be a conspiracy (although there will be some). The integration of SF into the mainstream will determine the true speed of the demise of PIRA.
You are deliberately missing the point . Of course the SWP are entitled to run anywhere they like, no group has a right to a fiefdom and Kevin Wingfiled has flown the flag in Ballymun over the years. The point is that he tried to convince a Finglas based community activist to run in the general election as a PBPA candidate. Now this person would receive little or no votes in Ballymun where the SWP has done the groundwork but would receive whatever support she could garner in Finglas. Fortunately she didnt fall for it. So it was a calculated attempt to undermine John O Neill's vote (remember because of the ISNs work in the area he got 800 votes (6%) in the local elections) and the work done on the ground in Finglas by the ISN over the years. Pure and simple sectarianism and probably arising from the fact that the PBPA in Ballymun broke with the SWP and Kevin could not find any willing dupe to stand for them there. The reason Im giving this example is not to talk on behalf of the ISN but to challenge Kevin Wingfiled who posted here on how non-sectarian the SWP were. Just exposing the hypocritical attitude.
Personally I don't think it makes tactical sense for "far left" (I hate that phrase!) candidates to run against each other, but the reality is that people are entitled to go forward. It would have been rather confusing, disappointing and annoying if Wingfield or the SWP had persuaded somebody based in Finglas to run as a PBPA candidate, but I suspect we would have been able to handle the situation. Would it have been a "sectarian" action by the SWP if the candidate had gone forward? Dunno. That would depend on their objectives in doing so.
To repeat what "ISN leaning indie" said, it would be good if people made their arguments without dragging the ISN into it.
What national profile does PBP have anyway? People on the left sometimes forget that most people haven't even heard of our attempts at 'unity'. The last time such an alliance came to public attention and had a genuine national profile was with the Socialist Labour Party in 1970s. Some analysis of the SLP would be interesting - I can't remember ever reading a decent analysis for its rise and demise.
Haven't looked at this for a few days - so was interested when Kevin Wingfield posted a couple of responses.
Mark P. has dealt with most of the points relating to GAMA although I will refer to it later.
To deal with the initial document - the most interesting aspect that I found was the confirmation of the intent by the SWP to hide their banner and step into the sphere of don't mention 'socialism', people aren't ready. This has certainly been the case with regards to RESPECT in England and was amply demonstrated in relation to the founding conference of Solidarity in Scotland where the SWP didn't want the word 'Socialist' in the party title. It is similar in Germany where the SWP have bent over backwards to accommodate the amalgamation of the WASG and the former Stalinist PDS without one criticism of the programme the new group will campaign under. For the SWP its 'unity of the anti-establishment forces and forget about the politics'
The SP supports the building of a new left movement in Ireland (and worldwide) but this does not mean a loose alliance of the current forces on the left. Someone mentioned the Socialist Labour Party of the late 1970's. Yes it did have a small national profile based around Noel Browne and when established following a walk-out at the 1977 LP conference it attracted practically every left of every description in Ireland including the SWP. As long as things were able to maintain it's profile for a short period things remained okay. But as soon as it became obvious that the SLP was not going to work it descended in widespread sectarian squabbling involving the SWP the Irish Workers Group, the League for a Workers Republic and others. The SP remained in the LP at the time of the walk-out in 1977 and had the perspective that the SLP would be a short-term and faction-ridden formation.
A new left movement will not come in Ireland from a re-alignment or coalition of existing left groups and individuals. While there have been campaigns around many issues over the past number of years there has been little or no development in class consciousness among the working class in this country over the period. People, to a degree are registering their opposition through the ballot box, not in a conscious left-wing direction but in an anti-establishment way by voting for hospital candidates etc. Indeed many of those who receive these votes could not be remotely described as left-wing. The SWP document demonstrates a lack of understanding of the current situation and they are attempting to dumb-down their politics to tap into this mood. However, this type of politics cannot and will not provide the basis for any consciously developing class movement. Class consciousness will only develop in a measurable way following an upturn in the industrial sector amongst trade unionist members fighting to defend their jobs and working conditions. Futhermore, the initial developments will take place within the trade unions and not on the political front and only after battles to reclaim the trade unions will workers move into the political campaign front. By moving too soon or using incorrect methods left activists can actually hinder rather than help such a development and, with all due respect to Kevin Wingfield, the methods being employed by the SWP will actually hinder such developments in the future.
The comments about GAMA demonstrate the methods of the SWP in their real approach to other left organisations. As pointed out by Mark P. it was not 'Joe Higgins played a magnificent role in following up and exposing the conspiracy to defraud workers' it was the Socialist Party. Joe Higgins played a very prominent role in this struggle but it would not and could not have happened without the active involvement of the Socialist Party and its members as well as other genuine left activists. The SWP, given their lack of involvement in this campaign, have absolutely no idea what was or was not possible during the course of this struggle. The criticism of the SP's role first of all demonstrates a complete lack of understanding (or intentional misleading) of the role the SP played in the struggle and secondly smacks of an element of sour grapes 'we were not involved - but if we were we would have done this, this and this and there would have been an even bigger victory'. Others have seen example after example of the efforts by the SWP to hang on the coat-tails of campaigns initiated by others when their own methods have left them far behind in reacting to developing situations.
This was the situation in relation to discussions during the anti-bin tax campaign when discussions took place about running an anti-bin tax slate for the local elections in 2004. The SP was agreeable to running an anti-bin tax slate (we had previously done so during the anti-water charges campaign in 1997) including some members of the SWP. But what we would not and could not accept was the addition of (mainly SWP) candidates to the slate who had played absolutely no role in the campaign. If you are going to knock on the doors of working class people and ask for their vote you at least have to show them the respect of running a candidate who has actually campaigned on the issue on the ground.
As regards the following 'The problem is that even if they succeeded in getting a second TD, their sectarian methods will become a bigger obstacle in future.' Well to say you support the SP in getting a second TD and then to say that by doing so will create bigger obstacles in the future - well - I could only call this as speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
Kevin Wingfield says 'Some years ago our approaches for just such formal contacts resulted in the SP producing a pamphlet denouncing the SWP, demanding that we first engage in a fruitless argy-barge about our positions on the North and the nature of the Stalinist state---precisely the issues on which we would never agree and which could be held up as a dealbreaker to any such co-operation.'
I am absolutely astonished by this statement. Not because the pamphlet written by the SP was not a polemic against the SWP, but because Kevin demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about what the pamphlet was actually attempting to do. The pamphlet was not designed to initiate 'fruitless argy-barge about our positions on the North and the nature of the Stalinist state'. It was written to demonstrate the twists and turns in the method of work of the SWP. Now the comment by Kevin demonstrates one of two things - either Kevin didn't actually read the pamphlet or he read it but couldn't understand the simple political message it was conveying. The SP have no problem working with individuals or groups that we have political differences with, what we do have a problem with, is working with people who engage in a methodology that, to put it mildly, is far from helpful to whatever campaign is underway. And if Kevin thinks I am being sectarian with these comments I suggest that he ask all the other individuals and groups who post on this and other forums.
Kevin states 'The SWP is the only radical Left party to have been consistently pushing for an alliance in the past few years'. In addressing this I will refer to the events surrounding the destruction of the Socialist Alliance in England. The SA was initiated by the CWI in England and Wales and had achieved some limited success in a small number of areas. Then the SWP joined, packed meetings and re-drafted a constitution that effectively placed the SWP in control. Of course the SWP now wanted to ensure that all sections of the SA towed the line. The SP had no option but to leave. Subsequently, the SWP kept the SA afloat for a period and then abruptly ended it when (what they considered) a better opportunity arose with RESPECT. These are precisely the methods that the SP pamphlet of years ago was outlining and the methodology that the SWP is going to have to address if it is at any stage to be accommodated in any new left formation that will emerge. Why, because I guarantee you that new activists will be a lot less polite in telling the SWP where to get off than the people who post on this forum or work with the SWP in the IAWM etc.
I thought you would have risen to the bait...
Or is it a case that you are incapable of refuting these points?