SWP in congress
- Thread starter Fisher_Gate
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
mutley said:
How about the fudge?
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Groucho said:
"probably" - does that mean that SWP-Respect might abstain between Livingstone and Johnson?
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
mutley said:
Wasn't that the line you criticised the LCR for in the French presidential elections last year? (the election that is, not the quality of the soup... )
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
mutley said:
So no-one mentioned the Dubai cheque then?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
mutley said:
Are the SWP really getting so lax with their fronts that Respect (SWP) decisions are openly made at SWP conference?
Here's an SWP conference report for anyone who cares: The atmosphere depressed with a tinge of hysteria. Few critical voices were raised. The delegates of what remains of the SWP membership voted for whatever the leadership put forward, with 95% plus majorities.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Not going to, or not allowed to?
To be honest I'd be surprised if the conference was upbeat given everything that's happened.....
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
So they can have any number of reactionary, anti-working class policies, but so long as they oppose the war they're OK to vote for? Is that it?junius said:
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
How about "putting them on the spot" about things that immediately affect the working class closer to home? Like the Welfare Reform Act, for example?junius said:
Yeah, like the umpteen dangerously useless charges into no-mans land in WW1.junius said:
I really hope 2008 sees the end of this idiotic joke of a movement.
poster342002 said:How about "putting them on the spot" about things that immediately affect the working class closer to home? Like the Welfare Reform Act, for example?
Yeah, like the umpteen dangerously useless charges into no-mans land in WW1.
I really hope 2008 sees the end of this idiotic joke of a movement.
I think it was social patriots of you ilk that cheered on WW1 matey.
Fuck the working class and other oppressed classes in Iraq, Afghanistan, eh?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
osterberg said:
SWP's latent islamophobia coming to the fore once more.
cockneyrebel
New Member
It certainly wouldn't be a problem. Most organisation are open about what goes on at their conference, the SWPs secrecy is cult like.
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
butchersapron said:
The report's in Socialist Worker this week.Same sort of report that would appear in your magazine about your conference.cockneyrebel said:
Anyway,with respect, you really should come off it.
Workers Power had a horrendous split . There must have been massive rows in the organisation at the time but the outside world knew nothing about it till the split. I was quite friendly with people who are now in PR at the time and they didn't give any hint at all this was going on. That was secretive .
I've been in other far-left groups that put prospective members through a period of candidate membership and held closed branch meetings unlike the SWP . In fact the views of the SWP and its politics is quite open to anyone in our publications and from Bookmarks .
I was in the fore-runner of Fisher Gate's ISG , the IMG , in the 80's .Which was certainly secretive with people required to take on pseudonymous names for the minutes and for names on documents .
As for cult-like you should try being in the castroite Communist League which I was in in the early 90s for about a year before I saw sense and escaped .
The far-left in Britain has a history of organising in underground-like organisations but in my opinion the SWP isn't one of them .
Of course your perfectly entitled to disagree .
cockneyrebel
New Member
But it's one thing having a sanitised version of the conference in the paper, another thing expelling members if they talk about it on a web board. PR would have absolutely no problem with me talking about our meetings/conference or whatever and talking about things I disagree with.
As it happens I always thought Workers Power was totally wrong in the control freakery that it had about people not discussing our internal differences. Obviously there are times when you need unity but not at the expense of being open about differences that are going on. And WP was a good example of how that kind of bureaucratic way of running things led to a cultish organisation. Some of the stuff that went on in WP was totally wrong and also, to be honest, quite weird. It always struck me that for an organisation that always focused on youth oppression they had a bizarre attitude to certain goings on. But that's an aside really as the root of the problem was a politcal one, not just that there was a problem with this or that individual. A perspective (the pre-revolutionary period) that got ever more detached from reality meant that the internal regime got worse and worse as the members were blamed for us not growing in such a heightened time of crisis of class struggle. Of course we aren't in such a period at all.
The SWP has a similar problem with the catastrophist perspective it has (with Harman saying we have just gone through 35 years of stagnation!!!), but actually the internal regime is even worse. At least Workers Power allowed/allows internal factions. The SWP only allows organised opposition to the leadership for 3 months a year, which basically makes it all but impossible.
As for candidate members WP also had that and in reality it was never used and people were just rubber stamped after a few months. Which just showed what a load of rubbish it was.
Again this was someething WP had when I first joined (but later dropped), and I'd agree that in these times it was totally unnecessary and made the internal regime look strange to new people getting involved. But worse for me is banning opposition for 9 months.
I have to say that I found the SWP very cult like when I was a member. On the surface they say things are open but in reality in works on a dual level. New members can say what they like as long as they're not seen as a threat and indeed aren't educated nearly enough in the organisation's politics. But if there is any sign of someone become real political opposition then they are shunned and pushed out one way or another. There is also a culture of people being made to feel very uncomfortable if they speak to other left organisations. And then there is central committee which is far too top heavy and removed from the membership (it just doesn't change year in, year out). The conferences are very stage managed and the fact that opposition is banned for 9 months makes this even more so.
All this leads to very zealot like behaviour. Look at nut cases like Bambery and the way he speaks to members. Also there is the relentless pressure for people to sign people up and sign papers (people in my branch used to lie about how many papers they'd sold and just hand over their own money).
Having said all this there are many good activists in the SWP, I just think the SWPs politics have led to a very unhealthy internal regime.
As it happens I always thought Workers Power was totally wrong in the control freakery that it had about people not discussing our internal differences. Obviously there are times when you need unity but not at the expense of being open about differences that are going on. And WP was a good example of how that kind of bureaucratic way of running things led to a cultish organisation. Some of the stuff that went on in WP was totally wrong and also, to be honest, quite weird. It always struck me that for an organisation that always focused on youth oppression they had a bizarre attitude to certain goings on. But that's an aside really as the root of the problem was a politcal one, not just that there was a problem with this or that individual. A perspective (the pre-revolutionary period) that got ever more detached from reality meant that the internal regime got worse and worse as the members were blamed for us not growing in such a heightened time of crisis of class struggle. Of course we aren't in such a period at all.
The SWP has a similar problem with the catastrophist perspective it has (with Harman saying we have just gone through 35 years of stagnation!!!), but actually the internal regime is even worse. At least Workers Power allowed/allows internal factions. The SWP only allows organised opposition to the leadership for 3 months a year, which basically makes it all but impossible.
As for candidate members WP also had that and in reality it was never used and people were just rubber stamped after a few months. Which just showed what a load of rubbish it was.
Again this was someething WP had when I first joined (but later dropped), and I'd agree that in these times it was totally unnecessary and made the internal regime look strange to new people getting involved. But worse for me is banning opposition for 9 months.
I have to say that I found the SWP very cult like when I was a member. On the surface they say things are open but in reality in works on a dual level. New members can say what they like as long as they're not seen as a threat and indeed aren't educated nearly enough in the organisation's politics. But if there is any sign of someone become real political opposition then they are shunned and pushed out one way or another. There is also a culture of people being made to feel very uncomfortable if they speak to other left organisations. And then there is central committee which is far too top heavy and removed from the membership (it just doesn't change year in, year out). The conferences are very stage managed and the fact that opposition is banned for 9 months makes this even more so.
All this leads to very zealot like behaviour. Look at nut cases like Bambery and the way he speaks to members. Also there is the relentless pressure for people to sign people up and sign papers (people in my branch used to lie about how many papers they'd sold and just hand over their own money).
Having said all this there are many good activists in the SWP, I just think the SWPs politics have led to a very unhealthy internal regime.
glenquagmire
Rightwing NuLab apologist
cockneyrebel said:
Can you elaborate on this?
cockneyrebel
New Member
No I'd rather not, it just feels like gossip.
junius said:
It's total fantasy to suggest that Iraq and Afghanistan are the central issues in British politics. They weren't during the last general election, and they won't be in the next general election, irrespective of whether you want them to be (and irrespective of whether they should).
junius said:
And if Boris made these pledges?
Similar threads
