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What is the long term strategy of the SWP

I found it quite amusing reading socialist worker recentely to find them slagging BNP for being Middle Class and mainly members of petty bourgeious.

Pot Calling Kettle Black!!!
 
What is all this shite about totty and whether female activists are good looking or 'easy' or 'available' or whatever? FFS.
 
Sue said:
What is all this shite about totty and whether female activists are good looking or 'easy' or 'available' or whatever? FFS.
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just an idiot being an idiot.

the positive thing being that the idiot exposes himself as just that - an idiot :-)
 
It was meant as humour, and reputation that SWP had/has.
Didn't mean to upset many peoples sensibilities.

May be a reason why many people joined or hung around SWP, which would be less sad than there politics.
 
Nigel said:
May be a reason why many people joined or hung around SWP, which would be less sad than there politics.
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I dunno you always get a few sad losers hanging around fringe political groups, some even flit from fringe group to frihge group in the search for a new social scene.
 
Rod Sleeves said:
I dunno you always get a few sad losers hanging around fringe political groups, some even flit from fringe group to frihge group in the search for a new social scene.
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Its all really part of a oneness the left in Britain is quite small, would you really call left sects a 'social scene'?
 
I suppose that the culture of the SWP, /was/is? on the main hedonistic to attract membership, that along with evengelical style cultism. How else would you get people to believe that the Revolution is just round the corner.
 
Streathamite said:
I thjink we have a divergence of class definitions in this country: on the one hand the classic marxist/economistic definition - whether you have ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange, or not - and on the other the cultural definition, which is the only one, by definition, which can make sense of the very term 'middle class'. culturally, the SWP are very middle class.
The fact is, as britain's economy - along with thatb of many other 'western' economies - mutates from bluecollar/smokestack/manufacturing economy to whitecollar/service economy, this divergence will grow. as you so rightly point out, call-centre slaves are as proletarian in terms opf their position in the scheme of things as the likes of James Connolly ever was!
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I second this wholeheartedly. There are actually two different definitions on the go, and I think that this actually holds the movement back. Also, I don't think it's something confined to the UK. For example, in Japan, I think about 70% of the population described themselves as middle class in one survey.

It's only within the cultural context that it makes any sense to talk about there being a "middle class". I just think there is a cultural drift to the cultural "middle class" over time, eg: I often meet extended families where the younger members come across as "middle class" and the older members as more "working class".

kavenism said:
Yeah completely agree with this. Although I must say I have experienced a fair bit of guilt tripping for showing any kind of overt consumerism or “bourgeois” tendency from other SWP members. Much of their definition of class (at least from a superficial perspective) seems to revolve around cultural politics. I work in a manufacturing facility and yet I get treated like some kind of elitist for choosing to spend my spare time at Tate modern or because I prefer continental beer to shitty mass market lager. I find this particularly stupid as the people I get this attitude most from are full time employees of the SWP who have never done a days work outside the party in their lives. It’s a pretty insular clique inside “the circle”.
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That's bloody amazing. I didn't come across that sort of attitude myself that much during my days in the SWP, at least not amongst Leeds comrades, but I did come across one or two more isolated members in outlying areas who thought such things as it was "posh" to use a teapot, even though the person in question had private healthcare. Another comrade thought it was "posh" to drink wine. One non-SWP guy I knew stood for the Socialist Alliance when that was still going. After getting a reasonable sort of vote, his partner thought she would put on a cheese and wine party for him to celebrate, etc. But he was totally devastated, and said that he couldn't do that cos he was from Such-and-Such a town. Needless to say, I know people from the same town, and they love wine.

SWP apart, I've met a lot of socialists in the north of England who "hate people who talk posh", even when the people concerned are activists in anti-war, whatever. I think accentism such as this weakens the movement.

Nigel said:
Think thats a bit hard on the Millies.
Maybe there aren't as many available young women in SP?:rolleyes:

Or do you reckom SWP girls are easy!!!!!!
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"Easy"?!!!! :eek: ffs!! Which time machine have you just stepped out of? Or have we just timewarped back to the 1950's? You make it sound like any woman who fancies a good shag should be dragged through the streets in chains, or made to wear a scarlet letter.

Just for the record: my raunchy aside about the SWP having top tottie wasn't intended as sexist: I was referring to both men and women. In my case in partic, I was on about men. Anybody caring to read the post properly will have surmised correctly that my partner is male (hence "Mr Electric").
 
electric.avenue said:
Just for the record: my raunchy aside about the SWP having top tottie wasn't intended as sexist: I was referring to both men and women. In my case in partic, I was on about men. Anybody caring to read the post properly will have surmised correctly that my partner is male (hence "Mr Electric").
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:D - I guessing that aside was for Nigel
 
Proper answer - build the party through medium terms fronts whilst maintaining The CORE. That's why they gone sHH for the last 6 months
 
Let me just check that I understand the current etiquette.

To mention the presence or absence of 'totty' or said 'totty's' availability is a fairly serious faux pas if the 'totty' is (all) female, but if the term 'totty' is used (unusually) to refer to sexually desirable males or (also unusually) to refer indiscriminately to attractive males and females, that's OK.

Have I got that right?
 
JHE said:
Let me just check that I understand the current etiquette.

To mention the presence or absence of 'totty' or said 'totty's' availability is a fairly serious faux pas if the 'totty' is (all) female, but if the term 'totty' is used (unusually) to refer to sexually desirable males or (also unusually) to refer indiscriminately to attractive males and females, that's OK.

Have I got that right?
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its the non-gender-specific-totty v gender-specific-totty question
 
JHE said:
Let me just check that I understand the current etiquette.

To mention the presence or absence of 'totty' or said 'totty's' availability is a fairly serious faux pas if the 'totty' is (all) female, but if the term 'totty' is used (unusually) to refer to sexually desirable males or (also unusually) to refer indiscriminately to attractive males and females, that's OK.

Have I got that right?
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Yes, that just about sums it up. :D

Since when was the term "totty" exclusively used to refer to women? :confused: I've heard it used more by women to refer to men. (Really, no kidding).

I think totty just refers to anyone you think you might like to go out with, whether you be female, male, gay or straight. So it can be both males and females.

(Please see The Electric Avenue Guide to Modern Manners and Etiquette). :cool: :D
 
Just don't see what 'totty' of either variety has got to do with politics and think it's a shit term whether it's used to refer to men or women :rolleyes:
 
Hocus Eye. said:
I met a long term member of the SWP years ago. He said that they used to hold an annual conference in Scarborough. Apparently they were aware that MI5 operatives would camp out over the road to keep an eye on things. He said that he didn't really understand this as all MI5 needed to do was buy a ticket and go inside, if they wanted to know what was being said.
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Skegness, not Scarborough. I grew up in the SWP and I believe that the majority of members, in the 80s at least believed that there would be a socialist revolution at some point in the future and that being in the SWP was a method of working towards that.
 
electric.avenue said:
Since when was the term "totty" exclusively used to refer to women? :confused: I've heard it used more by women to refer to men. (Really, no kidding).

I think totty just refers to anyone you think you might like to go out with, whether you be female, male, gay or straight. So it can be both males and females.
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OK. In that case, I think there is a generational change and I'm just out of date on usage.

Here's my (probably outdated) take on the term 'totty':

1. It was used by posh men - rugger buggers, Young Tories, the sort who say they go 'boating' etc (The sort of loud young men I remember when I was a student, shouting to each other across a lecture theatre: "Yah, Nigel. Party, Saturday. Bring a bottle and a woman. Ha ha ha!")

2. It was used by the posh men to refer to young women

3. I guess that the appeal of the term, to those who used it, lay partly in the fact that 'totty' is an uncountable noun: you do not have one totty, two totties, three totties, many totties, just a lot of totty or not much totty.


It used to put my teeth on edge, but I stopped caring much about these things many years ago.
 
JHE said:
OK. In that case, I think there is a generational change and I'm just out of date on usage.

Here's my (probably outdated) take on the term 'totty':

1. It was used by posh men - rugger buggers, Young Tories, the sort who say they go 'boating' etc (The sort of loud young men I remember when I was a student, shouting to each other across a lecture theatre: "Yah, Nigel. Party, Saturday. Bring a bottle and a woman. Ha ha ha!")

2. It was used by the posh men to refer to young women

3. I guess that the appeal of the term, to those who used it, lay partly in the fact that 'totty' is an uncountable noun: you do not have one totty, two totties, three totties, many totties, just a lot of totty or not much totty.


It used to put my teeth on edge, but I stopped caring much about these things many years ago.
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That's a surprise. I had no idea it was ever used in "posh" circles at all. I have mostly heard it used by feisty young women with spiky haircuts.
 
electric.avenue said:
Definitely! :D
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My post was a reply to Satino, who posted

Santino
idiot-hole

Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: London
Posts: 9,720
To get shags?

I haven't mentioned "totty" or any other sexual phraseology.
I responded to other peoples posts.
 
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