Why are the swp so popular?

[dennisr]

Are we entering a "period" now? You'd think so wouldn't you? Though I don't know. I don't know how distracted we all are by trivia and so on...time will soon tell on that one.

Agree with what you are saying to a great extent but just replying to this bit - because I think it is important.

I think the way to look at it is that all the trivia and displacement activity in the world cannot make up for the fear of loosing the roof over your (and your families) head, being put on short time working or losing an entire months work and overtime over xmas (as a load of plants have just discovered), having your life savings/pension robbed, facing unemployment, etc - people are going to be looking for answers. Talking to other Socialists over the weekend - they are all saying the same thing - there's a real surge in interest, in questions being asked on stalls, folk phoning up out of the blue - and thats just our piddling wee group

Folk on another thread talked about an Obama effect for New Labour - I think that misses the point of the vote for Obama - its the beginnings of a real questioning of 'how the hell did we end up here?', 'who's to blame?' 'what's the solution?' etc - the (previously...) 'all powerful' neo-con agenda has already been wiped out - literally overnight. All thats regardless of the emptiness of the Democrats promises of 'change'. That will occur across the planet not just in the US of A. That vote was genuinely significent. The financial economy going tits up is already being reflected in the real world.

Of course - given the state of the left (and I don't mean the little left groups like ourselves or the SWP, although we reflect that condition - I mean the trade unions, the organised working class), where we cannot fill the gap, there will be reaction as well - the threat of the likes of the BNP and others even if they don't have answers/ solutions, long term. The one thing you can guarantee is real change to follow the change that USA politicians talked up. What direction it goes in depends on the role we all play. In Germany - where a new worker's party is already part of the agenda they are getting support poll results of up to 20%

This is our break mate - our chance - the point were loads of ordinary folk have no more cheeks to turn. I don't mean just a break for the SP - i mean all of the folk who have been holding their breaths and trying not to drown in the sea of idiocy that have been the past decade+

 

[dennisr]

... after that rant I had better get back to work .... *slightly embarressed*

 

[Fisher_Gate]

now that the classic 'incomprehensible sectarian abuse' (with added smilies to show he's 'down with the kids') that roadkill mentioned - he learnt a lot in the SWP

And yes, MC5 - all is clearly and honestly explained - as is the closing down of the SAs by the SWP less than a year and a half later as a result of the vote that abolished that old british left federal tradition

I must have blinked and missed that "old british left federal tradition" when I was in the LPYS and any branch not supporting Militant was marginalised and minorities were excluded from representation on any internal bodies by sheer weight of voting numbers (extending even to nominating two candidates for each position, instructing sufficient delegates to vote for the candidate they wanted to come second above any opposition, just in case the first choice candidate fell by the wayside and had to be replaced by the second placed candidate ...).

 

[Ilsonyouf]

Are they popular? I know some ex members who say the whole experience of bien orderd about by a buch of shouty fanatics put them off politics for life. My experience of them is that they manage to alienate themselves in comunity campaigns with their radical for the sake of it approach and political manuverings.
They may stike a chord amoungst idealistic middle class students and the odd left leaning public sector worker but outside of the left bubble they are just the nutters that you try to avoid while out shopping on a Saturday afternoon.

 

[dennisr]

I must have blinked and missed that "old british left federal tradition"

you blinked and probably missed the last few decades FisherG. A few pithy comments and plenty of half-baked innuendo over the years on sites like this and you consider this 'making a political intervention'. its why people take you so seriously.

You may have noticed that the Labour Party we were both working in was not like the Socialist Aliances. Then again you may not...

 

[audiotech]

they are good at presentation - i think folk can learn a lot from them on that

Some here could learn from the American left about 'presentation'.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vlClH7q5T2E

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zh3jrxFaQ4

 

[treelover]

Originally Posted by kyser_soze
Come to our Church, learn to think like us, learn to be us. Fuck that.
^^^^

What the mad Balkan crime-lord said.
Reply With Quote

Who was that, Arkan, Miswhatshisname?

 

[Fisher_Gate]

you blinked and probably missed the last few decades FisherG. A few pithy comments and plenty of half-baked innuendo over the years on sites like this and you consider this 'making a political intervention'. its why people take you so seriously.

You may have noticed that the Labour Party we were both working in was not like the Socialist Aliances. Then again you may not...

You're the one who used the word "old" - which does imply some kind of 'long time ago' type of impression about something consistent ....

And I'm only talking about the 1980s!

So it was important for the SWP not to use their weight of numbers in the Socialist Alliance, but perfectly okay for the Militant to do it in the LPYS? Sorry but there's a word for that - hypocrisy. I don't care about whether it was inside the Labour Party or not. There are principles and there are opportunist practices. You just use being the Labour Party as an excuse to justify a rotten history. I'm glad you've changed though - just admit it once in a while.

 

[brasicritique]

Why are the swp so popular?

 

[brasicritique]

Are they popular? I know some ex members who say the whole experience of bien orderd about by a buch of shouty fanatics put them off politics for life. My experience of them is that they manage to alienate themselves in comunity campaigns with their radical for the sake of it approach and political manuverings..

thats what there there for imo as you say

They may stike a chord amoungst idealistic middle class students and the odd left leaning public sector worker but outside of the left bubble they are just the nutters that you try to avoid while out shopping on a Saturday afternoon.

seconded

the swapies are only interested in alientaing people from politics

 

[Citizen66]

The SWP are the Manchester United of the left and you can tell because their adverts are all over any given cause.

The rest of the left have divided themselves into the Vauxhall conference league or whatever name it goes by nowadays...

 

[embree]

Who was that, Arkan, Miswhatshisname?

No, he means kyser soze - mad balkan crime lord in The Usual Suspects

 

[dennisr]

the swapies are only interested in alientaing people from politics

you and the swp have more in common than you thought then

 

[imposs1904]

... after that rant I had better get back to work .... *slightly embarressed*

Can capitalism really be so bad when you can take time out from being exploited at the point of production to post so frequently on Urban 75 during working hours?

 

[scifisam]

This is a good example of how questions can be loaded. Some people asked 'are they popular?' but a lot of people just answered the question, as if it were grounded in reality.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Who was that, Arkan, Miswhatshisname?

kyser soze.

 

[tbaldwin]

The SWP are the Manchester United of the left and you can tell because their adverts are all over any given cause.

The rest of the left have divided themselves into the Vauxhall conference league or whatever name it goes by nowadays...

Combined counties league division 2.

 

[durruti02]

What's this thread got to do with the shortcomings of the anarchist movement?

but anyway...

hi chill no udos post was relevent .. the thread is about why is the swp 'big' ( relative) he asked when we find out why the @ movement are so shite, then we can see why the left/swp are bigger

 

[Das Uberdog]

Just screaming the same old shit over and over...

IMO a genuine political movement... has to build up over time, put down local roots, engage with an issue consistently and over the long-term and blah blah blah blah blah

*yawn*

 

[DotCommunist]

and here was me thinking that the one thing the left and the right can agree on is that the swappies have got to go

 

[imposs1904]

The SWP are the Manchester United of the left and you can tell because their adverts are all over any given cause.

The rest of the left have divided themselves into the Vauxhall conference league or whatever name it goes by nowadays...

If we need to go with a football analogy, perhaps the SWP are more like the Luton Town of the left?

Led by a dodgy leader with a dodgy hairstyle, they punched above their weight in the late seventies and early eighties, but are now languishing in the bottom basement of the football league and, because of dodgy dealings in the recent past, they've had to start this season on minus thirty points.

Begs one question, though. Who's playing Mick Harford: Chris Bambery or Martin Smith?

 

[audiotech]

Marx is substituted to give the Germans more attack.

 

[durruti02]

If we need to go with a football analogy, perhaps the SWP are more like the Luton Town of the left?

Led by a dodgy leader with a dodgy hairstyle, they punched above their weight in the late seventies and early eighties, but are now languishing in the bottom basement of the football league and, because of dodgy dealings in the recent past, they've had to start this season on minus thirty points.

Begs one question, though. Who's playing Mick Harford: Chris Bambery or Martin Smith?

and they did change their colours fairly abruptly! and straw boaters morphs into burqas!

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

If we need to go with a football analogy, perhaps the SWP are more like the Luton Town of the left?

Led by a dodgy leader with a dodgy hairstyle, they punched above their weight in the late seventies and early eighties, but are now languishing in the bottom basement of the football league and, because of dodgy dealings in the recent past, they've had to start this season on minus thirty points.

Begs one question, though. Who's playing Mick Harford: Chris Bambery or Martin Smith?

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Marx is substituted to give the Germans more attack.

Best football-related comedy sketch ever!

 

[nino_savatte]

Most of the popularity of 'The Party' can be attributed to its well-established virtues:

• Charm
• Wisdom
• Co-operation
• Prescience

It is, after all, the memory of the class.

However, we must not forget the splendid success of the Social Workers' strategy of Islamo-Trottery. By sucking up to keen mosque-attenders and niqab-wearers, 'The Party' has gained mass support among Mohammedans - except among the Social Workers' Mohammedan ex-partners in al-Respeq, who think the Social Workers are a bunch of useless bossy sectarians.

Allahu trot-not!

The record's stuck, the record's stuck, the record's stuck.

The only people who reckon the SWP are "popular" are those who have nothing else better to talk about. They tend to be obsessives...rather like you, who tend to over-estimate their potential. They also tend to play up the SWP in order to deflect attention from their own lack of ideas...or because they have nothing else ot offer but more excoriations of others on the left. It's all to easy for folk like you to accuse another of being a "Trot". That type of attitude is redolent of the denunciations in the old-style Communist countries.

Then we have those on Urban who constantly bitch about "the failure of the Left" and who offer nothing but sectarian nitpicking. With that sort of pettiness, it is perhaps no wonder the "Left" is finding it hard to challenge the Right's ascendancy.

 

[Gavin Bl]

Before this decline, they were basically the only people around on the far left, who had a clear presence outside of traditionally radical enclaves - they were active, they had answers, and they were vocally anti-stalinist (even if the practice left something to be desired).

They were good at connecting with people who were looking for radical answers, but who had no history with the far left - but they were good at burning them out too.

 

[frogwoman]

personally i dont have too much of a problem with the swp, i would never join them because i know what their membership practices are like, and they are a bit of a cult like group they have done a lot of things i really do disagree with, like the "we are all hezbollah" shite, but i don't get all of this vicious hatred towards them which seems completely insane surely if they are gaining membership that is a good thing, seeing as they are basically the only "socialist movement" that has any kind of popular support at the moment? and surely if more people join it will effect change from within and maybe tone down some of their more nasty ways of running the organisation?

 

[frogwoman]

eta i do have first hand experince of being hassled by the swp lol, you go to one of their meetings or sign up to something and never leave you alone

 

[Bakunin]

personally i dont have too much of a problem with the swp, i would never join them because i know what their membership practices are like, and they are a bit of a cult like group they have done a lot of things i really do disagree with, like the "we are all hezbollah" shite, but i don't get all of this vicious hatred towards them which seems completely insane surely if they are gaining membership that is a good thing, seeing as they are basically the only "socialist movement" that has any kind of popular support at the moment? and surely if more people join it will effect change from within and maybe tone down some of their more nasty ways of running the organisation?

I wonder how long it will be before Rees and German suddenly have an apparent 'epiphany' and start letting us in on all the Swappies dodgy little skeletons in their cupboard, in an attempt to try and rehabilitate themselves politically.