Socialist Unity undermined in Wales

by rose Tue Oct 22, 2002 22:02

...for the very few of you who still wonder why 99% of the working class has no time for these fools.

by Violet Wed Oct 23, 2002 00:11

You win a vote, that's democracy. You lose a vote, the meeting was packed.

Shouldn't as many as possible take part in meetings and votes or does democracy for the SP mean the democracy of the elite?

Oh and Rose has the indifference of everybody except her immediate family.

by Brian Cahill Wed Oct 23, 2002 01:09

Violet, your post can only be described as disengenuous or at best naive.

Packing meetings happens all too often on the left. And doing it is about the surest way to destroy any form of trust or any amount of cooperation. In this particular case SWP members who had played no role in the Welsh Socialist Alliance were rounded up for one meeting to enforce the will of their local full timer.

So what would you have the Socialist Party do? Round up more of our members for the next meeting and pack that? We could have, but what would be the point?

The WSA was a shell of an organisation. Cymru Goch, the other founder group had already left in disgust at the SWP's antics in destroying the publication of the WSA. Very few independents remained active. The WSA only had a point as an alliance, not as a sectarian battlefield with each organisation trying to ambush the other at succesive meetings.

by bored Wed Oct 23, 2002 09:50

So:
SP sets up English Socialist Alliance -- loses a vote walks out in a huff.
SP sets up Welsh Socialist Alliance -- loses a vote walks out in a huff.
SP sets up the Scotish Socialist Party -- splits, denounces the organisation it set up. As yet both CWI members haven't built up enough mock outrage to leave.

To set up and lose one alliance is unfortunate, to lose two is sectarian posturing.

by Tamerlane Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:16

Irish Socialist Alliance. SP came to founding meeting. Saw they could not dominate it. Left in huff.

by OK - SP Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:27

What is it that we are trying to build?

I'm not interested in an Alliance/Party that is merely the collection of various sects that get together and have arguments.

The WSA, and the SA in England were originally a great vehicle for left wing activists to get together an campaign on the issues that matter. I'm under no illusion- these formations were not mass workers parties, but they were potentially down the line if the workers that moved into struggle orientated towards these alliances.

Unfortunatly the SWP went into the WSA ans the SA in England so that they could sell papers and recruit. These groups quickly became a mere collection of sects, and was not attracting genuine left wing activists and anti-capitalist youth.

by Violet Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:44

If the Socialist Party had a real commitment to the WSA etc their members would turn up on important meetings to express their views.

Either:

a) They didn't bother their arse turning up because they realised they couldn't dominate the thing or had no real commmitment to the project;

b) They did mobilise all they could but were in a minority and could not convince a majority to support their position.

SP likes things like Youth Against Racism and Youth Against War precisely because they have no competition. Once other forces enter the stage as in the WSA and ESA, and they have to argue their position in the company of these other forces, like for example the SWP, they lose their enthusiasm. Then the pretexts are found and the complaints amde at tedious length. "The whole project has been wrecked by the SWP", etc, etc.

They are also afraid of majority votes. That is why they demanded the right of veto over decsions in the English SA (and the Welsh). When they couldn't impose their minority will on thse bodies they denounce them as "undemocratic".

by out of the country and away from the fuss... - reclaim the streets! and genome Wed Oct 23, 2002 12:02 iosaf at email dot com barcelona 0034679708674

This is not presently being discussed on the
welsh indymedia site.
here is a link;
http://www.indycymru.org.uk/
the welsh site is a frinedship `thing´,
you don´t have a link from Ireland.indymedia
but Wales / Cymru
is just over the sea from Dublin.
The Welsh are celtic ethnic group people who are traditionally divided into two large communities "northern wales" and "southern wales".
They worry about Nuclear power.
They worry about social issues.
They worry about the application and patenting of bio-tech products in particular genomic.
They don´t like Sellafield. (They call it Sellafield).
If you speak / read cymru the site is fully translated.
Go ask the welsh what they think.
HEART AND MIND

by Brian Cahill Wed Oct 23, 2002 16:32

Talking with various SWP hacks is like talking to a brick wall. You can say anything you like, all you will get is the party line back.

Let's have a look at some of the things our anonymous SWPers above have been saying:

1) If our members cared enough about the Welsh Socialist Alliance they would turn up to its meetings to push through our will:

Think about this for a moment. The above is actually quite revealing about the SWP mindset. Packing meetings of an alliance to force your desires on your "allies" is redefined as caring about the alliance. Orwell would be proud.

This might lead the sceptical amongst us to wonder if Violet is really this stupid or if she is just being disengenuous. Did all of the SWPers who turned up for one meeting as voting fodder "care" about the Welsh Socialist Alliance? Why weren't they active in it before?

So Violet, yes the Socialist Party could respond in kind. We have slightly more activists in the Swansea area, after all. But what would be the point? Already the poisonous atmosphere created by the SWPs takeover attempts had driven almost everyone out of the WSA apart from the SP. Not only would we be lowering ourselves to your level, we would be wasting our time: there isn't anything there to fight over. You had already gutted the WSA!

The WSA only made sense as an attempt to reach out to wider numbers of people - as a real alliance. There was never any point in it as a phantom organisation with little purpose other than to provide a handy forum for sectarian battles.

So now the SWP have "won". They have control of the WSA. But there isn't a WSA to control. Well done!

2) Some other SWPer brings up the English Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party. The combination of the two is interesting. The last time the SWP were mentioning the two in the same breath was when their takeover of the English SA was reaching its conclusion.

In the run up to the ESA conference which the SWP used to turn the "alliance" into yet another front there was some edginess amongst some of their better members about the consequences of doing so. Their leadership decided to prepare the ground by putting out an issue of their internal "Party Notes" claiming that the Socialist Party/CWI was taking a strange I-vant-to-be-alone turn and was about to leave the SA and the SSP for no reason.

Their unfortunate membership in Scotland believed the lies they had been fed and created havoc briefly in the SSP when they spread the rumour around. The problems quickly subsided when the source of the rumour was traced back to petty manouevring by the SWP leadership in England.

3) It might do some of our SWP "friends" some good if they were to actually examine the histories of the Socialist Alliances in Britain.

In all cases they were set up by the Socialist Party with others - in Wales with Cymru Goch, in England with local groups of socialists including the Leeds Left Alliance, Preston Radical Alliance etc and in Scotland with an array of people mostly from Labour backgrounds.

In all cases the SWP maintained an attitude of "splendid" sectarian isolation. Eventually it scented some organisational gains and made one of its regular u-turns. Of course, the SWP had no real intention of working with others and quickly set about trying to take over the various alliances. In the process they drove out every single founding organisation in the ESA and now finally the WSA. In both cases they are now left with a handy name to use, but no real organisation. So they set back left wing cooperation in England and Wales years for what? A nice front name.

Some of us may question the wisdom of that even from the point of view of the most hardened SWP sectarian.

by Brian Cahill Wed Oct 23, 2002 16:38

I forgot to mention how amusing the plaintive whining of the Irish SWP for an alliance with the Socialist Party is in this context. Why on earth would we lumber ourselves with a bunch of scheming sectarians? I mean you have certainly left enough object lessons lying around over the last couple of years - the ESA, the short-lived Irish Socialist Alliance and now the WSA. Crocodile tears fool nobody.

by tatlin Wed Oct 23, 2002 17:10

The Socialist Alliance was a thing of wonder and beauty until the evil SWP joined, they were going to take it over so we walked out to stop that happening!
http://www.socialistalliance.net/news/PaulFootHackney.html

For those with too much time on their hands accounts of the SP walkout of the English Socialist Alliance can be found here.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/1778/sw177821.htm
and none SWP versions here:
"It is not even true, as the statement implies, that the SWP had a majority in the conference. They did not. They had to win other votes to get decisions through. In fact they lost the vote on the establishment of an appeals committee.
In the end it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the SP leadership wanted an exit strategy from the SA, and that they found one."
http://www.labournet.org.uk/so/51sp.htm
http://www.labournet.org.uk/so/52sp.htm

The postscript to Brian’s post, is perhaps revealing. The Welsh Socialist Alliance? Many readers of the site could, I imagine, care less. But over the last few days there has been a theme to a few posts on the site. “We lost the Nice referendum, lets fight.”

One good thing happened during the referendum was the Alliance Against Nice. Now there is long a way to go, but it was a start. But the problem is there are two options, you either you think "well that was Ok so lets do some more", or you can think "fuck me that was close we nearly had to work with the SWP".

Brian’s transfer to England and various e-lists has landed him in the latter school of thought.

However, we could talk about moving forward.
(Notice here we are still at the stage of talking about it, not actually doing anything as radical as uniting over an issue or anything)
But instead we have "You won a vote in OUR alliance and that's why we took our ball home and we won't talk to you."
That is what makes both the Irish Left and this newswire in particular so pleasant.

by doheochai - Socialist Party Wed Oct 23, 2002 23:33

I put up the original post for information purposes but not surprisingly we ended up with a slagging match. I think those who visit this site have had enough experience and are intelligent enough to be able to make up their own minds about what has happened in Wales. Despite this however I cannot resist giving my two cents worth.

Despite being involved in politics for 20 years I have relatively little experience with the SWP, primarily because they have never managed to build anything in Limerick. They have made efforts once again in recent times and I believe have two members in UL.

During the Nice Treaty campaign, the Allaince Against Nice held a meeting in Limerick. Despite the fact that the SWP have never done any work in Limerick they had a speaker at the meeting. This caused surprise among members of the Socialist Party and others involved in the campaign but we said ok they are part of the Alliance so fair enough. The Green Party, Sinn Fein and the Socialist Party each put up a quarter of the posters for the meeting. Despite numerous efforts to contact the SWP in Limerick and Nationally to get them to do their share of the work the SWP did nothing for the meeting. Their speaker at the meeting spoke for 5 minutes and baiscally said No to Nice, No to War, Join the SWP and come to our meeting in UL next thursday and dont forget our marxism weekend in November. Most people at the meeting looked at one another as if to say what is he on about. Incidentally they were also the only group that didn't take any Alliance leaflets to distribute.

To quote tatlin "fuck me that was close we nearly had to work with the SWP".
And we would have if they had done any work.

by the prophet exiled Thu Oct 24, 2002 03:29

correct me if i am wrong here, but was it not the SP who initiated the alliance against nice? i think the sp were probably justified in walking out of both the SA and WSA.
but serioulsy folks, what is the point of an alliance if a)it is contolled by a majority decison making group (such as the swp and their allies)?

and b)lets face it, the working class (in ireland anyway) are genrally, at best, indifferent to the swp (as shown by their appalling election results - and lets not say anything about their electoral policy u-turn), so an alliance dominated by the swp, is NOT going to attract workers and young people. i certainly wouldnt join it, and in fact didnt join the WSA when i lived there a few years back cos i thought it was just a swp front like the anl. but i didnt know much about left politics back then, but as they say "i knew what i liked" (and didnt like - and that was the swp).

well thats my two pence worth (should that be cent?)

by James Dean Thu Oct 24, 2002 12:04

Call me old-fashioned, but always thought the democratic thing was when everyone's vote was equal, whether a member of this or that party or none.

People have fought big battles to establish the principle of one person one vote. But the SP people are bursting to load the newsline with gossip, innuendo,and slander on events which very few people can check independently.

All we know for sure is that they are upset because they lost a vote on whether they would be allowed as a minority to veto decisions.

Nothing is more abhorent to people moving away from the New Labour mafia and coming into an alliance like the Socialist Alliance to believe that their votes don't count for as much as those of others.

But that was the object, purpose and inevitable result of the SP veto proposal.

For the rest as has been previously discussed in these threads, the SWP in Ireland welcomed the initiative of others in setting up the Socialist Alliance. The SP came along, saw the SWP there, and after sniffiing around refused to participate. The SA limped along for a while but obviously without some rapprochment with the SP was going nowhere fast.

Brian Cahill justications for this sort of sectarianism are familiar and boil down to "We're better than you, stick up more posters than you, etc, etc" fleshed out with a few anecdotes and gossip which nobody can check.

Upset by the defeat over Nice the SP comrade from Limerick adds his little piece of gossip to the pile.

And you wonder why the Left in Ireland has a reputation for mad sectarianism. (Even worse perhaps you don't even womder -- you just dont care!)

by Cork SWP Thu Oct 24, 2002 12:36 corkswp at yahoo dot com

to the SP member in Limerick, all I can say about the Alliance in Cork in comparison was that the SWP here played as full a part in putting up posters for the joint meeting organised by the parties in the Alliance and took the Alliance leaflets, which we gave out aswell as our own leaflets. We were assigned two areas in the south side of Cork city, Mahon and Ballincollig, by the Alliance and canvassed/leafleting them.

Maybe because we only have 2-3 members in then Limerick area, (one living out near Ennis I believe) that we couldn’t honestly play a full part in the Alliance in that town.

Yes we have been historically weak in Limerick and could the Limerick comrade confirm that the SP there had 20-30 members at one stage? Unless I am completely mistaken and am prepared to be corrected was there only a handful of SP members from Limerick/Shannon Town at the recent Shannon demo?

So what difference is there really? We lost the vote fairly badly didn't we?

by out of the country and far from the fuss. - teepee dwellers cyber support team Thu Oct 24, 2002 15:14 iosaf at email dot com

working with a SWM.
earning your crust next to a swimmie day after day, not just doing political stuff,
no actually working.
grafting, sweating, boring, repetitive stuff.
bread and butter.
working with a swimmie.

imagine that...................eeeuuurgh

...working for a SWM.
taking the daily dose of direction from a swimmie,
making coffee, for a swimmie.

imagine that.................

...being a swimmie´s boss.
hmmm.
owning a pub with a few essential staff,
one of them a swimmie.
hmmm.

Wales is generally thought to be one of the most important countries for understanding the development of socialist ideas in non-urban areas.
Those socialists of the valleys and coal mines joined forces with those of the urban areas to shape the ideology of the British Labour movement in the early twentieth century.
It was one of the effects of the Irish independence movement to remove representation from Westminster of equivalent elements at perhaps a crucial stage in the development of class identities in north western Europe.
We saw certain peoples of Northern Europe pass through the mid-tweentieth century with neglible development of industrial or agricultural class indentity.

¨That´s what I´s say in my imaginary pub to my swimmie worker... and I´d do it with a megaphone.

"& now you clean the toilets someone´s got sick".

by SWP hater Thu Oct 24, 2002 16:10

Oh I really hate the SWP.

I hate the way in whcih they swing from being all nice to you, then all of a sudden they're sectarian in the extreme.

It must be a record. They are keeping up being nice to other left wing groups since their election humiliation in May. It can't be long before they go on a sectarian rant against other lefts.

I also hate them because they've more wings than a Chernnobyl Chicken. There's the 'intellectual' wing (lead by Kieran Allen), and then there's the 'Community Campaigner' wing (lead by Richard Boyd-Barrett), not forgetting the 'Anti-capitalist wing (lead by 'GR Joe' Carolan).

Oh yeah there's the journalist wing (lead by Eamon McCann). But I'd probably put the journalist wing in with the 'intellectual' wing. Although I think its more of a case that there are 2 tendencies within the intellectual wing. The McCannites and the Allenites.

If you know any more of the SWP wings add them

by Me Thu Oct 24, 2002 16:25

SWP hater,
Do you feel better now you unburdened yourself of that closely argued and cogent critique of the SWP?
Have the voices stopped yet?

by doheochai - Socialist Party Thu Oct 24, 2002 18:48

You suggest that the SWP in Limerick couldn't play a full part in the Nice campaign (in fact they didn't play any part) but they were able to play a full part in the public meeting by speaking from the platform and plugging their various meetings.

In relation to the Shannon Demo, not alone did the local members of the Socialist Party participate on October 12th, but we have participated in many of the regular protests that have occurred over the past number of months. Unfortunately, the SWP haven't been such regular visitors.

As an aside, I didn't see any SWP members participate in the 1200 strong Trade Union Demo on Oct. 5th or the 3500 student demo a few days later.

Incidentally, about 40 people attended a SP meeting in UL on the war, while 4 attended the SWP meeting, despite the attempts to plug the meeting.

Now the SWP continues to attack the SP for failing to co-operate with them, yet the reality is the SWP are only interested in doing any work when it is their interest. Those who visit this board are well aware of this fact.

by out of thecountry and away from the fuss... Thu Oct 24, 2002 19:47

that the swimmies annoy everyone.
no matter where they are.
and that I imagine working / jobbing / earning my living with a swimmie would be unbearable.
To illustrate this point I used a literary device,
a comic situation and location,
to wit;
one imaginary pub.
with myself as landlord.
(bit of irony there since I´m an occupation campaigner but anyway...)
and I decided to cast a "pretty
typical
stereo-typical
much-maligned
party cohort
of the dogmatic
very very
last century
SWM / SWP
megaphone weilding
bolshevik"
as my essential employee.

I fantasised as light relief in a day which has seen the most populous state on earth go offline, and has seen most curious behaviour in Moscow, on possible hypothetical exchanges between myself a lyrical poet and clown and this stereotype SWM/SWP member.

and it made me laugh.
and previously I had pointed out that this issue is not getting much attention on Welsh / Cymru indymedia perhaps because the fate of the Swimmies doesn´t really make it on the list of "think globally act locally" priorites at the moment.

Maybe tomorrow.
certainly not last century.

by hunter Fri Oct 25, 2002 00:11

well it made me laugh, 'out of the country'. but i dont hate swimmers as such, i just hate the swm/swp as an organisational machine/party.

by hunter Fri Oct 25, 2002 00:11

well it made me laugh, 'out of the country'. but i dont hate swimmers as such, i just hate the swm/swp as an organisational machine/party.