How low can the SWP go? (and other discussions moved to this article)

Monday March 24, 2003 16:00

by Tony Dillon - Socialist Party

Charlie Chaplin with a megaphone

Yes the SWP, or at least its most frantic wing, have sunk to a new low with their antics during the anti war protests in Belfast last week.

Yes the SWP, or at least its most frantic wing, have sunk to a new low with their antics during the anti war protests in Belfast last week.
On Day X Youth Against the War organised school walk outs and rallies across Northern Ireland. Thousands walked out – in
Derry and Enniskillen they joined the Stop the War rallies and were the biggest and liveliest contingents, elsewhere YAW rallies were held.
Over 1,000 turned up for the rally at Belfast City Hall. The SWP – or some of them – have since claimed that they organised this event through their “Schools Against War” organisation. Here are the facts of what happened. They say a lot about the way the SWP works; and why it is just not possible for anyone to take them seriously.
Youth Against the War prepared for the rally through the groups that are now organised in most of the main schools in Belfast. Leaflets and posters had been issued calling for Day X walkouts at 12.30 with a City Hall Rally at 1.30pm. On the morning of Day X every school in Belfast was postered by 8.00am with posters saying “walk out today”. The groups in the schools were contacted by text and phone.
What did “Schools Against War” do? They had postered Belfast with posters calling for a Day X rally at 4.30pm. This is the only public material they issued. On the night before the war (Wednesday) they agreed to support the ICTU vigil called for the Friday even if the war started that night.
The next morning – seeing the YAW posters – the SWP sent out frantic emails trying to their members to switch the day to Thursday.
Their response to the City Hall YAW lunchtime protest was to try to hijack it. “Schools Against War” in the form of SWP members in their 20s and 30s, especially David Carlin with megaphone attached, intervened in the crowd and among students as they arrived getting them to sit down on the road. NOT A SINGLE SCHOOL STUDENT WAS INVOLVED IN ORGANISING THIS.
The result was that instead of 1000 at a rally which could have been followed by an organised protest there were 500 at the rally with another 500 sitting on the road and with David Carlin turning up the decibels through his megaphone to try to get chants to drown out the speakers. Agent Provocateurs couldn’t do better.
For the sake of accuracy it is true that this time – unlike on March 5th – there were some Schools Against the War people from Methody at the protest. Fair play to them. But none of these people were involved in the SWP antics of the day. Nor could they even have been consulted about what SWP members were doing in their name.
As for the SWP leading people to the event - only in the way Charlie Chaplin “led” a demonstration in “Modern Times”! The usual SWP way – find a movement and try and get your banner to the front of it. Charlie Chaplin with a megaphone – this is the David Carlin wing of the SWP. Lets hope for the sake of us all there are more rational elements around in that organisation.
And how did it all end. There was a “never ending” protest around Belfast which the SWP completely lost control of. Hardly surprising for people who have the tactical sense of a Rhinoceros!
It ended with four people arrested. Not surprising as the police waited until the crowds thinned and picked a few people out. The twenty or so who were left went to Musgrave Park police station and stood out chanting “SSRUC” at the gate. There was a young school student inside. And where was David Carlin or the other SWP “leaders” whose antics had got him arrested?. Gone home. The only SWP presence was two inexperienced and gormless members who had no idea what to do. Three Socialist Party members had to intervene, spending almost an hour registering a protest with the police and succeeding in getting the charges against all those arrested dropped! The Socialist Party and Youth Against the War takes responsibility for people it has called out on a protest and does not go home or on to some other “against the war” activity while they are in police custody.
David Carlin, proud of what he had done, announced on Indymedia that night that Schools Against War were calling their people out again for the ICTU/Stop the War Coalition rally the next day. There were less than 50 school students at that event – compared to more than 1000 at the Youth Against the War rally the day before.
That did not stop David and the ultra wing of the SWP from using the megaphone to get school students to block the road again. The police were called and were going to clear the 50 or 60 anarchists and school students from the road. Meanwhile David and the other SWP people made up a “legion of the rearguard” and stood to the side admiring their work. It was at this point that the Socialist Party members there intervened to say that the SWP should either put themselves at the front of those sitting down or else clear the road. The road was cleared.
There is nothing wrong with blocking roads or other forms of mass civil disobedience. But such protests need to be properly organised and organisers have to ensure that they are ended in a disciplined way, not allowed to fritter away to the point that the police can easily intervene and pick off individuals.
Hopefully there are people in Schools Against War who believed that it was more than a front for the megaphone brigade of the SWP and who will assert themselves. And hopefully there are people in the SWP who don’t want to go along with this infantile disorder.