Desmond Greaves Summer School

by Curious Thu Aug 21, 2003 15:06

Is Dermot Connolly officially representing the SP? Has his speech been cleared by the Troika? Ask Dermot what he thinks about the SP line in the Anti Bin Charges Campaign! Ask him if he was happy to be ousted as General Secretary of the SP.

by Degenerate Thu Aug 21, 2003 15:33

What no SWers!! How dare they.
This debate is bogus. It can't be the 'Left and Europe' without the true leaders - RBB or KA.

Boycott the sectarians. (Or maybe they did - the organisers that is)

by Anonymous Thu Aug 21, 2003 16:12

I know degenerate, whats goin on!!

But seriously, Eugene, any particular reason the SWP are not included in your above list, to complete the left "full circle"??

And what about anarchist organisations, will they be represented?

Best of luck with the debate.

by Janus Thu Aug 21, 2003 16:24

The CPI aren't the organisers of the Summer School. The Summer School's been about for years and I don't think Eugene decides who can and cannot speak.

As for why the SWP aren't there, frankly, every other political party listed, with the exception of the CPI is more representative than them. I think it only makes sense to keep irrelevant political organisations off the speakers table to keep from wasting peoples time. If they want to speak, they can attend the meeting, as can the Anarchists for that matter.

by Agent of Chaos Thu Aug 21, 2003 16:51

Well if they can have one Cult represented on the platform why not another? I also await DErmots contribution with great interest. Will he stick to the SP line? Will they order him not to attend?

by JJ Thu Aug 21, 2003 16:58

Are you sure about that Janus?

As much and all as the SWP annoy me, it is hardly their fault that you view having drinking clubs as a sign of being more representative.
A bit of the ex-shinner coming out there?

by Magneto Thu Aug 21, 2003 17:11

WP not really representative of much. Its unlikely they will hold the Waterford Council seats. SF thrashed them in the Dail election last year.

by Janus Thu Aug 21, 2003 17:26

I don't shinners, or ex-shinners, have a particularly kind mindset relating to the Workers Party. The WP have more support, expressed at the ballot box, than the SWP, and they actually have elected representatives.

I'm not arguing the WP are the vanguard of the working class ;) but that while they may be in terminal, terminal, final, absolute decline, they're still bigger than the SWP and more credible. It's not that I think well of the WP, more that I think very, very badly indeed of the SWP.

by Anonymous Thu Aug 21, 2003 19:02

Thanks for your response Janus.

I disagree though. I think the SWP are a very relevant party for the left in Ireland and not havin them there I think is unwise.

Would also be nice to have an anarchist speaker who are also a very relevant group to the left in Ireland.

by Seáinín Fri Aug 22, 2003 03:23

Socialism died in Europe AD 1990. Anyone of any consequence now accepts that capitalism is the sole viable means of arraning human affairs.

Anyone who can possibly think that any form of State controlled economy could work is as self-deluded as a Holocaust denier.

It's pathetic lads, grow up and join the real world.

by Andrew Fri Aug 22, 2003 12:01

Seanin not all socialists think (or thought pre '89) that a "State controlled economy could work" if by 'work' you mean deliver a free society.

Now prove to us that you are not a TROLL by taking that into account in future posts. (Whats the bets he does, boys and girls?)

by Anonymous Fri Aug 22, 2003 14:39

SEANIN IS A TROLL.

He/She/They post(s) comments to indymedia to try to get a rise out of people and waste their time. Trolls are an unfortunate feature of the internet. The are people who abuse the open publishing systems of the internet with behaviour that is intended to be destructive, either because of a twisted personality, or a desire to destroy the project.

DO NOT RESPOND. DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

by invincible Fri Aug 22, 2003 15:05

considering their membership outnumbers the membershipso f the sp,wp ans cpoi?

by Agent of Chaos Fri Aug 22, 2003 15:43

Ask the SP about their involvent in the Ukrainian fraud.

Real life is odder
by IBT Friday, Aug 22 2003, 1:49pm


Fraud against the worker' movement
IBT Conned in Kiev
The International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) is one of a
number of left-wing organizations fooled by a gang of
con artists in Kiev, who fraudulently posed as
supporters of different international political
tendencies.

On Thursday 14 August a British-based opponent
organization supplied us with a photograph taken at
one of their international gatherings. We knew one of
the three people pictured as a British member of the
opponent organization, but had taken the other two to
be the leader and a senior member of our own Ukrainian
group. The other organization had taken them to be the
leader and a senior member of their group.

We proceeded to exchange information and photographs
with a variety of other leftist tendencies we
suspected might also have been targeted. We are not at
liberty to list those organizations because we
undertook to treat much of the information we received
in strict confidence. We expect that the identity of
most of the other groups involved will be revealed in
the near future.

We have established, beyond any doubt, that the same
collection of people presented themselves as multiple
groups, each with an international affiliation. We
have created a list of the players we have so far
identified, with their photographs.

Aspects of this fraud have already been made public by
two organizations. The 26 July minutes of the
executive of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
(SPGB), available on the internet from 6 August,
reports that the scam was set up to raise funds for
the Kiev operations of the Committee for a Workers
International (CWI--the international organization of
the Socialist Party of England and Wales, led by Peter
Taaffe). However the SPGB has yet to produce
conclusive evidence.

What purports to be a CWI statement on the matter
(dated 5 August and appended to the 26 July SPGB
minutes, and also distributed through the Leftist
Trainspotters email list) claims that neither the
CWI's international leadership nor its Commonwealth of
Independent States lieutenants are involved, and
announces the suspension of its Ukrainian National
Committee and Kiev City Committee, pending an
investigation.

A Bit of History
A group calling itself the "Young Revolutionary
Marxists" (YRM) of Ukraine wrote to us in 1999. A
senior IBT member visited them late that year and was
impressed both by their apparent understanding of
Trotskyism and their interest in discussing important
programmatic questions. He was particularly struck by
their account of how a minority of their group had
recently decamped to join Workers Power/League for a
Revolutionary Communist International because they
disagreed with our position of military support to the
Soviet Stalinist "hardliners" in their August 1991
confrontation with Boris Yeltsin. The ?YRM?
convincingly feigned agreement with our position on
the coup and many other political questions.

Two of these operators, Zakhar Popovich and Boris
Pastukh, visited our British organization in 2000.
Pastukh, who was originally introduced to us as
Alexander Sherbakov, was presented as the group's
leader. It is now clear that in addition to leading
"our" Ukrainian group, he was also "leader" of at
least two rival groups.

While in Britain, Popovich and Pastukh participated in
a series of educationals and branch meetings. They
appeared to be politically sharp, honest and
committed. A leading IBT comrade made another visit to
Kiev, and then two of their leaders attended our
international conference in October 2001, meeting the
IBT leadership and a cross-section of our membership.
The conference concluded with a bogus ?fusion? between
the IBT and the ?YRM.? Since then, five different IBT
comrades have visited Kiev, and another Ukrainian
swindler, Oleksander Zvorsky, spent three weeks with
our German section.

In the last year we became increasingly concerned
about the lethargic pace of the translation of our
materials into Russian and Ukrainian, their failure to
produce any substantial original propaganda, and the
marked absence of internal political and perspectives
documents. Yet we were very conscious of the desperate
poverty in Ukraine and attributed the lack of activity
of our supposed section to the difficulties involved
in merely surviving in an economically devastated
country.

We had determined to upgrade the performance of our
?section.? As a first step we dispatched a leading
comrade on a four-week visit with a mandate to assess
the problem and initiate an organizational overhaul.
She was appalled by what appeared to be chronic
Menshevik organizational norms and a low level of
membership commitment. When she raised these issues
with the ?leadership? they appeared a bit embarrassed
and pretended to accept her proposals for reorganizing
the group?s work. We anticipated that if they did not
rapidly improve their functioning, a serious political
struggle was inevitable.

In hindsight there are several incidents which might
have alerted us, had we been at all suspicious. There
were precautions we ought to have taken, and we
certainly could have moved sooner to tighten up what
appeared to be a largely dysfunctional organization.
Yet there can be no absolute guarantee against being
taken in by a complicated (and well organized)
conspiracy run by intelligent criminals with a
background in Marxoid culture, particularly if their
operation is insulated by language and geography. We
will learn from this experience as we continue to work
to extend the IBT internationally, but we do not
expect to be able to avoid all risks.

Two leading members of our putative Kiev group told
one of our comrades that they had first met through an
amateur acting troupe. This might be true, although
they are no longer amateurs. We have given these
people some material aid--very modest by Western
standards, but significant in Ukraine. Our subsidy
ostensibly paid the rent on a small apartment to be
used as a political headquarters. We expect that other
organizations have also been financing the same
premises.

The primary motivation for this scam was presumably
personal material gain, but we must assume that the
Ukrainian political police knew of the charade, and
shared any information they collected with various
other intelligence agencies.

?A Broad Spectrum?
In our article on the 2001 ?fusion,? we reported:

?The YRM derived from a circle of Kiev teenagers who,
in 1989, obtained a copy of Leon Trotsky?s The
Revolution Betrayed, and discovered that it contained
a wealth of political insights profoundly relevant to
the events taking place around them, as the forces of
capitalist restoration gained momentum in the Soviet
degenerated workers? state. From that original
grouping, a broad spectrum of leftist organizations,
all critical of Stalinism and, in most cases,
identifying themselves as Trotskyist, has reappeared
in Ukraine.?

?1917 No. 24, 2002
The ?broad spectrum? of virtual organizations was more
closely related than we imagined.

Like the other groups involved, we trusted these petty
crooks and feel betrayed. But it is also impossible
not to see the comical side. The script was Twelfth
Night meets Life of Brian, as these characters, in the
guise of the Ukrainian section of one of our
opponents, harshly denounced us and then, as ?our?
group, indignantly proclaimed the criticism to be a
pure invention.

We received occasional updates on ?our? relations with
various non-existent opponents in Kiev. Sometimes ?we?
were able to initiate promising political discussions
with ?them,? but soon ?they? would become hostile and
refuse to talk. We were also advised of actions by the
security service against various imaginary opponents,
and of the periodic harassment of ?our? comrades.
Needless to say, we were concerned and sympathetic and
offered what advice we could.

An unanswered question: Oleg Vernik & the CWI
The extent of the whole operation is not entirely
clear, but Oleg Vernik, who was introduced to an IBT
representative in Kiev in 2001 as the former leader of
the CWI in Ukraine, is clearly a central figure.
Pastukh described him to us as a leftist element
disenchanted with the CWI, and a potential contact for
the IBT. Pastukh later reported that Vernik had
dropped out of politics.

In fact Vernik has remained highly active,
contributing to CWI websites and promoting them in
internet postings. An article on the privatization of
the sugar industry in the CWI?s Russian paper Left
Vanguard (No. 49, 8 May 2003) is signed by Oleg
Vernik. He is credited with an article on the website
of the SPGB, and is listed as the chair of an
independent union in Kiev called ?The Protection of
Labor.? The IBT representative who recently visited
Kiev was housed for a month in the same flat as
Vernik, who was posing as Vitaliy, our ?office
manager? and ?organizer.?

We await with interest the CWI?s explanation of how
they managed to remain entirely unaware of Oleg
Vernik?s activities, given his high profile and the
CWI?s considerable Russian language capacity.

It seems quite possible that Vernik, Pastukh, et al,
once had, and even perhaps retain, in some attenuated
and degenerate form, a political motive for their
activity. But they are so thoroughly corrupted and
cynical that they can only serve as an instrument for
the enemies of the workers? movement.

Boris Pastukh, the ?leader? of the fake IBT/Ukraine
group (among others) displayed a handsome wristwatch
with a picture of Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi
during a lubricated late-night social at our 2001
international conference. He claimed that friends in
the Socialist Youth of Ukraine (an affiliate of Sheila
Torrence?s orthodox Healyite tendency) had given it to
him some time ago.

We recently came across an internet posting by Oleg
Vernik and Boris Pastukh dated 11 June 2001 announcing
preparations for a ?summer camp in Crimea for brothers
from Lybia [sic], Ukraine, Russia, Byelorussia and
Moldovia? and advertising their own web site as
www.GreenBook.da.ru. (The Green Book was Qaddafi?s
equivalent of Mao?s Red Book.) The website seems to
have vanished, but it suggests that these hustlers
were on the lookout for bigger fish to fry.

It is little consolation that we are not the only
people to have been duped. Nor is it any great
consolation to remember historical semi-precedents,
such as Roman Malinovsky, the Czarist spy who became a
member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and head of
the Bolshevik fraction in the Duma, or Mark Zborowski
(Etienne), the GPU agent who was Leon Sedov's chief
lieutenant in Paris and the likely architect of his
murder, and subsequently Trotsky's leading
representative in Europe.

We cannot allow these gangsters to discredit
Trotskyism in the former Soviet Union. Serious people
can have no hesitation in exposing this kind of scam.
To be victimized but remain silent is to facilitate
future frauds. It is of course embarrassing to have
been taken in, but we have a responsibility to do what
we can to expose these crooks to the workers? movement.

by mick Sat Aug 23, 2003 15:54

Janus, I don't see why the SWP and anarchists shouldn't be there. Neither of them place the same emphasis on electoral politics as the millies or the sticks do, but they are both well represented in activst and grass roots cirles.The Communist Party have no elected representatives but nobody is objecting to them. Let's keep things as open as possible .Let's have a united front against the right wing .On the subject of which:
Seanin- The editors should delete his comments. He is a racist and a troll and clearly opposed to everything indymedia stands for.Why facilitate him?

by none - none Sat Aug 23, 2003 16:25

"Neither of them place the same emphasis on electoral politics as the millies or the sticks do"

Well I know the anarchists have their own 'no-leaders' reason for not standing in elections, but the SWP... well correct me if I'm wrong here but didn't the SWP switch from their 'principled opposition to elections' when Joe Higgins was elected a TD and the Socialist Alliance started taking off in the UK? The SWP would love an elected representative or two. thanks be to god there is as much chance of that happeneing as findng WMDS in Iraq.

by middle class feminist Sat Aug 23, 2003 17:12

Has the middle class labour speaker broken with her party's craven support for the big business EU superstate? Or does it just look good to have a middle class trendie on the platform?

by Magneto Sat Aug 23, 2003 19:18

Has their rep rejected support for the cops at Shannon? Has he rejected support for the Orange Orders "right" to march down the Garvaghy Road?

by mick Sun Aug 24, 2003 15:23

none -none
I'm sure the SWP would like to have a few public reps .I didn't know they ever had a principled opposition to elections -are you sure about that one?From what I can see of them though they don't have such a big electoral machine as the sticks millies etc. - they mainly use elections for propaganda/party building purposes. I don't know or care whether they're bigger than the SP but I would say they were as big as the CP and the sticks although probably without as much political clout of either of them at the moment. Like the anarchists they are able to work very effectively ,for better or worse ,on single issue campaigns like the anti war campaign. Many anti war activists feel that SWP recruitment methods during the campaign were opportunist and I think that's something that should be addressed ,but you can't just leave them out of the equation. And surely the fact that they were able to anticipate and prepare for the development of a mass anti war movement indicates a certain level of political sophistication on their behalf.
I'm still not sure whether the SWP were deliberately excluded from the Greaves school and there haven't been any irate posts from them so far. Are they still ignoring indymedia?

by John - definitely not in the SWP (by the way) Mon Aug 25, 2003 03:51

I don't think the SWP are particularly worried about their exclusion because the Greaves School is a broken record (mostly about the EU) run by a bunch of clapped out orthodox communists. Let's face it, the programme is virtually the same every year and, like something the East Germans used to run, they focus on paying homage to their departed friends, Greaves and Crotty. Anthony Coughlan (he who toured with Justin Barrett - remember that?) is the main organiser behind this annual exercise in narrow thinking, served with large dollops of pseudo-left nationalism. Forget about it.

by . Mon Aug 25, 2003 12:47

Clearly the swp do not give a fuck, so why does everyone else?

by anon Mon Aug 25, 2003 15:28

The SWP have in the past had a 'principled' opposition to standing in bourgeois elections. They held this position through most of the 80's and up until the mid 90s. Just look back at old copies of the Socialist Worker. They changed their mind when Joe Higgins stood in the Dublin West by election in 1996 and came within a handful of votes of winning a seat. The change in this position saw the PC divide in three,the majority group around Boyd Barrett arguing the SP line on elections, and two minority groups one centred around Allen argued for the old position and the smaller group lead by Grace Lally arguing for standing but not taking up seats a la SF and westminster.

by unaligned republican Mon Aug 25, 2003 20:02

John is no doubt a trot of some insignificant hue) Crotty was a man who had guts and who did the nation a great service in exposing the real nature of the EU and successive free state government's stealthy and underhanded attempts to involve this country in the superstate that is being constructed Now what have trot windbags ever done for this or any other country.

by Hilda Robinson Mon Aug 25, 2003 20:31

He was a supporter of Youth Defence and represented everything backward in Ireland. A craw thumping nationalist.

by unconvinced Tue Aug 26, 2003 17:37

Even if all those things are true about Crotty, he still achieved more than the trotskyist talking shops, who do nothing of any value. He at least battled and beat numerous governments!

by trot Thu Aug 28, 2003 16:49

So if the Trotskyists have done nothing?

who lead the fight that defeated the Water Tax?

by Agent of Chaos Fri Aug 29, 2003 13:41

A lot of independent activists, the WSM, SF members, LP members, WP members, SWP members and SP members. Thats who defeated the Water Tax.