Belfast SEA established

by Badman Fri Mar 19, 2004 16:32

The incredible vanishing party strikes again!

Why not try honesty - it can work you know.

by nobodaddy Fri Mar 19, 2004 19:30

Fair play to everyone involved in the Sea. Best of luck to eamonn.

by Funnyman Fri Mar 19, 2004 20:25

I'd like to see the SEA in the sea!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Eamon McCann + Brits out = no future.

by Register Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:58

Good to see much of the Belfast left including many independent left community activists and workers as well as many trade union activists get together and agreeing to work together. Just to mention leading activists of the ATGWU and the Belfast trades council were also there. Well done

by Been here before Sat Mar 20, 2004 12:15

I give it 6 months tops, before the left factions tear it apart again. The SWP/ SP and others all have the view that they are the leadership of the revolution, and will be entering this with one thought at the forefront of their minds - who can we recruit for our own sect? Nothing else matters much. It will fragment and tear apart - until and unless the left revises and ditches the Leninist claptrap that has kept it in increasingl ywell deserved obscurity for many decades.

by Dr. Faustus Sat Mar 20, 2004 13:14

Ehem. Pardon me. What does SEA stand for? [blushes]

by left Sat Mar 20, 2004 13:49

"...unless the left revises and ditches the Leninist claptrap"

ie sell out and go down the Labour, WP, SF, Green Party road.

by Paul Sat Mar 20, 2004 14:25

Weird and wonderfull as they are I don't think you can ever accuse the wP OF SELLING OUT LENINISM. Thats why so many of their members have departed.

by ec Sat Mar 20, 2004 14:32

I think . .

by WPwatch Sat Mar 20, 2004 14:35

The WP have sold out leninism. They are stalinists. They supported the disgusting and undemocratic bureacracy in the USSR. They therefore supported the butchering of workers movement s all over the world in order to preserve the USSR bureacrats. Lenin stood for democracy and for international revolution, the stalinists do not.

by Cllr eoin O'Broin - Sinn Féin Sat Mar 20, 2004 17:10 eoinobroin at hotmail dot com

This is a genuine question. I have no difficulty in the idea of a genuinely independent SEA, nor do I have any problem with the SWP standing candidates. The issue I am keen to hear about is whether or not the SEA is actually independent or just another SWP front.?

This is an important question, as the original post claims that people from a range of trade unions and other groups were in attendance. There may even be an inference that these groups support the SEA, which none of them do as groups, irrespective of what 'leading members' of these groups think independently of their organisations. However were these 'leading members' members of the SWP? Is this simply an SWP front?

I ask these questions out of a genuine interest to know, and not as a side swipe at either the SWP or the SEA.

Any serious answers would be appreciated...

by nc Sat Mar 20, 2004 18:11

does that depend on SWP or.. on other activists getting involved?
Is SF likely to shift to SEA type position on issues like ... abortion, PFi, links with US, etc.?

by Michael Doherty - SEA Sat Mar 20, 2004 19:32 seaderry at hotmail dot com Derry

Of the eight of us who travelled from Derry to the Belfast meeting, three were SWP. That was an over-representation of the SWP in terms of their proportion within the SEA in Derry. Of the 70+ at the meeting from Belfast, I counted 7 - 8 Belfast SWP, 5 - 6 Communist Party and 3-4 Socialist Party. The rest were all non-aligned. The Socialist Party made it clear they still think the idea of any broad left electoral alliance is 'premature'

Genuinely, as I have said on other posts here, the SEA in Derry and now hopefully Belfast and throughout the North, is comprised mainly of non-aligned people. Whatever people may think of the SWP, my experience of them has been that they do not try to dominate. Quite the opposite, they have helped the rest of us who are willing to learn some of the practical aspects of organising - like getting a poster together, or a press release, going on radio or TV as spokespeople etc.

They do probably raise issues more than the rest of us, for example, it was SWPers who suggested we focus on the airport runway and the rail link with Belfast. More recently, it was an SWPer who suggested we come to the defence of the Nucleus when Precious Life started to picket it. Is this SWP domination? I don't really think so, just that they seem to have more people who phone them about things, more trade union contacts etc. Anyway, it is the wider SEA that decides whether or not to take up an issue and in what manner.

by ? Sat Mar 20, 2004 23:58

What about the irsp?

by Michael - SEA Sun Mar 21, 2004 00:35 Derry

The IRSP have been going around saying we [SEA] have excluded them. Not so. They have excluded themselves. We are against paramilitarism. That was part of founding statement of SEA.

Anyway, the reality is that SEA is an 'individual membership' organisation, so there are no organisations who are members BUT it is also the case that some individual members of the IRSP - those who want to see it break from INLA and thuggishness - have worked with SEA in Derry during Assembly elections.

by Hmmmm Sun Mar 21, 2004 16:31

what about the WP didnt sea try to get them on board?
Why the attacks on the irsp, what is the real reason they are excluded?

by Davy Carlin Mon Mar 22, 2004 10:03

Eoin as your point was raised in a fraternal way I will attempt to answer it. Firstly on the issue of the SEA being an 'SWP front' ------


I hear the same from the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities {NICEM} who see the ARN as a 'challenge to them'. NICEM has 20 paid workers , the ARN is voluntary. Yet NICEM try to call it an SWP front although there are only two SWP activists involved it it.

As for trade unionists at the Belfast SEA meeting well of course leading trade union activists from the SWP where there, but I seen many leading trade union activists who where non SWP people such as those around the newsheet 'uncivil servant' who played also a leading role in the recent civil service walkouts, I seen people who want to and will take a leading role in the Libarary closures fight back, leading ATGWU, UNISON, and Belfast trades union council members, as well as workers from several other trade unions also there.

I seen several non SWP steering committee members of the ARN, members of the BAWM and the Anti poverty network as said above also there. There where also leading commmunity workers and schoolstudent anti war and anti racism activists fom across belfast in attendence. There where left wing writers, journalists, and other womens, gay and miniority ethnic and human rights campaigners there, and a lot more.

All of the above I mention where not SWP but do work with us in the many campaigns we are involved in, and indeed the majority of those there where not party aligned.

I can say the SEA ike the ARN is not an 'SWP front' as 'some' may say but it is about a collective group of peoples coming together to take a collective stand on their respective issues. I do not really believe that NICEM real problem is with the two SWP activists as such within the ARN {of 25 suportive organisations} but as much about the ARN.
and the 'challange' to their 'profile' and space etc.

Yet the 80 or so activists in the room - { and I stress 'activists' as they are leading activists in trade unions, anti racism, anti privatisation, Anti War, anti Poverty, womens, gay, human, community and a host of other rights issue from around Belfast} - work with the Belfast SWP on daily baisis within various campaigns

I say it as I see it Eoin and like the ARN , {made up of genuine activists looking to fight racism} similarly I seen a packed room of genuine activists looking to form an electoral alliance. There may of course Eoin be differences in tactics and of course problem will be raised and aired {and mistakes will be made and lessons learnt} but at the end of the day I seen many of the Belfast 'non al igned' left coming together with SWP and CP activists to form this alliance, to me if the alliance is primarily activist based with a representative democratically accountable steering commitee, then this is a good thing.

by Davy Carlin Mon Mar 22, 2004 10:31

and as importantly for oneself it will be therefore something that I would actively support and actively promote.

by Wise Up Mon Mar 22, 2004 22:17

This whole thread is ridiculous. The far left is hopelessly divided, and this will remain the case so long as its constituent parts remain fixated on the Leninist dictum that a single revolutionary party molded in their own image must monopolise public opinion and then seize power to reconstitute a new society. This means any and every new movement is first and foremost regarded as a recruiting ground for 'The Party.' Nothing is learned from history, nothing is subjected to searching inquiry, nothing is learned from the repeated debacles of this kind of initiative.

It is all the most unutterable bollocks, founded on not a scintilla of genuine scientific inquiry

And the result is a series of doomed and laughable initiatiaves of this kind - which leaves capitalism without even a scratch.

by IRSP Member Wed Mar 24, 2004 01:56

"Anyway, the reality is that SEA is an 'individual membership' organisation, so there are no organisations who are members BUT it is also the case that some individual members of the IRSP - those who want to see it break from INLA and thuggishness - have worked with SEA in Derry during Assembly elections"


I am a member of the IRSP in Derry and I know of two Republican Socialist activists who got involved in McCann's assembly election campaign for very the genuine reasons of trying to promote a new left awareness and to challenge the status quo of what serves as politics in the north. They certainly didn't get involved because they wanted to see the IRSP break any connection with the INLA. This is a blatant lie.

by L Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:11

first item on the agenda-the split.

I do not see the reason the irsp have been excluded, all this crap about a military wing, it never bothered the swp before.

Can the irsp tell us the real reason?

by Dorts Wed Mar 24, 2004 19:07

Is it true that the SEA convention held in Derry said that they would call for support for 'political prisoners'?

Do they mean the terrorist RIRA or are they talking about the 'political prisoners' at the other side of the world?

You know, these 'revolutionary socialists' that give support to the 'further the way the better' political causes and prisoners which they like to rant on about...