Why the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is neither anti-Zionist nor pro-Palestinian

The SWP Decision to Welcome Zionist Groups to its ‘anti-racist’ march in Glasgow last weekend proves that the SWP's support for the Palestinians is hot air

UPDATE

On 16 February, in response to an email on behalf of Brighton and Hove Trades Council, Scottish SUTR i.e. the SWP, reassured me that:

SUTR Scotland … has no formal relationship with Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland or any of its local groups. Claims it "works closely" with or "invites" these groups are false. Neither is true that this group has been "welcome" to marches. We have no knowledge of their intention to attend the march in 2023.

Today Glasgow Friends of Israel posted this message on Facebook:

‘a letter of thanks from GFI chair Sammy Stein to Kier McKechnie and Mohammed Asif, organisers of the SUTR march that took place on Saturday, who made sure that GFI and COFIS members were kept safe during the march.

Hi Keir and Mohammad

It was good to see you both at the SUTR march in George Square on Saturday and many thanks for the welcome you gave us.

The Letter of Thanks ends:

‘I will of course post this message on social media so that all the good folk in Scotland will know about your kind and on-going support.’

Many thanks and I look forward to meeting you again in 2024.

Keep safe

Sammy Stein

chair Glasgow Friends of Israel. 

I don’t mind being lied to by the SWP/SUTR. Indeed I expect it. What I do object to is being lied to on behalf of a racist Zionist group by those who dare to call themselves socialists. Especially since they were lying to me in my role as an Executive Member of Brighton &  Hove Trades Council.

GFI is a 100% racist outfit. It had room on its Facebook page for a story about ‘A violent Palestinian mob attack on 2 German tourists’ who were attacked when entering Nablus in a vehicle with Israeli license plates and an Israeli flag. The tourists escaped with light injuries thank to the help of other Palestinians.

There has been no mention on GFI’s Facebook page of the reign of terror by settlers and the Israeli army on the West Bank. No condemnation of the call by Bezalel Smotrich, the West Bank’s head of civil administration, to ‘wipe-out’ the  town of Huwara.  No mention of the pogrom in Huwara in which Israeli soldiers accompanied and defended the settlers whilst attacking their victims, 1 of whom was killed and nearly 100 injured, some seriously. No mention of the Jewish Nazi Ben Gvir who is now Israel’s Police Minister. No mention of the ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yata.

Glasgow Friends of Israel are 100%  racist scum yet the SWP welcome them onto its ‘anti-racist’ demonstration. The SWP have demonstrated that there is no principle that they are not prepared to sacrifice, no promise that they are not prepared to break, no ethic that they won’t undermine for the sake of building their party.

Whenever there is a Palestine solidarity march you can be sure that there will be an SWP stall with posters and placards. The impression given is that the SWP is in the forefront of Palestine solidarity.

The reality is somewhat different. The way the SWP works in practice marks it out as an organisation that combines verbal support for the Palestinians with the most shameful appeasement of Zionism and its British supporters.

Zionists on the march with the SWP's blessing

This contradiction has come to a head again this year on the SWP/Stand Up to Racism march, March 18 in Glasgow. Since 2017 the SWP has welcomed Glasgow Friends of Israel [GFI] and the Confederation of Friends of Israel–Scotland [COFIS] on its marches.

But we are now fighting back against the SWP’s  capitulation to Zionism’s far-right supporters. Dundee Trades Council’s refusal to support the SWP’s march was joined this year by Brighton & Hove Trades Council. At Lewisham Trades Council a similar motion of non-support was narrowly defeated. It is to be hoped that next year more trade union branches and Trades Councils will join in saying no to SWP/SUTR’s collaboration with far-Right Zionists.

Glasgow Friends of Israel Contingent 2023

It is no surprise that the ‘right’ of these Zionist groups to march was vociferously supported by that friend of anti-racism, the Scottish Daily Express! The SWP’s real reason for allowing Zionists to march each year is a fear of being accused of ‘anti-Semitism’, in other words a surrender to the campaign that brought down Corbyn.

In other words GFI will be marching against anti-Zionism i.e. the Palestinians, courtesy of the SWP

On 16 February Scottish SUTR wrote to me saying ‘SUTR has no policy on the Middle East’.  However most anti-racist groups do oppose apartheid, today in Israel yesterday in South Africa. Even the SWP used to oppose apartheid.

If an anti-racist Zionist actually exists then no one objects to them marching as an individual. Hopefully they will come to recognise their own cognitive dissonance. The objection is to organised supporters of Israeli Apartheid marching with flags and placards. To Palestinians the Israeli flag is the equivalent of the Confederate flag for Black people or the Swastika to Jews.

The Lies that Justify Ethnic Cleansing from COFIS

As Mick Napier of Scottish PSC said:

"SUTR pretend to be neutral on the issue of of Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Bad enough to try to be neutral but in fact they are very partisan. Their absurd claim that "we cannot build a united anti-racist movement if the politics of the Middle East are imported into the movement" is belied by their insisting on the right of Friends of Israel to march with them, ie precisely to import the Politics of the Middle East onto their demonstrations, thereby making them no-go areas for Palestinians".

When I was a teenager I was a member of the International Socialist group, which pre-dated the SWP. I remember that they took a fierce anti-Zionist position. The first anti-Zionist pamphlet I read was The Class Nature of Israeli Society by Moshe Machover and others.

 Today the SWP is proud of the fact that they have the support of the right-wing TUC and trade union bureaucracy. The same people who are calling off the biggest wave of strikes we have seen in 40 years.  It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that this ‘support’ is a way that they can parade their anti-racist credentials without them doing anything.

If the TUC were serious about fighting racism then they would have condemned the statement of Rachel Reeves criticising the Tories for not having deported enough refugees.

It is more than ironic that on an allegedly anti-racist march you have organisations marching whose sole purpose in being there is to support racism.

The leader of GFI, Sammy Stein, was caught fraternising with Max Dunbar, an ex-BNP Treasurer. Stein was pictured on the latest march with an SWP banner! GFI’s main support is from anti-Semitic Christian Fundamentalists.

Stevie Harrison is Sutherland and together with Matthew Berlow (below) they faked an antisemitic attack which was intended to be blamed on Scottish PSC

Although GFI later dissociated themselves from Dunbar, the statement confirming this was from Edward Sutherland, who was reprimanded by the General Teaching Council for sharing an anti-Semitic post online.

In a recent post on Facebook Sammy Stein demonstrates how far to the right he is, even for Zionists, when he cast doubt on the Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948 which he calls ‘disputed’. Zionist militias Irgun and Lehi carried out a savage massacre in the village. Over 100 women, children and elderly died.  David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister condemned it and the Jewish Agency sent Jordan's King Abdullah an apology. Holocaust deniers dispute the Nazi Holocaust so shall we have doubts about that too? 

Stein also repeated the myth of Palestinian refugees having voluntarily left of their own accord whereas this lie was designed to cover up the ethnic cleansing in 1947-8. Stein even made out that he supported refugees in this country. But not Israel of course where non-Jewish refugees are refused asylum automatically. But since Stein supports the rights of refugees in Britain so much perhaps he will support the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to Israel too?  I somehow doubt it because he’s wedded to the Jewish supremacist nature of the Israeli state.

Has the SWP ever asked GFI if they support the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and if not why not?

That the SWP choose to align themselves with the likes of Sammy Stein demonstrates that they have learnt nothing from the rape scandal that nearly destroyed them in 2012/3. They have also learnt nothing from their association with the anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon from 2005-2011.

The problem in Scotland is part of a wider problem with the politics of the SWP on Zionism, racism and imperialism. Instead of treating racism as flowing from imperialism and Britain’s role in the world the SWP treats racism and imperialism as separate entities.

On the one hand the SWP will proclaim that Zionism is racist and Israel is an apartheid state, but when it comes to anti-racist work, the issue of Palestine disappears as the SWP allies with these very same racists! The fact that Israel and Zionism is to the fore of Islamaphobia is simply ignored.

On the GFI Facebook page a supporter wrote, after the murder of 50 Muslims in New Zealand that:

‘it’s payback for the attacks that muslims have perpetrated across the globe. perhaps this will curb their appetite for bloodshed.’

It is difficult to think of a more vile racist comment yet the SWP is unconcerned. Imagine that someone had celebrated the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 because of the Palestinians murdered by the ‘Jewish’ state. The air would be thick with cries of anti-Semitism, prime amongst them the SWP.

Also on the GFI FB group was a post which talked about Israel ‘euthanasing’ 3 Palestinians. This is language which one would normally expect from neo-Nazis. The SWP supports refugees coming to Britain but it refuses to ask why they come and to integrate this understanding into broader anti-racist struggles.

The SWP confines itself to broad statements of support for Palestine solidarity but rarely discusses the causes of their dispossession and the role of Zionism except once a year at Marxism when anti-Zionism is brought out on display.

At the 2021 Palestine Solidarity Campaign conference, the Executive proposed a new constitution eliminating anti-Zionism. The two SWP members present, Tom Hickey and Rob Ferguson, spoke in support of the Executive’s proposals and against those who wanted PSC to remain an anti-Zionist organisation.

Sammy Stein reveals himself as a far-right Zionist bigot behind all the talk of mutual recognition etc.

The arguments of Hickey and Ferguson were that we should concentrate on activism and not get distracted by Zionism. Except that Zionism, as an ideology and movement, was responsible for the dispossession of the Palestinians. How can you support the Palestinian struggle and have nothing to say about Zionism? This, more than anything, reveals the bankruptcy of SWP politics.

The question of Zionism was a central feature of debates inside the Labour Party. Yet to the SWP what matters is activity for its own sake despite the fact that Israel, unlike South Africa, depends on maintaining political support in the West. Anti-Zionism is not a theoretical luxury but a necessity. We constantly have to win the argument on campuses and in trade unions.

The reluctance of the SWP to argue for anti-Zionist politics is a product of their opportunistic politics. Tony Cliff, their founder did understand Zionism being born in Mandate Palestine but SWP theoreticians today – John Rose and Rob Ferguson – do not have that background.

The SWP and Zionist Relations with the Nazis

In ‘Don’t fall into your opponents’ traps’, John Rose criticised Ken Livingstone for even mentioning the subject:

… the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian case must be argued effectively and sensitively. Traps must be avoided which favour our opponents. On Thursday Ken Livingstone created then walked into precisely such a trap. The argument about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis has been around for a long time. It is rightly ignored by solidarity activists with Palestine….

It’s true that when Hitler came to power some Zionist leaders stupidly thought that they could do a deal with him that would enable some German Jews to go to Palestine. But Ken should have known that this disgraceful manoeuvre bitterly divided the Zionist movement.

Rose went on to say that ‘there was no coherent, united Zionist leadership in the 1930’s. It was deeply split.’ This is simply untrue, indeed it is a lie. As I show in Zionism During the Holocaust it is also ahistorical nonsense. There was almost complete agreement about the need to create a Jewish State and ‘transfer’ the Palestinians out of it in the 30s and 40s. The differences amongst the Zionist leadership between Weizmann and Ben Gurion were about which imperialist partner they preferred – Britain or the United States. Even the differences between Labour and Revisionist Zionism were tactical.

Nor was there anything ‘stupid’ about negotiating with Nazis from the Zionist perspective. Ha'avara, the Nazi-Zionist trade agreement was not about saving German Jews. What it sought to do was rescue their wealth.

David Ben Gurion was the most important pre-state Zionist figure. A cursory reading of the final chapter, Disaster Means Strength, of his biography by Shabtai Teveth makes it abundantly clear that the Zionist leadership welcomed the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. The very title of the chapter gives us a clue.

On the eve of Hitler becoming Chancellor, in January 1933, Ben-Gurion explained his thinking to the Central Committee of Mapai (Israeli Labour Party) when he warned that

‘Zionism… is not primarily engaged in saving individuals’ and that if there was ‘a conflict of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.’

In November 1935, after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws he said:

To the disaster of German Jewry we must offer a Zionist response, namely, we must convert the disaster into a source for the upbuilding of Palestine.

On 15 October 1942, by which time the Zionist leadership was aware of the holocaust, Ben Gurion remarked to the Zionist Executive:

Disaster is strength if channelled to a productive course. The whole trick of Zionism is that it knows how to channel our disaster, not into despondency or degradation, as is the case in the Diaspora, but into a source of creativity and exploitation.

Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of Davar, saw the rise of Hitler as ‘an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have.’ Ben-Gurion predicted that ‘The Nazis’ victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.”

It is to the critical Zionist historian Noah Lucas, not John Rose, that we must turn if we want to understand Zionism’s approach:

‘As the European holocaust erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism... In conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. ... By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the movement.’  [A Modern History of Israel, pp. 187/8].

Rose was also wrong when he said that ‘this disgraceful manoeuvre bitterly divided the Zionist movement’ The Labour Zionists were united in support of Ha'avara. The General Zionists and Religious Zionists of Mizrahi supported it too. Only the Revisionists under Jabotinsky opposed Ha'avara.

Ordinary Zionists bitterly opposed Ha'avara and didn’t understand what was happening but the Zionist movement was not a democratic movement and their voices counted for nothing.

On June 21 1933 the German Zionist Federation voluntarily wrote to Hitler expressing their opposition to the Boycott and their agreement with Nazi fundamentals. They wrote:

On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible…. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group… The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.’[Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, pp. 150-153].

The Zionist leaders were not stupid. If anyone can claim credit for the founding of Israel it is Hitler. Between 1933 and 1939, as a result of the rose of the Nazis, the Jewish population of Palestine more than doubled from around 215,000 to 449,000, giving the settlers a critical mass. 60% of capital investment in Palestine between 1933 and 1939 came from Nazi Germany.

John Rose was dazzled by meeting the last Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman in 1989. The anti-Zionist Bund, of which Edelman was a member and members of left-Zionist groups such as Hashomer Hatzair and Dror, fought together. But the Zionists fought, not because of their Zionism but despite it.

Mordechai Anielewicz, the first Commander, expressed his regret over the ‘wasted time’ undergoing Zionist educational work. I quote in my book the speech of one of these Zionist fighters, Hayka Klinger, to the Histadrut Executive in March 1944. She described the Judenrate, the Jewish Councils who collaborated with the Nazis thus:

after they began assisting the Nazis to collect gold and furniture from Jewish homes, they had no choice but to go on to help them prepare lists of Jews for labor camps... And precisely because those who stood at the head of most of the communities were Zionists, the psychological effects on most of the Jewish masses vis-à-vis the Zionist idea was devastating, and the hatred towards Zionism grew day by day...

Klinger told the Histadrut Executive that ‘we received an order not to organize any more defence.’ To the Zionist leadership the ghetto fighters were more valuable in Palestine. Klinger observed that

Without a people, a people’s avant-garde is of no value. If rescue it is, then the entire people must be rescued. If it is to be annihilation, then the avante-garde too shall be annihilated.

After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Zionist emissary arrived in Bedzin in July 1943 to persuade Frumka Plotnicka to leave. She replied that ‘I have a responsibility for my brethren... I have lived with them and I will die with them.’ The Zionist youth in Europe, such as Zivia Lubetkin and Plotnicka, refused on principle to leave. One can only admire the bravery and commitment of these young Zionist fighters who, given the choice between the fight against the Nazis in the Diaspora and the Arabs in Palestine, committed what in Zionist eyes, was a mortal sin. They chose the Diaspora.

One of the Zionist emissaries, Yudke Hellman, described how in October and December 1939 he witnessed the return of Plotnicka and Lubetkin to German-occupied Poland and how he had tried and failed to persuade them to leave for Palestine. Frumka stood up and announced that her decision to return to Warsaw was final.

Never was the ethical and moral distinction between the Jewish diaspora and Palestine’s Zionist leaders clearer. Rose failed to perceive that Zionism was established on the basis that anti-Semitism could not be fought and that its principal task lay in the establishment of a Jewish state. 

It was the Revisionists who put up the strongest resistance in the Warsaw ghetto because they were armed by their fascist friends. They had an abundance of arms unlike the left-wing Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB). So yes, Zionists fought. It was not because they were Zionists but because they were organised in groups. The Zionist parties in Warsaw however were opposed to resistance.

Individual Zionists are not the same as the movement. At times of despair the Jewish masses supported the Zionists and when the fight against anti-Semitism grew, they abandoned Zionism. In the last free elections in 1938 in Warsaw out of 20 Jewish Council seats the Zionists obtained precisely one compared to 17 for the anti-Zionist Bund.

As anti-Semitism grew in Poland Poale Zion split into a right and left in 1919. Left Poale Zion had effectively abandoned Zionism. But these contradictions entirely escape the SWP and its theoreticians.

The Israeli state was extremely hostile to Edelman, who had written an open letter to the Palestinians asking them to enter into peace negotiations. The letter caused outrage because Edelman did not mention the word ‘terrorism.’ Israeli leaders were incensed by its title: ‘Letter to Palestinian partisans’.

When Edelman died on 9 October 2009 he was honoured with a state funeral and a fifteen-gun salute. Not even the lowliest clerk at the Israeli Embassy attended. No official representative of any international Jewish organisation attended either.

Edelman received Poland's highest honour but he died unrecognised and forgotten in Israel. The President of Poland spoke at his funeral and two thousand people attended the grave-side ceremony.

John Rose has been the SWP’s main theoretician on Zionism since Cliff. He has never understood the internal dynamics and logic of Zionism. Imperialism has used the tragedy of the Holocaust to legitimise its barbarism and to paint anyone opposed to Zionism as ‘anti-Semitic’. Unfortunately Rose and the SWP instead of standing up to this have bowed to it and the winds of chauvinism. In an article critiquing Norman Finkelstein, Rose wrote that:

Even in its most reactionary form, Zionism before the second world war was one of the voices of oppressed Jews facing the growth of violent anti Semitism as a mass movement everywhere.

This statement represents an abandonment of any class politics. Zionism was the voice of the reactionary Jewish petit-bourgeoisie who, given half the chance, would betray working class Jews as Marcel Liebman demonstrated so vividly when describing his experiences as a child seeking refuge in Nazi-occupied Belgium. He described one leader of the Belgian Judenrat, the Association of Jews of Belgium telling a poor Polish Jewish woman:

Well, well! If you ended up in Eastern Europe what would be wrong with that? You are all from Poland anyway! You’d just be going back where you came from!

Another wealthy Zionist member of the AJB, ‘S.V.’ wrote in his diary on 12 December 1942, after the Germans had released a Jew who was married to a non-Jewish woman:

I find it extraordinary that someone should be recompensed for having been unfaithful to his religion.

Two-thirds of the Judenrat, which were hated by poor and working class Jews, were Zionists but Rose saw them as the voice of the oppressed, writing that ‘Zionism was perfectly capable of inspiring resistance to the Nazis’.

Rose went on to say that ‘Zionism later mis-used its genuinely heroic anti-Nazi resistance fighters for cynical ideological ends in Palestine.’ How surprising! The Zionists also misused the Holocaust to justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Why? Because historically the Zionists were indifferent to the Holocaust. To many Zionists those who died in the Holocaust brought it upon themselves. Idith Zertal observed that:

There hasn’t been a war involving Israel ‘that has not been perceived, defined, and conceptualized in terms of the Holocaust.’ Israel has mobilised the Holocaust ‘in the service of Israeli politics.’

This is more than cynicism. It is the exploitation of the Holocaust in the service of imperialism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians.

Rose referred to Hitler’s view of the Jews as a ‘satanic race’.

Hitler didn’t just think that Jews were a distinct race. He also thought that they were a Satanic race, and ultimately, that they were a Satanic race that had to be exterminated.

Rose echoes Zionist holocaust historians such as Yehuda Bauer who attributed anti-Semitism to ‘a political elite that had come to power with pseudo-messianic concepts of saving humanity from the Jews.’

What Bauer was saying was that Nazi anti-Semitism lay outside of history. It was inexplicable. That is also what Rose is saying. That the Holocaust lies outside class politics. This is simply anti-Marxist.

Did the elimination of up to 3 million Polish intelligentsia occur because the Poles were Satanic? Or the Russians or Disabled? The attempt to exterminate the Jews was not unique. Why did Hitler want them gone? Because the Jews were seen as the biological parents of their main enemy, Bolshevism. Hence the term Judeo-Bolshevism.

Rose wrote about the

truly sinister cat and mouse game the Nazis were playing when they appeared to be supporting the Zionist project in Palestine even if did mean some German Jews, by moving to Palestine with Hitler’s agreement, escaped the death camps.

Rose did not understand the Ha'avara agreement (or the Nazis’ Jewish policies) which led to just 20,000 wealthy German Jews moving to Palestine. They had to have £1,000 (today about £85,000). These Jews would have found refuge in other countries.

If anything Ha'avara undermined the position of other Jews wanting to emigrate. Between 1933 and 1939 the Nazis’ policy was expulsion not extermination. There were no death camps to escape from. The first death camp, Chelmno was established in December 1941.

The problem with the SWP is it shouts slogans about Zionism but has never taken the time nor trouble to understand it.

SWP Crisis Over Cover-up of Rape & Sexual Harassment Allegations against former National Secretary Martin Smith

trade-mark SWP badge

Martin Smith, former National Secretary of SWP - at the centre of serious allegations of sexual violence

Can the SWP survive its own failures of internal democracy?

UPDATE
Although I didn't realise it until reading the transcript, the second woman who made a complaint of sexual harassment against Comrade 'Delta' has been barred from working at the SWP HQ.  In her own words 'Within days of the hearing I asked to be allowed to return to work, but in many meetings and appeals to the central committee I was repeatedly told that I’d disrupt the harmony of the office. The worst part and the most stressful part of this is the motivations that have been ascribed to people coming forward.' 

If I were acting as her employment lawyer I would do, as I have done on many similar occasions with capitalist employers, tell her to resign and claim constructive dismissal and detriment on the grounds of having made a complaint of sexual harassment as well as the dismissal itself.  That would be my strong advice to Comrade X now.  The SWP has to know that it is not above the most basic laws that even capitalist society has conceded in respect of discrimination and sexual and other harassment. 

I have also received the following from a recent member of the SWP:

'By the way, don't quote me as the source of this, but are you aware that not only are SWP members being expelled from the party but members of SWP staff in their office in Vauxhall are being sacked too? There seems to be a full-scale purge going on.  Hannah Dee is now off the CC as part of the purge ...

Another thing: Judith Orr may have leapt to the defence of the party position over Atzmon, but my sources tell me that she was on the right side of the current split i.e. she supported the alleged victims. Again don't quote me on this please.  Not sure whether she will also be purged, will resign or  whatever ... watch this space.'

The debate at the SWP Conference was stacked.  Most of the speakers were supportive of the Central Committee.  The debate was curtailed instead of being extended.  The victim of the alleged rape was barred from listening to the debate itself.  The behaviour of the SWP is so bad one wonders where they have been for the last 30 years.  Have they learn nothing?  Do they not understand that asking the victim about her past/present sexual relationships, her drinking habits etc. is part of the process whereby rape is made acceptable?

The Socialist Workers Party is the largest group on Britain’s far-left, with an estimated membership of around 2,500 although the statistical manoeuvres, which are part of the greater problem facing the SWP, has led to these figures being inflated to around 7,000.

The present unprecedented crisis within the SWP, leading to the expulsion of four members before even holding their annual conference, just after the New Year, the near defeat of the Central Committee at the conference, a split in the CC itself, with four members standing on a separate slate and the resignation of a long-standing journalist Socialist Worker journalist, Tom Walker, whose statement is beneath, signify that the long-standing problems of lack of democracy, declining membership, auto-activism without political coherence, the legacy of Respect and now an inability to take on board serious allegations of rape and sexual harassment by a senior Party member, have come to a head.  The question is whether the SWP itself can survive.

The catalyst for the crisis in the SWP were the allegations of rape by one member of the SWP and the sexual harassment of another member by Martin Smith, former SWP National Secretary.  It is of course impossible to know whether there is any foundation to the rumours, although it is unlikely that there is no smoke without fire, but how they were dealt with by the SWP leadership speaks volumes about the mentality of the leadership clique led by Alex Callinicos and Charlie Kimber and their attitude to ordinary members.  It also speaks volumes about their commitment to socialism since it is difficult to imagine a more serious and vile act than rape by a senior member of the leadership of a political group against a young comrade.

Martin Smith is, regardless of the truth of these allegations, a particularly unpleasant individual, both politically and personally. Weekly Worker of 12 July 2007 Stop thuggery in workers` movement  described how Simon Wells, who was expelled from the SWP, was attacked without provocation by Smith, at Marxism 2007, when he refused to hand over the ticket he had paid for when queuing to go into a session:  “The SWP`s national organiser angrily demanded comrade Simon`s ticket to the Marxism event and, when he refused, Smith instantly attacked him. Wrestled to the floor, comrade Simon sustained bruising, abrasions and back strain.”

It was also Smith who was primarily responsible for the SWP hosting and politically defending Gilad Atzmon against accusations of anti-Semitism.  From 2005 to 2009 the SWP was content to make use of Atzmon’s status as a leading jazz musician, regardless of his racist views.  Martin Smith, a devotee of John Coltrane and jazz, was content to ignore Atzmon’s views as taking secondary priority to his musical affections. 

Otto Weininger - Hitler's favourite Jew and the subject of Atzmon's talk to the SWP in 2005

On 17th June 2005 Jews Against Zionism picketed the Bookmarx bookshop in London, owned by the SWP, after it refused to cancel a talk by Atzmon.   In an e- mail to me of 16.6.05, Judith Orr of Bookmarks urged that we call off our planned picket because ‘Bookmarks has a reputation as a socialist bookshop going back over 30 years, we have faced up to Nazi attacks both physical and legal and have been proud to have been part of the struggle against racism, fascism and anti-Semitism throughout that time.’  This and an SWP statement issued at the time (which has long disappeared from the web) traded on the past legacy of the SWP in fighting fascism as a pretext for hosting someone who was openly anti-Semitic. 

Although the reason Judith gave for Atzmon’s hosting an event, was to  read from his book ‘My One and Only One’ in fact Atzmon gave a talk on Otto Weininger, a German Jewish philosopher and author of the anti-feminist Sex and Character, of whom Hitler once remarked that ‘Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day when he realized that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples".   In charge of stewarding and grimacing at the demonstrators was Martin Smith, who hovered at the entrance to Bookmarks.  Even SWP members who had fraternised with the demonstrators were barred from the meeting.

I should confess my own experience of the SWP.  In 1970, after having participated in my first demonstration, in Newport, South Wales against the tour of the South African rugby team, the Springboks, I came across and soon joined the International Socialists Group, forerunner of the SWP, at the age of 16 whilst still at school.  By the age of 18, with less than 3 years membership, I was expelled from the group for breach of discipline, namely openly dissenting from the IS line, which was to wind up the Anti-Internment League.  [see The Left: There’s no success like failure - Tony Greenstein bemoans the continuing self-marginalisation of Britain’s far left 

Martin Smith outlining the finer points of theory to the UAF

There is no doubt that the recent furore in the SWP is unprecedented.  Normally decisions of the Disputes Committee are passed on the nod.  However the decision on Martin Smith’s guilt was only ratified by 231 votes to 209 with 18 abstentions.  Those who opposed the Disputes Committee and the Central Committee’s expulsion of 4 SWP members for secret factionalising (which was endorsed by two-thirds of the conference) were labelled ‘feminists’, harking back to old debates in the 1980’s over radical feminism, with the implication that to take rape or sexual violence seriously is somehow to be some kind of reactionary radical feminism. The transcript of the debate the SWP Conference has been published and is here.

What is remarkable is that an allegation as serious as rape even came before the Disputes Committee of eight, which is packed with 5 current or former members of the Central Committee.  The DC found that the allegations against Smith were ‘not proven’, though one member dissented from this (also unprecedented).  Just what expertise the DC has to pronounce on whether rape has occurred is not clear.  The existence of an SWP forensic and detective department hasn’t previously been highlighted as a part of the SWP’s structures.  They were unable to take sworn evidence, clearly there was no cross examination of Smith and it had of course no capacity to investigate the allegations.
Nonetheless, when it came to supporting a senior member of the Central Committee, the DC voted to support their mate Martin.  By all accounts the women concerned were subject to the kind of hostile and obtrusive questioning that women have often complained about in the courts and treated with the kind of hostility that the Police were and still are famous for.  We don’t know whether or not the women concerned decided not to complain to the Police but a DC was not the forum in which these allegations could be investigated and a verdict pronounced upon.  The obvious question would be why a member of the SWP would make up such an allegation.  Of course there may indeed be a reason, but she should have been strongly advised to go to the Police.  But faced with allegations from 2 women comrades the verdict of ‘Not proven’ (which only applies under the Scottish legal system) was absurd.  How could it have been proven?  In a criminal court there is forensic evidence and cross examination.  In the case of Martin Smith it came down to the simple question ‘Who to  believe’ and Smith’s comrades preferred to take his word above the women members of the SWP.  But having chosen to believe the alleged perpetrator, the SWP Central Committee’s glaring lack of democratic accountability was brought into the open.

Lack of Democracy

The SWP’s Central Committee is in effect a self-perpetuating clique whose ‘elections’ are transparently undemocratic.  Instead of individuals being elected or rejected by the SWP National Conference, a Central Committee slate is presented to the conference.  Only once has there been an alternative slate.  It is a take it or leave it situation which the SWP proposed in 2001 at the Socialist Alliance AGM and which destroyed the democracy of that body.

The SWP also has a quaint rule which forbids the existence of factions until a 3 month period before the national conference.  When I joined in 1970 the SWP was still a more libertarian body and Workers Fight (now the AWL which was then a healthy socialist group) not only had the right to exist as a faction but had representatives on the Central Committee.  In 1972 the rules were changed to ban factions. 

Despite claiming to be a revolutionary socialist organisation, the SWP, unlike the Bolsheviks, refuses to allow permanent factions with the result that the only permanent faction is the Central Committee itself.  The formation of ‘secret factions’ is outlawed and this was used as the basis for the expulsion of 4 members before Christmas.  What it boils down to is that the very act of trying to form a faction within the 3 months period before conference can lay one open to the charge of secret factionalising!  This is what is normally known as a Catch-22 situation after the author Joseph Heller.  When the facebook conversations of 4 members of the Democratic Opposition, who in fact argued against forming a faction in discussions, were discovered they were expelled by e-mail by the Central Committee.  Even the idea of a disciplinary hearing, which even the bourgeoisie concede in the case of a dismissal of a worker, is too democratic for the SWP. 

The SWP isn’t the first organisation to face such a crisis.  The Workers Revolutionary Party under Gerry Healy splintered as a result of rape and sexual harassment allegations against Healy.  In both cases the root of the problem is the lack of democracy in the organisation that allowed powerful male leaders to emerge in a position to suborn and molest young and inexperienced female members.  The SWP’s Central Committee is virtually impossible to remove.  Its members aren’t individually elected or therefore accountable and there is a natural tendency amongst organisations and institutions, to protect those in authority.  That is exactly what has happened over Martin Smith.   And the alleged victims of his sexual violence were expected to shut their mouths for the greater good.

As I said above, the allegations of rape, which will undoubtedly be made use of by the Right, were the catalyst not the cause of the present furore and possible implosion of the SWP.  When the SWP’s dalliance with Respect and George Galloway came to an abrupt end in September 2007, John Rees, then National Secretary was made the fall guy.  He had accepted a donation of £10,000 from an anti-union Arab capitalist in order to fund a trade union fight-back conference!  Rees formed a faction which was heavily defeated at the annual conference in January 2008 and shortly after  both he and his partner, Lindsay German, left the SWP for Counterfire.  Chris Nineham of Global Resistance and former National Secretary Chris Bamber also left the organisation.  Ironically at the time, Rees and German protested furiously at the lack of democracy involved in his removal and scapegoating, even though he had never hesitated to preside over the apparatus of ‘democratic centralism’ itself.

Therein lies the problem.  Democratic centralism.  In the Bolshevik Party’s early years, democratic centralism meant free debate, factions and the ability of party leaders to dissent from each other.  In the hands of the SWP and other British far-left groups it has become a mechanism of control of the party by the leadership.  It isn’t democratic but bureaucratic centralism.  It ensures that the debates of party leaders are never reflected back to the membership of the party, who as in the Respect Affair, were kept ignorant of what had been happening until almost the end.  By definition it lacks all accountability and transparency and for what?  Has the SWP advanced under the chains of its bureaucratic centralist means of control?  All it does is allow the leadership to claim credit for the most insignificant of achievements, such as the Unite the Resistance conference last year (did you notice the difference that was made?) or in the case of the defeat of the EDL demonstration in Waltham Forest, to outrightly lie to the membership about what actually did happen.
Another feature of democratic centralism, as I highlighted in my article, is that democratic centralism enables the leadership to pretend that there has been a steady advance towards the goal of socialism.  It prevents mistakes being examined or analysed, unless that analysis is itself prescribed by the Central Committee.

Democratic Centralism might make makes sense when combating a capitalist class that is itself resorting to military and authoritarian rule.  One can hardly open and above board and democratically overthrow capitalism by being transparent in everything one does.  Revolutionary groups in a revolutionary situation would also have to keep secrets and organise secretly if they wish to be successful.  Not to do so means nothing less than permanent capitalism.  But democratic centralism belongs to the age of revolution.  We are not in a revolutionary situation or anything like it.  In the current climate, democratic centralism means dictatorship by the leadership.

The running in this affair has been made by a small group, the Communist Party of Great Britain and its paper, the Weekly Worker.  Despite the small size of the CPGB itself, it runs an open paper of the far-left and has managed to achieve the largest readership of a far-left paper via the Internet.  In its current issue there are articles by the group itself SWP conference: Comrades in the SWP, rebel!  and Tom Walker, Why I am resigning  Tom Walker takes the opposite view from the CPGB, viz. that dissidents should now leave the SWP and organise to do so rather than being picked off separately.  I agree with Tom Walker. 

The SWP has had a mixed record being responsible for the creation of a mass anti-fascist organisation, the Anti-Nazi League before taking it over and closing it down.  It was also responsible for launching the Stop the War Coalition and organising the monster demonstration in February 2003 against war in Iraq.  But it has also operated as a revolving door as recruits came in one door and the disillusioned or expelled went out the other door.  Permanent activity was counterposed to debating politics and strategy.  That was the responsibility of the Central Committee.  Indeed probably the largest political party in Britain today is ex-members of the SWP.  But of course this problem has been addressed by fiddling the figures.

Below I reprint an article by Richard Seymour on his Leninology blog.  Despite previous differences with Richard, the article is brave and well worth reading and it is likely to end up in his own expulsion.  However up till now Richard has teetered on the edge as a loyal critic and refused to publicly criticise the SWP over Atzmon, preferring to see it as an isolated incident.

Likewise the article from Laurie Penny is also interesting but it also has a right-wing slant in its use of what has happened to bolster the merits of ‘identity politics.  The alleged rape and sexual harassment of two SWP members has nothing to do with how they defined themselves and everything to do with the abuse of power by men who were powerful in the SWP.  Identity politics is often used by the strong against the weak as Ms Penny should know from the use of ‘anti-Semitism’ by Zionists.

I also reprint an article by Mike Marqusee, a libertarian socialist and journalist.  Mike’s contribution though is somewhat disingenuous as his account of SWP misdemeanours begins with the affair of the cheques forged by the SWP in the name of his partner, Liz Davies, who was at that time Chair of the Socialist Alliance.

What Mike omits to mention is that in the autumn of 2001, the SWP proposed a change to the SA’s constitution which led to the Socialist Party walking out (in error) and a new National Committee being proposed which was elected by, wait for it, the same undemocratic slate system that Mike is now taking exception to.  A slate of individuals was to be put up en bloc to the SA Conference and could be accepted or rejected accordingly.  Of course the SWP said it would include ‘independents’ but the problem was that they were not genuinely independent, but chosen by the SWP.   For reasons that are still unclear, since Mike and Liz refuse to discuss the matter, Mike himself and Liz Davies agreed to become SWP independents.  It was only after supporting this attack on SA democracy that Mike Marqusee and Liz Davies realised just who it was that they had got into bed with.

I said I agree with Tom Walker.  The question of what to do is a tactical matter but within the SWP it is impossible to organise any sort of oppositional group.  It would be far better if a large section of the SWP left to form, in conjunction with the others on the far-left without a home, a new revolutionary socialist grouping which had democracy at its heart.  The SWP politically should be left to wither on the vine, a testament to where the methods of Stalinist democracy lead.

Tony Greenstein

Crisis in the SWP

Laurie Penny writes an article about the crisis in the SWP, following up on Tom Walker's very finely written resignation statement. It quotes my long-time friend and comrade China Mieville making some, to my mind, extremely well put observations about the catastrophic nature of this crisis and the roots of it in the party's deformed democratic structures and lack of accountability. It is an excellent piece. And it stands in stark contrast to the shameful whitewash in this week's Socialist Worker, and ironically does more service to the party.

The image of itself that the SWP likes to portray

So, let us recapitulate. A serious allegation is referred to the Disputes Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, my party, to investigate. The Disputes Committee is composed largely of individuals who know the accused. The Disputes Committee asks the person making the allegations a series of completely inappropriate questions that, had they been asked of someone making such allegations in a police station, we would rightly denounce them as sexist. Another comrade makes a related allegation against the same accused, and submits a statement. The committee subjects this comrade to similar treatment. The committee reaches a verdict of 'not proven'. The conference of the party is then lied to about the nature of the allegations. The Central Committee and the Disputes Committee collude in a cover-up. They suppress it. This is already a disgrace.

But word does get around. People begin to hear what has happened, and are outraged. They begin to hear of senior party members spreading the most disgusting rumours about the two women involved. Many members, especially young members, begin to kick off about it. It becomes clear that this will be an issue in the party conference of 2013. So, there is a preemptive strike against four members for participating in a Facebook thread discussing the case, which is alleged - on the basis of selective excerpts - to be evidence of 'secret factionalising', which is prohibited. The expulsion is enacted immediately, with no due process, no disciplinary hearing. The four comrades are expelled by email. This is totally at odds with the party's usual procedures. It is a clear bureaucratic manoeuvre to stymy the upsurge. But it produces a revolt. A group of comrades form a faction to contest the expulsions, campaign for the rejection of the Dispute Committee's report on the allegations, and challenge the party's democracy deficit. (Naturally I join this faction.)

We organise. But the members who raise this issue, many of them students, are yelled at in meetings, denounced for 'creeping feminism', or for carrying the germ of autonomism into the party. Old polemics against 'feminism' from the 1980s, always somewhat dogmatic, are dusted off and used as a stick to beat dissenters with. People who try to raise the issue at district aggregates are shouted down. Wised up hacks turn up at meetings, with their best 'what, us?' innocent expression, claiming to be shocked and horrified at the lack of trust in the party, and astonished that some people use terms like 'hacks'. They express befuddlement about why the faction even exists. They accuse dissenters of being 'inward-looking'. Nonetheless, the faction grows quickly. Soon, there are two factions, both opposing the expulsions and criticising the findings of the Disputes Committee. They have different emphases and different tactics, but similar objectives. They go to conference, expecting to be in a minority - after all, most comrades still haven't got the slightest clue what is happening, or have only heard the rumours and lies. In the history of party conferences, dissenting motions generally haven't fared well. But we find, suddenly, that there is a groundswell. The more members hear, the more they're throwing up. And we get to conference, and our delegates face down the most appallingly bureaucratic arguments. And we are surprised, and disappointed. The party ratifies the expulsions by two thirds to one third. The party ratifies the Dispute Committee findings by a slender margin. But the reality is that despite formal wins for the leadership, this amounts to a serious crisis for them.
How do they respond? A sane response would be to say, 'much of the party is still not convinced, we need to debate this further and work out a solution'. At the very least. More generally, a sane leadership might think about opening up year round communications so that party members can communicate with one another outside of conference season. They might think about creating more pluralistic party structures, ending the ban on factions outside of conference season and rethinking the way elections take place. Instead, they tell everyone in Party Notes that there will be no further discussion of the matter. CC members tell full-time party employees that the accused was 'exonerated' by conference (no such thing), insist that conference voted for an 'interventionist' party, rather than a 'federalist' party, and begin a purge. Report backs from conference either don't discuss the Disputes Committee session in any detail or discuss it in an arrogant, dismissive manner. A CC member gives a report back that instructs members, "if you can't argue the line, you should consider your position in the party" - as if the party was the possession of the bureaucracy. They tell members to get on with focusing on 'the real world'. In the real world, this is a scandal. And we, those who fought on this, told them it would be. We warned them that it would not just be a few sectarian blogs attacking us. We warned them that after we had rightly criticised George Galloway over his absurd remarks about rape, and after a year of stories about sexual abuse, and after more than a year of feminist revival, this was a suicidal posture, not just a disgusting, sickening one. They continued, obliviously, convinced that this was the correct, hard-headed Bolshevik position. Now members are caught between the choice of having to expend energy on a fight to save the party and its traditions, or burying their heads in the sand, or swallowing the Kool Aid and joining the headbangers.

There isn't enough bile to conjure up the shame and disgrace of all of this, nor the palpable physical revulsion, nor the visceral contempt building, nor the sense of betrayal and rage, nor the literal physical and emotional shattering of people exposed to the growing madness day in and day out.
This is the thing that all party members need to understand. Even on cynical grounds, the Central Committee has no strategy for how to deal with this. A scandal has been concealed, lied about, then dumped on the members in the most arrogant and stupid manner possible. The leadership is expecting you to cope with this. This isn't the first time that such unaccountable practices have left you in the lurch. You will recall your pleasure on waking up to find out that Respect was collapsing and that it was over fights that had been going on for ages which no one informed you about. But this is much worse. They expect you to go to your activist circles, your union, your workplaces, and argue something that is indefensible. Not only this, but in acting in this way, they have - for their own bureaucratic reasons - broken with a crucial component of the politics of the International Socialist tradition that undergirds the SWP. The future of the party is at stake, and they are on the wrong side of that fight. You, as members, have to fight for your political existence. Don't simply drift away, don't simply bury your face in your palms, and don't simply cling to the delusional belief that the argument was settled at conference. You must fight now.

***

One last thing. There is an article in The Independent about this case. It uses the phrase "socialist sharia court". It is miles away, in tone and spirit, from Laurie Penny's piece. I would urge people to think carefully about who wants to use the sort of language deployed in the Independent article. I think the answer is, "racists". I would also point out that, as far as I know, the Independent did not speak to any party members. My advice is to disregard that piece.

What does the SWP's way of dealing with sex assault allegations tell us about the left?

When it comes to sexual violence, why should progressive organisations be held to different standards?

Laurie Penny, New Statesman, 11 January 2013

How do we deal with sexual violence on the left? Here's a case study.

The Socialist Workers' Party, for those who aren't familiar with it already, is a political organisation of several thousand members which has been a prominent force on the British left for more than 30 years. They are at the forefront of the fight against street fascism in Britain, were a large organising presence in the student and trade union movement over the past several years, and are affiliated with large, active parties in other countries, like Germany's Die Linke. Many of the UK's most important thinkers and writers are members, or former members.

Like many others on the left in Britain, I've had my disagreements with the SWP, but I've also spoken at their conferences, drunk their tea, and have a lot of respect for the work they do. They are not a fringe group: they matter. And it matters that right now, the party is exploding in messy shards because of a debate about sexism, sexual violence and wider issues of accountability.

This week, it came to light that when allegations of rape and sexual assault were made against a senior party member, the matter was not reported to the police, but dealt with 'internally' before being dismissed. According to a transcript from the party's annual conference earlier this month, not only were friends of the alleged rapist allowed to investigate the complaint, the alleged victims were subject to further harassment. Their drinking habits and former relationships were called into question, and those who stood by them were subject to expulsion and exclusion.

Tom Walker - a party member who walked out this week in disgust - explained that feminism "is used effectively as a swear word by the leadership’s supporters.... it is deployed against anyone who seems ‘too concerned’ about issues of gender."

In a brave and principled resignation statement published yesterday, Walker said that:

". . . there is clearly a question mark over the sexual politics of many men in powerful positions on the left. I believe the root of this is that, whether through reputation, lack of internal democracy or both, these are often positions that are effectively unchallengeable. Not for nothing have recent sex abuse allegations in the wider world focused on the idea of a ‘culture of impunity’. Socialist Worker has pointed to the way that institutions close up to protect powerful people within them. What is not acknowledged is that the SWP is itself an institution in this sense, with its instinct for self-protection to survive. As previously mentioned, its belief in its own world-historic importance gives a motive for an attempted cover-up, making abusers feel protected."
Members are now leaving the organisation, or being expelled, in large numbers after the case came to light at the party's conference and transcripts of the discussions were leaked online.
The writer China Mieville, a longstanding member of the SWP, told me that, like many members, he is "aghast":

"The way such allegations were dealt with - complete with questions about accusers' past relationships and drinking habits that we would instantly, rightly denounce as sexist in any other context - was appalling. It's a terrible problem of democracy, accountability and internal culture that such a situation can occur, as is the fact that those arguing against the official line in a fashion deemed unacceptable to those in charge could be expelled for 'secret factionalism."
Mieville explained that in his party, as in so many other organisations, the power hierarchies which have facilitated problems such as this have been controversial for a long time.

"Many of us have for years been openly fighting for a change in the culture and structures of the organisation to address exactly this kind of democratic deficit, the disproportionate power of the Central Committee and their loyalists, their heavy-handed policing of so-called 'dissent', and their refusal to admit mistakes ," he told me.  "Like the current situation, a disaster catastrophically mishandled by the leadership. All of us in the party should have the humility to admit such issues. It's up to members of the SWP to fight for the best of our tradition, not put up with the worst, and to make our organisation what it could be, and unfortunately is not yet."
The British Socialist Worker's Party is hardly atypical among political parties, among left-wing groups, among organisations of committed people or, indeed, among groups of friends and colleagues in having structures in place that might allow sexual abuse and misogyny by men in positions of power to continue unchecked. One could point, in the past 12 months alone, to the BBC's handling of the Jimmy Savile case, or to those Wikileaks supporters who believe that Julian Assange should not be compelled to answer allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.

I could point, personally, to at least two instances involving respected men that have sundered painfully and forever friendship groups which lacked the courage to acknowledge the incidents. The only difference is that the SWP actually talk openly about the unspoken rules by which this sort of intimidation usually goes on. Other groups are not so brazen as to say that their moral struggles are simply more important than piffling issues of feminism, even if that's what they really mean, nor to claim that as right-thinking people they and their leaders are above the law. The SWP's leadership seem to have written it into their rules.

To say that the left has a problem with handling sexual violence is not to imply that everyone else doesn't. There is, however, a stubborn refusal to accept and deal with rape culture that is unique to the left and to progressives more broadly. It is precisely to do with the idea that, by virtue of being progressive, by virtue of fighting for equality and social justice, by virtue of, well, virtue, we are somehow above being held personally accountable when it comes to issues of race, gender and sexual violence.

That unwillingness to analyse our own behaviour can quickly become dogma. The image is one of petty, nitpicking women attempting to derail the good work of decent men on the left by insisting in their whiny little women's way that progressive spaces should also be spaces where we don't expect to get raped and assaulted and slut-shamed and victimised for speaking out, and the emotions are rage and resentment: why should our pure and perfect struggle for class war, for transparency, for freedom from censorship be polluted by - it's pronounced with a curl of the upper lip over the teeth, as if the very word is distasteful - 'identity politics'? Why should we be held more accountable than common-or-garden bigots? Why should we be held to higher standards?

Because if we're not, then we have no business calling ourselves progressive. Because if we don't acknowledge issues of assault, abuse and gender hierarchy within our own institutions we have no business speaking of justice, much less fighting for it.

"The issues of democracy and sexism are not separate, but inextricably linked," writes Walker. "Lack of the first creates space for the second to grow, and makes it all the more difficult to root it out when it does."  He's talking about the SWP, but he could be talking about any part of the left right now, in its struggle to divest itself of generations of misogynist baggage.

Equality isn't an optional add-on, a side-issue to be dealt with after the revolution's over. There can be no true democracy, no worthwhile class struggle, without women's rights. The sooner the left accepts that and starts working the enormous stick of priggishness and prejudice out of its collective backside, the sooner we can get on with the job at hand.

Ten years on: a comment on the British SWP

Mike Marqusee

Mike Marqusee - socialist iconoclast

The recent conflict within the Socialist Workers Party over allegations of serious personal misconduct by a leading member has brought back sharply my own rupture with the (then) SWP leadership, ten years ago, and how this was handled by the party (of which I’ve never been a member).

To explain. After twenty years hard graft in the Labour Party I resigned in 2000 and became active in the Socialist Alliance campaign for the London Assembly. A year later, I was joined in the SA by my partner, Liz Davies, who had been a Labour councillor and an elected member of Labour’s National Executive. Liz was elected chair of the SA national executive in late 2001. As such she was made one of the signatories for the Socialist Alliance’s (meagre) bank account.

In autumn of 2002, we discovered that Liz’s signature was being forged on Socialist Alliance cheques. The forging was being done by people in the SA office, members of the SWP whom we knew to be in daily contact with the SWP leadership. When Liz raised the discovery with the SWP leadership, she was met with hostility. None of this was to be discussed by anybody. That was not acceptable to her. She brought the matter to the SA Executive. In the course of the discussion there it became apparent to Liz that there was a comprehensive refusal to grasp the seriousness of the offence or to take any meaningful measures in response. That was articulated by one SWPer at the meeting who said it would have been wrong not to forge the signature since the money was needed to get placards on a demo. Liz resigned in disgust and I followed soon after.

It shouldn’t be necessary to say but for those with doubts: by forging the signatures, these people were making unauthorised use of the dues paid to the SA by its members. They did it not once but repeatedly, and were only found out by accident. This was a sustained, furtive, and calculated violation of democracy and basic standards of probity, a high handed abuse of power, displaying contempt for the SA and its members.

Sadly not only the SWP but also most of the other groups involved in the SA could not grasp this. It suited them all for various reasons to downplay the whole thing. For some it served as an excuse to marginalise strong unaffiliated voices within the SA.

People on both sides of the current SWP conflict have understandably taken offence at the way they have been labelled by opponents. But this has been the modus operandi of the SWP towards critics outside its ranks for ages. Time and again, crude categorisations, given a spurious Marxist veneer, have taken the place of real engagement with the issues in question.

In the wake of our departure from the SA, we were dismissed as “Labourists” or “reformists” preoccupied with “formalistic bourgeois morality”. SWP leaders put it about that we were going to go to the police about the matter – an allegation that said more about their own petty mentality than it did about us.

In fact, because of the political situation in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, we kept our counsel: it was obvious that this incident could be used to attack the Stop the War Coalition. Nonetheless we were treated by the SWP as persona non-grata at meetings of various kinds, our every intervention met with suspicion.

Some months after the invasion had turned into a long-term occupation, and the anti-war movement was taking stock, I wrote a piece critical of the SWP’s methods – it mentioned no names, made no personal references of any kind, and referred once only in passing to the cheque forgery incident, without giving details. In response, an article penned by the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition appeared in both the Morning Star and Socialist Review attacking me by name, lumping me in with Nick Cohen and David Aronovitch as an enemy of the Coalition, stating that I had played no role in the movement for the past year – which the authors of the piece knew to be untrue – and dismissing my concerns as the result of “personal bitterness”. There was no attempt at all to respond to what I’d actually said in the original article.

So I have to say that many features of the SWP’s current internal dispute seem bitterly familiar to me: treatment of whistle-blowers, smearing of critics, blaming victims, the unaccountability of leading cadre. When I see SWP members valiantly insisting that the recent dispute is nobody’s business but their own, I have to demur.

Some years later, when John Rees at al departed the SWP, SWP members approached me to say that we must be pleased with this development and suggesting that all could be forgotten now. But I saw and see no evidence of the SWP examining itself with the seriousness required. The question was and is: how was it that a socialist organisation that claims to be democratic could allow people with a coarse disregard for accountability in all spheres run their organisation unchecked for years? How was it that the SWP leadership’s obviously contrived and incomplete account of their rupture with us (described by them as a dispute over “administrative procedures”) went unquestioned by the vast majority of members, including the scores with whom we had worked amicably and constructively? Only three individuals (two of them now long gone from the party) were even willing to talk about the matter with us.

Shortly after I first learned about the forgeries, I made an effort to talk about it confidentially with three long standing SWP activists with whom I felt I had a personal relationship. Not one of them was prepared to accept that there could be any truth in what they referred to as “these allegations”. It spoke to me of a party culture of denial and solipsism.

Coming from a left Labour and trade union background, I was from the first taken aback by the SWP’s lax approach to what it regarded as the finer points of accountability and organisational integrity. For us in the Labour left, the whole battle had been about accountability, about members’ rights and power; we had no interest in joining an alternative that did not meaningfully enfranchise us – for which things like accurate and detailed minutes, reports from officers, etc. are a sine qua non. The cheque forgery was one example of the kind of misbehaviour that people with serious experience in the labour movement would never countenance. But the aura of “revolutionary” superiority in which the SWP wraps itself enables it to skate past all kinds of questions that are the daily diet of people in the broader movement. Perhaps that’s now coming back to haunt the SWP as they wrestle with the issues revolving around the current dispute.