New Statesman Feels the Heat as Hundreds Protest The Censorship of Palestinian Article - Zionist UK Media Watch Denies Its Role

New Statesman Editor Jason Cowley Personally Rings Up Long Time Subscriber to Find Out Why He Cancelled 

Editor Simon Cowley - feeling the heat

The New Statesman Editorial Collective is feeling the heat over their decision to comply with the demands of UK Media Watch to remove an article.

I received this message today from a long-time subscriber.

----- Forwarded Message -----

Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2016, 20:17

Subject: Re: Sign the Petition to Boycott the New Statesman

For what it's worth, I cancelled my decade long subscription to New Statesman today, and to my great surprise promptly received a phone call from editor Jason Cowley.

First up he proffered an alternative explanation to the censorship story, claiming that the article in question had been a paid commercial piece inconsistent with the eligibility criteria. He denied all knowledge of outside intervention and insisted that PSC were acting in bad faith.

But more interestingly from my point of view, I had the opportunity to air long felt grievances about NS positioning on the Israel-Palestine issue more generally.

He didn't attempt directly to contradict my assertion that the magazine is liberal Zionist in its editorial and selection of content. He merely stated support for "the Jewish State" and a two state solution.

He did seem to take on my gravely articulated suggestion that Israel is becoming ever more extreme in its behaviour and that sooner or later, a publication that defines itself by left progressive values may have to reassess its position. I was surprised by his, almost humble, acknowledgment of this, but I'm sure this conciliatory stance is primarily a damage limitation exercise. Who knows how many other long term subscribers like me are pulling the plug!

Keeping quiet - Clinton supporter Laurie 'ex-red' Penney

It is clear that the campaign against the New Statesman's censorship is having an effect if the editor rings up someone who has cancelled their subscription.  I have also heard from other sources that there are ructions within the editorial board of the New Statesman as a result of what has happened. In particular some of its more left-wing contributors (no not Owen Jones!) are also unhappy about the heavy handed censorship of Cowley and Helen Lewis.

The attempt to suggest that the article was an 'advertorial' is merely smoke and mirrors.  The article that was pulled clearly said 'Presented by Palestine Solidarity Campaign' - there was a partnership between PSC and the New Statesman.  The nature of that partnership is irrelevant.  This was an article by Salah Ajarma, a well known Palestinian activist and founder of the Lajee Cultural Centre in Aida refugee camp outside Bethlehem. 

The fact is that an article by a peace activist living under a 50 year old military occupation by the world's fourth major military power was pulled at the behest of an organisation which is a propaganda and lobby organisation acting on behalf of the same military power.  Imagine in the days of South African Apartheid, an article by an anti-Apartheid activist being pulled at the instigation of John Carlisle MP, a well known Tory MP who supported the South African state or an article on Chile by an opponent of the Pinochet regime being pulled at the behest of the military regime there.

What happened is a disgrace.  Israel operates two legal systems on the West Bank.  One, a military regime and military law for the Palestinians and another is the civil Israeli legal system for Jewish settlers.  In military courts there is a 99.7% conviction rate.  Palestinians have no right to a lawyer, cannot see a lawyer for weeks on end, are subject to torture as a matter of course and are convicted in a language that they don't even understand.  This is the system that the New Statesman, in bowing to the demands of an quasi-Israeli government organisation has upheld.

The strangulation of Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Christian religion, by Israel and its Apartheid Wall, an ugly structure over twice as high as the Berlin Wall, is a matter of fact.  The commercial life of Bethlehem is slowly being squeezed out of it by Israel's occupation.  In its place we see settlements like Gilo, which UK Media describes as a 'neighbourhood of southern Jerusalem.'  The New Statesman took silenced the voice of the oppressed living in a refugee camp created by Israel's ethnic cleansing, at the behest of an Israeli funded McCarthyist organisation.  Next time the New Statesman and its writers discusses identity politics and cultural racism it can reflect on its own practices.  Or maybe not.

The article that was pulled at the behest of Israeli funded McCarthyist organisation UK Media Watch

UK Media Watch used to be called CIF Watch after the Guardian's Comment is Free.  UKMW boasts about the fact that it helped neutralise CIF's original balanced coverage of Palestine ['Indeed, our transition to UKMW was prompted by the general consensus that, partly due to our efforts, the Guardian’s malign obsession with Israel had somewhat abated, and their legitimization of antisemitic tropes (above and below the line) had at least diminished].  UKMW is now trying to repeat the same trick with other media outlets and it is clear that it has gained a scalp with the pusillanimous Jason Cowley and Helen Lewis of the New Statesman.

In its first tweet UKMW address Deputy Editor Helen Lewis thus:

Lewis jumped as UKMW barked.  In its next tweek UKMW boasted that 'Following a @UKMediaWatch post & @CAMERAorg campaign, @NewStatesman removed an article published in collaboration w/ anti-Israel group PSC!'

CAMERA is a US based McCarthyite organisation, one of a stable of organisations whose sole purpose is to close down Palestinian voices.   That the New Statesman jumped to the UKMW/Camera bark is in itself a betrayal of the values it purports to espouse.

First they boast of their success at another media scalp with REMOVED across the erased article

However, following the campaign of this Blog, PSC and Electronic Intifada, UKMW began to deny its role.  When you stand up to these organisations they back off.  Unfortunately magazines like the NS lack the requisite backbone to stand up for free speech, which is why it takes blogs like t his one to do so on their behalf.  Now the story is that apparently the decision of the New Statesman to censor  Salah Ajarma's article had nothing to do with their campaign or lobby - it was coincidental!  Such are the lies of the Zionist lobby.

Now UKMW pretends that it didn't LOBBY the NS.  It took its own decision without any pressure at all!

We should not however let up because the NS occupies a pivotal position in the Labour Party and Trade Union spectrum. It not only has writers like Laura Penny and Owen Jones who purport to be on the Left but it is very much part of Labour's Fabian tradition (don't forget Tony Benn was also a Fabian). For it to actually pull an article which it has already put up, at the behest of a settler colonial regime and its propaganda outlets is a first.

Over 400 people have signed the petition so far but we need at least a thousand if not more. If you haven't signed please do so now.

Also please share it on FB, Twitter etc.  What we are defending is the right to speak out on Palestine, a right which is under attack, not only by UK Media Watch, CAMERA and other Zionist lobby groups like Conservative/Labour Friends of Israel and people like Eric Pickles/Tom Watson MP, but by the cowardly behaviour of so-called friends of the free press like the New Statesman.

We not only expect this article to be reinstated but for the New Statesman to print an apology.  The best form of apology would be for Cowley and Lewis to depart.

Tony Greenstein

*******

If you want to write to the editor and assistants at the NS then their email addresses are:

Editor
Jason Cowley
@JasonCowleyNS
Deputy Editor
Helen Lewis
@helenlewis
Features editor
Xan Rice
xan.rice@newstatesman.co.uk
Political Editor
George Eaton
george@newstatesman.co.uk
Culture Editor
Tom Gatti
tom.gatti@newstatesman.co.uk
Arts Editor
Kate Mossman
kate.mossman@newstatesman.co.uk
Assistant Editor
Michael Prodger
michael.prodger@newstatesman.co.uk
Assistant Editor
Caroline Crampton
caroline.crampton@newstatesman.co.uk
Creative Editor
Gerry Brakus
gerry.brakus@newstatesman.co.uk
Editorial Assistant
India Bourke
india.bourke@newstatesman.co.uk
Chief Sub-Editor
Nana Yaa Mensah
nanayaa@newstatesman.co.uk
Sub-Editor
Thomas Calvocoressi
tcalvocoressi@newstatesman.co.uk
Sub-Editor
Yo Zushi
yzushi@newstatesman.co.uk
Design/Graphics
Dan Murrell
dan@newstatesman.co.uk
Digital Editor
Serena Kutchinsky
serena.kutchinsky@newstatesman.co.uk
Deputy Web Editor
Anoosh Chakelian
anoosh.chakelian@newstatesman.co.uk
Special Correspondent
Stephen Bush
stephen.bush@newstatesman.co.uk
Staggers Editor
Julia Rampen
julia.rampen@newstatesman.co.uk
Online Writer (pop culture)
Anna Leszkiewicz
anna.Leszkiewicz@newstatesman.co.uk
Online Writer (tech and digital culture)
Amelia Tait
amelia.tait@newstatesman.co.uk

Editor, citymetric.com
Jonn Elledge
jonn.elledge@citymetric.com
comments@newstatesman.co.uk
editorial@newstatesman.co.uk
gerry.brakus@newstatesman.co.uk

The Lies & Deceit of the New Statesman - the Staggers Reverts to Type

Simon Johnson of JLC Repeats the Same Slurs & Falsehoods About Anti-Semitism

Corbyn - in the Stagger's sights

The New Statesman has, or used to have a reputation as a left-wing weekly, albeit of the  Fabian persuasion.  On imperial adventures it was, unlike Tribune, very much a supporter of the idea of ‘trusteeship’, the concept of civilising the natives to bring them up to our standards.  Racism and the Staggers always went hand in hand.

The same nonsense that appears in the Mail and Guardian

Kingsley Martin - the first and longest serving editor of the NS

For a short period under Bruce Page and around the time of the Bennite resurgence in the early 1980’s it underwent a left-wing surge but of late it has reverted back to its earlier right-wing roots under Kingsley Amis and Paul Johnson.

The NS's fake left cultural feminist Laurie 'Red' Penney

The New Statesman has a number of soft left journalists like Owen Jones, who is rapidly moving to the Right as he distances himself from the Jeremy Corbyn leadership and Laurie ‘red’ Penney who in America would be called a PEP, Progressive Except on Palestine.

First edition of the New Statesman

My particular ire is with a particularly outrageous article by the Chief Executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, a body that is wholly unelected and represents the major Zionist and Jewish organisations in Britain.  In this absurd piece of writing, which reads more as a press release than a piece of considered journalism, Johnson alleges that the booing of Owen Smith, in his debate with Jeremy Corbyn, for saying the Labour Party was overrun by anti-Semitism was because it was infested with ‘left anti-Semitism’.

The obvious reason for the booing was because nearly all Labour Party members (i.e. other than Progress members) know that allegations of anti-Semitism are a media manufactured myth weaponised to destroy the Jeremy Corbyn leadership.

I have sent in a long letter to the New Statesman.  I’m sure they won’t publish it so I am putting it on the blog instead.  In fact the only reason I wrote it was to let the editors and writers at the NS know what I thought of their pretentious publication.

Monday, 08 August 2016

letters@newstatesman.co.uk

comments@newstatesman.co.uk

Letters Editor

The New Statesman

7 Carmelite Street

Blackfriars

London

EC4Y 0BS

Dear Sir or Madam,

Simon Johnson of the Jewish Leadership Council complaining about the use of anti-Semitism as a political football is like an arsonist who complains at the results of his own endeavours. [New Statesman, 5^th August]  No organisation has been more assiduous in weaponising anti-Semitism than the Jewish Leadership Council, a wholly unelected, unaccountable organisation.

The New Statesman used to be proud of its independent journalism, bucking the trend, not going along with the received wisdom of the day.  What possible reason was there for publishing a hack article that repeats the same old lies and myths about ‘left anti-Semitism’?  The Daily Mail and Guardian provide us with an ample diet of such junk journalism.

Johnson describes the booing of Owen Smith, when he spoke about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, as an example of anti-Semitism.  His explanation was entirely disingenuous.  Owen Smith was booed because the audience knew that allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party were false.  They are a prime example of a media manufactured, orchestrated series of lies. 

Anti-Semitism was used as a means of attacking Jeremy Corbyn even before he was elected.  At first it was the allegation that he consorted with a holocaust denier and then it morphed into friendship with ‘terrorists’.  Along the way Oxford University Labour Club was accused of anti-Semitism because it dared to support Israel Apartheid Week. 

What other description is apt for a state that refuses to allow the Palestinian refugees to return, because they are not Jewish, whilst allowing me to ‘return’ to a place I have never lived in?  There are over 50 specific laws discriminating against Palestinian Israelis such as refusing to allow them to live in Israel if they marry Palestinians outside the country.  Apartheid?  Perish the thought.

False accusations of anti-Semitism are of benefit only to anti-Semites who can then hide behind the cloak of anti-Zionism.  It is the ‘boy cried wolf’ syndrome.

Opposition to Israel’s racist politics and apartheid policies have nothing whatever to do with anti-Semitism.  Unfortunately the New Statesman doesn’t cover Israeli racism.  The fact that there are now mobs in Israel who march to the drumbeat of ‘Death to the Arabs’ should give even Simon Johnson pause for thought.  If Jews in this country were subject to the same treatment as Arabs in Israel they would be the first to cry ‘anti-Semitism’.

The attack on Shami Chakrabarti because she has been made a peer and the inference that her report was affected by the promise of a peerage is pretty despicable and desperate politics.

I am a Jewish member of the Labour Party who has been suspended in the anti-Semitism furore.  The fact that I have been an anti-racist and anti-fascist activist throughout my life is irrelevant.  I drew the conclusion long ago that if you oppose anti-Semitism then you should be consistent and oppose all forms of racism, Zionism included.  Apparently Simon Johnson and the New Statesman disagree.

Yours faithfully,

Tony Greenstein

Stop politicising anti-Semitism, or it will become even more embedded in the left of British politics than it was before.

By Simon Johnson

I watched the Labour party leadership hustings on Thursday night and was depressed to hear loud booing of Owen Smith when he told Jeremy Corbyn that anti-Semitism has been worse in the Labour Party in the last nine months than at any time he can remember.

I asked myself, how have the last six months, in which Labour was supposed to be getting a grip on anti-Semitism, brought us to this point?

Six months, in which two inquiries have been published – one official, one leaked – and one still to come, and we are no closer to ridding political discourse on the left of anti-Semitism. In fact, all that has happened over the last six months is that anti-Semitism has become a political football, used to divide people as being loyal to the Leader or disloyal.

What has happened to the cross-party consensus against racism? Why has a political party founded on equality and tolerance become the focus for division and bullying?

On Wednesday morning, the full version of the Royall Report into allegations of anti-Semitism among Labour-supporting students at Oxford University was leaked to Jewish press. Having read the full report, there are no huge revelations or scandals. So the Jewish community is left to scratch its head and wonder, why did the Labour NEC try for so long to conceal the full version from the Jewish community or the students who were the alleged victims of the abuse?

It was a bizarre move that left the Jewish student movement, especially at Oxford, feeling isolated. Any real gain from the report – and there would have been some – has been overshadowed by the pantomime of whether it would be released.

Then on Thursday came the confirmation that Shami Chakrabarti was to be the only Labour peer in the new list. After Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to never make a peer, the fact he recommended the supposedly politically independent leader of an inquiry into anti-Semitism has undermined much of the process in the eyes of the community. Social media is frothing with anger.

Chakrabarti is a public servant who possibly would have deserved an honour for her work at Liberty. However, the timing and circumstance of her elevation have undermined the integrity of the investigation and report in the eyes of the Jewish community.

Organisations such as my own engaged in good faith with the inquiry on the basis of assurances that it would be fearless, robust and independent. It has turned out to be none of those things. It now confirms our fears that, from the outset, the inquiry was a device to push damaging allegations off the frontpage.

Chakrabarti and Seamus Milne now have questions to answer on when the peerage was offered and whether there was any link to the commissioning or content of the report, or its aftermath.

The booing of Smith tells us that one’s view on anti-Semitism now determines where you stand on the leadership of the Labour party. If you raise the issue of anti-Semitism in the party, you risk being shouted down as disloyal or part of a witch-hunt. If you are loyal to the Leader, you condemn the raising of any such concerns as an act of disloyalty or part of a plot by embittered Blairites.

I still don’t understand why anti-Semitism is not clamped down on in the same way that has been effective for other forms of racism?  As Corbyn said, just a few weeks ago, Jews and Poale Zion (a Jewish Labour Movement) helped found the Labour party alongside the trade unions over 100 years ago. There are many within our community who not only associate themselves with Labour; they are actively part of the movement and embrace all sides of it.

The Labour party has always taken the lead on equality, tolerance and discrimination. But for some reason, ancient stereotypes such as the conspiratorial power of the minority continue and this becomes more intense when the discourse moves on to the subject of Israel.

The left cannot see that its constant and disproportionate criticism of Israeli government policies could ever stray across into anti-Semitism. At least the Chakrabarti report gave some clear examples of where it does. It’s a good thing it did, because it is beginning to look as though the Labour party’s problem is less with anti-Semitism than with the denial of anti-Semitism.

It is also regrettable that neither report came to grips with the vexed issue of anti-Zionism and how the denial of the right of Jewish people to self-determination in a Jewish State could well be anti-Semitic as well.

Many within the Jewish community would agree that nothing has been achieved in the last six months. If anything, anti-Semitism has become more embedded in the left of British politics than it was before.

The Jewish community does not want to become a football in party politics. We would all be happy if there was a zero-tolerance, strict liability approach to anti-Semitism in society, politics and in all political parties.

We did not need three inquiries to tell us that!

Simon Johnson is the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council.

The Self-Destruction of the Socialist Workers Party – Now is the Time for a New Left Party

Sexual Harassment & Alleged Rape Were the Symptoms Lack of Democracy was the Cause

Martin Smith on the look-out for teenage SWP members?

On Sunday March 10th an Emergency Meeting of the SWP voted to endorse the Central Committee’s [CC] handling of the allegations of rape and sexual harassment against Martin Smith ‘Comrade Delta’, as well as upholding the expulsion of four activists.  The CC had used to good effect its control of the SWP machine, coupled by bullying, threats of physical attack and plain old fashioned rigging, to maintain its position.  The immediate response was the resignation of scores of activists and the formation of an International Socialist Network.   The CC has won a Pyrrhic victory and in so doing possibly created the catalyst for a viable socialist party in Britain.

The original source of the conflagration in the SWP and its causes have been dealt with previously in SWP Crisis Over Cover-up of Rape & Sexual Harassment Allegations against former National Secretary Martin Smith  SWP Central Committee - Rabbits Caught in the Headlights - Gilad Atzmon Rides to the ‘Rescue’ of Martin Smith and the SWP leadership as well as guest posts by Simon Pirani Parallels Between the SWP and the WRP?  A Comparison by Simon Pirani formerly of the WRP and Women’s Liberation & Class Oppression by Camilla Power. 

People can also refer to the Weekly Worker which has made much of the running on the issue including printing the first open resignation letter, by former Socialist Worker journalist Tom Walker..
 
Feminism
 

The SWP as it would like to be thought of

To some, like Tom Walker, the cause of the problem in the SWP was a hostility and inability to come to terms with feminism.  I disagree.  This was the symptom of a deeper malaise.  Feminism is a movement of democracy within capitalism, it is not a complete analysis or solution.  It too is subject to factors of class. 
 

Martin Smith's only non-SWP supporter - Gilad Atzmon

In other words feminism and women’s liberation are not immune from class society.  Women operate as both oppressors and oppressed.  Who can doubt that white women in southern Africa or Israeli women are/were, at one and the same time, both oppressors of Black and Palestinian people – women included – at the same time as they were oppressed by white or Israeli men?  Who can doubt that the White woman on a slave plantation was superior to the Black slave, of either sex?   Did Nazi or SS women show solidarity with Jewish women?

The answers to the above questions are obvious yet they are ones that the feminist movement has avoided, as have some of its male proponents.  Thirty years ago, with the formation of the Jewish Feminist Group and its adoption of a pro-Zionist position, supported by the feminist magazine Spare Rib, Black women and Women of Colour produced Outrage by way of reply.

SWP leadership's leading internal critic - but with a strategy that guaranteed defeat

A parallel is a national liberation movement where the future oppressor and the present day oppressed combine to demand freedom and independence.  One of the key differences between the revolutionary socialist and Stalinist traditions has been whether or not the oppressed classes economically should keep silent and postpone their own demands for socialism and equality in order not to alienate the richer capitalist section of the movement.

The communist parties were particularly appalling in this respect as one can see today from the support of the South African Communist Party for the police massacre of the Marikana miners.  In Britain after 1945, the Communist Party even proposed the continuation in power of a National Coalition including the Tories!  In Iran, the alliance between Khomeini and the Tudeh Party led to the butchering of thousands of socialists.

Laurie Penney - an early astute critic of the SWP's handling of rape allegations

At certain key times women come together across class to make specific demands.  The suffragettes were a good example.  The demand for the right of women to vote crossed class boundaries.  But even then the Women’s Social & Political Union, set up by the Pankhursts, later organised exclusively among the middle class.  It broke from its alliance with the Labour Party because the latter adopted the call for universal suffrage!  Why?  Because it supported the maintenance of the property qualification for those voting.

It is no accident that a number of officers and members of the WSPU ended up in Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, including its General Secretary, Nora Dacre Fox (Elam) who became their Southern Women’s organiser.  Emmeline Pankhurst and two of her daughters, Adela and Christabel, moved to the far right after the First World War.  Only Sylvia campaigned for universal suffrage and opposed-imperialism and fascism.

SWP students - nearly all of whom have now resigned or been isolated

The idea that the root cause of the SWP’s problems lie in the magic properties of feminism are an illusion.  Feminism in the 1970’s and ‘80s produced Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, whose hostility to the working class is matched only by their ardour to secure equality between oppressors. 

However an organisation which is undemocratic and whose leadership behaves in an exploitative and manipulative fashion, is indeed likely to replicate the patriarchal aspects of capitalism.  And being astute, the SWP CC thrust its leading women comrades into its defence.  Of the 7 members of the SWP’s Disputes Committee who exonerated Smith, no less than 5 were women. Candy Udwin chaired the crucial session at the AGM, which not only exonerated the CC and Smith but which barred the victim from attending or listening to the session.  The same session which was packed with pro-CC speakers and which was forbidden from discussing the issue itself was confined by Udwin to the question of whether procedures were followed.

The Changing Contours of Capitalism - There’s no success like failure
 
It seems to me that there are two, interrelated causes of the crisis in the SWP.   The first is, like the Bourbons, the far-left is condemned learn nothing and forget nothing.  It is the antithesis of the Marxism it nominally espouses.  The leadership of the SWP saw socialism and desire for an end to alienation and oppression, including personal oppression, in much the same way as the leaders of the Catholic Church take Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and its injunction that the meek are blessed and one should seek righteousness to heart.

In The Left: There’s no success like failure’ I pointed out the obvious.  Capitalism has restructured the working class and to a large extent, atomised it.  There are no big battalions of miners, car workers, and shipbuilding workers in Britain today.  The concentration on the working class at the workplace and strikes, which are of course important in their own right, is not in itself an answer to the question of how to build socialism.  Capitalism no longer lives in fear of the industrial proletariat.  Many classes – serfs, peasants, indentured labour – have been oppressed and exploited but the concentration on the working class was because of its potential for it being able to change society.  Unfortunately there is no evidence for this bar Russia nearly a century ago, one of the most backward capitalist states in Europe.

Rather than face up to this, the SWP has concentrated its fire on the supposed threat to Leninism.  What was Prof. Callinicos's (or Stallinicos as he is known) response to the allegations of rape against a former National Secretary and the way it was handled?  Nothing.  Instead we have a patently dishonest article In Defence of Leninism  or rather the SWP Central Committee’s interpretation of Leninism.  In Leninism is finished: a reply to Alex Callinicos Louis Proyect argues, on the basis of Lars Hi's Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context, that Lenin had never even sought to build a vanguardist democratically centralist controlled party but a party modelled on the German Social Demoratic Party. 

I claim no expertise in these matters but as I showed in Rabbits Caught in the Headlights  with my own expulsion, the SWP CC use democratic centralism not in order to intensify the fight against the state, whilst preserving our own secrets, but in order to control its own members.  It was bureaucratic centralism, honed to perfection by the CC. 

This means that like the Papacy, the CC is infallible.  It cannot make mistakes.  There is no analysis of history, where it has gone wrong, whether its root assumptions are correct. Respect, the Socialist Alliance, the failure of anti-war movement - these never happened.  Therefore no lessons were drawn.  Factions are verboten for all except 3 months of the year and the CC’s own permanent faction.   All attempts to discuss the failure of the socialist left, the failure of resistance to the Coalition’s attacksor even to discuss the question of how to resist the Government’s Divide & Rule tactics between benefit claimants and workers or the public and private sector go by default.  Even to map out a simple explanation of what has caused the latest capitalist crisis, its options and perils, is fraught with peril.

Far from Democratic Centralism providing some form of solution to the infiltration of spies such as Mark Kennedy in anarchist and direct action groups, it has actually done the State’s job for it by neutralising far-left groups politically.  The key task ahead, the formation of a socialist party from the grassroots upwards, not the ghost that presently masquerades as the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, is an urgent necessity not least because if we fail now, then the far-right in the form of UKIP+ could step into the breach.

Just in case they feel missed out, as they have barely commented upon what has happened, a few words for the Socialist Party.  They may not have the horrific practices of the SWP and their own internal structures, whilst no more democratic than the SWP’s at least seem able to tolerate a measure of dissent, but they are wedded to the same idea.  The belief that the road to socialism lies in the incremental growth of the revolutionary party, though with the SP it is in alliance with left trade union leaders in a rerun of the formation of the Labour Party.  In short economism long past its sell-by-date.

How should the SWP Central/Disputes Committee have reacted?
 
What would a democratic party have done if it had faced the problems that faced the SWP leadership over Martin Smith?

The first thing that should have happened, if the CC was seriously interested in investigating the matter, was to suspend Martin Smith's membership pending an investigation.  This is the normal response of an employer in these circumstances and one would indeed expect such an action in response to a complaint of rape or sexual harassment by a woman member of the union.

The second and most obvious solution would be for the woman alleging rape to be helped, supported sympathetically and directed to a Rape Support Group or the Police.  Comrades should have been specifically directed to support her whilst the matter was investigated.  Instead she and the woman who alleged sexual harassment were left to hang out and dry and even worse - they were victimised and villified.

If the alleged rape victim was unwilling to either go to the Police, understandable given their record, or to a Rape Crisis Group and she positively wished the Disputes Committee to deal with the problem, despite them having no forensic powers, or powers to question under oath, then they clearly faced a choice.  Either to refuse to undertake the task or to accept that both people could not remain in a single party and to therefore decide the question of whether the woman was raped on the civil test, the balance of probability.

In actual fact, if Martin Smith was concerned at all for the fate of the SWP as opposed to his own power and privilege, he would have resigned until his name was cleared. 

Those who personally knew Martin Smith on the DC should have stepped down.  That they did not do so suggests that there was a determination to exonerate a trusted comrade and dispense with what they saw as a nuisance complaint.  The woman concerned should have both been represented and allowed to cross examine Smith.  Instead and quite outrageously, the women were denied all sight of Martin Smith’s evidence but he was allowed to see what they had said.

People complain about bourgeois justice but there are strict rules about things like Disclosure.  In employment tribunals, where I practice, there are standard Orders whereby all parties have to provide a Standard List of Documents.  If the employer provides evidence during the Tribunal one can object and usually one will succeed.  Likewise in a criminal trial even more stringent rules apply and lack of disclosure can be fatal for the Prosecution.  This, it should be borne in mind, has been forced from the bourgeois state.  It was not granted as of right until the cases of wrongful conviction and police racism and brutality that sparked the riots of the early ‘80’s, became too much. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was brought in.  It has to be said that the SWP’s ‘justice system’ is not a patch on the bourgeois state's.

Likewise through a representative Smith should have been able to cross-examine his accuser, but not about her drinking habits, sexual relations, mode of life but about the allegations themselves and any relevant context.

The third thing would have been to look at the evidence itself, after a serious and reasonable investigation.  It is of course impossible for me to comment on what, if any evidence was uncovered or gathered.  However there is one matter I am curious about and yet no one seems to have touched upon it.

The woman herself seems to have been a very young comrade, 17 apparently.  Smith is, I guess around the age of 50.  If this is the case then Smith is about 3 times as old as the woman.   There is no law against this but in general inter-generational sex is exploitative and to be frowned upon.  A man of 50 is about 2/3 through his life.  A woman of 17 is about to start adult life.  There is a biological clock.  People become more frail as they get older and the younger partner is expected to care for them in later years.  This is not exactly equality as most such relationships involve older men.  But an older man forming a relationship with a teenager has a confidence, in Smith's case a party reputation and perspective that a teenager doesn’t possess.  In other words he has power over her personally.  Such a ‘relationship’ cannot be equal.  It may not be a crime but it is indicative of a breach of trust for a senior member of the SWP to sleep with young members of the party and calls into question his own motives. 

But there was a second charge by another woman, a full-timer who has it would seem been dismissed, of sexual harassment.  Even the Chair of the Disputes Committee, Pat Stack, who I always knew in the student movement as an ultra-loyalist, believed that it was proven.  Together on the balance of probability I would therefore reach the conclusion that the rape accusation was more likely than not and on that basis Martin Smith would have been expelled.  That is not to say he was guilty but faced with two conflicting versions I would have preferred the testimony of the woman in view of the second allegation and the admitted sexual relationship.  

But of course this was not an option.  It did not happen and the woman in question was effectively called a liar.  It now appears that the rape allegations against Smith aren’t the first of their kind amongst the SWP leadership.  Allegations of rape and sexual harassment against another full-timer were also heard by the Disputes Committee  when the allegations against Smith first surfaced.  The evidence was overwhelming re the sexual harassment and he was suspended for two years.   Unlike the 4 SWP Facebook members who talked about the allegations who were expelled, instantly, without a hearing, by SWP Secretary Charlie Kimber.  Allegations of rape are less serious, it would appear, than conversing over Facebook.

Is there a pattern?

The SWP CC is a self-perpetuating body.  It employs about 100 full-timers who keep tabs on the membership and quell any incipient rebellion.  It presents a slate for election to annual conference.  It is not possible to vote for or against individual members.  There has rarely been an alternative slate and there has never been a successful challenge.  The SWP leadership is quite immune from challenge and as recent events demonstrate it will do anything to keep its power intact.

Clearly any democratic party of the Left has to have an internal democracy which means that its leadership is elected and that members have the rights to form factions.  The alternative is a leadership which sees itself as apart from the membership and even begins to see that membership as a threat.  Sections of the SWP leadership seem to have developed a cult-like relationship.  It is inconceivable that some members did not know of Martin Smith’s tendency to form relationships with teenage party members, itself a sign of potential abuse.  The possibility that Smith’s behaviour was not a one-off are strong. 

In SWP: We need to talk about "Karl"  there is another allegation of a cover up of rape, this time by a full-timer a District Organiser.  According to Andy Newman of the increasingly right-wing Socialist Unity blog, a ‘long-time editor’ of SW (presumably the late Chris Harman):

‘used to have a reputation that “no means yes”, and when he vistied some districts, experienced comrades in the know sought to ensure he was not left alone with young women.

When women who had been assaulted complained, they were diminished and hounded out of the SWP. I know of one occasion when a victim of sexual assault was sat down with a senior woman CC SWP member who told her to keep quiet for the good of “the party”, excusing the behaviour because “capitalism fucks everyone up”, and then warning if she didn’t keep quiet then no-one would believe her, and the SWP would destroy her reputation.

During the 1980s there was a strange phenomenon of several angry young womwn comrades who used to talk about the sexism of this leading comrade, but they had been intimidated out of explaining what had happened, and instead the discusion often focussed on seemingly trivial details, like the fact that he always referred to women socialists by their first names, and male comrades by surnames (lenin and marx, but Rosa and Clara, for example)

To fnd an organisation that systematicaly for decades covered up sexual assault and who intimidated women who complained into silence praised in this was is disgraceful.

Even worse, I know of an IS/SWP district in the 1970s who colluded in silence and looked the other way when a leading industrial militant was raping his own step-daughter: the individual in question had previoulsy been in the IMG, who had also covered it up. When as a young 17 year old I confronted him at a party and asked him loudly if he was still fucking his duaghter, it was me cautioned by the SWP, while the truth of thse allegations was quietly ignored.’

Like all bureaucracies, the SWP’s has developed rhythms and modes of behaviour which it deems acceptable.  Preying on young women in the party seems acceptable to a certain leadership-friendship ‘fuck circuit’ as they have been called.
 
Where do we go from here
 
The SWP conference has taken place and some 71 of those who have resigned have posted a public statement as to why they did so. (see below)   A new International Socialist Network has also been formed  which does have the potential to bring about a party of the socialist left that is serious about building a new society.  The largest party in Britain today comprises ex-members of the SWP, notwithstanding the hundreds who have been expelled over the years,

But such a network and hopefully an organisation should not look back to the IS with rose-tinted glasses.  I was expelled from the IS in 1972, as the organisation moved from being a party of Luxembourgist to Leninist democracy (at least according to Cliff).  Many were the mistakes it made and to imagine that there was a golden era will be to eventually repeat the mistakes that were made on the way.  But the need for a new party of the socialist left, a party which is anti-capitalist but not sectarian, which prides itself on debate whilst at the same time being a party of activists (unlike the 5,000 missing members of the SWP) is something to aim for.

What is essential is that those who resign in disgust at the behaviour of the SWP are not lost to socialism.  Now is the time for all those who are resigning from the SWP, including those who have had a former association and been expelled, to come together.  As for the SWP itself, with its student organisation in ruins (members of the Brighton-Sussex SWSS have resigned en masse) its days are numbered as the leadership relies on the votes of the politically and in some cases physically dead.

Tony Greenstein