The SWP leadership in ireland is a pain in the arse

Scorpio | 17.12.2001 16:32

the socialist workers party in ireland gives me a pain in me arse!

This party is sectarian, domineering, sad and middle class. They harm the movement as a whole as they refuse to work with others or inform others of their plans. In Ireland they hook up with the Greens at every oppertunity, some of their members speak with Dublin 4 accents (For those of you who dont live in ireland its rather like Loyd Grossmann, that annoying chef /through the key hole guy).

Their main concern is selling their newspapers and recruiting they have no time for the working class, their SWSS in the colleges is a joke.

I have had enough of the SWP they hurt me, and give me a pain in the arse..They are a Liberal bureaucratic party, who has somehow disguised itself as a socialist movement.

If James Connolly were alive he would be red with anger at the SWP.

Now when i write this may i please say that the SWP have some decent members, but others really hurt me, in fact the vast bulk give me a pain in me arse.....

I have a message for the SWP buck up and grow up the left needs unity and you guys just wont let it happen.... I get very annoyed at your secterianism....and as an independent communist (not a stalinist)(once a member of yours) i feel sheer disgust at the actions of your party here in ireland.

Yours
Scorpio

Scorpio

Comments

Hide the following 17 comments

Nothing wrong with being middle class BUT

17.12.2001 17:03

First up: nothing wrong with being middle class - EVERYONE no matter what background is welcome to join in the fight for a better world. You can make 20K a year but still be a vegetarian, get involved with the critical mass, buy ethically produced runners, and do a multitude of other things to change the way the world works. Lets the drop the tired old political Left language of 'workers', 'proletarian', 'bourgeois' etc and focus on making the world a better place.

Secondly: I would agree with a lot of your points on the SWP. I find that they (and hence Globalise Resistance) are not willing to lend their support to causes that they can't dominate. They didnt like stuff like the Critical Mass, Street Football, or Buy Nothing Day because they were autonomous actions where they werent welcome to sell their paper or recruit (no political party was welcome to do that at these events, it wasnt just the SWP). Very few (if any) of their members ever came to these sort of events anyway.

Its a shame because a lot of people see GR as the only outlet for this kind of activity in Dublin/Ireland and get disillusioned with it quickly, and hence drift away from getting involved in any sort of meaningful action at all...

the path
mail e-mail: path@lab.org
Homepage: http://thumped.com/thepath

Socialist workers: pain in the arse anywhere

17.12.2001 17:15

In my home town after sept 11th a stop the war coalition was formed, this coalition contained members of the SWP, we had a large public meeting with a surprising level of support from most of the town.
The meeting was chaired by a member of SWP who came out with a strongly anti American line (which i personally support) but which I am well aware the WI for example would find difficult to swallow.
As the broad cross section of the population: churches, mosques, WI, independently concerned persons, left the building no less than seven Socialist workers were on hand to push their papers.
At the next (less well attended) meeting I made the point that as it was not a socialist event i felt it was inappropriate for SWP papers to be pushed, the SWP chair took issue with this and we had a exchange of views (arguement) during which they chair basically said that it was impossible to be against war unless you were a socialist.
This pattern of dominating meetings and discussion has continued to this day (with ever dwindling support from the locals)and i see it as a sad indictment of the party that they were able to so completely (and i'm sure unintentionally) destroy a local stop the war group.
I am still trying to work with these power crazed fools so I shall not divulge where i live but i'm sure It's not a unique story

peeved

Same old story

17.12.2001 17:20

The SWP's destructive activity is pretty well documented in Britain...here's a link to the most recent pamphlet from schnews/rts/earth first.

The point, of course, is to do things better so people don't burn themselves out by getting involved with this lot. So really, any criticism of the way the SWP 'take over' things could more usefully be seen as a question - why do we let them?
x

jimmy connolly
Homepage: http://www.schnews.org.uk/mr.htm

Nothing wrong with being working class.

17.12.2001 17:35

I have to admit it, I hate the middle-class. We're taught by them, policed by them and governed by them. I don't need them and I don't want them on my side, which I'm happy to say they're not. They have got nothing to offer me except the chance to continue to rule us after the revolution. I hate their accents, their condescending attitude and the way they have started to take an interest in football (but only successful teams). Naturally I hate the SWP. In happier times, rich kids would get their parents to but fast motorbikes and die on a quiet B road. These days, they just annoy everyone with their bloody megaphones and stupid rhymes on demos.
www.openlyclassist.org.uk

Ronnie.

SWP are insignificant among Working Class.

17.12.2001 17:40

The SWP aree not interested in campaigning on issues. In may area (Dublin City) the SWP dropped the campaign against bin-tax as soon as the war happened. Also they dropped an anti-racist campaign in the past......i could go on for ever about them dropping campaigns as soon as recruitment falls off.

When it comes down to it they have no base in the Working class, which is the only true revolutionary class. Their lack of a base is indicated in their disasterous election results. For them elections are about recruitment, not putting forward ideas and an alternative.

I read a good pamphlet last year about the SWP. It was by the Socialist Party (I am not a member) it was called "The Struggle for Socialism Today". It analyses their politics very well.

Bob Smith

because

17.12.2001 17:40

two things:

people let the swp get away with what they do because they do not like being called sectarian and alienating people, especially newcomers through GR etc. who don't understand why some things are more important than facile 'unity', also swp have so much apparently 'to offer' in terms of resources, members and determination to organise events - on their own terms, of course...

also, a book called 'defence of the realm' says that in the 1980s some 25 MI5 people went to work on swp; presumably some of them are still there and defending status quo in 'the realm' very effectively by messing up any movement that threatens emanicpatory change.

I guess some similar arrangement pertains in ireland...

zedhead

Quit critisicing the left.

17.12.2001 23:41

My question is "is the SWP really fucking up our world"?

Not from what I can see.
Why dont we vent our anger and time towards the multinationals and world leaders who drop bombs, destroy people and countries and environment.

So whats the problem?

All I can see is sectarianism towards the SWP from what I just read.

Maria
mail e-mail: passionflowerrosa@hotmail.com

maria...

18.12.2001 00:13

maria, i used to feel like you. but the thing is it's not the left people have a problem with, it's one particular group which has caused the left no end of problems on these islands. many people who have spent years trying to stop multinational exploitation and war have found that SWP goals and tactics are uniquely counter-productive to this movement. if you're new to it I can understand you won't have seen much of what they do, but check out some of what others have experienced. see the schnews report and earlier postings by uno (a swp member) on indymedia for a taste of the problem - there's loads more explanations out there if you look and ask around. a lot of people have just had enough of putting up with the deeply hierarchical swp trying to take over and render useless everyone else's efforts. i bet most people wish they didn't have to attack the swp, but when you're trying to build an inclusive movement, eventually you can't ignore the divisiveness and destructiveness of a lot of what they do. it's a shame, cos a lot of good people get caught up in the swp because they seem to have a hand in every right on campaign. i just wish that those good people could get involved in the campaigns as indiviiduals without the dead hand of the swp hierarchy telling them what to do there, and before they get put off politics for good by their experiences as party fodder.

zedhead

quit criticising the swp - or bad names for u

18.12.2001 02:23

sectarian - always the middle class apologists fave 'term'.. Until they get their 'new orders' let's party, and when they do, keep on partying - until it breaks.
@

historically minded

Sectarian

18.12.2001 11:38

I AM sectarian. Why should I apologise for knowing shit when I smell it? And the particular sect I hate is the SWP. I might have differences of opinion with everyone else, but I don't get the impression they're just out to sell papers and generally balls up anything they become involved with. (At least not deliberately). The bastards should be given the cold shoulder by everyone who genuinely has an interest in the anti-capitalist movement just as they are given the cold shoulder by workers generally.

Ronnie.

Lets not get stuck into the class issue rut

18.12.2001 11:49

Ronnie (& anyone else)
I think we need to stop reinforcing this class crap by constantly wingeing about it
As far as I'm concerned there are two classes - the 'establishment' (for want of a better term) and everyone else
ie- those that have power to make decisions that affect the rest of us (politicians, multinationals CEO's, masons, bankers, heads of police, the monarchy, titled & landed aristocrats etc etc) and everyone else who these decisions affect. So people like class war who have nothing better to do with their time than winge about 'middle classes' are pointing all their energy in the wrong direction - what have they actually achieved?

Take the anti-roads or genetic movements for example - a veyr broad group of people in both, from ef! ers, the 'middle classes', even a lord or two, mums, kids, pensioners etc, all working together to create change - and have done so very sucessfully in some cases - and it works in ways that aren't always obvious - many of the local residents that have become involved in local single issue protests have had their lives changed by the whole thing, from meeting people who are involved with a large number of issues and from seeing the establishment in action protecting its interests.

Many of them have gone on to be active members of their local community, gone veggie, worked on other unrelated campaigns etc all as a result of being involved. But if you go
around slagging them off because they don't fit in to the
correct class box then they will be alienated from any form of action in the future

With capitalism & globalisation affecting the vast majority of people in one way or another the answer is to educate everyone about how they are all being screwed over by a few 'leaders' who are working in their own interests, and we should all be working together to bring about social change for the benefit of all (and this works both ways paper sellers...)

gnome11

SWP I HATE THEM !!!!!

18.12.2001 13:08

I SEE ALL YOUR POINTS AND WELL I AGEE THE SWP IN MY HOME TOWN GOES ONE WAY AND ONE WAY ONLY ON THURDAYS WE HAVE A MEETING AND SATURDAY A PAPER SALE SAME OLD STORY (I WAS IN THE SWP FOR 1 YEAR) I HAD TO LEAVE I CAN'T TAKE MEETING SALE EVER WEEK IT IS LIKE THE ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT STOOD
STILL IN THIS TOWN, THANKS 2 RTS, WOMBLES AND INDYMEDIA I AM FREE, FREE TO BE IN A MOVEMENT OF GREAT PEOPLE!

PAUL
mail e-mail: PAUL@SOCIALIST.CO.UK

Why the swappers are parasites

18.12.2001 16:00

They reflect the views of their middle class leadership - piggy backing in to power on the backs of the working class

They are not interested in furthering the anti-capitalist/anti-war movements, only in recruiting cadres to their own political party. They will happily drain the energy from our movement to do this.

They are centralist/statist which is totally at odds with the the spirit of anti-capitalism (mutual aid and voluntary cooperation)

They are deliberately divisive within any movement they are ordered to infiltrate (funny how they always appear on mass when a movement is seriously challenging authority)

They try to disguise their aspirations to become a party dictatorship (they seriously believe that the working class needs to be led around by the nose - well think again scumbags)

They feel seriously threatened by the idea of an angry, self-organised revolutionary working class (and so they should)

They will lie, deceive, and much worse, to get a hold over any movement which could bring down capitalism/the state (after all they'll have no 'apparatus' to control when the state is dismantled, and no workers to 'lead' when capitalism is destroyed)

FUCKING PARASITES!!

sol

No friends of mine

18.12.2001 16:13

Why would the middle-class be interested in our fight anyway? They have nothing at all in common with us. They don't live in our streets, their kids don't go to our schools (though they're happy enough to teach our kids) and I don't want them anywhere near me. They keep the wheels of capitalism turning and occasionaly, some of them feel bad enough about things to try to get involved with our struggle. Fortunately they soon grow out of it and head back to where they came from. It's not about how much they 'earn' it's about their whole attitude to working people and the SWP typify it. "We know what's best for you, follow us because you're all too thick to work it out for yourselves." I'll never forget the morning two of them got their arses out of bed to do a paper sale at our sorting office. They only tried it once and got the message. We've never had them since. Pity the rest of them don't get the message. The WORKERS united will never be defeated. Not the workers with a sprinkling of placard waving shits.

Ronnie.

who are your middle classes?

18.12.2001 17:45

Ronnie
Just who do you mean by the 'middle classes' you keep referring to - that don't live on your streets, go to the same schools etc - chances are that they do, the people that go to private schools are in a small minority - probably those that you would describe as 'upper class'

And we are all supporting the capitalist system to some extent - wherever we come from
- we all have to consume to some extent - even if you:
grow your own food
make your own clothes
don't use any form of transport
take no benefits from the state
never read new books or papers
never use tv, radio or cinema
never use gas or electicity

then you will still find you need to buy occasional things that you can't make yourself - tools for the allotment, thread for sewing... the list goes on.
The thing to do is to work ot what you actually need, rather than what the system tells you that you need.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that all SWP are 'middle class' - or any other class - they come from all
walks of life, guided by a common aim - to sell more papers, to recruit more members, to hijack and take over as many campaigns as possible - because theirs is the only way forward - we won't overturn the system unless we do it their way
Sounds a bit like class war to me - we can only overthrow the system if we do it their way - brick the middle class etc
Which is why the SWP aree so good at pissing people off

Education not Alienation is the way forward.

gnome11

Middle Class

18.12.2001 19:14

Hello Gnome,
You should read 'The Enemy is Middle-Class' by Andy and Mark Anderson. It's good stuff. I know not every rank and file SWP member is middle-class, but their leaders are and they call the shots. I'd say anyone with power to hire and fire, anyone in a position of authority, copper, teacher, priest etc. is one of them, not one of us. There is more to it than cash.

Ronnie.

Ronnie ???

18.12.2001 20:48

you say the leadership is middle class?
show me your proof.
at least post a written explanation for such vague comments.

maria
mail e-mail: passionflowerrosa@hotmail.com