Time to leave the SWP

gary224 | 09.08.2002 06:18

It is now time to leave the SWP

The SWP have now been around for a while. In the 1970s they were gaining popularity but never managed to reach a point where they could be effective.

Personally i joined the SWP when i was 18. Why? cos i was anti-capitalist and i thought they were the natural party to join. Basically after spending 1.5 years in the SWP i left and i regret being part of it.

I am not going to bore you with why i dont like the SWP cos there are so many things to say and so many others on Indymedia regularly critise the SWP.

I think it is now time for the remaining 2,500 SWP members to leave. Most have very little say in how the party is run with (the leader) Chris Bambery and the others in the central committee dominating the party's policies.

There are other groups even worse than the SWP like the SLP and Spartisist League which are not the most pleasent people in the world however there are better alternatives out there. Whether you are a Marxist, Anarchist, Enviromentalist or whatever i think you would be more effective in another group. The SWP are not growing, unpopular and are generally draging the left down.

gary224
e-mail: gary224@email.com

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

SWP member

09.08.2002 08:19

I want to respond to this. Its difficult because there is only one substantive criticism of the SWP in the whole slander. This is the reference to Chris Bambery dominating SWP politics. Where is the evidence? I know him. I talk to him from time to time. I think his analysis of the current situation is correct. He and I agree the 1990s and 2000s are reminiscent of the 1930s but in slow motion. There is a distinction between the terror of Bin Laden and the terror of Bush and Sharon. Anti-capitalism represents a political revival of the struggle which is slowly rebuilding the economic struggle - and is a fantastic opportunity for the Left. The importance of not being sectarian toward reformists etc (witness the Socialist Alliance, Stop The War Coalition, Campaign for Palestinian Rights, GR, Genoa, Scottish Socialist Party etc). The polarisation between far left and far right across Europe and the importance of the ANL here in preventing the BNP emerging like their French clones.
Dominating the party? If Chris suddenly came out and said something like “Yes to war” (and remember that some of the Left during the last gulf war and the Balkans DID say this) then we would be happy to kick him out and there would not be a damn thing he could do about it. Dominating the party? Come off it.
PS 4,000 members alone pay their party subs by direct deductions. What is this slander about only 2,500 members?

SWP member

more SWP bolloxxx

09.08.2002 10:30

I disagree with SWP member. Chris Bambery and the whole Central Committe completely dominate the politics of the SWP, what they say goes and also the CC has remained pretty much the same people for a long time. The problem with Marxist Leninist parties is that they are highly centralised and dont encourage people to be innovative and exercise political power by themselves. The SWP is obsessed with organisers, and I hav met many who are extremely authoritarian and who treat the rank and file like a boss treats their employees. I have seen members being told off by organisers and indeed Bambery himself, for not selling enough newspapers. Another obsession of the SWP is with membership lists, thus for example many ethnic minority communities and indeed working class communities in general do not like the way they parachute into their areas demanding that they be won over to the socialist cause. This fetish with organising people can be extremely patronising and the SWP really need to look at the reasons as to why people dont like them instead of being defensive about it claiming that they are wonderful.

Jamal

SWP

09.08.2002 11:33

I joined the SWP and found them to be really nice people, very friendly, very intelligent and at all 'middle class' as some people like to claim. I even got a letter printed in the Socialist Worker which gave me a sense of contributing to the discussion.

People are always having a go at the SWP's 'cover organisations', but at the weekend the ANL rallied 150 people to protest against the BNP meeting in Burnley, making the 30 Nazis that turned up feel like a helpless minority.

Whilst there are a lot of people who criticise the SWP, there are a lot of people that enjoy it, otherwise they wouldn't keep renewing their membership. The same can be said of any Party, so maybe the criticism should be at Partys in general.

Anyone I've only had good experiences in the SWP up until now, and I don't see any alternatives.

Marxist_Mike

Yes, all very well but...

09.08.2002 11:57

This argument between the SWP supporters and non-SWP supporters (including anarchists and other socialists) just goes on and on and on and on...

All this serves is to degrade the quality of the Indymedia service, I had a good article on what I thought of this and other nonsense on IMC-UK, but the powers that be decided otherwise, and so it can now only be found in the "hidden" section...

Thomas J
Homepage: http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38018&group=webcast

QUESTIONS on the SWP

09.08.2002 13:32

After going to Marxism and other meetings as well as reading SWP material i see the SWP being dominated by the following; Chris Bambery, Chris Harman, Lindsey German and Globalise resistance dominated by the man named Guy.

The questions i have are . . . are these people elected? How often are there elections? and does anyone oppose them?

The fact is they have more power than the average member. As a believer in Direct Democracy i find this discrascfully unequal and hierachical.

Now the truth. How many are in the SWP? Not including the SWSS members.

gary224
mail e-mail: gary224@email.com

SWP etc.

09.08.2002 20:24

In fact SWP, Central Committee members are elected.
Every year the SWP has a Party Conference open to every Party member.
At this conference the past years performances, and strategies are debated & discussed, and the challenges of the year ahead are discussed.
Then a Central Committee will be nominated to help implement this strategy. The Central Committee is accountable to members.

I don't know anything about Globalise Resistance though -
you'd have to ask Guy about it.

Antonius Cliffus Jnr.

Guy

09.08.2002 23:32

Guy is currently falsely claiming benefits while drawing a salary from GR. While I've no problem with cheating the system, I've got a problem with cheating activists. Guy is an arrogant SWP cadre creaming off the donations given by well-meaning anti-capitalists.

Antidote

I haven't much time...

09.08.2002 23:49

So, I'll simply say this. The 15,000 members of the SWP are not about to dissipate en masse into the "independent socialist movement". They joined because the way in which the party operates seems to make sense. I joined because I had the opportunity to have arguments with them on street sales. There is no reason why anyone on indymedia should hate the SWP, even if you don't agree with our politics. The fact that certain members seem to dominate party politics at a particular moment in time cannot take away from the fact that they have all been nominated and elected. Democratic procedures have led to their dominance. Guy Taylor, although I think his writing style naff, is an extremely good organiser. Chris Bambery, although he tends to shit the bed and blow his fucking lid at every speech, is a terrific speaker. Love them or loathe them, they deserve to be where they are, because they work hard for it.
The SWP wants to win as many people as possible to a Leninist political position. This won't please anarchists, but by all means let us have the debate. Silly sectarian sniping won't do.

lenin
mail e-mail: lenin138@yahoo.co.uk

whats the diffrence?

10.08.2002 17:54

Im sorry but what exactly IS the diffrence between Bush and Bin Laden?

caluff

Bang out of order

10.08.2002 22:49

Whoever put that stuff about Guy up is bang out of order....For a start it's bollox and should be removed by Indymedia under their policy of honest postings and secondly anyone who tries to openly dob in other people in the movement is scum in my book......

By the way though to claim 15,000 members is an absolute joke. I spoke to an honest SWP organiser the other day and he said active membership is about 1,500.....what's the point of throwing around ridiculous figures like the above?!

Lies, damned lies...

11.08.2002 13:00

The "honest" SWP member doesn't know what (s)he's talking about. SWP membership was hovering around 10,000 mark ever since the poll tax riots. It's been soaring in recent years. Granted, active membership is not the same as passive membership ... but what counts as an active member? Someone who attends every single meeting, every sale, every demo? Most members do something, even if it's only small. But 1,500 is a ridiculous lie. Anyone who's ever attended our annual Marxism event would know how stupid that is.

lenin
mail e-mail: lenin138@yahoo.co.uk

Do me a favour!

11.08.2002 16:55

This was an SWP organiser, not a member! But anyway everyone admitted that Marxism was smaller this year than in previous years, and it's usually quoted that a couple of thousand people usually attend......

Don't you think an organisation of 10,000 to 15,000 would be able to get more than under 2,000 people to their major event of the year?! And an organisation of 10,000-15,000 members would have huge contingents of national demos and this simply isn't the case with the SWP......

And your membership figures haven't been soaring, in fact the SWP hierarchy is a bit concerned at the moment that membership hasn't been growing.....

But anyway if you live in cloud cuckoo land and wanna think the SWP has got 10,000-15,000 then that's fine by me! Believe me the 1,500-2,000 is a much more accurate figure......

A membership of...

12.08.2002 16:57

...1,500-2,000 would make the SWP little more than a faction, surely? If that's the case, there's an awful lot of agonising on this platform about a faction!

If the SWP really is this small then...chill out, and stop whining on and on and on and on about it...

mantrastic

Unfair

02.05.2004 14:46

Whether you agree or disagree with the SWP, it's unfair to slag them off all the time. I joined the SWP after a number of bad experiences in smaller, more sectarian organisations (Communist Party of Britain and the Communist Party of Great Britain). The SWP is organised, without being authoritarian, democratic and highly motivated. You call for a demonstration against capitalism, imperialism, fascism, racism, sexism or homophobia tomorrow, and you can be sure half the turnout would be SWP, while most of the pillocks writing in to slag them off will stay at home. Grow up.

Nelson