BIRMINGHAM BIDS SAD FAREWELL TO COMRADE GRRR

Brummie sectarians have been shocked by the news that popular SWP full-timer Ger Francis has been moved out of the West Midlands by the SWP’s central committee.


Ger, (known affectionately as Grrrrr to many comrades) made a massive impact on the Birmingham left during his sadly all too short time in the city.


It seems a remarkable decision for the SWP to recall to base a man who not only set up one Stop the War Committee in the city but had a big hand in ensuring that two such organisations were eventually created. Is there another city in the UK that can boast that?


Grrr will be remembered fondly for the way in which he ensured that Islamic fundamentalists were made to feel welcome in the Stop the War group and for making sure there was no room for compromise with those pathetic atheists and leftist dissidents from Moslem countries, especially those who objected to the physical separating of men and women in anti-war meetings.


He was particularly brilliant at denouncing anyone who criticised his new found friends as “Islamophobic” and for the superb way in which he lectured exiled Palestinians about their mistakes.


Saturday shopping in Brum won’t be the same without the sight of Grrr, Socialist Worker strapped to his chest, running up to anyone of Arabic or Asian descent and urging them to give money to their “brothers and sisters in Palestine”. We are sure that if those who donated were to check with Grrr, all the cash will have gone straight to the Gaza strip to help projects for Palestinians. No doubt about that.


As well as being a brilliant fundraiser Grrr, was also a masterful strategist in street confrontations. Who will forget the way in which he urged local Asian youth standing near to a police line to ‘attack the state’ while simultaneously ensuring that SWP comrades were moved out of harms way? And how we laughed when in one scuffle orchestrated by Grrr, a baby fell out of a pram. What jolly japes and scrapes were had with Grrrr.


Grrr was also head of the local Globalise Resistance group (Grrr of the GR?) and active in a whole range of other SWP front groups. Indeed such was Grrrr’s commitment to ‘united fronts of a special type’ that many SWP members, including some with decades of membership of the party, were inspired to commit themselves totally to broad campaigns and actually quit the SWP.


Indeed the numbers of activists who have quit the SWP during Grrr’s time in charge in the West Midlands exposes the lie that Grrr was a sectarians shitbag. After all, his commitment to his own unique way of political activity resulted in the biggest exodus of members from his party seen in years.


Who says the SWP always put themselves first?