ESF: A Tale of Two Plenary Disruptions - What's Going On with the SWP?

An evening plenary at the ESF gets closed down completely amid violent scenes and the SWP slightly criticise those responsible while blaming someone else. The next day an evening plenary get peacefully disrupted for 30 minutes and the SWP go mad on the recriminations.

Confused? Read on.....

So this is ok?

but this is an outrage?

On the Friday of the ESF 20 or so demonstrators stormed into the main plenary session and started a full scale punch up with the security and some of those in attendance.

Their problem it seems was that one of the speakers was from the Iraqi Communist Party who have constantly hedged their bets with both the puppet Alawi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority that preceded it. The session ended with Stop the War guru Lindsay German being booed and whistled off stage after trying to placate those demonstrating by agreeing with them.

Of course its just coincidence that the meeting was packed with SWP members who egged on the disrupters. It's also just coincidence that there was around 15 SWP core members (hacks) who were on hand to stop any trade unionists from confronting the disrupters by getting in their way and giving them a well rehearsed argument in favour of those demonstrating. Equally it’s just by chance that the offending Iraqi commies have recently been attacked in Socialist Worker and blamed for the failure of a Troops Out vote at the Labour Party conference. Finally it's just convenient that the disruption gave the opportunity for a long article slagging of the previously mentioned Iraqi reds in the next day's Socialist Worker. There was little or no condemnation of the violence or the perpetrators.

On the Saturday of the ESF around 200 demonstrators entered the main plenary to confront Labour Mayor Ken Livingston about the harassment they were getting from HIS Police who he is constantly moaning that he doesn’t have enough of. Ken was not there. Instead they were confronted by SWP robot Weyman Bennett who started a scuffle with them when a speech was made by volunteer from babels. That must have been embarrassing eh Weyman? Let’s get one think straight: The only attack from the anarchists was the overturning of the table (this is probably when the phone went missing, if it did at all). Weyman on the other hand was well up for a fight but did not get one because of the discipline of the demonstrators. HE DID NOT GET PUNCHED AS HE CLAIMS. So why is Weyman lying? Anyone involved in the campaign against the CJB and remembers Weyman in his previous incarnation can answer this question. Put simply, Weyman is a hack who would claim that his attackers wore white bed sheets and pointy hoods if the SWP central committee told him to.

The last time the SWP saw it's membership peak was in 1995/6. Since then, despite changing their core beliefs quicker that most people change their clothes they have been in total decline. They have recently had to sell off their printing press and are now forging alliances with people who believe that gays should be executed and women have no rights at all. Yet they are still willing to play the 'victim of racists' card when it suits them.

They may still be Britain's biggest Trot group but that's only by default. There has never been a better time to sling these hypocrites into the political dustbin and start a real revolutionary movement.

Dave Gremlin

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

The SWP Move In Very Myterious Ways

26.10.2004 00:02

Forget about the SWP organising to exclude groups from the ESF; the foolish and dishonest tactics of the SWP’s leadership; its lack of any programme or coherent strategy; its alienation of the rest of the left; its lack of any relationship with the working class that it claims to represent; etc.

Forget all of those, just take two of its most recent interventions: trying to be part of the anti-capitalist movement, and at the same time part of a liberal single issue party , RESPECT (that is, by the way, going nowhere) - they are contradictions that no party can maintain for very long; unless, to the comrades, the carrot is bribery and the stick is a gun.

Thankfully, we wont have to kiss goodbye to revolution and prepare for an SWP Stalinist holiday - there ways are on the way out, but, alas, its a long painful goodbye.

Just imagine how much better the London ESF and Autonomous Spaces, together, would have been without them.

??????

26.10.2004 08:50

why don't you clowns get a life and stop whining about the SWP all the time. When your alternative ESF came to buggar all you decided the best decision would be to go to the ESF, storm the stage of an anti-racism session and punch one of the speakers.

fraternal debate lives on!

M Python

Gormless Rant

26.10.2004 08:54

Dave Gremlin's gormless rant takes the biscuit prize for sectarianism gone mad. Dave needs to get out a bit more but I hope he and his masked mates will do better than to assault and rob other anti fascist activists next time.

Huw

methinks thou dost protest too much

26.10.2004 09:52

To be honest I don't buy this any more. If the SWP were really in terminal crisis, why would you feel the need to go ON and ON and ON and ON about them all the bloody time?

I'm no fan of the SWP but frankly I see no point in sitting on my arse slagging them off, I'd rather put my energy into the more difficult option of making an alternative.

(Also we really have to stop with these lazy stereotypes that all Muslims are misogynist homophobes, or we really will be guilty of the racism the SWaPpies like to imply.)

type

SWP Not the Enemy

26.10.2004 10:48

At no time was anyone stopped from getting involved in the ESF. What happened is a number of individuals have since Paris been against the ESF coming to London. When the decision was taken to hold the forum in London, these same individuals - and they know who they are - continued to rubbish the work undertaken.

The ESF in London was attended by 20,000+. I attended the ESF with a crowd of friends. We'd go off and do our own thing - then meet up again later. We all thought the ESF a success. The SWP should be congratulated for their involvement. Their not the enemy.

working class activist

the dark secret of the SWP

26.10.2004 11:27

it is well known that the SWP has a policy of "supporting labour without illusions", but it is little understood how far they would be prepared to go in order to do it, and, reprehensibly, try to enforce that policy on other socialist groupings.
a while ago , i was browsing through some old leftie paperbacks at random, when i found an old interview with tony cliff when he was was head of the international socialists, the forerunner of the SWP. the interview appears in an anthology edited by david widgery (erstwhile "OZ" editor) and published in 1976, entitled "The Left In BRitian", printed by Pergrine books. obviously in the early 1970s, much of said interview was taken up with observations about paris 1968, but then comrade cliff expands further on just how far he would be prepared to go to continue his policy. frankly, its SO shocking i couldnt believe what i read; i had to put the book down and make a photocopy. actually, i would like someone else to consult a copy he may have, and confirm the bizarre nature of what cliff says, because i dont want to say more without some backup...

sgdfuwb fhewjfbv

the whole world will be watching, some thoughts

26.10.2004 12:08

whilst the anti war movement is strong in britain the anti-capitalists is far weaker, we are not in the same scale as italy's "social forums" . the high points of the movement took place in june 1999"carnival against Capitalism" and on May Day 20000, both events made world new headlines. The success of the events depended largely on the element of surprise tactics, but the following year the state and the police were able to outmanoeure the protesters and temporarily stifle the expression of the movement.

repulsion against capitalism reains high, if we want next year to be our genoa it is extemely important that the british anti-capitalist movement is re-energised and gets its act together.

the swp did and continues to play a vital role in the anti-war movement,and i sure it wants the biggest turn out against the G8 summit . for fuck sake, why cant the swp and the autonmist work together against the G8. if they can work effectively inside the anti-war movement, perhaps you and the swp can work effectively against the G8 and perhaps revitalise the anti-capitalist movement, or would that not be the way forward?

red letter

Because we are worth it

27.10.2004 18:28

I don´t care about the SWP. Let them have their marxism today conference, their monoculture of placards, their opportunist slogans, their hierarchies, their proficiency in manipulation and power seeking, their simplistic worldview.
But as an appeal to the SWP supporters here: Tell your in the most unpleasant ways old-fashioned party to keep its dirty fingers off our spaces! This is a young and vibrant global movement, a movement that is courageously and sometimes exstatically re-inventing the best anarchist, socialist, cooperative traditions of previous movements. Old-fashioned we are in our celebration of virtual and geographic commons, in striving to organise in non-hierarchical ways, in sharing the resources we have, resources that are based in every single persons daily live and not in the funds of some party commitee. Our parties are raves, not marches, our politics are subverting the ruling forces with love and with rage. We don't need representatives and spokespeople to tell us and the world where to go - we are walking, and walking we ask questions. Questions about profit and sustainability, work and migration, surviving despite and beyond capitalism. We are talking to friends all over the world, making real connections, we don't need to affirm our national identities in the way last seen at the SWPs choice of British speakers during the European Social Forum.

Even when the SWP set out with all its resources to hijack the European Social Forum, a gathering that has a declared tradition not to involve traditional political parties, we managed to make the best of it, in a dozen alternative events, from the playful and poignant interventions of the lab of imaginative insurrection to the buzzing gathering beyond ESF.

Friends, let's stop wasting time on the SWP, lets focus on our positive energies. Because we are worth it.

hairdresser