SWP IS NOT A REGISTERED POLITICAL PARTY

PETER GEORGE WAKEHAM | 22.02.2005 08:15 | Analysis | World

Many people on this website refer to the SWP as a "party",
they are not! After looking up the political party register
the SWP is not listed. So if people could refer to SWP as disruptive faction that destroys anti-war groups and other radical initiatives we will be nearer the truth about SWP

SWP NOT a registered political party

You probably know this already, but when I did some doing some research on SWP I found it's a FRAUD.

SWP is not listed as a political party. It looks as though it is trying to get into power through the back door.

Anyone else has to register their party, have a constitution etc.. Looks as SWP is doing it by taking over RESPECT meetings and getting control via putting its members into the various executive positions !!!

I assumed that SWP was actually a party in its own right, but obviously got it wrong.

Now I know why they don't field candidates in an election.. They can't. It's easier for them to infiltrate. They will have much more influence that way cause they would never get any votes if they were in the open.

Yours truly

Peter

PETER GEORGE WAKEHAM
e-mail: kittyplant@btinternet.com
Homepage: http://www.spread-the-word.co.uk (to be set up by Friday 24 Feb 2005)

Comments

Hide the following 17 comments

party party party

22.02.2005 10:23

Don't want to burst your excited bubble sir, but this is not really that unusual. The official register of political parties exists for the purposes of election law. Parties only have to register if they want to run candidates in elections.

Trot-style parties like the SWP, and indeed other small ideological parties of the far left and far right, tend not to run in elections and so don't bother registering.

Respect runs candidates (indeed they have an MP and several Councillors) so of course they are registered.

Mind you 'the SWP doesn't really exist' is a fine quality conspiracy theory, if I've missed the point and this is satire then I doff my cap!

Mr Spoon

whats your point?

22.02.2005 10:40

What´s your point? Do you think parties can only exist if they follow goverment orders?
I don´t see any problem of revolutionary parties which has shape antiwar and anticapitalist movement. I think that SWP has been important backbone of british antiwar-movement. Every other revolutionary parties and anarcho/autonomous groups should be also that active and just don´t blame others.

Serge

Serge

Peter again?

22.02.2005 10:41

It's Peter Wakeham again!

Seriously people - why so much time and effort directed at dissing the SWP? Don't you think that maybe it's about time to get out of the playground and take politics a little more seriously than continued spats online?

nevermind
maybe one day we might defeat capitalism, but not while all we have is playground talk.

Not Peter Wakeham

You might find it registered

22.02.2005 10:53

Under the Labour Party..... coz essentially they're both one and the same

anti-swp

We need the SWP like a hole-in-the-head

22.02.2005 12:10

Yes, The SWP put major effort into the anti-war movement. Detractors say "they diluted it and rendered it ineffective". Those on the fence may say "they have one eye on radical politics and the other on keeping in with the feelings of civil society - eg the Daily Mirror readership."

I say: Bollox to that. Yes, the SWP is severely dodgy, block genuine radical initiatives, get jobs 2/3rds done and then fuck them up. Too many cases in point to mention. One example, blocking votes at the Respect Conference at end of October last year, and of course, the organisation of the ESf last year.

One link:

http://cpgb.org.uk/worker/564/swpamnesia.htm

Arty Swashbuckle

swp must be registered

22.02.2005 12:14

in 1979, paul foot stood as a swp candidate in birmingham. so i think u will find that it is registered. but eh ,who gives a flying fuck anyway?????????

The anti-war movement wanted to leave Saddam in power!

22.02.2005 12:40

Why support the anti-war movement when the anti-war movement wanted to leave Saddam Husseins evil, brutal, genocidal regime in power.

During the 24 years that Saddam was in power nearly 3 million Iraqi people were forced to flee their country as refugees.
300,000 people were murdered and their bodies dumped in mass graves.
Saddams' army fired on planes patroling the northern and southern no fly zones every day for 12 years set up to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shia muslims in the south from genocide.
Imprisoned and horrifically tortured hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.

The anti-war movement was niave and stupid and foolish in the extreme. No one wanted war least of all Tony Blair who needed a war like a hole in the head, but he was wise enough to understand the threat posed by such an evil and ghastly regime!

Micheal

Re: one and the same

22.02.2005 12:47

Yeah, that's right. The right wing neo-liberal NEW LABOUR party = the trotskyist SWP.

Are you saying you don't like Labour because it's too left wing for you? What planet are you living on?

Or are you suggesting that SWP is bad because it sometimes advocates voting Labour. The SWP only advocates voting labour when there's a marginal seat, in order to keep the tories out because they see that as a lesser evil.

They are NOT doing it because they believe in labour's policiyes.

That's called PRAGMATISM. You don't have to agree with it but you can at least recognise it - it's not too hard to get your head around.

Does SWP only ever wreck anti-war efforts? No, it might undemocratically take them over because it doesn't have the patience to let less experienced activists learn for themselves how to organise. There are sound reasons to severely criticise this tactic. But it's incredibly one-sided to deny that SWP activists have also played many positive roles in building the anti-war movement.

And no I'm not SWP, anarchism's closest to where I'm at but what I try to be is a non-sectarian anticapitalist. Sectarianism is the movement's biggest problem, not the SWP. Let's all work together despite our ideological differences. The moment we get out of the playground (as a previous poster described it) and start to unite against the system, is the moment the people who run the system will get scared, and then we'll know we're winning.

Ozymandias

PS

22.02.2005 12:49

And BTW, who gives a f*** if the SWP aren't registered with the government. Does anyone here seriously recognise the legitimacy of the government's authority? So should we care if the SWP are down on the official government list of officially registered political parties?

Some People obviously don't have enough to do...

22.02.2005 13:10

Some people obviously have too much time on their hands if this is all they can be bothered to do all day.Who would have thought there is a war in Iraq and another one pending in Iran and Syria? Still, not as important as the SWP taking over the world. This and a couple of recent posts strike me as a case of sore losers. Peter is doing a sulk cos he lost at the Respect meeting the other night, whilst the CPGB are still moaning cos nobody voted for their ultra-left positions at the Respect conference. Not the greatest supporter of the SWP, but at least they have a coherent world view. Suggest Peter goes back to trying to prove there is life after death and that strange chappie from the CPGB goes back to his other 25 friends and learns to relate to people in the real world.

Interesting link

http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.org/activistism.htm

Bored with this pointless crap

Any1 else sick of hearing Bull?

22.02.2005 14:43

Ok so when Iraq attacked Iran He was our friend, we gave him weapons, we met with him shook his hand and posed for the cameras, but when he invades Kuwait he suddenly becomes a monster. But wait a minute i can think of more...

When the Taliban fight the Soviet Union they are our friends, they are funded by the U.S govt until 11th of Sept 2001 even though the U.S govt knows they are harbouring their no1 wanted terrorist (Bill) But after the 11th of Sept they become a violent oppressive regime who harbours terrorists.

Israel on the other hand has violated 65 UN resolutions from 1955-92 not counting the ones after this period. Has slaughtered thousands upon thousands of palestinians, civilians refugees etc, has left millions of htem homeless, and has persued its policy of invading more land while building an apartheit wall separating palestinian families from eachother.
But they're not a repressive regime, neither is Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait, or China. They are friends of democracy because the US says so. No one from the anti war front wanted Saddam to remain in power (though now iraq is replaced by another dictatorship) but the issue here was far greater, it was about trying to stop the great powers from doing as they please when they please just fto persue their interests. Its people like you who dont see the bigger picture, only what is shown on BBC

Micheal knows jack

Ozymandias

22.02.2005 14:52

Pragmatism is to aknowledge that you are faced with 2 murderers but allign yourself with the one htat claims to be more of a left wing murderer and thus soiling your hands with blood aswell. Lets not forget labour took britain into yugoslavia afghanistan and iraq but of course instead of seeing this and saying right we want nothing to do with this filth, the SWP says we urge you to vote labour and keep the conservatives out. I still remember what took place at the Beyond ESF protests last yr when the SWP collaborated with the pigs in order to ge ta few arrests of innocent protesters.

SWP=LABOUR=CONSERVATIVES, Lib dems are catching up with them fast.

Katastrofeas

fall about laughing

22.02.2005 16:57

I had to fall about laughing when i read the above article.The author should get out a bit more and get involved in the real world...get stuck in young man!!!
col

col

Killing rates in Iraq increase by 800%

23.02.2005 09:56

Iraqi death rate increases - application/msword 21K

KILLING RATES IN IRAQ

To the guy who said “The anti-war movement wanted to leave Saddam in power!” I would like you to think for just a moment.

I do not recollect ANY anti-war group having this as an aim.
As far as WAR IN IRAQ was concerned 2 million uk people didn’t think it was the best way of dealing with it. They were not Saddam Supporters but opposed unilateral action by the USA-UK

Perhaps they could see a greater disaster unfolding

I do not see any supporters of Saddam in the movements.

Lets take your facts as accurate for a moment.

SADDAM KILLING RATE
Under Saddam the rate of killing of Iraqis was 300.000 in 24 years which works out at 12,500 per year.

SADDAM KILLING RATE= 12,500 per year

USA KILLING RATE:
Estimates now put this at in excess of 100,000 over the last year

USA KILLING RATE= 100.000 per year

This is an 8 fold increase

IRAQI KILLING RATE INCREASES BY 800% UNDER THE USA

Judge for yourself who was correct. Has there been an improvement ?

Ask an Iraqi if he is he better off now.

In retrospect, perhaps it would have been easier to take a legal route.

With out exception , none of the people that I know that supported the anti-war movements supported Saddam. They just wanted to stay within International Law.

So please don't assume that because someone is against war in Iraq they support Saddam (or anyone else for that matter).

Eric Prendergast

LUTON, Bedfordshire, UK

Reply to

eric@lutonrespect.co.uk

Eric Prendergast
mail e-mail: eric@lutonrespect.co.uk
Homepage: http://lutonrespect.co.uk

all this is relevant to anyone who cares about the anti-war "movement"

23.02.2005 13:03

even though 2 million of us marched in london before the iraq war, it still went ahead with little or no political cost to blair. many people blame the movement's "leadership" for this (SWP had well and truly hijacked STW by this point, and it was certainly no longer a "coalition"), partly because they predictably were more interested in gaining personal political power (through a supposed peace party, "respect") than actually stopping the war. for example, if they had gone to the unions with a popular plan for general strikes, instead of a begging bowl, the UK might've been forced to put its contingency plans for withdrawal into practice, which could've stopped the war. instead they went for personal power and let the 2 million dwindle down to nothing. do we really want these people "leading" us to failure against the next war? the above information on the status of their various front organisations (with their orwellian names: respect? coalition? party?) is most revealling.

peacenik

StW can't just hand out orders

24.02.2005 11:03

No offence intended, but I don't think that's a very realistic analysis.

We need a sense of scale. Trade Unions are massive organisations with millions of members, very few of whom see themselves as revolutionary or even especially radical. Historically it's been very tough to win their support for anti-war movements, the last time really was Suez in the 1950s.

From that perspective the Stop the War Coalition is an impressive achievement. Formed initially by the (relatively tiny) SWP and Communist Party, the Coalition rapidly won the support of much bigger groups including the left of Labour, the Greens and most of the Unions. They also made the courageous and correct call not to pander to anti-Muslim prejudice and to work with the Muslim Association of Britain and the tens of thousands they helped mobilise. And they allowed the Lib Dems and the Mirror to jump on board once the anti-war wind started blowing.

The upshot? The biggest anti-war protests EVER. Orders of magnitude bigger than any anti-Vietnam protests.

Of course the trouble is they didn't stop the war. But face facts, no anti-war movement has ever stopped a war before it started. Nonetheless the protests here and round the world did change the political landscape, many thousands if not millions have come to question the world order and that will have many and unpredictable long-term consequences.

I know it's tempting to endlessly bash Stop the War and of course everyone loves moaning about the SWP. But it doesn't really get us anywhere. We need to look at reality and to discuss seriously what we think should be done.

type

hmph yeah right

24.02.2005 11:07

SWP (8,000,000 members): "Yessir, at once sir!"

Meanwhile back in the real world...

;-)