More allegations of rape cover up in the SWP
Mark | 16.03.2013 14:07
I won't link to the Daily Mail as I hate that paper but if you look they have done another article on the SWP and their alleged cover up of rapes.
The Mail has picked up on what many comrades have known for a long time that allegations of sexual assaults within the SWP will always be brushed under the carpet.
The final straw for me was when a rape allegation by a female comrade was referred to as a disciplinary matter.
Now more allegations of sexual assaults which I don't doubt will not be doubt with.
The most sickening thing about the committee who cleared you know who of rape with their Victorian questioning of the the young comrade was was sexually assaulted.
Was that one of them is a rape counsellor in Sheffield.
Words cannot express my regret at ever being involved in the SWP cult.
The Mail has picked up on what many comrades have known for a long time that allegations of sexual assaults within the SWP will always be brushed under the carpet.
The final straw for me was when a rape allegation by a female comrade was referred to as a disciplinary matter.
Now more allegations of sexual assaults which I don't doubt will not be doubt with.
The most sickening thing about the committee who cleared you know who of rape with their Victorian questioning of the the young comrade was was sexually assaulted.
Was that one of them is a rape counsellor in Sheffield.
Words cannot express my regret at ever being involved in the SWP cult.
Mark
Comments
Hide the following 18 comments
Troll Lies
16.03.2013 19:01
This article is clearly designed to try and discredit the SWP by state employed agent provocateurs
troll watcher
Trolls?
16.03.2013 19:53
Out them
Ridiculous twisted logic
16.03.2013 20:41
What would you have preferred, that the SWP hand the case to a police force who are bitter enemies of the "defendant" in this case, the same police force who covered-up for their friend Jimmy Savile, and the same police force who are widely reported to routinely ask rape victims to go away and shut up? Or would you prefer that the SWP appoint an investigator whose professional experience lay in the field of installing cable TV systems, librarianship or unblocking drains for instance? If the alleged victims aren't happy with their treatment they still have the option of going to the police.
Receipts
uh?
16.03.2013 20:44
Got any evidence of that?
laracroft
lol socialists!
16.03.2013 20:49
talk about a kangaroo court - what a joke.
leave it to the police next time
smash swp
If there's one thing that's worse than the SWP
16.03.2013 21:00
99%
Why the police covered up for rapist and paedophile Jimmy Savile
16.03.2013 21:11
In other words Savile knew so much dirt on the police that if they pursued him for sexually abusing children he'd expose all the dirt he knew about the police. Elsewhere Savile described running what's been called a "Breakfast Club" with senior police
Evidence
Rape victim pressured by cops to drop claim against man
16.03.2013 21:20
Lin
Who the Mail are really using this case to slander
16.03.2013 21:54
Daily Mail proprietor Viscount Rothermere 1st Baron Harmsworth with Adolf Hitler
And it just so happens the person the Mail are really using this case to slander is Candy Udwin - who the Mail describe as the "daughter of an eminent psychiatrist", rather than pointing out she just happens to be a leading campaigner against the Tory policy of privatising the NHS.... coincidence?
Here's how The Daily Mail smeared 26 March 2011 protestors and the Dale Farm campaign -
The Mail also waged a relentless & vicious smear campaign against OSLX
_____1
How many SWP trolls?
17.03.2013 08:42
Laughing at SWP spin monkeys!
Here's the article, read it and use your own judgement
17.03.2013 08:54
Previous allegation of rape against senior member heard in 'kangaroo court'
SWP leadership survived unprecedented motion of no confidence last week
Claims party's 'disputes committee' heard nine separate allegations of rape
Another alleged victim who quit party has come forward with her testimony
SWP 'strongly contests' account and said they took 'prompt action'
The SWP also insists there have only been two such cases investigated
Earlier this week, Ciara Squires, a student at Queen Mary, University of London, and a hitherto enthusiastic member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), posted this message on Twitter: ‘I’ve left the SWP but in absolute tears. So absolutely gutted. Gonna drink wine till I don’t care about anything.’
Behind her emotional and very public admission is a deepening scandal that is threatening to engulf Britain’s largest far-Left organisation, which prides itself on its promotion of women’s rights.
The scandal first came to light earlier this year and involved an allegation of rape against a senior figure in the party by a junior colleague.
Instead of calling in the police, the party set up what can only be described as a kangaroo court, comprised mainly of the alleged attacker’s friends, to investigate the complaint, and effectively act as judge and jury.
The spurious justification for this charade was that the SWP did not recognise Britain’s ‘bourgeois’ system of justice. That’s the law of the land, to you and me. The official in question, a middle-aged, full-time activist, who has a long-term partner, was subsequently exonerated.
The girl, on the other hand, just 17 when she began a relationship with the veteran party apparatchik, and just 19 when she claims she was assaulted, was subjected to embarrassing questions about her sexual history and made to feel like a ‘slut who asked for it’, to quote someone who knows her. Precisely the kind of behaviour the SWP has frequently accused the State of.
Friends say the young woman, who we will call Miss X, and who made a formal complaint to the party hierarchy in September of last year, has been left traumatised by the process. Apart from anything else, her anonymity has been compromised. Her accusation has been so widely discussed and debated because of the way it was handled that many in the party know who she is.
Those are the brief, shameful facts the Mail exposed in a report back in February. Since then, we can reveal, female members of the SWP, such as Ciara Squires, have been leaving the party in droves. Many attended an ‘emergency’ conference at Hammersmith Town Hall last weekend where the SWP leadership survived an unprecedented motion of no confidence by 483 votes to 133. Critics furiously branded the result a ‘whitewash’.
They say that had all the estimated 1,000 or so party members been allowed to participate, under the time-honoured principle of ‘one person, one vote’, the leadership would have been forced to resign en masse. But then the central committee, the Soviet-style ruling body of the SWP, was never going to let that happen.
It was a Pyrrhic victory in any event; the party is now haemorrhaging support and is said to be on the brink of collapse.
Many other women, aside from Miss Squires, appeared visibly upset when they left Hammersmith Town Hall late on Sunday afternoon. Some, eyes to the ground, looked close to tears as they went silently on their way. Their party, after all, has always professed to champion the cause of feminism. The sense of betrayal was palpable — and today the full extent of that betrayal can be laid bare.
For, according to a former veteran party member of 18 years standing, the SWP’s internal court — otherwise known as the disputes committee — has been convened on no fewer than nine separate occasions to investigate allegations of rape against nine different men in the party.
Yes, that’s right. Nine occasions where amateur justice has been dispensed in circumstances that could hardly be more controversial. The SWP vehemently denies the fact — but you can judge the veracity of that denial when you have finished reading what follows.
What is beyond all reasonable doubt is that Miss X is not the only woman to have found, to her dismay, that the party insists on playing judge and jury when its male activists are accused of raping their colleagues.
Another alleged victim came forward on the eve of Sunday’s emergency conference. We shall call her Susan. Her testimony, which has striking similarities to the account of Miss X has been posted on the internet.
Susan was a student in Sheffield and a committed member of the SWP until, she claims, a senior party organiser pressured her into meeting him and then raped her in a bedroom in 2011.
She felt that if she’d gone to the police, she would have been expelled from the party. ‘If you go to the police you get kicked out automatically,’ she wrote.
The SWP insists that women such as Susan choose not to go to the police: again, judge the truth for yourself. Susan decided to quit the party of her own volition anyway, but was persuaded by a party official to take her allegations to the disputes committee, the mechanism for resolving routine grievances and disciplinary matters in the party ranks. Up to eight senior SWP officials can sit on the committee.
Many of them are women, including Amy Leather, 37, from Manchester, a regular contributor to the Socialist Worker newspaper who was involved in the protest camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, and Candy Udwin, 58, daughter of an eminent psychiatrist.
Writing about giving evidence to the committee, Susan says: ‘They asked me had you been drinking? Are you sure that you said no, and are you sure you didn’t consent? Was he drunk? Because it would be different if he was drunk.’
She says she was also interrogated about her previous sexual history.
During the hearing, two other women made allegations against the same official, who is in his 20s, including claims of attempted rape and sexual impropriety.
Later that same afternoon, Susan was called back and given the verdict. The committee did not rule on the truth of the rape allegation, she said — instead they just ordered her to shut up about it.
‘They said, if you go around calling him a rapist, you’ll be in trouble. If you tell anyone, you’ll be in trouble. They didn’t elaborate. They’re not the kind of people to get on the wrong side of.’ Why has she chosen to speak out now? ‘I want people to know it’s a systemic thing,’ she explained. ‘They’ve done this a few times, covered things up in the interests of the party, and it’s a dangerous environment to be in.’
The man she accused of raping her, meanwhile, is understood to have been suspended from the party for two years for sexist and improper behaviour. He has apparently been encouraged to read up on women’s liberation as part of his rehabilitation.
His reading list is said to include the works of Lindsey German, a former Mayor of London candidate, and author of Material Girls: Women, Men And Work. Presumably, he will be eligible to return to the fold once he has completed his rehabilitation. Could anyone, if tasked, come up with a better way of trivialising rape?
Responding to the allegations, Charlie Kimber, the party’s national secretary, said: ‘The SWP strongly contests major elements of this account of the disputes committee hearing. The woman brought serious accusations to our attention, we investigated, found against the accused and took prompt action. Those are the facts of the case.’
When asked to elaborate on exactly which ‘elements’ of her account were wrong, he declined to do so.
We have also learned of a third alleged rape case in London, which went before the disputes committee and resulted in the accused — a party member also in his 20s — being expelled from the SWP. How many others are there? Linda Rodgers, a shop steward at Scottish Women’s Aid in Edinburgh, an organisation that supports victims of domestic abuse, answers that question in a blog on a Left-wing internet forum.
She says the disputes committee, or DC, ‘has investigated nine rapes in the past . . . I believe this is put forward to reassure comrades of the competency of the DC. I don’t find it reassuring in the slightest; in fact I find it terrifying.’
She is in a position to know. Miss Rodgers was a member of the SWP for nearly two decades before becoming disillusioned with the party over the rape scandal; she is now believed to have resigned.
In a stinging memo to the central committee of the SWP back in January, which has also been posted online, she wrote: ‘Would the DC [disputes committee] have investigated murder?
‘I would guess not, but then what does that say about the level of seriousness with which the CC [central committee] and DC treat rape?’
The SWP insists there have been only two such cases.
But we have already highlighted three in this article, so you must decide who to believe: The Socialist Workers Party, or Linda Rodgers, a woman who has spent her life helping abused women.
And whatever the actual figure, the fact that any woman alleging rape could be subjected to the vagaries of a kangaroo court in 21st-century Britain is surely deeply disturbing.
In the words of Miss Rodgers, referring to the case of Miss X: ‘The shambolic playing at investigator, judge and jury held a real risk of ruining someone’s life, and it is no thanks to the leadership of the SWP and only testimony to the woman’s strength if it hasn’t.’
More revelations about the case of Miss X — who was, remember, just 17 when she encountered her alleged attacker — emerged this week
They are documented, point by disturbing point, in a ‘pre-conference bulletin’ compiled by party members opposed to the current leadership.
‘In this case, the comrade making the complaint was kept waiting for four hours before she was called to the DC [disputes committee] to give evidence. This added stress made it harder to put her side of the case.
‘In this case, the DC made a one-sentence decision — that the allegation of rape was unproven — with no further explanation. As might have been expected, the comrade who had made the accusation was extremely distressed.
‘The DC took a full two weeks to provide a statement. Yet the DC’s statement did not explain why it did not accept her account, or why it failed to make any criticism at all of the male comrade’s behaviour.
‘In this case, the comrade against whom the complaint was made broke discipline. The CC [central committee] had instructed him to give up his normal party activities, but he spoke in a public meeting and travelled to the city where the comrade making the complaint lived in the week before the hearing, which she and her witnesses found intimidating.
‘Both incidents were raised with the DC and the CC, and both bodies confirmed that these matters would be dealt with, yet it seems that no action has been taken.’
To quote Charlie Kimber, the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, ‘those are the facts of the case’. And, Comrade Kimber, they make for shameful reading.
Source:
!
Trolling again.
17.03.2013 09:59
The Daily Mail frequently makes things up or simply invents stories to sell papers. Everybody knows this so why is this garbage being reprinted here?
Also, the SWP is a hierarchy political body which IMC does not support...read our mission statement, its pretty clear that disseminating the political agenda of the SWP and the commercial agenda of the Daily Mail is not really what we do here.
This article should be removed.
anonymous
The article reproduced from the Daily Mail is in context
17.03.2013 10:18
Interested
Sounds like the Church of Scientology
17.03.2013 11:28
Woman should of just left the SWP and gone to the police and get the guy put in a proper court of law. Kicked out of the party if talking to the police?! Sums it up to me.
So if i get burgled, or mugged, or someone trys to kill me, then I'm not allowed to talk to the police according to SWP policy????! wank*ers
not swp
Smear Campaign
17.03.2013 12:28
Fact is the Mail published their smear against Candy Udwin on the same day thousands of people marched against massive cuts at the Whittington Hospital in North London - that's not a coincidence
"Laughing at SWP spin monkeys!" thinks (wrongly) that critics of this smear campaign must all be SWP supporters but hasn't even attempted to deal with the points raised in this actual debate... QED
I'm not an "SWP spin monkey", I'm a life-long Anarchist who's grown sick unto the back teeth of the constant bollocks spouted on Indymedia by some Anarchists
For the record I totally agree the SWP are a "dangerous cult", the Anarchist "movement" however is another cult, that's only dangerous insofar as it allows itself to be used as a minor pawn of the right-wing media etc
1973
did someone mention healy
17.03.2013 15:26
The CC has ultimate power in their party, including the ability to intimidate its members away from going to the police. And that ultimate power has gone to their heads. Why be surprised to learn that, again and again, that ultimate power has gone to their dicks as well?
not impressed by Martin Smith
Just not true
17.03.2013 17:56
Hmmmm
You can run, but you can't hide
21.03.2013 13:23
"A serious allegation is referred to the Disputes Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, my party, to investigate. The Disputes Committee is composed largely of individuals who know the accused. The Disputes Committee asks the person making the allegations a series of completely inappropriate questions that, had they been asked of someone making such allegations in a police station, we would rightly denounce them as sexist. Another comrade makes a related allegation against the same accused, and submits a statement. The committee subjects this comrade to similar treatment. The committee reaches a verdict of 'not proven'. The conference of the party is then lied to about the nature of the allegations. The Central Committee and the Disputes Committee collude in a cover-up. They suppress it. This is already a disgrace.
But word does get around. People begin to hear what has happened, and are outraged. They begin to hear of senior party members spreading the most disgusting rumours about the two women involved. Many members, especially young members, begin to kick off about it. It becomes clear that this will be an issue in the party conference of 2013. So, there is a preemptive strike against four members for participating in a Facebook thread discussing the case, which is alleged - on the basis of selective excerpts - to be evidence of 'secret factionalising', which is prohibited. The expulsion is enacted immediately, with no due process, no disciplinary hearing. The four comrades are expelled by email. This is totally at odds with the party's usual procedures. It is a clear bureaucratic manoeuvre to stymy the upsurge. But it produces a revolt."
Revolting indeed. If Richard Seymour is lying, if published transcripts are false, if the young women accusing a senior member were not asked "completely inappropriate questions" and smeared, the SWP has had every opportunity to correct the record.
Just consider the gross hypocrisy of this "anti-capitalist" party and its feigned contempt for bourgeois 'justice': when Julian Assange was similarly accused, the SWP demanded he face rape charges in a bourgeois court in the knowledge that the US already has his place reserved in those special dark corners kept for deemed enemies of the 'War of Terror'. Now, we do not know if Comrade Delta has yet taken Holy Orders but the SWP leadership demonstrably believes in its entitlement to something akin to medieval 'benefit of clergy' so-called because clergymen could only be tried by other clergymen who would understand. So while the bourgeois court is good enough for Assange, Delta is heard by his mates on the DC.
SWP: if you're going to disdain bourgeois justice, you had better have something better to put in its place.
At least then you might not get laughed out of court.
Khan