ESF: A Tale of Two Plenary Disruptions - What's Going On with the SWP?
Dave Gremlin | 25.10.2004 18:05 | European Social Forum | Free Spaces | Globalisation | Repression | London
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.....
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 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.
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??????
26.10.2004 08:50
fraternal debate lives on!
M Python
Gormless Rant
26.10.2004 08:54
Huw
methinks thou dost protest too much
26.10.2004 09:52
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
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
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
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