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Stop War Coalition says Labour MPs that voted for war are anti-war

Mendosa | 11.05.2003 15:23 | Anti-militarism | Repression

Posted on an antiwar list for direct action people.

I'm posting my resignation letter to the Stop the War Coalition Steering Committee for anyone whose interested.

I resigned a while ago and have had no reply to my letter - I don't expect it will be shown to anyone apart from the SWTC officers. The future strategy of the STWC is mapped out by the SWP's John Rees, a leading member of the STWC at  http://www.swp.org.uk/SR/274/SR1.HTM. The coalition aims to become a social democratic alliance run by the
SWP that ignores/fails to understand the growth of the global justice movement as anything other than a nieve, idealistic source of membership for a more mature, union-orientated organisation quickly created and dominated by the SWP (Rees says of the STWC that "Its precursor was the anti-globalisation movement"). The reality of who opposed the war (muslims, schoolkids, people from a variety of backgrounds) is replaced with a fantasy (unions) that
fits the formula. I had thought the SWP and their allies in STWC were serious about working with people involved in anti-capitalist groups that don't accept their dogmas but I didn't find that. You just get abuse with no hope of influencing anything. So I resigned.

I should maybe emphasise that I think the coalition has done an excellent job of organising big marches - but probably mistook riding a wave for being the wave. It's a problem sects have. Anyway...

29th April 2003

Dear officers,

At the last two meetings of the Stop the War Coalition Steering Committee I have been attacked for being "divisive" by the chair for voicing an opinion that he disagrees with. I am no longer prepared to be subjected to these unwarranted personal attacks – attacks which no one seems to think are at all out of order – and am
therefore resigning from the committee.

I was elected to this steering committee as a delegate for Sussex Action for Peace, a local anti-war group based in Brighton. I have attended all the meetings of the steering committee. I have never been emailed about these meetings despite frequent requests and assurances that I would be. I was given the wrong time for the last meeting. I get the distinct impression that I am one of the few, if not the only, delegate from a local group outside London, attending these meetings. But let that go.

At the meeting on 29th April John Rees of the Socialist Workers Party said that the coalition needed to "increase its social weight", something that was different from the number of people involved. He said that while Muslims helped and the support of the Daily Mirror helped ,trade unions were key to giving the coalition this "social weight".

John is entitled to his view. I don't agree with it. I kinda thought the point of coalitions was that people from different political viewpoints managed to discuss differences while working together for common aims. It's what my local group, which involves people from a wide range of viewpoints, does. Not this committee.

When I spoke I disagreed with John's view, which I believe idealises the labour movement and offers an inaccurate assessment of the forces that have, and will in the future, oppose the warmongers. I also pointed out - a fact well known to thousands of anti-war activists - that the coalition repeatedly downplayed or ignored demonstrations at RAF Fairford (no one had mentioned the massive
recent demonstration at Fairford until I did, 1½ hours into the meeting). Finally I objected to the fact that the STWC website  http://www.stopwar.org.uk/article.asp?id=180303 describes as `anti-war' 57 Labour MPs who did not oppose the government's motion to go to war but omits the names of 68 non-Labour MPs who did oppose the
government's motion.

I have no objection to people disagreeing with me - Lindsey German did, in a reasonable and reasoned way. That's democracy. What isn't acceptable to me is to have a chair who consistently abuses his position to attack me for voicing my opinions by, amongst other things, calling me "sectarian" and "divisive". Sectarian? – on behalf of whom? Divisive? - I have argued with many anti-war activists who believe the coalition is anti-direct action, pro-Labour and entirely dominated by the SWP that they should work with it because we achieve more together than apart.

I'll find it pretty hard to do that anymore. Congratulations on your success against "divisiveness".

Colin Chalmers
Sussex Action for Peace

Mendosa
- Homepage: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/article.asp?id=180303

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Depends

11.05.2003 16:58

What is missing from this statement is any insight into what anybody else on the committee thought? Were you alone in your opinions? Also I thought the chair was Andrew Murray who is not SWP but a Communist. Also I dont really get the significance of the MP reference, and surely none of the Fairford demos could reasonably described as 'massive'. Are you against the idea of Stw supporting the anti G8 demo and campaigning against the occupation in Iraq? What do you mean social democratic, as oposed to what? Also Unions have been key to all the major anti-global protests seattle, Genova, my union sponsored me to go to the later. Whay is your vision of how to proceed?

Dave


The Steering Committe Is Not The Coaliton

11.05.2003 18:11

The situation with Bristol-Stop-The-War, is that most people who regularly attend our events & meetings find the idea of the steering committee representing the coalition to be laughable.

My main concern is that they are attempting to position themselves in ways which actively damage the movement, such as their sidelining of Fairford by excluding it from advertising on the email database.

At the critical moment when the media initially declared the war over (as Saddam's statue was toppled), the eyewitness evidence from Fairford was of cluster bombs being loaded onto B52's, presumably to cluster bomb Tikrit out of sight of the media eye.

This was a moment when much could have been done to undermine the mainstream propaganda, but at this critical moment, with such valuable information to hand, the steering committee chose to continue ignoring Fairford. Why would they do this?

This suggests more than a tactical disagreement over the importance of Fairford, but a more active nobbling of the movement from the top-down. A form of nobbling which the secret services would be proud of.

With this in mind, I would suggest that people forget about the demarcation between the STWC & everyone else, & instead recognise that the STWC in fact remains a remarkably broad-based movement. It is primarily the bias of the steering committee which is the problem.

James Venables
(Bristol-Stop-The-War Communications)

To join our mailing list send a blank email to:
 bristol-stop-the-war-coalition-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

James Venables
- Homepage: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bristol-stop-the-war-coalition


a

11.05.2003 18:12

c

b


The authoritarian "Left" will never change...

11.05.2003 21:36

Just an advice Colin... You will see that mobilising against war and against capitalism, but in the same time away from parasites like SWP (SSP in scotland) and its front organisations like "Globalise Resistance", "Anti-Nazi League", "Stop the War Coalition" or "Coalition for Justine not War" or "... Coaliton ..." etc etc, will make the struggle more flexible, effective and autonomous.

This parasites of the left, who believe above all in a strong party, are trying to control any kind of human rights, anti-war and anti-capitalist movements in order to win votes and publicity. The so-called socialst MPs are sharing a part of the parliamentary power, if they were real socialists and revolutinaries, they would resign as soon as the western capitalist democracies declared a world wide dictatorship or as soon as the war on Iraq begun! But nothing like that happened, because they are not trying to stop any wars! They are wining votes when a war is launched and they know that stopping a war will take more than just walking in circles... it will take to stop or harm the mass production... so they prefer to use people, groups, movements in order to maintain their political power.

It's unfortunate that some people are believing their bullshit and they are joining them... As Colin says:

"I have argued with many anti-war activists who believe the coalition is anti-direct action, pro-Labour and entirely dominated by the SWP that they should work with it because we achieve more together than apart."

"we achieve more together than apart" way of thinking is very honest and right, but when you deal with parasites as the SWP, you will find yourself backstabbed for sure!

In Scotland they failure of the anti-war movement is clearly seen in the voting percentages the SSP gained... SSP's campaign was very cheap indeed... as the local coalitions prepared the marches and meetings their inflitrators arranged for SSP MPs and speakers to be present! Their slogan: "VOTE FOR THE ANTI-WAR PARTY!"... but no war ends by voting... When groups, which are not involved with the "Coalition", are arranging local direct actions, the local "Coaltions" doesn't support them as they are usually controalled by "socialists".

They managed to infiltrate and control the anti-war movement excactly in the way they had planned it a year ago. See the Leaked SWP Internal Memo, dating 13/10/2001:
 http://www.ainfos.ca/01/oct/ainfos00242.html

Anyway, we have to know better our enemies and friends in the future!

==================================================================================

Further proofs on the parasitic and authoritarian nature of SWP:

 http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=5952

 http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/leninism/authoratarians.html

 http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=5935

 http://www.schnews.co.uk/monopresist/monopoliseresistance/index.htm

@nonymous


sorry but I don't get it

13.05.2003 10:14

Having read your article I'm still none the wiser.. Why did you quit? What was it that happened? As far as I read it, John Rees said something at some point involving the word 'sectarian'. There must be more to it than that, you can't surely be so precious as to walk off the national committee of the biggest ever anti-war coalition because someone uses a word you don't like?

kurious


Unions must break from Labour

13.05.2003 14:52

Read the article by the SWP that Colin refers to. In it i found a number of things that i think the SWP constantly fail to realise:

Firstly it exagerates the number of people on the February 15th March, saying it was 2 million - no one really believes it was 2 million, over a million is a generally agreed figure, possibly 1.5 million, but to round it up to 2 million for the sake of it is typical of the SWP. While the police always undercount demos, the SWP always overcount.

The article also makes the claim "The Stop the War Coalition has organised the largest (15 February), the second largest (22 March) and the third largest (28 September 2002) left wing demonstrations in British political history." Who said they were left wing demos? Yes left wingers were a large portion of the anti-war movement, but to say the demo on Feb 15th was left wing is a stretching the truth. It was a mass movement of all political persuasions, don't try and claim it for your own.

More importantly though the SWP still seems to believe that the Unions are the most important part of the anti-war movement, well my experience in Brighton showed them to be useless. On the day war broke out they had a lunch time rally with boring lefty speakers, which the schoolkids (who without union representation had bunked off school in massive numbers)rightfully hijacked and went on a wander around Brighton town centre shutting it down all afternoon. Also Unison had called for all council workers to walk out at 4pm! Ooh wow, take an hour off work that'll show Tony! If they were serious about stopping the war the unions would have called a general strike on the day of the war. (It must be said that a lot of workers did take the day off work by phoning in sick).

The SWP said that had the Conservatives been in power then the demos would have been bigger. True but it is the stupid notion of the trade unions that Labour is a socialist party that prevented the demos being bigger. WAKE UP UNIONS - LABOUR IS A NEO-LIBERAL FREE TRADE GEORGE W COCK SUCKING CAPITALIST PARTY. Until the Unions break from Labour then there is no hope for any serious union opposition the the ongoing son-of-Thatcher project.

If the SWP want to do something useful then they should use their influence in the Unions to get all Unions to break from the Labour party.

Unaligned


Sigh...

13.05.2003 15:49

"This parasites of the left, who believe above all in a strong party, are trying to control any kind of human rights, anti-war and anti-capitalist movements in order to win votes and publicity. The so-called socialst MPs are sharing a part of the parliamentary power, if they were real socialists and revolutinaries, they would resign as soon as the western capitalist democracies declared a world wide dictatorship or as soon as the war on Iraq begun!"

Dude - read Tony Benn. He is a quality left-winger who spent roughly 50 years in Parliament because he wanted to represent his constituents accurately and fairly which he felt no other candidate could do. Do you think he should have resigned every time he disagreed with parliamentary policy and forced his constituency to have less than adequate representation, or was he better placed where he was?

Also Coaliton for Justice and Peace was not a movement which the SWP were involved in. The SWP threw their lot in with STW as I'm sure you are well aware. I'm sure they'd be very upset to be misrepresented.

Also, a point which always needs to be rehashed is that the SWP does not control organisations like STW. Sure, because they're a big group they tend to make the majority - but surely if they can add to the size of a movement then that's a good thing. And if you think they are dominating the movement then why don't you and your friends agree to stand for lots of the posts that need filling? That way you could easily get your say. But if you don't get involved then you can't complain when things don't happen quite as you'd like them to, can you?

Caroline


nice idea

13.05.2003 16:13

'if you don't get involved then you can't complain'

Ah Caroline, if only that were true! ;-)


Also, can I suggest to 'Unaligned' that you seem to overestimate the degree of influence/control the SWP have in the unions. Unions are democratic (ish) organisations with millions of members; the SWP argue the case for breaking with Labour but they can't just give orders!

kurious


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