SWP: criticise, don’t “no platform”

Submitted by Matthew on 10 April, 2013 - 10:51

Solidarity has criticised the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) on its handling of allegations of sexual harassment and then of rape brought by a young woman member of the SWP against leading SWP organiser Martin Smith.

The SWP leadership’s approach, over two years and more, was to steer as near as it could to bureaucratic brush-off. The case is not closed: the woman involved should have the option of an independent investigation by labour movement people unconnected with the SWP and with some legal qualifications.

Some on the left have attempted to “no platform” the SWP — for example, shouting down speakers on demonstrations who are SWP members. We disagree. The SWP must be confronted politically, not “no platformed”.

The Glasgow protest against the bedroom tax at Easter, several thousand strong and the largest such demonstration in Britain, was disrupted by people (mainly young women) trying to shout down an SWP speaker. Some were violently harassed by SWP stewards, who told them to “go back to their rape demo”, and attempted to get the police to remove them.

The SWP speaker was Dave Sherry, a member of the SWP Disputes Committee. We understand why people object to someone so complicit in the SWP leadership’s handling of the issue.

But shouting down SWP speakers, even Disputes Committee members, will not improve the culture of our movement, or make it more safe and welcoming for women.

In Scotland, some members of ex-members of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) have an added edge to their anger against the SWP because of memories of the destructive 2006 split in SWP, when the SWP sided with Tommy Sheridan.

At a demonstration in York on 6 April, anarchists and Maoist-Stalinists harassed SWPers and in one case spat at an SWPer. An AWL activist running for election in a Unison branch recently was denounced by some because her supporters in the election included SWPers. One union branch has voted not to affiliate to the West of Scotland anti-bedroom-tax campaign on the sole grounds that the SWP has influence in it. Some union branches have seen moves to oust SWPers from office.

The shouting-down and spitting disrupt the labour and socialist movement rather than helping it develop a better culture on issues of women’s rights and gender violence. Often, in unions, such responses will play into the hands of the right wing, which has no better attitude or record than the SWP on women’s rights. A union branch which disaffiliates from a broad campaign because of SWP influence is less, not more, able to make that campaign hospitable for women.

Some of those wanting to “no platform” the SWP learned this approach in the SWP itself, which has a long habit of trying to deal with political issues by anathemas and exclusions.

The International Socialist Group (ISG) in Scotland was formed by people who split from the SWP only in early 2011 (when the Smith scandal was already brewing: there is no evidence that the people now in the ISG did anything specially good on the issue when they were in the SWP).

The SWP’s own approach is now coming back on them. For example, the SWP and the AWL disagree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The AWL argues that a workable and democratic settlement must recognise the rights to self-determination of both nations, Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, and must therefore be a “two states” formula (a real one, not the Israeli government’s hypocritical “two states”, meaning all power to Israel and parcellised bantustans for the Palestinians). The SWP argues that justice for the Palestinians can be achieved only by conquering Israel and subsuming its people into an Arab state.

We’ve seen the SWP, not in an over-excited outburst by some young activist but in an official letter signed by Alex Callinicos, hyping this up into an absurd claim that the AWL “supports the Israeli state’s terror against the Palestinian people”. The outrage is selective: the SWP is relaxed about cooperating with people who really do support the Chinese state’s repression of the people of Tibet. The hype serves not to give due urgency to debate, but to replace it by curses (“Zionists!” “racists!”).

The ISG writes that the way the SWP handled the scandal “replicated the culture of... rape apologism”. On the streets, that translates into broadside denunciation of SWPers as “rape apologists”.

There is a reasonable case for the labour movement and the left not accepting Martin Smith, in particular, as an organiser and a representative until some better tribunal than the SWP Disputes Committee has delivered a verdict. And, in fact, despite protesting that Smith remains “in good standing”, the SWP CC has quietly pulled him out of public organising roles.

The investigation by the SWP’s Disputes Committee, all of whose members knew Smith well, was unsatisfactory. But the wider left is even less equipped to deliver a verdict than the SWP’s Disputes Committee was. Smith, like any other similarly accused, should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Something like half the active SWP membership came out in one degree or another of opposition to the SWP Central Committee’s handling of the case.

Other SWPers backed the CC because, despite everything, they believed the Disputes Committee. Or because they were persuaded by the Central Committee’s cursing of its critics as feminists who had ceased to look to the working class, or as semi-anarchists. Such wrong attitudes do not make them “rape apologists”. Their attitudes can be changed by serious argument, not by shouting and spitting, and not by tactics which help the right wing.

The self-righteousness of the ISG does no service to women’s rights. As well as criticising the SWP, the AWL has also attempted self-examination. How would we have dealt with similar allegations in our own organisation? Even the best political positions and education programmes are no guarantee against individual abuse. Do we have strong enough safeguards against the sort of lower-grade wrongdoing which seems to have formed the background to the Smith scandal: older activists using their “prestige” in political activity for sexual advantage with young members and contacts?

Attempts to “no platform” the SWP cut against that sort of self-examination and against the rational argument — sharp and angry where necessary — by which alone the labour movement can progress.

Russian soldiers entering Germany at the end of World War Two raped as many as two million German women. In east Berlin some 100,000 women were raped, and up to 10,000 died as a result (Antony Beevor: Berlin: The Downfall). Communist Party activists across the world denied these facts or tried to explain them away. Trotskyists vehemently criticised the CPs, but they still sought to work with rank-and-file CP workers in the labour movement where there was common ground, and to re-educate them.

In 2001 the SWP openly “explained away” the Taliban’s abuse of women in Afghanistan (SW, 6 October 2001). The AWL criticised the SWP, but did not rally against the SWP in any way that could help the “bomb Afghanistan” brigade, then in full flood after the Twin Towers atrocity. We sought to discuss with and convince SWP members of the wrongness of their politics.

We should be criticising, debating with, and politically confronting the SWP in an attempt to persuade activists and clean up the culture of our movement.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 12/04/2013 - 10:15

At the National Union of Students conference (8-10 April, Sheffield), hundreds of delegates walked out when leadership-loyal SWP candidate Tomas Evans spoke. When SWP oppositionist Shereen Prasad spoke, the response was very different.

As we understand it, Tomas Evans was imposed on the SWP student group as their candidate for NUS Vice President Higher Education, because the previously agreed candidate, sitting National Executive member Jamie Woodcock, is an oppositionist. It also seems that Shereen Prasad, who stood for VP Society & Citizenship, was blocked from standing for the part-time section of the executive (where the left actually wins positions).

In the VP HE election, Naomi Beecroft, an anarchist feminist who sits on the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts national committee (but was standing independently), attacked the NUS leadership before turning to attack the SWP over the Martin Smith scandal. Following this, when Evans began his speech by defending the SWP leadership, right-wing (meaning, broadly, Blairite) executive members got up and walked out. They were joined by perhaps two hundred delegates, from right and left. When Evans spoke for the part-time position later in the conference, there was another walk out.

Workers' Liberty and our allies did not initiate the walk out. We in the AWL think there is certainly some hypocrisy from the NUS leadership involved. The left should take no lessons from these people on standing up for women's rights (or anything). No doubt some delegates were playing 'follow my leader'. And of course there are more general issues about walking out because someone is saying something you don't like. Nonetheless, we are not sorry it happened.

This is particularly the case because of the different response to Shereen Prasad's candidacy for VP S&C. Shereen and other SWP oppositionists asked the NCAFC for support; the NCAFC consensus was that the campaign could support Shereen if she made comments critical of the SWP leadership in her speech (which in the event she did). When she spoke, there was no walk out, but a strongly positive response to her criticism. The result: where Tomas Evans received 2.8pc of the vote for VP HE (just 15 votes), Shereen received 26.5pc for VP S&C.

These events must surely strengthen the hands of oppositionists in the SWP.

We think all this is very different from attempting to 'no platform' even loyalist SWPers or refusing to work with them in union branches, local campaigns etc. Tomas Evans was a representative of the SWP leadership on the national stage, and moreover one imposed against the will of SWP students. It is good there was revulsion against what he represented politically. The SWP leadership is responsible for what happened.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.