No class politics: student stop the war conference:

Submitted by Anon on 12 September, 2008 - 11:31 Author: Sacha Ismail

About one hundred student activists attended the Student Stop the War meeting on 6 September — not a bad turn out, but unfortunately that was the best thing about the meeting.

Most of those present were from various socialist groups with the SWP — who organised the event — in abundance. The politics promoted by the SWP were very far from socialist, and the meeting failed to develop any real strategy for action.

Of a two hour meeting, seventy minutes were taken up by speeches from the top table — not much time for discussing anything.

Tony Benn delivered a version of the speech he always makes. The only deviation was his false claim that Stop the War is not a single issue movement, but one which puts forward a vision for a "different kind of society". Immediately after he cited positively the fact that Tory MP Michael Ancram had spoken from a STW platform! Benn's speech was, to be honest, almost totally incoherent.

Lindsey German's speech was the usual mix of platitudes and nonsense. In discussing the crisis in the Caucasus, she fixed the blame entirely on NATO expansion, downplaying the role of Russian aggression against Georgia. This soft-Stalinist position was warmly applauded by an old supporter of the USSR in the audience.

George Solomou from Military Families Against the War made a pretty bland speech focussing on the "illegality" of the war and looked to liberal reform of the British state's military institutions. There’s no principle against having such views on a platform, but no objections were raised!

Neither German nor Solomou said anything about the workers' movement or class struggle — whether in the Middle East or the big imperialist states. Tony Benn — for all his incoherence, substantially to the left of the SWP! — referred to the possibility of working-class action against the crisis.

Two contributions from the floor are worthy of mention.

The CPGB’s Ben Lewis asked why, when STW is "inclusive" enough for Ancram, Charles Kennedy and the like, the CPGB-sponsored Hands Off the People of Iran campaign had been excluded from affiliation to the coalition. Lindsey Germany dodged the question with a series of truly shocking, Stalinist-style evasions and lies.

SWP member and Essex University SU president Dominic Kavakeb, who is of Iranian descent, claimed that it would be wrong for STW activists to support workers, students and other democratic movements in Iran, since the Iranian people are "good" and capable of liberating themselves! (Difficult to know where to begin...)

The forty minute "planning session" at the end of the meeting was pretty desultory. It is clear that wide layers of students retain quite a bit of enthusiasm for the Stop the War movement — but the coalition has no political answers or practical proposals to channel that enthusiasm into meaningful activity. “On to the next demo” is still the gist of what the SWP advocate.

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