Sorry old chap — I’ve heard your “cadres” doing just that at the Gaza protest.

I think you might want to check your sources on that. That’s a complete lie.

Lindsey German’s :shibboleths”,snuggling up to the MAB nutters, chanting Allahu Akhbar at rallies and the “We are all Hezbollah” business. Enough for you?

Good constructive critique of the SWP’s role in UAF from one of the most principled and least sectarian groups on the far left.

The following is a quote from a socialist worker article published at the time of the strike. I think it does little to support the claim that “when workers go on the strike the swp will always be there to help.”

“It’s right to demand that everyone is paid the proper rate for the job and that there’s no undercutting of national agreements. And we need militant action, including unofficial action, to win these demands. But these strikes are not doing that – whatever some of those involved believe. ”

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17004

Assuming for the sake of argument that you are capable of using google, I suggest you search Socialist Worker for coverage of the Lindsey strike and you might find things like this: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18354

Are you seriously saying that this is parroting the line of Labour, the EU and the employers? Please remember we are referring to planet Earth before you reply to that.

As for the other allegations:

Completely useless during the miner’s strike? I’m afraid I was knee high to a grasshopper at the time so can’t comment, so please provide some evidence of this. If it helps you wikipedia has an outline of the concept of evidence here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence

A bunch of wannabe islamists? You mean because we oppose imperialist slaughter abroad and the scapegoating of ethnic minorities at home?

Made up almost entirely of poly dropouts and low level civil servants? So have you done a comprehensive sociological study of the SWP membership then?

By all means oppose and disagree with the SWP, but if you are doing so in a public forum it might help to put forward some reasoned assertions backed up by facts – i.e. present some real arguments. The ill conceived playground twaddle that you are displaying suggests a rather juvenile inability to deal with this, if not fraustration that you have lost the argument.

Pull the other one. Remember the Lindsey strike? I recall the SWP parroting the line spewed by Labour, the EU and the employers. The SWP were useless during the miners’ strike too. A bunch of wanna-be islamists made up almost entirely of poly dropouts and low level civil servants.

How patronising, but typically SWP. Our community-level action involving all parties, all faith groups (Christians, Muslims and Jews working together) and individuals (many of them are members of the proletariat!) has managed to defeat three BNP councillors in the past year. Not one egg has been thrown, not one placard waved in people’s faces, not one mob organised and not one SWPer has provided their professional revolutionary services. Sorry if the success hasn’t brought forward the date of the forthcoming revolution, but some people have their minds on getting things done and achieving tangible gains instead of ramming an agenda down others’ throats. If that makes them ‘apolitical’ in your view (really, they are just not adopting your revolutionary strategies), then you’ll have to put up with it.

“finally, all those placards are for beating you liberals round t’head with, cos after reading this rubbish it’s clear you need some sense knocking in to you.”

Aha, the SWPer’s trademark tantrum against liberal conspirators and middle-class wine drinkers followed by silly half-hearted threats, which we all know you won’t carry out. Tell me, have you always been comfortable with everything central command has instructed you to do? Do you have a mind of your own, or are you a party political moron?

“2 million on the streets means nothing cos of all those bloody placards and muslims!”

My argument has always been that the SWP is opportunistic rather than idealistic when selecting which campaigns to support. I agree that the SWP does not necessarily determine the fate of united front campaigns. The SWP gets stuck in at the beginning when a campaign looks like it will have mass support and bullies its way into dominance. And when the attendance at meetings reduces to SWP supporters and their unconvertible foes, they stop going. In the interim period the SWP eliminates all but the most robust by their bullying tactics.

Sticking it out against the SWP requires a cadre spirit that is absent from most political campaigners.

And it isn’t “conspiracy theory”. Conspiracy theory requires that a large number of people remain silent following their hypothetical covert operation. Ex-SWP members are not silent.

Really, among the far-left, there isn’t a great deal of bitchiness. There is disagreement, but not hatred. They are even able to get along with some Labour, LibDem and Green party activists when there is a common agenda. The exception is the SWP. And the SWP have to ask themselves why.

It seems to me that the real problem comes from the fact that the SWP, unlike many of the smaller political sects, engages with the real world and tries to work with real political forces who share only a part of its analysis. It’s a lot easier to engage in pure political propaganda for socialism or for an ideal progamme. Or you can take part in solidarity work and so-called ’single issue’ movements (anti-war, Palestine, antiracist, anticlimate change or whatever) without trying to convince people that these issues are all linked and that the only ultimate solution is radical system change,

That sounds vrey worthy on paper, but it is unfortunately not linked to this thing called reality. If the big STW march was really about the interconnectedness of all things Middle East, I’d have expected to see some plackards declaring things like “Britain – You Screwed Up the Mandate!”, or “Retract the Balfour Declaration!”. Or at least “Stop Military Aid to Israel”. Instead I spent the march sandwiched between those hideous posters of dead babies and a group of youths shouting “Deth to the Jews!” into a megaphone (in Arabic, so as not to upset the nice Oxford CND ladies behind us).

The reality is that Israel/Palestine ot the British Left is what abortion is to the American right – a quasy-religious article of abhorrence, with anyone falling on the “wrong” side and failing to declare the correct level of objection being classified as an enemy. I remember back in 2001, there were these A4 posters plastered all over Oxford, pleading “Don’t Bomb Bosnia” and in a little inset at the bottom “Free Palestine”. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the post-intifada oppression of the Palestinians is causally related only in the sense that Israelis and Serbs breathe the same air, so we may as well protest both by holding our breath until we’re blue in the face. But this lack of logic never seemed to bother anyone much.

As an aside, this “it’s all awfully complicated donchuknow, you couldn’t possibly have a valid opinion about it, we’re the guardians of understanding what really goes on in the Middle East” doesn’t do the far left any favours either.

That was a smashing TV moment. I almost got goosebumps. Not quite but it was close.

Did you see the Tower Blocks of Commons when that BNP councillor started lecturing at a meeting of council tenants campaigning to have their block of flats demolished? The guy started shouting “I’m telling you as it is, I am telling you the truth, listen to me.” The BNP councillor was behaving exactly like an SWP official. The tenants eventually kicked him out of the meeting saying they hated his politics and wanted people to listen to them, not shout at them. The LibDem MP Mark Oaten helped organise the meeting and while my view of him has been dim, it was refreshing to see him let the people get on with things, not even intervening when the fascist was shouting. That’s the politics I like, not some shouty party moron. Politics should be about facilitating and empowering, not demanding and leading. Is this making any sense?

Speaking as a relative newbie to all this I’m staggered that people who agree on so much can spend so much time arguing over so little.

Where’s the bigger picture? Isn’t there an anti-fasch, anti-privatisation, anti-war struggle to be getting on with?

That’s crap. I am not a member of any rival group of the SWP. I couldn’t care less about these ideological movements. I just think that people should work together and not seek to dominate. All the SWP knows is how to dominate and it really pisses people off. Everyone outside the SWP, ie 99.9% of the population, knows this. They are not interested in a meta-analysis that invariably involves debating the Russian revolution and the nuances of Karl Marx or the rest of them. When you are dealing with a community resisting fascists, the last thing many people are interested in is having a lecture on revolutionary socialism and the Nth Socialist International. It just doesn’t work in the real world, because in the real world people don’t view themselves as revolutionary agents but people with problems they are trying to work out. And maybe, if you chat with them about your ideas instead of lecture, they might be won over. But if you are just trying to run the show for a revolutionary cause, it is the best way to break unity and alienate people. As far as I am concerned, I prefer to be on the margins of organisation, help out where I can and do my bit, but I’m fucked if I’m going to have a party political moron tell me what to believe and what to do, as the SWP does. And really, that’s how normal people feel.

In my town, we have an Alliance for Green Socialism group and while I’m not interested in joining them, they are trying to get people engaged without lecturing at them through their democratic forum. The have hold a debate on privatisation of the local health service and people put forward their views, which are respected and a motion is agreed. No-one is asked to join or sign up to their ideology and people who disagree respect each other without rancour. It is quite different from any meeting I’ve had where the SWP determine who speaks and what motion is carried. It is a conversation, instead of a party line being set down. If you cannot understand where the SWP is going wrong, then you are socially inept like the SWPers and you will get nowhere.

You know, it is not just rivalry that drives people to hate the SWP, there is substance to it. If the SWP does not respect people who disagree with it, it does not deserve respect. As I said, there were some Iranian leftists who tried to join the StWC and they were refused because it upset the SWP’s Islamic extremist allies, even though those leftists opposed war against Iran. I think that says everything about the SWP and its fronts. And I won’t get involved in anything tainted by those bastards.