For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder children" at you. I'm not entirely sure they'd recognise what an actual 'Worker' was if they met one. I always found them quite comical.
However they are a serious party, they're a highly motivated and active movement with significant influence in the Labour Party grass roots. They're sort of our equivalent of Antifa in that they are a significant organising presence in lefty street protests, but much more politically active and spend a lot of time in conferences and action committees wondering what Capitalism ever did for us.
Importantly, they are in no way shape or form a terrorist or criminal organisation. I would not be at all surprised if some ultra-violent or would-be Red Army Faction types joined or associated with them, but that's not at all who the SWP are as an organisation. They're the well meaning, impressionable white middle class girl next door with a class guilt complex and a side shave that's been going to BLM protests.
If they are getting banned by Facebook something has gone horribly wrong. Quite possibly some of them got a bit excited and posted things they shouldn't, so I'm not saying this is for sure Facebook's fault, but they're not about to murder any bobbies in Parliament Square.
They're more like PETA than antifa, they cover up internal sexual assaults, have a bunch of cranks, and other groups have to put up with and try to prevent their continuous entryism, hijacking protests and other actions to self-promote.
Lots of cranks (though probably less so than CPGB-ML who are full on tankies), and a giant pain in the backside.
Nevertheless, whilst I chuckle at this, it is a dangerous thing and yet another reason Facebook should not be trusted as any sort of impartial platform and probably dismantled.
It remains astonishing that a number of these people did a full 180 turn to right-libertarians and from there to Brexiteers, eventually leading to Claire Fox, apologist for the bombing of Manchester, becoming a member of the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Fox
Not really, ideology doesn’t matter to (some) extremists, they’ll follow whoever uses the tools of fear and hate most effectively.
See the “Bernie Bros” who flipped into full Trumpists a few short months later in 2016. I’m sure if you look back at the Spanish Civil War and other divisive historical time periods you’ll find plenty of turncoats that flip from one extreme to another.
> See the “Bernie Bros” who flipped into full Trumpists a few short months later in 2016. I’m sure if you look back at the Spanish Civil War and other divisive historical time periods you’ll find plenty of turncoats that flip from one extreme to another.
This seems like a bit of a myopic, low-dimensional view of the political landscape. Bernie and trump (esp candidate trump) weren't "opposite extremes" when it came to plenty of issues: anti-free trade, anti-corporatist, promises to protect entitlements, complaining about the corruption of the existing political order, even just the populist vs technocrat aesthetic.
For people who prioritize this issue, the notion that Bernie and Trump are "opposite extremes" in every way relative to Hillary is laughable.
(President trump obviously reneged on much of his promises as a candidate and went with many mainstream gop policies, but that's neither here not there when discussing support during the election)
Bernie and Trump were also both anti-war during the preliminaries, each for different reasons. I prefer Bernie's reason of defunding the military in order to put the money into more social benefiting areas, but Trump goal on focus more on internal US interests could have some of the same effects.
Yup. The idea that there's a single axis along which Bernie and trump is an incredibly simple-minded view of the world. Unfortunately, most voters are pretty simple-minded, which tells you a lot about why politics is the way it is.
> It remains astonishing that a number of these people did a full 180 turn to right-libertarians and from there to Brexiteers, eventually leading to Claire Fox, apologist for the bombing of Manchester, becoming a member of the House of Lords.
Claire fox was never CPGB-ML, but the “Revolutionary Communist Party.” From what I can understand, the RCP was always a primarily contrarian entity and always more libertarian than Marxist. To quote their journal, Living Marxism:
> We live in an age of caution and conformism, when critical opinions can be outlawed as 'extremism' and anything new can be rubbished as 'too risky'. Ours is an age of low expectations, when we are always being told what is bad for us, and life seems limited on all sides by restrictions, guidelines and regulations. The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs. These are basic human values that cannot be compromised if we are ever going to create a world fit for people. [0]
This seems to have more in common with the libertarian right than Marxist, particularly “to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs,” which is almost the antithesis of Marxism.
> Fox stayed with her ex-RCP members when the group transformed itself in the early 2000s into a network around the web magazine Spiked Online and the Institute of Ideas, both based in the former RCP offices and promoting libertarianism. [1]
Given their apparent funding, contrarian headline-generating antics and subsequent banding together, some may question whether they were a model for what would come later: an opaquely funded right-libertarian outlet.
Why is it surprising? A lot of Marxist functional description of the capitalist economy is coherent with events if you squint hard enough. If that is accepted then moral choices and personal preferences overlaid ontop lead to several different paths. Accelerationism is one.
I find it hilarious that these Marxist dimwits think they are coming up with some new idea. Its a fossil of an idea with a long track record of top-down oppression, corruption, and progression stagnation where nothing gets built in perpetuity. You can try to make the system more fair without going full neanderthal. The Marxist movement gets a lot of spoiled upper middle class kids who want the govt to take care of them like mommy and daddy did because they realize its going to take real work and slim odds to get the same standard of living they grew up with. And thats just called life. By definition not everyone can be above the average life quality. A great way to kill the standard you have and for everyone is to kill production and attack the capital markets.
At the end of the day life quality is a logistical issue above all else. Jeff Bezos is not going around the country buying up all the single family homes and hoarding all the doctors in the country for his knee injury. If you want better medicine you need to invent more efficient technology through the capital markets to serve people. If you want more homes you need to invent better home building techniques to cater to the masses. Thats how increased efficiency works and its why our lives generally get better with services and quality of live each decade. Thats not to say there are not tweaks and governing to be done to the capital markets (the govt is the conductor), but this is the general aspiration and trend.
They're cranks. The "left-wing brexit" I think was in part inspired by anti-globalism and not wanting to see financial migrants as more readily and cheaply exploitable labour but it was weird.
> They're sort of our equivalent of Antifa in that they are a significant organising presence in lefty street protests
I can see the point you are trying to make being familiar with both, but for those who are not, this analogy is just wrong and confusing to those who do not know SWP and will think you are saying SWP have no qualms about using violence. That is wrong
I thought I explained my understanding of the SWP attitude to violence very clearly, so for what you say to be true someone would have to read just the Antifa comparison and not read the rest of my post, in which case I think that misunderstanding is on them.
> They're sort of our equivalent of Antifa in that they are a significant organising presence in lefty street protests
Are you trying to give a wrong opinion of SWP. No "ultra violent, red army faction types" are joining the SWP.
Also your use of "ultra violent" / "red army" surely is used to incorrectly ascertain that there are parts of the left that are much more violent than they actually are.
I think the "red army" is referring to RAF (Red Army Faction, "Baader-Meinhof complex" in Germany), Red Brigades (Italy) and so on, in 70s, 80s European history. Actual leftist terrorist organisations, unlike the "antifa" (lol, America...).
Edit: I think OP meant, it's not unlikely, if there was a real left terrorist organization, they would align with SWP, but the SWP is not the terrorist organisation. Same as with Antifa, for that matter. That's what people mean when they say Antifa is an idea... seriously, it hurts it's necessary to even say this.
You are over-stating the significance of the SWP. Maybe what you say is true of the 80s, but it isn't today.
They are not the main party to the left of Labour, the greens are. The greens have 50,000 members and received 850,000 votes in the 2019 election, the SWP has a few thousand members and does not even field candidates.
In my experience they have little influence on the Labour grassroots. The SWP's standing among young, idealistic socialists exploded after it emerged that its central committee covered up a series of rape cases in the party. That was in 2013. I have not met anyone who takes them seriously since. After Corbyn was elected many who would have joined the SWP in the past joined Momentum instead.
I am shocked that Facebook have banned the SWP. Their faults are something more like a religion - centralised, deluded, outdated. They have no criminal or terroristic aspirations. What kind of precedent does this set?
Given your username, I'm curious. Are there many left anarchist activists in the UK at the moment? I had some tenuous contact with the ACF in the late-90s, but it doesn't seem a very active or impactful part of the political landscape.
There used to be a decent amount of book shops and punk gigs. There's IWW and Solidarity Federation, not sure how active. There's also a bunch of Marxist and other varios left-wing philosophically based groups.
There used to be a great group called Space Hijackers who bought an APC and drove it through the G20 but that was 11 years ago, they were kinda Situationist.
There was UK Uncut. I think a lot of groups end up just being overwhelmed with the amount of awful shit the Tories do and how apathetic/ignorant our population is.
London Renters Union is a new and amazing left-wing group, not necessarily anarchist, but not ML or Trot either.
They have their causes - Occupy, Rojeve, anti-fascism, mutual aid groups - but no serious political strategy or organisation. A lot of the student movement and extra-parliamentary left abandoned their traditional antipathy of Labour and came into the party after Corbyn's election.
There was a very concerted and covert anti-left push during the 80s and 90s. Anti-establishment groups of all kinds - anti-nuclear protesters, greens, animal rights activists, and official far left groups like the SWP - were infiltrated by undercover police and sometimes subverted.
It's an ongoing scandal, although it's been lost in the noise from other events over the last year or two. Undercover police with fake identities had relationships with activists and sometimes fathered children with them.
In some cases they worked internationally and were responsible for criminal acts (i.e. terrorism) which discredited the organisations and movements they infiltrated.
It's hard not to suspect the apologies are disingenuous. The plan was to subvert, marginalise, and discredit left wing views, and to destroy left wing organisations of all kinds.
> Undercover police with fake identities had relationships with activists and sometimes fathered children with them.
whilst I suspect this happened in the 80s as well, the actual case that was prosecuted was from the early 2000s
> were responsible for criminal acts (i.e. terrorism) which discredited the organisations and movements they infiltrated.
Our dealings with the unionists in NI are a particular dark stain. Now sadly legalised by this new intelligence bill. (simplification, but its not a good bill.)
> destroy left wing organisations of all kinds.
Much as this is nice to believe, having worked in a number of left wing organisations, they are perfectly capable of imploding by them selves. It appears that they attract a certain kind of idiot, who is exceptionally well adapted at persuading other middle-class idiots that black is blue.
Right-wing organisations also implode, but in a different way. Ironically they tend to have more "real" working class people in them too.
>Much as this is nice to believe, having worked in a number of left wing organisations, they are perfectly capable of imploding by them selves. It appears that they attract a certain kind of idiot, who is exceptionally well adapted at persuading other middle-class idiots that black is blue.
This doesn't speak to his point at all. He's not saying all left-wing groups that have been destroyed were destroyed by infiltrators. He's saying that that was the purpose of the infiltration by law enforcement.
The fact that orgs can be destroyed by other factors is true but totally irrelevant.
> The SWP's standing among young, idealistic socialists exploded after it emerged that ...
Not to take away from your otherwise excellent post, but your use of the word 'exploded' seems ambiguous. I take it you mean that their standing went down, i.e. their standing was reduced to rubble. However, I am much more used to seeing exploded used to describe a large increase, e.g. downloads for our latest app have exploded after reducing the price.
What makes you say that? People against Boris's policies are not to be conflated with anti-maskers. We are currently the worst performing nation per capita.
Sounds like you were fine with Thatcher taking an axe to organized labor, and weren't all that bothered about those children dying in Africa or what-not. After all, unlike them, you weren't "way too serious".
> If they are getting banned by Facebook something has gone horribly wrong.
Well, many things have gone horribly wrong. Among them, one thing that's wrong is:
> Quite possibly some of them got a bit excited and posted things they shouldn't
There exist an important finding in social science when it comes to conflicts between groups. The Out-group homogeneity effect.
When people of an in-group (and those who feel a slight relation to them) describe themselves, it one of complexity. In-groups are always a group of individuals with individual graces and faults. Out-groups however is not complex, but perceived as being more alike with their out-group stereotypes being the defining nature of them.
The result of this is that people tend to marginalize extremist views of the in-group, while at the same time defining the out-group by their extremists. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to have discussions that relies on the distinction between a group having a small number individual impressionable young people that occasionally happen to do an obvious bad thing, and a other group where every member is evil and its obvious an evil group that need to be stopped at the core.
On a more local note regarding the far left here in Sweden during the 90's and early 00, a major distinction between them and the social left were that they believed in a violent/forceful revolution against capitalism (take from the rich, give to the people). As a party they have since tried to put some distance to that view in order to be more respectable, but 20 years is not that long ago. The far right and far left is often debated as both being parties with extremists in them and with troubling pasts for which they try to distance themselves.
My first encounter with the SWP was at a stall outside a university building. They didn't seem shouty, but I remember asking questions and getting vague, half-thought-out answers. Then about ten years later, I met a couple who were ex SWP but switched to labour once Corbyn became leader. I was reminded slightly of that stall by Corbyn's speeches.
It's worth noting that the harder left Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) can only really talk of imperialism, bourgeois democracy, the labour aristocracy and overproduction — at least in relation to the UK.
No serious leftist group in the UK is even hoping for the conditions in which a revolution might be possible, because in those conditions they believe that the counterrevolutionaries would be the darlings of the UK media, would have near full police backing, and would likely target leftists as an enemy to deal with.
The increase in Labour membership was significantly higher than the number of SWP members, and I would guess the number of ex-SWP members as well. So I don't think ex-SWP people were driving that.
I saw a lot of pro-Corbyn comments on my Facebook feed a few years ago and they were from comfortably middle-class people. Lefty and green tendencies, centre-left (not hard-left) types. Some of them previously Lib Dem supporters.
The gist was "at last an honest politician!" and "for the first time in a long time, we have a chance at real socially progressive policies, this one is worth voting for".
In other words Corbyn seemed different somehow, and in a good way.
Corbyn gave many people a feeling of hope for a few years, especially young people but including all ages, against an establishment regarded as cruel. That hopefulness grew into a mass movement to join Labour specifically tied to Corbyn and his policies. Labour's manifesto policies under Corbyn were generally popular, even though it fell apart in 2019 over Brexit and painting Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser.
Now that Corbyn is out of the picture, Labour looks like Tory-lite again, and there's not much enthusiasm for current Labour from those who enthusiastically switched to it a few years ago. It's not surprising after the landslide loss in 2019 that the party would change to accommodate what it thinks the electorate will vote for (on balance), and the swell of membership under Corbyn would not like the changed party.
"Antifa" is more of a self applied label; you can certainly see antifa logos at demos.
The SWP are Trotskyist, in the sense of "March through the institutions". If you're doing anything left wing they will turn up and try to make it about them, take over organization positions, etc. The SWP are mostly your boring old lefty uncle, with a side of institutional rape apologia: https://www.gender-agenda.org.uk/not-my-comrades-on-dealing-... (this is not only their problem, it can happen in any organization that doesn't take active steps to avoid it)
I suppose the canary for partisan moderation should be Sinn Fein; they were banned from television in the 90s.
Sinn Fein had literal terrorists as members and were proscribed by government. This is the exact opposite of what has been seen in relation to the deplatforming on social media sites.
Sinn Fein were never proscribed, they were the political wing of the Provisional IRA (which very-much was proscribed), but were never illegal themselves. This makes sense for both sides, to keep lines of communication open.
The UK Govt at one point passed legislation that meant Sinn Fein voices could not be broadcast. This was circumvented by having the words repeated exactly in sync with the vision by a voice actor.
You have to wonder if the current BBC would have the gumption to circumvent it.
Gerry Adams claimed he was first arrested for selling the party newspaper. There was a strange, not illegal but harassed anyway, sort of relationship between Sinn Fein and the authorities.
I didn't mean to make a strong Antifa link, I just thought it's something non-Brits would understand as a point of comparison in terms of general activities rather than specific tactics or aggressiveness. e.g. SWP was heavily involved in the Ant-Nazi League in the 70s back when the National Front was more of a thing in the UK.
The SWP types I knew back in the 80s probably are your boring old lefty uncle these days. That's how out of date I am, although there were still excited young SWP activists pushing leaflets and selling the paper on Deptford High Street in the early 2000s. That's well before the rape crisis though.
Ironically SF were banned from the media in Ireland, but not in the UK. There was a ban that involved a specific wording that was construed to mean that recordings of their voices could not be played. So, IIRC video was played of their spokespeople with actors dubbing over their voices.
EDIT: I see angry_octet supplied the same information below.
>>I suppose the canary for partisan moderation should be Sinn Fein; they were banned from television in the 90s.
Their elected MP's were also banned from travelling to Britain, effectively preventing them from taking their seats in Parliament. Not that they planned on doing that mind.
> I guess some pro palestinian posts may have strayed into the antisemitic territory?
My understanding is that any pro-palestinian posts can be labeled antisemitic under the IHRA/EUMC working definition of antisemitism (as adopted into UK law) if it any way singles out Israel for the oppression in a way not done for other states.
> “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”
This to me seems vague and a point of likely disputed interpretations likely to have at the very least a chilling effect.
> way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'
Just to inform you. Reagan and Thatcher have literally f* up the world by allowing banks to devaluate currency and forming a situation where my bank will charge me for having money deposited with them (instead of paying interests) while giving credits with money they dont have or in another words - they print the money instead of the state. Yes, you might think that they are bunch of weird people but the history proven fact is that the weird people was everyone else.
Bottom line, they were right. And be very sorry they weren't laud enough as R&T brought the world in neverending crysis cycle that directly impacts you and me. And it has nothing to do with socialism but rather with pure greed, while the only issue is people not having enough of sane thought to figure it out on their own.
> To all down-voting me, please DO CHECK what the R&T reforms are about. And no, it has nothing to do with gold backing up currency. It is just crazy how little are people aware of history that directly impacts them. R&T literally gave "carte blanche" to the banks.
More directly, Thatcher was also responsible for a litany of crimes, including murder and torture, and human rights abuses against her own citizens in Northern Ireland.
Although Thatcher is hated by swaths of UK society (which turns out to exist after all), there is in Great Britain in general an ignorance or blindness to crimes committed by the State against their own citizenry.
I think the UK population, as in most countries and maybe all of them, have a higher tolerance for such things when their own fellow citizens are being murdered and blown up.
I think this misses the point, which is that many (maybe most) of the citizens of Great Britain don't consider nationalists in Northern Ireland as citizens at all, even while they are murdering them.
After all, while the majority of the deaths during the Troubles were caused by Republicans, most of those killed by Republicans were members of the British Armed Forces.
Most of the civilians killed by any party were killed by the British Armed Forces or Unionist paramilitaries supported by them.
You, like many in Great Britain, have decided that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland aren't really UK citizens, while simultaneously they were being slaughtered to try to force them to accept being UK citizens.
You are a perfect (possibly non-GB) example of the ignorance or maybe wilful blindness that surrounds Northern Ireland, and the crimes of the British government against its own citizens.
Not at all, I have a lot of sympathy for Republicans in northern Ireland. I think they have just as much right to want independence as many Scots do.
You raised the attitude of the UK public, and that’s all about perception. You may well be right about the numbers, but the UK government don’t see sectarian murders and knee cappings in NI as affecting them because they, in general from a majority point of view, don’t live in NI. They do live in or visit or have relatives who live in and visit Manchester, Birmingham, London, etc. So when they see people being blown to bits in these places they perceive that as an attack on them. The thing is it’s bad enough to register as a direct attack, it’s enough to make them hate the IRA and by extension Republicans, but it’s not enough to make them feel any pressure to negotiate. So it has the effect of making them want blood in return and not care too much how they get it.
I think the IRA leadership finally figured this out, along with the fact that long term demographics are on their side.
Picking on Maggie is a bit of a tell. There was no appreciable difference in policy between any of the major Parties on NI and in the mainland UK it simply wasn’t a partisan issue. There were some in the far left sympathetic to Republicans but they were very much a fringe in Labour. What this has to do with MT particularly is hard to fathom. E.g. Bloody Sunday was under Edward Heath, so if your going to pick anyone I’d have though it would be him, but it’s not as if everything was peace and flowers under Wilson or Callaghan.
I think you’re thinking of the gold standard abandonment which was in 1976, way before Reagan or thatcher.
They did liberalize a lot of markets but attributing the way banking works specifically to them is a bit of a stretch.
Also during war times a lot of governments printed money. Before the 20th century too. So again, your anger towards Reagan and thatcher, while partly probably justified, is a bit excessive.
Antifa isn't a real organization, it's just a bunch of disconnected groups that have recently been getting labeled as Antifa. Most don't even claim to be part of Antifa. Antifa is basically the boogeyman that Republicans made up to distract from the fact that a bunch of far right wing people were literally organizing armed pseudo-militias with the intent of overthrowing the US government. They knew these idiots stood no chance so they downplayed them and made up conspiracies about left wingers doing the same shit, and pretending like there was a serious threat from the left instead of the right.
Trotskists oppose terrorism (generally called "individual terrorism") not on moral grounds but due to efficacy. The book you're linking to is Trotsky's argument against individual terrorism and in favour of mass workers' action.
Antifa shows up to other groups' protests to start fights and engage in political violence, sometimes with deadly consequences. Is that what SWP does too?
However they are a serious party, they're a highly motivated and active movement with significant influence in the Labour Party grass roots. They're sort of our equivalent of Antifa in that they are a significant organising presence in lefty street protests, but much more politically active and spend a lot of time in conferences and action committees wondering what Capitalism ever did for us.
Importantly, they are in no way shape or form a terrorist or criminal organisation. I would not be at all surprised if some ultra-violent or would-be Red Army Faction types joined or associated with them, but that's not at all who the SWP are as an organisation. They're the well meaning, impressionable white middle class girl next door with a class guilt complex and a side shave that's been going to BLM protests.
If they are getting banned by Facebook something has gone horribly wrong. Quite possibly some of them got a bit excited and posted things they shouldn't, so I'm not saying this is for sure Facebook's fault, but they're not about to murder any bobbies in Parliament Square.