17.04.2014
NUS: Autonomist bankruptcy
The SWP stall at this year's NUS conference was attacked by 'anarchists'
The Socialist Workers Party had a visible, but much reduced, presence at the NUS conference - albeit outside the main entrance rather than in the conference centre itself. It is unclear as to whether this was deliberate or whether the NUS had refused the SWP a stall, although the former seems more likely.
The SWP comrades were speaking to delegates, advertising their fringe meeting about Ukip, hawking Socialist Worker, and pushing Marxism 2014 - which in spite of the University of London Union1 ban is due to be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in July. Speaking to the woman running the stall, I was told that they had been called names once or twice, but largely their stall was a “success”.
This all changed when, amidst cries of “Rape apologists!” and “Misogynists!”, an autonomist group calling itself Liverpool Class Action without warning turned over the SWP stall and tore down its posters, as security guards scrambled across the lobby of the conference centre. This is the second such incident that has been reported involving the SWP and autonomists - the first occurred when a group at Sussex University not only turned over an SWP stall, but set fire to a stack of Socialist Workers in December.2
The bankruptcy of this action was self-evident. For example, in its statement, LCA claims that “worst of all” was the fact that the SWP, by turning the “rape apologist” accusation back at Class Action, was “assuming the survivor status of members of LCA”.3 However, some of the SWP members present claim to have done so on the basis that they themselves were survivors of sexual assault. One wonders why, if “assuming the survivor status” of others is so abhorrent, the autonomists did exactly that themselves.
By their own admission “nobody else was there to hear these accusations”, which begs the question, what were the autonomists trying to achieve? In its statement LCA claims that the “action” was to send a message to the SWP that its “rape apologism” was not welcome in Liverpool, but, given that the stall had been run uninterruptedly throughout the day up to the point when this small group attacked it, it is unlikely that the SWP took this message on board.
Indeed the autonomists did not even attempt to intervene at the SWP’s well-attended fringe meeting on Ukip - perhaps if they had taken a brief glance at the “shit” literature they were throwing all over the floor they might have been aware of it.
The fringe meeting itself was run-of-the-mill SWP affair. The comrades claimed that, while Ukip is a racist party, it is not fascist, and therefore the no-platform tactic could not be adopted on principle. Instead everybody must build the ‘Stand up to racism’ campaign which is run by the SWP and its bedfellows. In the SWP’s typically economistic fashion there was a passing nod in the direction of strike action - the working class learns through struggle and the picket line teaches it more than any book or meeting could.
It is worth noting that both the speaker and the chair of the fringe meeting were women and surprisingly the vast majority of the attendees were young, seemingly non-SWP women - possibly members of Student Broad Left. The meeting demonstrated that the tactics of both the autonomists and the intersectionalites were not only wrong politically, but have been an abject failure even in their own terms.
Turning over stalls and burning bundles of Socialist Worker achieves nothing but making the culprits feel radical and appear tough on the likes of the SWP, while at the same time relieving them of the responsibility of actually intervening in a political way. As does the move to ban SWP events and literature by the intersectionalites. Similarly the culture of anathematisation, of not engaging with the SWP, has simply produced a situation where the latter is able to organise meetings in which its politics go almost completely unchallenged.
When asked about the comrade Delta affair at this meeting, the SWP speaker insisted that the organisation had handled the situation as best it could, but it had been used by the opposition for factional advantage. While this intransigence was to be expected from hardened cadre that have gone through the turmoil of the last three years in the SWP, its contacts on the periphery and new members may well be open to persuasion on that question.
Charles Gradnitzer
Notes
1. See ‘The new moral panic’ Weekly Worker March 26.
2. See ‘Autonomists in “feel good” attack on SWP’ Weekly Worker December 19 2013.
3. http://liverpoolclassaction.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/swp-not-welcome-in-liverpool.