19.02.2004

SWP loses allies

Over recent weeks, the Socialist Workers Party's 'anti-capitalist' front, Globalise Resistance, has had to update its website rather frequently, because of a string of resignations. Tina Becker reports

Over recent weeks, the Socialist Workers Party’s ‘anti-capitalist’ front, Globalise Resistance, has had to update its website rather frequently, because of a string of resignations. As GR has no real local organisation, this steering group is the only body with some life in it that exists independently of the mother ship.

First to go was Jeremy Dewar from Workers Power. Why WP ever joined in the first place is beyond me: it certainly did not play any significant role. But it did help GR portray itself as more than yet another SWP front. More seriously, the four most prominent non-SWPers on the GR executive all resigned last week. They cite in particular the SWP’s undemocratic shenanigans in the European Social Forum. Nick Dearden, global justice officer of the NGO War on Want, was always the most likely to exit. He was the only person left who represented something other than the SWP, rather than simply being listed as an ‘independent’.

However, the other resignations are equally serious: Naima Bouteldja is a member of Just Peace, the Muslim Progressive Network. Like Omar Waraich, who used to be the School of Oriental and African Studies student union’s black officer and now chairs the SOAS Palestine Society, she spoke on behalf of GR at numerous public meetings around the country. Naima has been heavily involved in the ESF process right from the start, attending most of the international assemblies across Europe. Comrade Waraich played a major role in the anti-war movement. Having been nominated by the SWP for the Stop the War Coalition executive, he was sent around the world, speaking at dozens of anti-war protests. He had a very close relationship indeed with the SWP.

As did Asad Rehman, whose exit will perhaps be the most damaging for the SWP. Asad used to be events manager for Amnesty International and represents the Newham Monitoring Project on the STWC executive. Over the last two years, he acted as an SWP ally at dozens of STWC and ESF meetings. To be honest, I always suspected he was an SWP member, though he was markedly less sectarian than Chris Nineham and co. Although he has been travelling in Asia for the last few months, he made sure that his signature was on the resignation letter.

These departures come at a time when the SWP is under considerable strain. Because the SWP has no programme it simply follows and adapts to what it thinks will bring recruits and now votes. That can mean going two ways at once. In the ESF the SWP cuddles up to Ken Livingstone and Socialist Action, while at the same time trying to convince European youth of its r-r-revolutionary credentials. In Respect it does everything to keep George Galloway sweet and play the role of thoroughgoing reformists who surely cannot be expected to call for open borders or a workers’ representative living on a worker’s wage.

It is unfortunate that comrades Rehman et al have chosen not to openly fight against the SWP’s undemocratic antics in either GR or the STWC. They did not publish their resignation letter, though I understand that they were not too upset when it leaked and have no objections to the Weekly Worker printing it. Nor did they rebel against the SWP’s sectarian manoeuvres, and therefore missed an opportunity to point the way to a more democratic left. This is a pity, as undoubtedly political struggle is the best way to gain clarity all round.

All four of them are now heavily involved in the preparations for the newly formed Radical Activist Network, which will have its first public outing on March 5. While it is still a very new and loose formation with no structures or programmes set in stone, the comrades seem to have taken in the (mainly negative) lessons from their experience of working with the SWP.  In their invitation to the March 5 meeting they announce agreement with three well-meaning, if rather vague and classless, “principles”. Opposition to all “forms of oppression, exploitation and domination in society, which dehumanise people, destroy our natural environment and reduce life to a system of economic values” and “a belief that radical and sustainable social change can only be achieved through collective, grassroots organisation based on solidarity, equality, democracy, openness and respect for others”. To this they add: “a rejection of top-down, hierarchical and authoritarian models of political organisation”.

Rather than criticising the SWP for its particularly perverse and bastardised method of ‘democratic centralism’, the comrades throw out the baby with the bathwater and reject political parties per se. However, they seem genuinely interested in building a new and inclusive organisation. That at least opens the possibility of serious and frank discussions. Who knows, they might even come to recognise that a party of the working class is the only vehicle that can really wage the organised fight for a society of “solidarity, equality, democracy, openness and respect for others”.