30.06.2004
Socialist Workers Party: Blaming the membership
Last weekend's national committee of the Socialist Workers Party was a pretty unhappy affair. The printshop is being sold off and the promised breakthrough on June 10 failed to happen. How did the leadership explain these results? Paul Fellows reports
Speaker after speaker at the first session of the June 27 national committee took the opportunity to express their frustration and disappointment with the election results. Why hadn’t the promised breakthrough materialised? Many thought that, while there were some pockets of good results, the votes overall were poor.
Comrade Lindsey German responded in the time-honoured manner of the machine bureaucrat under pressure. She blamed the members. Areas like Manchester were attacked; she damned one of that city’s branches as “rotten” and - a bizarre idea - infiltrated by Workers Power and members of the local Social Forum. She was “unsure” whether comrades around the country had worked as hard as those in London and some members had put too much into other SWP fields of work such as Unite Against Fascism, thus diverting time and energy from the main campaign and effectively canvassing for parties which were rivals for votes. More or less everyone came in for criticism, in other words - apart, of course, from a leadership that took the organisation into an electoral initiative on an unprincipled left populist basis and raised grossly inflated expectations about its potential for success.
John Rees had opened the session on Respect with a short report that was characteristically upbeat, although he did express some concern that Respect might be viewed as an organisation whose appeal was being too narrowly directed at muslim voters (a dig at George Galloway’s crude overtures to a section of that electorate over the abortion question, perhaps?)
After listening to the criticism, however, comrade Rees joined in the blame game. In his reply to the debate he noted that “the framework of a revolutionary party” is provided by objective factors. Since there was nothing in this framework that dictated that Respect could not have made a breakthrough, subjective factors must have been to blame for the poor results in places like Bristol and Manchester. He attacked those in the SWP he believed had effectively sabotaged Respect, specifically citing people such as Birmingham’s former district organiser, who was labelled “liquidationist and sectarian”.
Comrades Rees ended his comments with the usual call for maximum effort for the next campaign - the forthcoming by-elections that Respect is contesting - but many were left feeling very dissatisfied. After all, the Respect initiative had been sold as the once in a generation chance. As he said at Respect’s founding convention of January 24, dumping basic socialist principle and voting “against the things we believe in” was necessary in order to “reach out to the people locked out of politics” and “make a difference”: ie, get elected (Weekly Worker January 29).
If anything, the unease of NC members increased during the next session on the SWP’s printshop and publications. It was opened by Chris Bambery. Of course, it is now common knowledge that the SWP leadership has taken the decision to sell the organisation’s print firm, East End Offset. This is driven by a huge financial crisis. Certainly, the SWP has been overstretched over the past few years, having to help finance political initiatives such as the Stop the War Coalition without any pay-off in terms of a noticeable influx of new members. But it was Respect that really did it for the SWP financially. Debts first spiralled upwards and then sky-rocketed.
Characteristically, however, Bambery presented the decision to sell off this precious asset as a purely positive development. He referred to Gramsci’s notion of a hierarchy of arguments, arguing that the party must have a corresponding hierarchy of publications to engage with popular consciousness. On the bottom rung, there was Socialist Worker - “modelled on the Daily Mirror”. A soon-to-be revamped Socialist Review comes next, modelled on the New Internationalist. Lastly, International Socialism packed the powerful theoretical punch.
So, given the importance of SWP publications, and the flexibility provided by having its own printing capacity, why the decision to sell up? Comrade Bambery argued that the equipment - originally bought in 1973 - was no longer competitive. In effect, the party was subsidising poor-quality printing. It had therefore been decided to sell the business, equipment and building (the value of the property has apparently gone up because of London’s Olympic bid) and use the proceeds to relocate more centrally. He was at pains to stress that the organisation would still have the capacity to undertake emergency printing in the event of “a disaster or a terrorist attack”. However, the changes must be forced through. The next issue of Socialist Review would be printed elsewhere - the “surplus capacity” of major printshops meant low prices.
Socialist Worker editor Chris Harman told the meeting that East End Offset was currently losing £35,000 per month. On the face of it, this seems quite a feat of incompetence. However, the SWP’s printshop has helped finance an apparatus out of all proportion to the real membership - 100 full-timers for an organisation of no more than 2,000 people (for all the boasting there is only a tiny periphery - Respect itself boasts a mere 3,200 members). A good proportion of these full-timers are employed by East End Offset, but are actually engaged for at least part of the time in other areas of SWP work.
A central committee letter to the 100 NC members informing them of the plans to close the printshop suggested that there is a limited commercial market for newsprint not in full colour; that upgrading to handle colour is simply not commercially viable and that the party’s publications have to be in full colour to compete with rivals.
A recent Party Notes - the SWP’s internal bulletin - estimates the cost of an upgrade at £1 million. Writing on the Socialist Unity Network website, ex-SWPer Andy Newman asks why “as an established national print firm with 30 years experience and national titles in its portfolio, a bank loan would have been available” (www.socialistunitynet-work.co.uk). So why not take one out to finance the upgrade?
The June 27 NC was told that the impulse to get rid of the business came from a Respect executive meeting, where it was decided that printers other than East End Offset could produce better-quality materials at cheaper prices. However, this essentially technical argument does not really wash. If the SWP leadership is saying that its publications have to be full-colour to compete (with whom? The Daily Mirror? The New Internationalist?) and that commercial rivals are snapping business up that would normally come the way of the party’s printshop, why not upgrade?
While in 2003 the company filed an abbreviated account, a ‘guesstimate’ can be made for annual turnover of at least £2.5 million (excluding any cash transactions). But, with losses running at over £400,000 per annum, this is hardly a strong position from where to approach bankers for a loan. However, the suspicion must be that the SWP leadership is selling its print business and premises simply to fill the huge hole that has become the SWP’s overall finances. John Rees’s big gamble on Respect has undoubtedly stretched the SWP to its limits - and far beyond. If the leadership is actually selling off such a vital asset in order to cover the debts accumulated through carrying Respect, the membership is surely entitled to a full political accounting of the past period to ascertain why such a drastic retreat is necessary, despite all the promises of the leadership that a breakthrough was imminent.
Typically, the decision to wind up the SWP printshop appears to have been made with little real consultation. The central committee letter to the NC members essentially spun the decision as “a consolidation of our position” that will “strengthen the party and its publications” - not an estimation that carries much conviction and considerable resentment now exists against what is seen as selling off the family silver - politically as well as commercially - in the rush to break through to the big time. Not that there is any coherent opposition of any kind.
However there is resignation: a former worker on Socialist Worker forlornly concluded that “the CC has discussed this already and therefore it is beyond us really”. And this session also saw a call for a vote (which was not put) on whether to keep or close Socialist Review; for more contributions to the party press from other groups and traditions in the movement; and for a more critical engagement with other forces in Respect in an effort to leaf them “away from reformism”.
Comrade German responded that if the comrades were unhappy about the printshop decision, they could raise it as an issue at the SWP’s next conference - by which time the whole thing would be a done deal, of course.
She added that the cost of maintaining the staff and the prospect of upgrading equipment to allow for full-colour printing made the whole enterprise unviable. At this, the above mentioned former Socialist Worker worker stormed out. Then, at the insistence of a delegate (and to German’s evident annoyance), the motion to close the printshop was put to a vote. It was carried overwhelmingly with one lone abstention.
The final session of the June 27 NC was on the organisation’s annual school, Marxism, although most of the debate actually focussed on Respect and looming by-elections. In the push to maximise votes in two constituencies judged to be fertile ground for the coalition, the CC has decided that all districts would be expected to supply comrades to canvass and that all members who held week-long tickets to Marxism would be expected to spend at least one day knocking on doors. There will be shuttles every day to Leicester and Birmingham and the Thursday of the school will be shortened to just four sessions. Friday will then be extended in order to encourage people from Birmingham and Leicester to attend.
The meeting was told that “NC and CC personalities must be seen on the streets” of these areas and three different leaflets would be produced. Comrade Bambery reassured the committee a good vote was possible, given that “the Greens aren’t standing in either area” and the SWP had “the luxury” of sending “all 5,000” of those attending Marxism to Leicester if necessary.
The comrade could not resist a passing shot at “sectarians” - he named Steve Godward - who “only attack Respect” - indicating not only a morbid sensitivity to criticism characteristic of the man, but perhaps also a certain lack of confidence about the Respect project itself. However, the day’s highlight was his concluding comment: “We are building a left reformist party. Yes. We are going to build a party that pulls these people together and it could look like Rifondazione ... I don’t know.” Referring to the Socialist Alliance, he said: “In 2002 it was the SWP and a couple of other Trots. Now it’s 2004 and we are the minority.”
The SWP leadership has been desperate to be in a revolutionary “minority” swamped by ‘reformists’ for some years now. However it is patently still not the case. The SWP forms an absolute majority of Respect’s paper membership and the overwhelming bulk of its active membership. For that dubious privilege comrades Rees, German, Harman, Callinicos and Bambery have sacrificed one political principle after another to Respect’s largely phantom reformist wing.