14.07.2004
Marxism 2004: SWP in trouble
It is unlikely that the SWP's central committee will be very happy with Marxism 2004. Registrations and overall attendance was down significantly - by about 50% - to around 2,500. Our team reports on some of the key sessions
While numbers were down, the composition was much like other years in terms of age profile, ethnic make-up, etc. Despite Respect’s modest success in gaining votes from some islamic communities, this did not translate into particularly noticeable attendance by muslims.
As I write, the results of the July 15 by-elections are not known, so there is a slim possibility that the final rally on Friday may receive a much-needed moral boost from a good showing (over the course of the week hundreds of SWP comrades were bussed up to Leicester and Birmingham to staff Respect’s by-election campaigns).
However, apart from a few ritualistic ovations at the opening rally and some of the larger meetings, Marxism 2004 has been a pretty downbeat affair. Mercifully there was an absence of the violent confrontation which marred Marxism 2003, when two CPGB comrades were subject to physical assault by a group of middle-ranking cadre - supposedly outraged by our leaflet protesting against the willingness of Lindsey German to sacrifice ‘shibboleths’ for the sake of electoral advantage.
Of course, many SWP comrades still feel the need to signal their loyalty to ‘the party’ by slavishly refusing to read other groups’ literature. But at least they did not try to physically prevent us from selling or distributing material this year. Even the normally indefatigably sectarian Michael Bradley - a comrade implicated in last year’s assault - could only manage a few limp insults.
Quite clearly the SWP is in deep trouble. After a year of hard slog and sacrifice by the rank and file, the leadership’s promised breakthrough into the big time simply did not materialise. No London assembly members and no MEPs.
Despite the successes of the CPGB’s fringe meetings, despite the fact we sold out of the Weekly Worker, there is still no sign of much questioning from below in the ranks of the SWP. Superficially then this year’s Marxism felt very much like the others over the last 10 years or so. Nevertheless beneath the surface things are changing … and changing fast.
Right, right, right
The opening rally - as usual in London’s Friends Meeting House - was packed out, with latecomers having difficulty squeezing in. So, given the capacity of the venue, around 1,200 comrades must have attended.
The chair, Megan Trudell, told us that we had a “really, really exciting” selection of speakers. Certainly, Giuliano Giuliani spoke movingly of what he has learned from his murdered son, Carlo. Luciana Genro - a deputy in the Brazilian parliament recently expelled from Lula’s Workers Party (PT) for opposing neoliberal attacks on the working class and poor - was inspiring and, in many ways, the most politically coherent of the lot. “We are very proud of being expelled from PT,” she said to prolonged applause.
On the other hand, Walden Bello was a chore to listen to, especially as his speech was peppered with some overblown parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.
George Galloway was, as ever, full of fire and eloquence. He told us that the Respect campaign in Leicester in particular is “knocking hell out of the establishment parties”, although he seemed to play down expectations of a breakthrough: “I don’t know what the final result in Leicester or Birmingham will be,” he admitted. “But I can safely predict that our vote will be decisive in determining the outcome. Nobody will be able to ignore either our voters or us.”
The comrade also spoke of the need to engage with the “majority in both constituencies … the white working class that has been systematically betrayed” - a theme that was picked up on by a number of leading SWPers during the week in a clear attempt to correct the impression that Respect is a muslim-centred organisation.
The first half of Lindsey German’s contribution was the standard anti-Iraq war/occupation speech she must have delivered hundreds of times. However, she did make a particularly telling point. She just missed being elected to the London assembly on June 10 by a whisker and a few weeks later Ken Livingstone was effectively urging RMT members on London underground to scab. “Not a single member of that assembly said a word” against him, she said.
Comrade German insisted that if she had been elected, “you would have known that there was at least one person against crossing picket lines”. Only a sectarian would doubt her word and only a sectarian would say that, given the alternatives on offer, that she was not worth voting for. As a London AM she would surely have stood on the side of striking workers and in a small way enhanced class combativity.
In that fighting spirit she savaged Livingstone over the dramatic salary increases received by his craven political advisors (many of whom happen to be leading members of the Trotskyite sect, Socialist Action, which works hand-in-glove with the SWP in the European Social Forum). She mockingly compared what Livingstone says is a “generous offer” to the RMT of 6% over two years to the £30,000 extra just handed to his cronies - “that’s as much as a tubeworkers earns!”
Finally comrade German turned to spinning Respect’s 250,000 votes. She doggedly ignored all the heady predictions of a million votes, the thoroughly opportunist abandonment of one ‘shibboleth’ after another and, despite that, the complete failure to get anyone elected. Respect achieved the “the biggest left vote ever in this country,” she claimed in what was a brave attempt to attempt to revive the flagging morale of SWP activists.
Of course, it all depends on how one judges what is left and what is not. Going by its pinched manifesto and the list of essentially minimalist demands, Respect, it has to be said, was not particularly leftwing. It was certainly not revolutionary and not even socialist or democratic. Admittedly the same has to be said of the Socialist Alliance’s miserable, essentially old Labour-type priority pledges, on which it fought the 2001 general election.
So, since the death of Tony Cliff and John Rees’s takeover, the SWP has gone from auto-Labourism via old Labourism to left populism with Respect. In a phrase: right, right, right.