11.11.2004

See you in court?

Here is something which perhaps better than anything else shows the rotten state of the SWP and how its leadership is abandoning working class norms and standards.

Prior to the Socialist Alliance’s executive committee meeting, SWP apparatchik and SA national secretary, Rob Hoveman, wrote to Jim Jepps, Declan O’Neill and Andy Newman, leading contributors to the Socialist Unity Network website (www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk). Hoveman objected to a Liz Davies and Mike Marqusee article, posted in September, outlining events that led to their joint resignation from the Socialist Alliance in 2002 (Liz was national chair at the time).

Comrade Hoveman asserts that this article and the editorial comment alongside it by Declan O’Neill contain serious libels. The SUN comrades replied, thanking SWPers for reading the site and asking for clarification of the specific problems Rob Hoveman and the SWP had with the piece. At this stage, the SUNers indicated their willingness to look at the objections concretely and respond constructively if it was mutually agreed that there was indeed a problem. In fact, the written comments from comrade O’Neill objected to by the SWP already made clear that be had differences with the Davies-Marqusee piece, but that the SUN website has “a policy of opening its pages to the left”.

At the end of the November 6 SA executive, Jim Jepps found himself in a huddle with comrade Hoveman and others to arrange a convenient date for the first meeting of the conference arrangements committee. Predictably, the offending web article came up and both Hoveman and Nick Wrack took the opportunity to complain. Then John Rees butted in and warned that, unless it was removed forthwith, he intended to approach the next SWP central committee with a proposal to break a longstanding workers’ movement tradition and begin legal action against the publishers of the site.

As we go to press, the SUN comrades have heard nothing further. However, there are a number of points that need to be made.

The article by comrades Davies and Marqusee does indeed contain allegations against certain individuals. Signatures - ie, those of Liz Davis - were forged on Socialist Alliance cheques … but this was done in order to cover legitimate office expenses. While the authors have never suggested for a moment that it is their intention to pursue any legal redress, the potential involvement of the registrar of political parties - the bureaucrat who overseas electoral arrangements (including financial probity, etc) - is possible.

Undoubtedly, it is the SWP that caries the prime responsibility for this mess. First, for the arrogant and blundering way it dealt with comrades Davies and Marqusee in the first place. These were two independents who were acting as the SWP’s loyal satellites and got treated, perhaps, as they deserved. The SWP took them for granted and simply used them as satellites. However, it does not take a genius to work out that eventually this causes resentment and eventually even satellites rebel.

Secondly, the SWP must be unequivocally condemned for not seeking to resolve this matter with SUN through comradely channels - but then it seems to no longer regard others on the left as ‘comrades’ at all. Presumably, we are all simply “islamophobes”, “sectarians” and “wreckers”. Thus, perhaps it will transpire that John Rees’s brittle sect has only the bourgeois courts as an option. Of course, this was the practice of another unpleasant, unprincipled sect, intent on pursuing a palpably false perspective and characterised by a visceral hatred of other socialists. But surely there are sane voices who will protest against being taken down the road of Gerry Healy and his loopy Workers Revolutionary Party?

If the SWP insists on pursuing the matter in the courts, it will suffer the consequences. Aside from any legal problems it may bring down on its own head, it will further tarnish its already comprehensively soiled reputation as a socialist trend both in this country and internationally.

The movement should demand that the SWP adhere to the principled approach articulated by the late Paul Foot in his appeal for support against the libel action launched against Lindsey German, Alex Callinicos and Bookmarks Publications by Quintin Hoare and Branca Magas: “It has been a long tradition in the labour movement that arguments between socialists should be conducted openly and should not, except in extreme circumstances, be tested in the courts by the libel laws” (Online appeal, www.bookmarks.uk.com/cgi/store/bookmark.cgi).