25.11.2004

Get well, Leanne, but sod off

What lay behind the attempted putsch was the SWP’s ludicrous desire to remove anyone from the local steering committee who was even slightly ‘off message’ and replace them with people who could be trusted not to rock the boat. Yet, bizarrely this did not mean simply dumping those to the left of the SWP. It also meant that they also sought to remove Leanne Wood AM, a prominent Plaid Cymru leftwinger.
A former Labour councillor, Sue Lent, was put up to challenge Leanne Wood for the position of chair. Unfortunately Leanne has been suffering from a bout of influenza and her absence enabled the SWP and its hangers-on in Respect to narrowly defeat her. But this was the SWP’s only success - if you can call it that. To cut a long story short (to explain in full the chaotic proceedings would be to risk the mental health of the reader), due to the normal bungling that is characteristic of the organisation in Wales, the SWP just failed to remove the other principal target of takeover, Pete Ashley of Workers Power, although he lost the officer’s position he had previously held. Indeed, to add insult to injury, after a complete cock-up in handling nominations, the SWP were unable to prevent Ethan Grech of the CPGB from taking the trade union officer’s position. Cheers, comrades.

So there you have it. There are now not one, but two ‘ultra-lefts’ on the steering committee. True, the SWP and its nodding donkeys still have a large majority, but it wanted a committee packed completely with people it could trust to do everything behind closed doors. No doubt it will still try, but this will now prove to be a slightly more difficult task.

Quite what possessed the comrades to remove Leanne from the chair is hard to fathom. Hardly an ‘ultra-left’, she is someone who has spoken from the rostrum at Trafalgar Square at the end of anti-war demos, has given publicity to the anti-war movement and has consistently championed many leftwing causes. One would have thought that the SWP would have cherished someone formally to its right and with a national profile.

Possibly, it is because the SWP in Cardiff is plain dumb. The SWP chair and its new Cardiff organiser (who tried to orchestrate the meeting) are neither of them the sharpest tools in the box. No wonder Cardiff branch of the SWP is smaller than in any other British city of a similar size.

Alternatively, it could be because Leanne has a record of working with all shades of the left in Wales, including the Cardiff Social Forum, which the SWP shuns. Perhaps she could not be trusted to keep silent about SWP manoeuvrings in the local anti-war movement.

More insidiously, it could have been an attempt, backed up by SWP leaders, to exclude anyone with a position of influence from criticising the SWP/Respect road show. It was curious that the only non-members of Respect on the SWP-proposed ‘slate’ was a comrade from the pro-Respect wing of the Communist Party of Britain (who to his credit voted not to exclude either comrade Wood or comrade Ashley) and Sue Lent herself. Possibly, they are hoping that assiduous courting of her could lead to her decamping to Respect.

If this is so, it is sectarian lunacy. Getting the grand total of 0.6% of the vote in the European elections, Respect Wales is hardly in a position to gain hegemony over anything at all. Instead all it has done is to cause a deep rupture in Cardiff STWC and exacerbated suspicions about the SWP. In doing so, the SWP has perhaps scored an own goal by exploding the myth that it wants a genuinely broad and diverse anti-war movement.