Letters

Vote Jon Rogers

Unison United Left has nominated Lambeth branch secretary and NEC member Jon Rogers for general secretary in the upcoming elections. There’s been a steady stream of support for Jon, as more and more branches have put their nominations forward.

Many Unison members were extremely disappointed by the union’s recent decision to back the ongoing presence of troops in Iraq, despite the fact that Unison members and conference voted emphatically against this. Our point: members’ views are not influencing New Labour policy under current Unison leadership.

Vote Jon Rogers
Vote Jon Rogers

No front

You say that the Revolution youth group is a front for Workers Power (Weekly Worker March 13 2003). Go on, comrade, tell me how. We have our own national council, elected by Revo’s members, as well as our own national congresses, publications and manifestos - all of which are accountable to the membership of Revolution.

Talk about sectarianism.

No front
No front

Support Molyneux

I am a member of the SWP and I agree 100% with John Molyneux. I am only 18, and have serious problems with the SWP. Most people in my position would have left, due to the lack of democracy in the party. I just hope that this article is supported by members, and it is somehow adopted at the upcoming conference.

Support Molyneux
Support Molyneux

SA forgeries

Mike Marqusee claims that the committee of inquiry into the financial improprieties in the Socialist Alliance that I chaired “made Hutton’s look rigorous” (Letters, November 18). Obviously I must reply.
The committee found itself in the odious position of having differing accounts of how the seven cheques in question came to bear the forged signature of Liz Davies. On the one hand, there was the claim by Liz Davies that there had been an orchestrated cover-up by the national secretary, office worker and membership secretary. On the other hand, those three people presented another argument. Statements were taken. These were followed by phone calls and each of those making a statement was given a copy of the report before it went to the executive.

Given the contradictory evidence, it would have come down to a question of which side the committee believed. The committee of inquiry did not feel that a report should make a conclusion about who was lying: Liz Davies; or John Rees, Rob Hoveman, Will McMahon and the office worker. I personally thought comrade Davies’s version of events to be more believable, but this was not substantiated in fact; merely based on assertions in her statement.

The committee presented the possible versions of events, but drew no conclusion, leaving this up to the executive committee. Apart from tightening the procedure for cheque signing and financial protocols, the executive took no further action. A censure motion moved by me against those responsible was lost. Neither did the SA national council or annual conference take the matter further. Liz had resigned from the executive and decided not to pursue her case at national council.

I felt that the signing of the cheques arose out of bad political practice: namely the SWP treating its political allies as dolts and the Socialist Alliance as its political property. Up to this point comrades Davies and Marqusee, as allies of the SWP, had acted as attorneys for such practice.

I wrote at the time that Liz’s objections were not political and Mike responds by saying the matter “was not a personal attack on Liz Davies or myself, but a political attack on the Socialist Alliance, its membership and principles”. Well, there had been many previous examples of the SWP running roughshod over procedure and principle in the Socialist Alliance previous to this. Why was it only on this matter that comrade Davies decided to make a public stand? She reacted to a breach of the trust she felt she had built up with the SWP. Previous political differences she had with the SWP were addressed in private, in the inner circle of the SA leadership. On all the main political issues Liz and the SWP presented a united front at the SA executive. In that sense, her grievance was more personal than political. She was affronted when it became obvious she was just one more expendable political ally being used by the SWP - and that was revealed to her in a particularly stark way.

Liz Davies was not the first and will not be the last politician used in such a manner by the SWP. Up to that point, comrade Davies had been complicit in the SWP’s wrong-headed vision of the SA as a ‘united front of a special kind’: a ‘home’ for disgruntled Labourites rather than a vehicle for serious left unity. The logical outcome of the SWP’s approach to such people is either disillusionment (witness comrade Davies, Marqusee, Will McMahon and even the International Socialist Group) or incorporation (witness Nick Wrack).

Of course, at the time, the matter was sensitive. Even comrade Marqusee recognises this when he says: “We are sure that activists on the left will understand why, in the autumn of 2002, we were reluctant to make any of this public. We were worried about various potential repercussions and especially about the damage that such publicity might have had on the anti-war movement at a crucial stage in its development (during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq)” (joint statement with Liz Davies, Socialist Unity Network website).

Mike availed himself of such diplomacy at that time without feeling able to allow others the same privilege. He says: “The Weekly Worker was aware of the cheque forgeries and the involvement of SA officers in them. You chose not to publicise the facts of which you were aware.” Er, on your own account, neither did you, Mike.

In and of itself, I do not believe the signing of the cheques led to any personal or factional political gain per se: they were for normal SA running expenses. This has not been contested until now. What is most worrying about Mike’s letter is the insinuation that there may have been personal gain from the financial impropriety. He says: “Five of these cheques were made payable either to cash or to one of those involved in the forgery - for a total of more than £3,000. Three of these five were made out in round figures of hundreds of pounds. These may or may not, either in part or in full, have been used ‘to cover legitimate office expenses’. We simply don’t know.”

Well, Mike, yes, we do. All seven expenditures were accounted for and covered mundane expenses such as car hire, phone bills and the like. I agree with Declan O’Neill when he says on the SUN website: “I do believe - and, as far as I am aware, nobody has ever alleged otherwise - that all the cheques were written to pay legitimate debts. This is not to excuse the inexcusable. The forgery of Liz’s signature remains both an indefensible and incredibly stupid act.”

This episode may loom large in the political world of comrades Marqusee and Davies. However, it was merely a symptom of a broader problem in the alliance in which comrades Davies and Marqusee had previously alibied the actions of the SWP.

SA forgeries
SA forgeries

Green politics

Mike Macnair’s recent article reviewing Michael Woodin’s and Caroline Lucas’s book Green alternatives to globalisation: a manifesto was an interesting and welcome contribution to a socialist discussion of environmental issues and green politics (‘Autumn colours’, November 4).

I was therefore disappointed to read councillor Matt Sellwood’s reply, in which he failed to respond to any of the political arguments and simply focused on a few badly chosen words (Letters, November 11). Unfortunately this failure to get beyond rhetoric and engage in rational and worthwhile discussion is all too common in the debates between socialists and greens.

It seems to me that the majority of socialists fall into one of two categories regarding their response to environmental questions. On one side there are those that tend to capitulate almost entirely to green politics and favour red-green alliances, while avoiding any thorough and honest sorting out of differences. The other group mostly dismiss environmental questions or say they are not of concern to socialists (at least as socialists) in the here and now. ‘We can deal with the environment after the revolution,’ they say.

Both of these positions are wrong and neither is Marxist. A few socialists have, however, begun to develop a Marxist approach to environmental questions, John Bellamy Foster being the most notable example. Mike’s article can be seen as part of this trend. I hope that councillor Sellwood can bring himself to reread the article and maybe respond to some of the political arguments.

Green politics
Green politics

Big oil

As we consider the threat of new fuel protests, let us reflect on the events of the year 2000. Watched from a distance, the oil blockades looked like spontaneous popular uprisings: regular working folk, frightened for their livelihoods, getting together to say, ‘Enough’s enough’. But before this David and Goliath story goes any further, it deserves a closer reading.

There’s no doubt that the fuel protests began when a couple of hundred farmers and truckers formed blockades outside the oil refineries. But the protests became effective only when the multinational oil companies that run those refineries decided to treat those rather small barricades as immovable obstacles, preventing them from delivering oil to gas stations. The companies - Shell, BP, Texaco et al - claimed they wouldn’t ask their tanker drivers to drive past the blockades because they feared for their safety.

The claim is bizarre. First, no violence was reported. Second, these oil companies have no problem drilling pipelines through contested lands in Colombia and political revolts directed against them in Nigeria. When it comes to extracting oil from the earth, there seems to be no danger, including warfare, that oil multinationals are unwilling to risk. Third, the truckers’ ‘pickets’ were illegal blockades, since the protesters were not members of trade unions - unlike the cases in which union members form legal pickets and companies hire scabs to cross them anyway.

So why would the oil companies tacitly cooperate with anti-oil protesters? Easy. So long as attention is focused on high oil taxes, rather than on soaring oil prices, the pressure is off the multinationals and the Opec cartel. The focus is also on access to oil - as opposed to the more threatening issue of access to less polluting, more sustainable energy sources than oil. Furthermore, the oil companies know that, if the truckers get their tax cut, as they did in France, oil will be cheaper for consumers to buy, which will mean more oil will be sold. In other words, big oil stands to increase its profits by taking money out of the public purse - money now spent, in part, on dealing with the problems created by big oil.

More mysterious has been the government response to the illegal trucker protests. While Tony Blair has not caved in to demands for lower taxes (yet), he didn’t clear the roads either - a fact all the more striking, considering the swift police crackdowns against other direct action protests in Britain and around the world.

The oil blockades in Britain and France were enormously costly. Final figures aren’t in, but the protests likely caused more real economic damage than every Earth First, Greenpeace and anti-free trade protest combined. And yet, on the roads, there was none of the pepper spray, batons or rubber bullets now used when labour, human-rights and environmental activists stage road blocks that cause only a small fraction of the fuel protest’s disruption. ‘We need to maintain the rule of law,’ the police invariably say, as they clear the roadways, stifling the protesters’ messages, while painting them as threats to our safety.

Big oil
Big oil

Why feminism?

I am accused of “repudiating genuine socialism, the healthy trends in the history of the revolutionary movement and a strategy that can actually deliver real liberation for women” (Weekly Worker November 18). Yet Mark Fischer fails to explain fully what kind of strategy he is actually advocating. He blinds us with the ‘scientific programme’, but he doesn’t explain his concepts properly. He writes about the “healthy trends” in the history of the revolutionary movement, but nowhere does he give any clear examples of this.

Comrade Fischer briefly discusses the “seminal” work of Engels on The origin of the family, which was written in 1884. Of course, the work of Engels has provided an excellent start to explaining the oppression of women, but there has been a whole wealth of literature produced within the past 30-odd years, much of it by feminists. Some of this has provided a good understanding of women’s liberation.
I don’t want to go into too much detail on various works, but it wouldn’t hurt comrade Fischer to actually read texts such as Is the future female? (Lynne Segal, Virago, 1987); Beyond the fragments (Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright, Merlin Press, 1979); and Why feminism? (Segal, Polity Press, 1999). There are others I could state, but to me these are seminal works and should be read as widely as possible because they provide a springboard for action on women’s liberation.

Comrade Fischer pours scorn on feminism, yet fails to understand or even accept the positive things which came out of the women’s liberation movement - from the demands of the first conference on women’s liberation to the various journals, such as Scarlet Women and Spare Rib, to women overall becoming consciously aware of their oppression. As Lynne Segal says of the heady days of the early women’s liberation movement in the 70s, “We sought to build a collective power of all women. We wanted power to participate in the making of a new world which would be free from all forms of domination” (Is the future female? p2). Positive words from a desire to build a better world. Something which should be celebrated rather than scorned.

What also troubles me greatly about comrade Fischer’s article is whether he is actually advocating subordinating oppression. He states that this “bespoke area of party work must be subordinated to the general programmatic approach of the organisation”. Does he mean a hierarchy of oppression? If so, where does that leave the oppression of women in the pecking order, or indeed any other form of oppression?

The working class has a historical duty to fight against all forms of oppression and not to do so is class-divisive. This includes fighting the oppression of women, which makes you a feminist. When fighting oppression, you take a class analysis, which makes you a socialist. So, why for instance, is ‘socialist feminism’ a “contradiction in terms”?

Feminism is a valid category in itself and is certainly not ‘sectional’. Women’s oppression requires particular strategies. It is interwoven in the whole fabric of society, from reproductive rights to the family, to equal pay. It is therefore not sectional. Feminism is a way of highlighting and combating the oppression women face and is something the left should not dismiss.

On democratic centralism, I would urge the comrade to read the chapter, ‘Women’s movement and organising for socialism’, by Sheila Rowbotham in Beyond the fragments. What she says in the late 70s is still relevant today. To me democratic centralism entails a top-down approach to educating the membership, a lack of debate (one aspect of this is the hostility towards feminism) and invariably the ‘line’ which has been decided by the political committees of various far left organisations. Hardly democratic!

Comrade Fischer states that comrades such as myself have experienced “the profoundly alienating 20th century experience of left sectarianism, economistic narrowness and a concept of democracy has thoroughly soured and distorted their view not simply of working class sects, but of working class politics itself.” Partly true, I have to say, except it hasn’t distorted my view of working class politics. What has actually soured my view of the revolutionary left is democratic centralism and the whole adherence to the supposed Leninist framework.

It is the sectarian habit of putting your organisation’s advantage over the interests of the oppressed that has led to those ills. The competing democratic centralist groups and their sectarian behaviour are, I suggest, a major mechanism by which the weakness of working class politics expresses itself. I don’t have to remind the comrade of the debacle of the Socialist Alliance and its eventual destruction. If you challenge the supremacy of the party, then all hell breaks lose.

Not any of the democratic centralist groups involved could stomach the Socialist Alliance not being controlled by them. The effect of democratic centralism on the SA was to destroy the most promising development in leftwing politics for a generation. Therefore we are left with no political vehicle for effective united action. How many SA members actually joined a democratic centralist group or, more to the point, how many rejected the sterile orthodoxies of democratic centralism? Instead, in the place of SA we have Respect - an alliance with the most reactionary elements within the muslim community.
I believe that feminism is an integral part in creating an equitable society. A start would be the development of a strategy which encourages the free flow of debate and ideas, and a flexibility which lets people think for themselves and be honest about their politics.

My views are best summed up by Lynne Segal where she says: “The future is not female. But feminism, a feminism seeking to transform socialism and end men’s power over women, has a crucial role to play in its construction” (Is the future female? p246).

Why feminism?
Why feminism?

Irritated

Mark Fischer’s reply to Louise Whittle raises some interesting questions.

In England the leaders of communist parties and groups generally regard themselves as British, working class and qualified to say what should be done in any part of the world at any time in history. Actually they are usually white, English, male, middle class, have read some books and periodicals and attended some meetings. Communist leaders adopt a ‘one size fits all’ programme for everybody from Land’s End to John O’Groats who relies on pay or benefits for most of their living expenses.

Then along comes a feminist like Louise Whittle whom the programme doesn’t fit. Not even the offer of autonomy within the Communist Party is satisfactory. Feminists prefer to spend their time making up for the gaps in the communist programme.

Already the communist leaders are beginning to feel a little irritated. Then along come Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish and Welsh militants, who know that they are fundamentally different from the English. The communist leaders’ irritation grows. ‘It is ridiculous to say that Cornwall is a nation.’ ‘Of course we are on the side of the Welsh language’ - though communist parties never do anything about it.

The Republican Communist Network used to have two sections: one for England and one for Scotland. The English RCNers used to devote their time to saying that Scotland was probably not a nation and that the Scottish RCNers were splitting the British working class. The Scottish RCNers got sick of this and pulled out and are still active to this day. The English RCNers wound up their organisation.

It is no use communist leaders getting irritated. If they are really interested in workers’ unity, they need to show that they understand exactly what everyone else is getting at.

Irritated
Irritated

Punch the wall

Jack Conrad’s hard-boiled materialism and alpha-male rhetoric in his article on religion was depressing (‘Secularism, atheism and Bolshevik lessons’, November 18).

There’s not a one-size-fits-all Official Scientific Materialism. There must be different categories of materialism, else you wouldn’t be able to read these words and understand them. We can act intentionally; we can put into practice our ideas. Marx’s theory of alienation shows that beneath all the shit oppressing us we’re free; and when we realise we’re free we’re capable of changing the world. Changing not only material structures and conditions, but also ourselves, because alienation is both outside and in us. Under capitalism we are always split.

Now presumably we don’t want a revolution that is going to pan out like the Russian Revolution or it would be best if we voluntarily locked ourselves up now. Instead, we want a communist society where, for instance, the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. In other words, my development and flourishing will be as important to you as your own. We will have clambered out of our pre-history. No longer alienated, we will be free and in love. Because it’s not logical to think that we need a revolution that will liberate the oppressed freedom within us but also think that humans are essentially flawed. Of course we’re flawed now. We’re alienated, but not totally alienated from our true, free selves, else we’d have finished each other off long ago.

Ideas are as essential as sudden flashes of inspiration. Things can come out of nothing, like revolution. Marxism is ideas! Consciousness constantly changes matter. It’s not written in stone that if you privilege mind over matter you’re talking idealistic nonsense. You might be, you might not. I can decide to punch a wall, but it can’t decide to punch me back. Mind and matter are deeply connected. If we knock out or privatise the autonomy of ideas, including religious and spiritual ones, then we knock out revolution.

Punch the wall
Punch the wall

Copyright

Your November 18 article, ‘Limits of national liberation’, contains nine paragraphs that are taken almost verbatim from the World Socialist Web Site’s November 12 obituary of Yasser Arafat, written by Chris Marsden and Barry Grey (http://wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/araf-n12.shtml).

With only occasional and minor modifications, these paragraphs make up virtually the entire analysis offered by your writer, Eddie Ford, of the history of the Palestine liberation struggle between 1948 and 1982. We therefore ask that you properly attribute the World Socialist Web Site article as the source of these sections.

Plagiarism is always objectionable, but what makes this instance more so is that the passages used are incorporated within a political analysis that is markedly different to our own. You are of course free to argue for your position, but using sections of our analysis taken out of context and without this being acknowledged only creates confusion. Indeed we were alerted to your article by one of our readers, who asked whether this was a sign of cooperation between the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Communist Party of Great Britain - which it is not.

Ford’s article does not, as it claims, examine the objective limitations of the programme of national liberation. Instead, it substitutes a denunciation of the alleged individual betrayals and subjective failings of Arafat, and offers this in lieu of an explanation of the fundamental causes of the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinians.

In contrast to such an approach, we explained: “The ultimate failure of Arafat’s national project cannot be ascribed to the subjective attributes of an individual. In any event, Arafat’s strengths and weaknesses reflected the problems and contradictions of the political movement he led ...

“The root of Arafat’s tragedy is the false political perspective upon which his political struggle was based. Even more emphatically today - in a globalised economy dominated by a relative handful of transnational banks and corporations - the fundamental lesson of the 20th century pertains: the solution to national oppression and social exploitation lies not along a national, but rather along an international and socialist road.

“The problem of the Palestinian people is an international problem. It cannot be solved within the existing framework of capitalist nation-states in the Middle East, through which imperialism exerts its control. The addition of a Palestinian state to the present equation in the Middle East, even were it to come to fruition, would not resolve the basic problems of the Palestinian masses. The framework itself must be removed, and replaced with a new system that corresponds to the needs of the working masses. That framework is a United Socialist States of the Middle East. The social force capable of achieving it is the working class, uniting behind it the rural poor, in struggle against both imperialism and the national bourgeois classes of the region.”

You ignore such fundamental questions and instead advocate a variant of a bourgeois ‘two-states’ solution as a supposed ‘stage towards rapprochement’ between Arab and Jewish workers. Not only does this Stalinist ‘two-stage’ perspective perpetuate the division between Arab and Jewish workers; it leaves unchallenged the existing capitalist property relations in the Middle East and the imperialist domination of the region, which is maintained through the agency of the regional bourgeois regimes.
Once again, you are fully entitled to publish articles reflecting your political standpoint. But you may not do so by copying, without permission and without attribution, material published by the World Socialist Web Site - from articles which are, we remind you, copyrighted.

We expect a correction to be made promptly.

Copyright
Copyright

SWP democracy

I read John Molyneux’s call for a more democratic culture within the Socialist Workers Party, reprinted in last week’s Weekly Worker, with great interest (November 18).

I was a member of the SWP for six years, and left partly because of many of the practices which John highlights. The artificial unanimity of all party workers, national meetings as transmission belts for the central committee’s latest enthusiasm, dissenters jumped upon by a series of speakers from the leadership, all making unnecessary personal attacks - these things are all too familiar. Indeed, I was present at the meeting where John disagreed about the size of the Longbridge demo and was roundly denounced - I believe he was told by a CC member that he should have been selling copies of Socialist Worker rather than trying to estimate the size of the demo. Of course, my understanding of the internal dynamics of the party came slowly and in fragments, and I didn’t raise my voice at a party conference before leaving precisely because, as John says, it would have been “a highly disagreeable experience with little prospect of success”.

I was no fly-by-night member. I attended five annual conferences and numerous party meetings. I could explain ‘deflected permanent revolution’ like the best of them, and stood on more street corners selling Socialist Worker than I care to remember. But in the end, I found out what other members don’t, or don’t want to - that the lack of a democratic culture is not just an internal problem for the SWP: it has produced a leadership which cares little for democracy in the wider movement as well.

Many non-members who work with the SWP understand this. Unfortunately, SWP members have a tendency to take criticism of their organisation like a personal insult, so non-members just don’t bother. That is, until their frustrations are so great that their criticisms are made in a less-than-friendly tone, and they can easily be portrayed as ‘sectarians’, or people with an axe to grind.

I am writing to you about this not because I have a desperate need to bemoan my experiences to the world, but because I know that many SWP members read the Weekly Worker as the only source of news on their own party (not to mention others on the left!) If the current leadership does not take John Molyneux’s criticisms seriously, the membership of the party will continue to haemorrhage. I am dubious about much of the CPGB’s analysis, but personal experience tells me the SWP’s membership is in decline, and I don’t just mean the perennial problem of ‘revolving door recruitment’.

Why does this matter to people like me, who have not just left the party, but largely parted company with ‘democratic centralism’? Because the SWP’s attitude to democracy profoundly affects the wider movements in which they are involved, and which I still care about. Contrary to another of the SWP’s myths, although I left the party, I am as active as ever trying to change the world. There is life beyond the SWP, and unless it effects the kind of serious reappraisal that Molyneux suggests, there won’t be much life left in it.

A rebellion is long overdue.

SWP democracy
SWP democracy

Loyal opposition

“Support John Molyneux’s call for SWP democracy,” screams the headline of the front page. Presumably this was the most important issue facing the class last week! It is also an exercise in wishful thinking, if not deliberate self-deception.

John Molyneux is one of the SWP’s longest surviving members, from the generation of 1968. Someone whose loyalty and steadfastness have been second to none. His tentative call for democracy is no raising of the banner of rebellion, but rather a sign of the crisis that afflicts the SWP, facing bankruptcy in both the political and financial sense.

The key problem with John Molyneux’s analysis is that he proposes no political alternative to the current direction of the SWP’s central committee. Indeed he bemoans the fact that some of those who are hostile to his demands for greater democracy have suggested that it was “illegitimate to raise the question of democracy without proposing an alternative political perspective”. John Molyneux, who has loyally followed the SWP’s every twist and turn - opposed to electoralism, now in full support; opposed to popular fronts, now in support of cross-class unity; opposed to religion, now opposed to secularism - is incapable of doing this.

The problem with Molyneux’s call for democracy is precisely that it is empty of political content. He bemoans the fact that the central committee has faced no substantial challenge, let alone defeat or election, for the past 15 or more years. He refers to a previous period of vigorous debate in the organisation on a range of issues, and offers one of two explanations. The first is the “outstanding leadership provided by the CC” and he then goes on to state, without irony, that “actually I think there is some truth in this”.

And then he suggests that the docility of the membership and the dominance of the CC lies in the times of “downturn” we are living through, as if the SWP is merely a creature of circumstance, thus negating the whole purpose of a revolutionary party. Indeed his only criticism of the CC is functional. It has split large branches into small branches, thereby increasing the sense of isolation and loss of members. There may be some truth in that, but, if so, it is symptomatic of larger problems that Molyneux is incapable of tackling. Issues such as building the party incrementally and at the expense of the class. Working via ‘front’ organisations, which fool no one who isn’t already gullible, and being incapable of working on equal terms with other comrades without feeling the need to take control of their organisations. The development of a sectarianism which results in virtually no one on the left working with the SWP unless they are prepared, like Alan Thornett, to scrape and bow.

The analysis of the SWP’s lack of democracy by Molyneux is, as one might expect, impressive, though it says very little that Sue Blackwell and Rumi Hassan, two long-standing ex-SWP comrades from Birmingham Socialist Alliance have not already said. Indeed Molyneux understands that it is the very lack of democracy in the SWP which is “likely to repel” potential recruits. His plea for a change of heart on the part of Rees and German is a product of the damage that he can see they are doing. Yet he is incapable of generalising his criticism from the forms of democracy to the political. Indeed he makes explicit his agreement with the popular frontist electoralism of Respect. His complaint is that the lack of internal democracy in the SWP is making it into a wooden and unattractive organisation to those on the outside.

Nowhere are the confines within which Molyneux operates shown more clearly than in his recommendations for change. Contested CC elections, branch elections to conference and granting the right of reply to those who move motions at SWP committees and conferences. Palliatives all. Surprisingly, Molyneux doesn’t even begin to mention the most essential form of inner-party democracy - the right of those who disagree with the SWP leadership to form permanent platforms. How else can you challenge the political perspectives of the CC if you can’t organise around those differences? The problem is not that some people throw personal abuse at those who speak out, but the fact that individuals will continue to be isolated as long as they are denied, on pain of expulsion, the right to organise with others in the SWP if they dissent from the CC’s perspectives. On this Molyneux, who has loyally supported all the SWP’s previous witch-hunts, is silent. Indeed he accepts that organised dissent is, in the Cliff mould, “divisive”.

Molyneux’s article is interesting because it demonstrates the crisis that the SWP faces. Formally revolutionary, in its everyday practice it increasingly follows the reformist path - so much so that in Unison it is backing a soft-left Labour candidate against the Socialist Party. But no one should be under any illusions that Molyneux is the equivalent of her majesty’s loyal opposition.

Loyal opposition
Loyal opposition