Last night Socialist Unity posted a confidential internal SWP pre-conference report by Party member, Neil Davidson. It is a typically Ultra left unreadable dirge.These people take themselves so-so seriously. If they could communicate ideas on one page of A4 they may have made a lasting impression.
Instead this supposedly Trotskyite Revolutionary vanguard teamed up with a Stalinist ego maniac, Islamic fascist fundamentalists and rich anti-gay, anti-women local businessmen. A marriage of conveniences made to last? Yeah...
Now it doesn’t mean that some decent people were not sweep up in this farrago. Many of whom have now realised that they have been “had” - good and proper.
I enjoyed Davidson’s attempt to justify the SWP by posing the question “What would British society be like if the SWP had never existed? What would we see if the guardian angel of revolutionary parties could show us a United Kingdom where the ship bearing Ygael Gluckstein to these shores in 1946 had sunk with all on board?” Ygael Gluckstein was of course the SWP prophet, Tony Cliff, who I met shortly before he died. I’ll post on this weird and rather surreal meeting another time.
I’m not that sure that the obvious answer Yes you bloody fool why even ask? is actually true. Since if the SWP did not exist then no doubt another bonkers ultra left organisation would have rapidly filled the void. As Cliff’s SWP replaced the gap caused by the implosion of the rapist Healy’s WRP, which use to be the leading Trot Party beforehand.
It now appears likely that the SWP will split, not least because they need to witch-hunt someone for their failure to gain any power or to even seem like contenders. But no doubt another equally useless lot will take their place. My current “comrade at arms”, Dave Osler, as usual provides a more eloquent explanation for what is going on here.
I wasn’t born in 1946 so I couldn’t have possibly sunk Ciff’s ship. However in 2009 as you would expect, I will of course be trying to do my best to fly over the modern SWP wreck and machine gun any survivors....so I’ll leave you with these happy, happy thoughts (sorry Charlie for not being more “critically supportive”).
Thanks to Col Roi for his updates.
