Dear all,


For me, the role of the SWP and people such as George Galloway provide an 
object lesson in how the new politics of the post-Soviet era still have to 
overcome the legacies of the past. As a participant in the European Social 
Forum (ESF) in Florence last year and a member of ATTAC UK, both these 
organizations obstinately refuse to hierarchize and bureaucratise along the 
old party lines of the 60s, 70s and 80s, because for many of us the real 
problem with such parties is exactly that hierarchical nature; they are 
designed and built to control, rather than win debates, and the way they are 
designed they automatically gives place of precedence to ‘charismatic 
leaders’ who are again almost invariably white, male and middle class. 
Looking at the platform of speakers for the big anti-war rally of Feb 15th, 
which I also went to - are we really saying that people like Tony Benn, 
Tariq Ali and Geroge Galloway a) represent what’s going on with UK left 
activism these days, and b) are really the best we can do? Miss Dynamite was 
a damn sight more relevant than those old boys, in what she said and what 
she represents……

Leading on from which, as Nick says, SWC/SWP people speak, and historically 
have never “listened to other views on tactics and directions.” Because the 
fundamental truth about the SWP and their new incarnation as Globalise 
Resistance is that they already know what is to be done, how to go about 
doing it (strikes, rallies, mass mobilization) and so why should they take 
anyone else’s view on board? For them, the overthrow of global capitalism is 
the only logical end of organised left-orientated activism and since they 
are the vanguard party who know how this is to be done, the only end of 
forming coalitions and ‘popular fronts’ with anybody is so that the 
SWP/Globalise Resistance can lead them and tell everyone else what to do. To 
say that the SWP doesn’t build personal capital (if by which you mean 
personal power) is simply absurd; the SWP is a power-seeking missile that 
takes over by the unceasing activism of a minority and by a 'winning the 
debate' that involves excluding/not listening to other points of view.

The mass of movements, groupings and parties that make up the ESF is 
currently having to cope with just such a tendency within its’ own ranks. 
Whereas the ESF has no formal hierarchy and refuses the hegemony of 
representation at the moment, on the organisational front plainly there have 
to be meetings, groups, and people responsible for organising things. By a 
very strange coincidence, many of these people from the UK (Chris Nineham, 
who you may all remember from the Stop The War movement, is one example) and 
their counterparts abroad are from the Socialist International parties of 
France and Germany, the Rifundazzione Communisti in Italy, in fact the usual 
suspects. Those of us who have suggested opening up the democratisation of 
the ESF by setting up a separate discussion and debate list, and by 
beginning to establish a net-voting system online, have been slapped down. 
Plainly democracy and grassroots mobilization within the ESF is best served 
by holding obscure meetings all over Europe, which particularly those 
members and groups from poorer countries and groups are completely unable to 
get to, and which tend therefore to be dominated by the members of…. Guess 
which parties?

Thus far organizations of mass activism and resistance in Europe such as the 
ESF are showing a remarkable solidarity in their defiance of allowing 
political parties as such to take part in the assemblies, and in resisting 
the idea of beginning the process of hierarchization; how can a global 
resistance movement begin to organize before it has properly become global 
(which is proceeding with the World Social Forum in Hyderabad in 2004, if 
you’re interested) and before a properly global debate has taken place 
concerning the function and purpose of the WSF and the various regional SFs?

Within the UK, what might broadly be called the alliance of global 
resistance groups is comprised of a vast number of groups, some single 
issue, some more diverse in their political interests, and the 
anti-capitalist section of that alliance is only part of it; the people 
represented by groups such as the SWP/Globalise Resistance are in the 
minority, it would be my guess, and yet instead of seeking out 
reconciliation with and debate on the ideas of others, these groups are 
seeking to pretend they don’t exist and by vociferous protestation and the 
mass handing out of placards with the SWP logo on them, seeking to pretend 
that the whole movement is harmoniously led by the same principles which you 
can read every day in the ‘Socialist Worker’. But many people in the 
Anti-War movement are sick and tired of the sectarianism and 
faction-fighting of 80s and 90s, for which the SWP inter alia was 
responsible – the attitude of the SWP is now and has always been that *they* 
are the vanguard party and if they aren’t allowed to lead then they’re going 
to take their bat and their ball and go home, wrecking the game in the 
process if they can. Because as we all know, the universal truths about how 
a society should be conducted really were written by a middle-class, 
middle-age, white European bloke sitting in a library some 150 years ago, 
and arguing with that universal constant simply makes you a class traitor if 
not actually a fascist.

The sins of Galloway and the SWP might well be trivial in comparison to the 
sins of the US, but that’s not really the point, is it? In terms of building 
an alternative politics of the left in the UK, if such a thing is possible, 
the attitudes and actions of people like Galloway and organizations like the 
SWP are central and crucial to the debate. When the Stop The War movement 
invited the usual suspects to stand up on the platform on Feb 15th and give 
it some about how wicked the US is, then plainly the implications were that 
these people somehow represented the movement and were important enough to 
be considered some kind of leadership, which I personally resent beyond my 
means to describe, particularly in the case of that self-obsessed old 
wrecker, Tony Benn. If whatever new politics currently developing are to 
mean anything, then they have to get beyond the old party-controlled, 
cult-of-the-personality bollocks that these people personally represent. I 
mean, haven’t we for chrissakes had enough white male middle-class leaders 
to last a lifetime?

Which brings us in a roundabout way to Gorgeous George. George didn’t take 
on the post of MP for Baghdad Central because no-one else would do it and 
someone had to, he did it because he enjoys playing the pantomime villain 
and because he actually makes quite a bit of money out of it, irrespective 
of what may or may not have gone on with War On Want (and speaking as one of 
the founding members of the movement in Oxford in 1986, we weren’t the 
happiest bunnies to find that he and the others had bankrupted us, believe 
me). What with expenses from various charitable bodies, consultancies to 
this that and the other organization, plus the money siphoned off to him by 
wealthy Iraqi supporters who of course had nothing to do with Saddam 
Hussein, there were worse life-styles in the world to have than George’s.

So for my money if what we’re really about here is building a coherent and 
united front, then what we don’t do is play my enemy’s enemy is my friend, 
and we don’t ignore the failings of those claiming to represent us, when 
those failings themselves act to undermine the movement – exposing the lies 
means exposing all lies and being particularly harsh on our own, if you ask 
me. No movement like the Stop The War coalition needs a George Galloway, and 
taking on his self-earned problems as somehow emblematic of the struggles of 
movement not only undermines the movement, it degrades its’ moral 
pretensions. In terms of leadership, I couldn’t agree more with Dave when he 
says that the inclusion of people like Benn and Galloway, who I would claim 
were irreversibly tainted by the arbitrary and unreasonable left politics of 
the last few decades, ‘closed down the possibilities of articulating 
opposition’.

The 15th Feb march represented a lost opportunity for me, too, but I would 
claim that this was inevitable given the absence of realism amongst the 
leadership, for whom presumably this was just another mass demonstration 
along the road to overthrow of global capitalism. The fact that there are 
still people on the left who think it such terms is mind-boggling, to my way 
of thinking, and until they demonstrate a capacity to engage with difference 
and alternatives in a constructive way, as well as critically appraising 
their own role in the failure of left politics in the UK over the last two 
decades of the 20th century, then they are always going to be at least a 
liability and more frequently a threat to the construction of another 
Europe.


Jon Cloke


P.S. The next European Social Forum is being held in Paris between 12th and 
the 15th of November; registration online is now open at the ESF website – 
be there or be a pro-US imperialist….

P.P.S. A proper debate at last!

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