Results are in...

And counted. A grand total of 51 people voted. We would have liked to have got more votes than TUSC, but taking on such a mighty electoral machine in such a short space of time... we think we did well. So, anyway, puzzle no longer, the definitively tip-top best meme of the SWP crisis is, well, you can see it: That's quite a successful revolutionary organisation you've got there... Aaaaaaaand it's gone. It was quite a close run thing. The results are as follows:

Aaaaand it's gone - 31%
Creeping feminism - 25%
Don't X Y - it's petty bourgeois - 20%
We must observe socialist discipline - 12%
China Mieville is SCANDALOUS - 8%
Do you support this - 4%

Both the Whiff of autonomism and I've been on the internet... got no votes.

The interventionist leadership finally grinds into action...

And it's a calamity. Julie Sherry's article in the Guardian is appalling. It dodges every substantial criticism made of the SWP during this crisis. The only defence offered (that the matter was investigated and voted on) is actually what people find MOST offensive about the leadership's handling of the Delta case - that the leadership thought itself capable of investigating then ruling on an allegation of sexual assault. Even if it was a good article it has come out THREE months after the crisis broke; so much for interventionist leadership. 

Here is a link to an IS Blog piece responding to the Guardian article.

Vote Now!

What is the best meme of the SWP crisis
	Don't X Y it's petty bourgeois
	Creeping Feminism
	The whiff of Autonomism
	China Mieville is SCANDALOUS
	I've been on the internet for 20 years and I must admit I'm lost
	That's quite an successful revolutionary organisation you've got there... Aaaaaaand it's gone
	Do you support this?
	We must observe socialist discipline!
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You have one week!

The SWP leadership have sown the wind.

Now the SWP must reap the whirlwind. Sad to say a number of us saw this coming. If the In Defence of Our Party faction does not prevail at this Sunday's special conference it means several things. 1) The SWP is a rigged game - IDOOP has more supporters than the CC Faction yet fewer delegates to conference. 2) Either that or the SWP membership are sectarian themselves - or, of course, a combination of the two. 3) Either way the SWP is over. 4) Anybody who cares about the future of socialism in Britain must leave it.

Facepalm

The party is reviewing its procedures for investigating claims of sexual harassment after Channel 4 News disclosed that Lord Rennard had been accused of pestering several female staff – a claim he denies. The women claimed that the allegations were reported to senior figures in the party, including Paul Burstow, then the party's chief whip and a minister until last year, and Jo Swinson, who is currently minister for women, but were not taken seriously.
The development comes as the party faces a growing crisis over plunging support, and amid fears that it will lose next week's Eastleigh byelection triggered by the resignation of Chris Huhne.

Nick Clegg has asked Tim Farron, the party president, to establish an "immediate review into all our procedures for dealing with these issues, including a thorough examination of how allegations made in the past have been handled" following the claims against Rennard.
Nick Clegg has asked Tim Farron, the party president, to establish an "immediate review into all our procedures for dealing with these issues, including a thorough examination of how allegations made in the past have been handled" following the claims against Rennard.

But, don't worry it's being investigated by a panel of five senior party members... What could possibly go wrong? When the Lib Dems are outflanking you on women's liberation you've got to look at your own game.

Interventionist Leadership - a poem

This matter is no longer
Up for discussion.
If you want to discuss this matter you must do so
In your branches.
If you do discuss this matter
In your branches it is not binding,
Unless
You circulate discussion documents by
Internet.
Discussing matters through the internet is
Wrong.
There will be no more factions
And no recall conference as this matter is no longer
Up for discussion.
People will be expelled for discussing
This matter.
There will be a one-day conference for discussing
This matter
And there will be no expulsions.
The result of the conference will be that we were
Right all along
And this matter is no longer up for discussion.

A new blog...

And a mighty fine one it is too: the International Socialism blog.

Get on t'internet...

“Comrades need to stop complaining on the internet and bring their concerns to branch meetings”. I paraphrase, but variations on this canard are repeated quite often, sometimes with an addendum along the lines of, “we need to engage with the real world”.

We do need to engage with the real world but moral injunctions about branch meetings are just the opposite of such engagement. Revolutionary socialists advocate direct discussion and open voting against closed meetings and secret ballots, but this fine, hard won principle is not being applied intelligently.

Any medium is by definition is exclusive. You’re either online or not. You can either attend a meeting or you can’t. There are plenty of reasons why someone might not be able to make regular meetings on a Wednesday or Thursday night, too many to list. It certainly doesn’t make you lazy or devious or your opinions invalid. It can equally be said that electronic communication provides an invaluable resource for people not able to meet face to face. In fact it allows a far greater pooling of experience and information than a geographical branch.

But there’s more to it than this. There is an unacknowledged bias that has been hardened by the misapplication of the idea of direct democracy. Why does a branch meeting count as the real world (when quite often it’s a group of ardent left-wingers agreeing with each other then arranging a paper sale) when online discussion does not?

It is, in part, a residual prejudice of 20^thCentury thought. Using McLuhanite terms, under print media the written word is dissociated and cool, whereas the spoken word is involved and hot. The written word had elevated status because it was recorded, for all time.

Thanks to electronic media the written word can unfold as fast as spoken conversation. There is no going back to the old ways of thinking. The internet not only has an idiom of its own (idiom being a sure sign of intense involvement not cool dissociation) but is affecting language and communication in general.

The party must come to understand electronic media and incorporate them as part of a democratic mix, including print media and public meetings, or it will become irrelevant, and all for the sake of principles transformed into shibboleths. To put it another way, if you don’t like what people are saying online don’t hide away in your branch meetings, get out into the real world, get online.

Once more on bourgeois culture...

The role of any socialist approaching modern culture is as a critic. There is no such thing as socialist culture and trying to create such a thing is at best misguided.

Just because something is said in the bourgeois press does not make it untrue let alone something that can simply be written off. Modern mainstream culture is bourgeois. The prevailing ideas in any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class; this includes ideas about law, justice and so on. Most people we want to reach are, to this extent, 'bourgeois'. If mainstream press attacks a part of the socialist you deal with it head on, you don’t dismiss the attack and you don’t hide, because you can’t.

In case you didn't know (but do care)...

Both Keith and I are in full agreement with this and this.

An ounce of theory is worth a ton of action

The old 'orthodoxy' such as it was, was the three pillars of the IS, state capitalism, permanent arms economy and deflected permanent revolution. The last two are now void and the first isn't such a tremendous intellectual head start any more. The SWP has no programme. What makes the party different and how? Why is it a distinct organisation?

Often it’s described as democratic centralism, but such a term is polyvalent, it means different things to different people. Democratic centralism is often attributed to Lenin as a key innovation, sometimes its blurred with vanguardism, another ‘Leninist’ term. Independent initiative is sometimes described as federalism, the opposite of democratic centralism and something to be wary of. Even in Lenin’s controversial What is to be Done the reorganisation of the party as a collective of professional revolutionaries dedicated to distributing newspapers, posters, leaflets and on, was meant to encourage independent initiative: the ultimate aim being a simultaneous (or practically simultaneous) uprising among the diverse and dispersed people suffering under the Russian Empire.

But step into our time again, a party whose point of differentiation is it’s own internal organisation is a step away from a party that exists to perpetuate itself.

Ed Miliband promises no end to working class austerity... Ed Miliband gets booed at trade union rally

      I mean, was it something he said? No, the funny thing is this mild booing (why boo when you can throw bottles?*) is being put down to the SWP brigade. I'd love it if we had a brigade. Labour hacks seem to have a recurring collective nightmare that all that stands between proper decent society and a ruthless, tentacular conspiracy to unleash working class insurrection, is them. Ed Miliband wants to save capitalism, you understand?

The only other explanation is that a large number of trade unionists have had enough of austerity, attacks on their working conditions, standards of living and the services they provide, enough to boo the leader of the Labour Party when he suggests there will be more attacks on their working conditions, standards of living and the services they provide... On Planet Miliband does not compute.

It's down to us, the working class movement, trade unions, tenants groups, student groups and broad campaigns to make a difference. Step one is march. Step two is strike.

*Online police take note, I am not suggesting this be done, merely that Ed Miliband will get over being booed. He really will.