The Socialist Workers Party (Britain)

[JaspyB]

I've been a member of the SWP for about 7 months now, this was the first organisation which lead me to be an anti-capitalist and socialist.

I've found them to be a party who are very pro-active with fighting against current struggles, such as racism and fascism. I've also found their weekly meetings and events to be a good platform for debate and a place to expand revolutionary ideas.

However… having heard and reading through other peoples accounts of the SWP, my doubts are mounting. Rape case, sexism etc...

What are other peoples experience of the SWP, positive or negative? :confused:

[Blake's Baby]

They have until the last couple of years been the most active group in the British Left. The regularly claimed a paper membership of around 3,000, far more than any other Left group. They were active on a lot of university campuses and a lot of town centres. Their newspaper was regularly-produced and they could muster cadre almost anywhere. However, much of this activist base was recruited from students who often seemed enthusiastic but not particularly well-assimilated. There was always a feeling from the outside that members were signed up with little agreement and treated as paper-selling fodder. They often wouldn't last long and would leave in a couple of years. Whether (as the despairing claimed) the party leadership didn't care about the burnout of activists, or (as the cynical wondered) it was a deliberate policy to turn people away from radical politics, is a moot point. The effect is that a lot of people after their experience with the SWP are very reluctant to get involved with radical politics again.

They were involved with the Socialist Alliance project in the late '90s, which pretty much became a battleground between themselves and the SPEW (Socialist Party of England and Wales). The SA foundered (from my reading) because both organisations tried to swamp the SA where they could. The SPEW claimed that the SWP was wrecking it; the SWP claimed the SPEW was wrecking it; most others I think thought they were as bad as each other. The SWP then went wholeheartedly into Respect and tried very hard to make links with Muslim community organisations.

A few years ago the SWP basically imploded and the majority of the remaining people left in a series of splits. What is left is the people who defend the current party leadership, who are implicated in covering up allegations that a leading member raped young recruits.

Organisationally, it is a shadow of its former self. Politically, I think pretty much everyone else regards it as toxic.

EDIT: just to say, I think it's a very long time since I noticed anyone on RevLeft defending the SWP line.

EDIT no. 2: to clarify about the rape allegations.

[Hit The North]

I was a member of the SWP for some twenty years, off and on, and would endorse most of Blake's fair assessment above of the party's current state. Re. The burn-out claims, this is a natural outcome of any activist party that seeks to engage with a wide layer of the class; all socialist parties have more ex-members than current members - any that doesn't is basically a sect or cult. Could the SWP do a better job of educating its members? Perhaps, but a few years in the SWP is an education in itself and not, as it's critics like to chorus, necessarily a negative one. A reason that some ex-comrades do not join other similar organisations afterwards is that every other organisation on the UK left has either been tiny or relatively passive.

I guess one question you need to ask is if you leave the SWP where else is there to go? SPEW are little more than Labour Left and pretty uninspiring whilst all other revolutionary socialist organisations are tiny.

[Left Voice]

I considered joining them when I was a student about 5 years ago on the basis that they were the biggest socialist party in the UK. Their size really was quite a big deal because there is literally nothing else on the British left other than tiny sects, and thus is would be quite easy to put aside relatively minor theorietical and organisation differences to join something that actually seemed to have a sizable presence.

Unfortunately, the covering-up of rape allegations regarding Comrade Delta and the subsequent kangaroo court pretty much destroyed the party and what credibility it had. It is now a rump of its former self, having splintered off into numberous tiny and irrelevent sects and groups.

I don't regret their demise in the slightest because there was evidently a lot toxic about their party, but it's a shame that nothing has appeared to fill the void.

[The Idler]

The Socialist Workers Party have always been organisationally characteristic of a sect since way before the rape allegations;
They've always inflated membership numbers
They've always gerrymandered fronts and public meetings for their own advantage.
Internally, branches don't send resolutions, and they've always sent loyalists to party conference. Pre-conference bulletin favours the CC and was always kept secret from the working-class.
No matter how futile, their activity has always been marches, flooding protests with their placards and selling their paper, recruitment to the point of burn out hence rapid turnover of inexperienced students. This stops members engaging in internal accountability and means ex-members of the SWP tend to drop out of politics altogether.
They ostracise critics including ex-members, and for a couple of years not so long ago, they even used to physically attack them at Marxism Festival.
They're widely disliked by leftists, and have been for a long time, for the above reasons.
So when the rape allegations became public (against pleas for secrecy from the SWP) only naive SWP members where surprised that the SWP decided to attack the accuser and exonerate the accused to literally a round of applause and cheering at conference.
'The smallest mass party in the world', no credible serious mass party behaves so pathetically, don't make me laugh.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I was a member of the SWP for some twenty years, off and on, and would endorse most of Blake's fair assessment above of the party's current state. Re. The burn-out claims, this is a natural outcome of any activist party that seeks to engage with a wide layer of the class; all socialist parties have more ex-members than current members - any that doesn't is basically a sect or cult. Could the SWP do a better job of educating its members? Perhaps, but a few years in the SWP is an education in itself and not, as it's critics like to chorus, necessarily a negative one. A reason that some ex-comrades do not join other similar organisations afterwards is that every other organisation on the UK left has either been tiny or relatively passive.

I guess one question you need to ask is if you leave the SWP where else is there to go? SPEW are little more than Labour Left and pretty uninspiring whilst all other revolutionary socialist organisations are tiny.

I appreciate you sharing this with us - it's always valuable to have an (ex)-insider's account!

I would just pick up on a couple of comments.

Re: the acceptance of burnout and high turnover of membership as being the "natural outcome of any activist party": it seems to me that this is predicated on two (false) assumptions. Firstly, that the 'activist party' model is the main accepted mode of organisation and struggle amongst the organised 'left', which I don't believe holds true anymore (just thinking about the range of non-party organisations that organise large protests, such as the PA and NCAFC, and other groups such as IWW, AWW, Plan C, Radical Assembly, Black Revs, Brick Lane Debates that meet regularly, take actions, and essentially have taken over the 'branch meeting' activities that were previously the arena of debate for the 'activist parties' of the Leninist left). Secondly, that we should accept people burning out after a limited period of time. I believe this is dangerous, primarily because the causes of burnout are normally rooted in over zealousness and overwork. This implies that to be an active contributor to political struggle, one must complete a certain amount of 'work'. In reality, we should try to foster the opposite attitude: whilst accepting of course that the arena of political struggle requires dedication (at least from some), it should also be something energising, uplifting, and motivating. It should not be seen as additional work on top of our waged/salaried labour performed for capital. Changing the nature of political struggle from 'extra work' to something more social is the only way we can hope to popularise our ideas and generalise class struggle.