Scottish Workers Republic

[PRC-UTE]

Scottish Workers Republic (http://srsm.port5.com/swr/failte.html)
An Geamradh/ Winter 2004 edition

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Front Page & Contents

Articles include:

Preparing for Emergencies, the Establishment Way
David A' Gardner

The Westminster Elections

Westminster No More
Kevin Williamson

Abstentionism and the SSP
Gerry Cairns

The Independence Debate

Scottish Independence and the Unions in Britain
Professor Gregor Gall

For an Anti-Imperialist Front
John Mitchell

How can the Scottish Parties Gain Independence?
Joe Middleton

Radical History

John MacLean and Conspiracies
Jim Clayson

International News

The American People
Joe Davison

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Deadline for Spring 2005 issue - 25 January 2005. All articles welcome.
Contact [email protected] for subscription details.

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The Scottish Workers' Republic was first published in 1985.
It remains the longest running paper in Scotland supporting Republicanism
and Socialism.

[bolshevik butcher]

Oglach, do you know if theres going to be something happening abotu the g8 summit.

[PRC-UTE]

haven't heard anything but I'll keep you posted.

[YKTMX]

There probably won't be a lot about the G8. To most of the "Republicans" I speak to the ant-globalization/capitalist movements are "middle class" or even "reactionery". They're too concerned with building the preposterous sounding "Scottish Workers Republic" to be concerned with such things.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Clenched [email protected] 14 2005, 02:54 PM
Oglach, do you know if theres going to be something happening abotu the g8 summit.
There will be massive resistance to the G8 summit. Already thre are activist schools organised and groups all over the country co-ordinating themselves to make as much noise as possible.

Most groups are affiliated with Dissent. You can check out their website here. (http://www.dissent.org.uk/)

Gleneagles 4th - 6th July!

[YKTMX]

I suppse if TAT is plugging this group then I should mention Globalise Resistance. They will also be doing a lot of organizing for Gleneagles.

Globalise Resistance (http://www.resist.org.uk/index.php)

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 01:51 PM
I should mention Globalise Resistance.
Which is nothing more than an SWP recruitment organisation.

[bolshevik butcher]

Thanks anarchist tension, the 1 in edinburgh's just down the road from my house.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 11:53 AM
There probably won't be a lot about the G8. To most of the "Republicans" I speak to the ant-globalization/capitalist movements are "middle class" or even "reactionery". They're too concerned with building the preposterous sounding "Scottish Workers Republic" to be concerned with such things.
Marx was from a middle class family. People can be middle class and socialist.

[PRC-UTE]

There probably won't be a lot about the G8. To most of the "Republicans" I speak to the ant-globalization/capitalist movements are "middle class" or even "reactionery". They're too concerned with building the preposterous sounding "Scottish Workers Republic" to be concerned with such things.

I don't regard the 'anti-globalization' movement as middle class. I was quite pleased with what they accomplished in Praha and Seattle. I defended their actions to people who condemned them. I wish I could've been there.

What a useless dig.

Also, the group that publishes the SWR are the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, who although small, are I believe a faction within the SSP which is one of the largest parties in Scotland.

Also, why the hell would someone with a John Mclean quote on his avatar cop that attitude? I remember you used to also have on your sig lines from that song about Connolly.

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+Jan 15 2005, 03:08 PM--> (The Anarchist Tension @ Jan 15 2005, 03:08 PM)
[email protected] 15 2005, 01:51 PM
I should mention Globalise Resistance.
Which is nothing more than an SWP recruitment organisation. [/b]
Good


Also, why the hell would someone with a John Mclean quote on his avatar cop that attitude? I remember you used to also have on your sig lines from that song about Connolly.

Because they were great anti-imperialist Marxists, perhaps? That doesn't hide the fact that the idea of a Scottish Workers Republic (or an Irish one at that) is preposterous.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by YouKnowTheyMurderedX+Jan 15 2005, 09:45 PM--> (YouKnowTheyMurderedX @ Jan 15 2005, 09:45 PM)
Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 15 2005, 03:08 PM

[email protected] 15 2005, 01:51 PM
I should mention Globalise Resistance.
Which is nothing more than an SWP recruitment organisation.
Good [/b]
Good for what?

[YKTMX]

Building the party...

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 10:14 PM
Building the party...
The anti-capitalism movement is not about recruiting people into a quasi-fascist organisation like the Socialist Workers Party. It is about resisting capitalism!

[YKTMX]

The anti-capitalism movement is not about recruiting people into a quasi-fascist organisation like the Socialist Workers Party. It is about resisting capitalism

Sectarian Anarchist bollocks won't "resist" capitalism, comrade.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 10:39 PM

The anti-capitalism movement is not about recruiting people into a quasi-fascist organisation like the Socialist Workers Party. It is about resisting capitalism

Sectarian Anarchist bollocks won't "resist" capitalism, comrade.
That's why the origianl anti-capitalist movement is broad based. The only reason Globalise Resistance exists is because the SWP can control it.

[YKTMX]

Maybe but so what? If activists find GR a useful group then they can join and get involved. If they don't, they won't join or can leave. People aren't forced into joining the group.

I suppose we look at this from opposite perspectives. I think the building of a large, Marxist-Leninist party is good and you don't.

[1949]

In what way is the SWP "quasi-fascist"? I don't support them, but the idea that they are "quasi-fascist" strikes me as absurd.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 10:47 PM
Maybe but so what? If activists find GR a useful group then they can join and get involved. If they don't, they won't join or can leave. People aren't forced into joining the group.

I suppose we look at this from opposite perspectives. I think the building of a large, Marxist-Leninist party is good and you don't.
The point is, splitting a movement so you can control it is the definition of sectarianism.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 10:52 PM
In what way is the SWP "quasi-fascist"?
Party officials are unelected, commands come from the leadership to be obeyed to the letter and party dissedents are expelled using their disciplinary body the Central Control Commission.

Socialist Workers Party and Socialism from below (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/once/sfb_swp.html)

[YKTMX]

Oh, come on. This has nothing to do with "splitting the movement" (a wrong idea in itself), you're only complaining because you don't like the SWP. It is also stupid that one party can "control" such a broad base movement as the anti-capitalist/globalization movement. What we can do is fight for revolutionary socialist politics within that movement. I know this upsets your delicate sensibilities. Tough.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 10:58 PM
Oh, come on. This has nothing to do with "splitting the movement" (a wrong idea in itself), you're only complaining because you don't like the SWP. It is also stupid that one party can "control" such a broad base movement as the anti-capitalist/globalization movement. What we can do is fight for revolutionary socialist politics within that movement. I know this upsets your delicate sensibilities. Tough.
What has this got to do with my "delicate sensibilities." The SWP is a menace to the left. It's simply a fact.

Look at the mess they made at the European Social Forum and even of the Stop the War Coalition. They push their "socialist" politics to such an extreme that every opposition is silenced in the process. And if it's resisted, they call the police.

[YKTMX]

The SWP is a menace to the left. It's simply a fact.


The SWP is the left in this country. The rest is just people like you.


even of the Stop the War Coalition

I'm astonished by that. How is organizing the biggest demo in British history "making a mess".


They push their "socialist" politics to such an extreme that every opposition is silenced in the process

Good. We've read Marx and Lenin, hence all our positions are accurate.


And if it's resisted, they call the police.


:lol:

[1949]

Originally posted by "The S.W.P. and Socialism from Below"+--> ("The S.W.P. and Socialism from Below")In an interview in the British 'Socialist Worker' in January 1993 Tony Cliff interpreted the failure of the miners struggle against pit closures not on what ideas were influencing the class, or even the level of militancy but on how many people had joined the SWP in the week before! He asked

"Imagine if we had 15,000 members...and 30,000 supporters...socialists could have taken 40 or 50,000 people to parliament...the Tory MP's wouldn't have dared vote with Michael Heseltine. The government would have collapsed" [my emphasis].

This idea of the size of the party as being the sole measure of success or failure has nothing in common with 'Socialism from below'.[/b]
I agree with this. In fact, Lenin polemicized against "[t]his idea of the size of the party as being the sole measure of success or failure" in a part of What Is To Be Done?

But the article doesn't seem well documented, and it mostly sounds like fairly typical anarchist critiques of Leninist parties (or revisionist-claiming-to-be-Leninist parties, as is the case with Trotskyites and E-G-style dogmato-revisionists). Would you go so far as to label the RCP, the CPN-M, the PCP, the CPP, etcetera, as "quasi-fascist" as well?


TAT
And if it's resisted, [the SWP] call the police.
Proof?

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 11:06 PM
The SWP is the left in this country. The rest is just people like you.
You mean RESPECT!? Give me a fucking break. The SWP have no more than 1000 active members and the majority of respect are liberal tits.

The rest of us may not be in the papers getting people to vote for us in the local and general elections, but we're there.



How is organizing the biggest demo in British history "making a mess".

The SWP were not the only people organising for that demo. Although, I was working for the SWP at this time, I agree that they did a lot of work to get that demo organised.

The point is however, things like John Ree isolating the anarchist member of the steering committee and then fabricated petty little lies to get them to leave. Why?

You're the one mouthing off about sectarianism. Opposition is acceptable. Debate is progress. You can't be right all the time.



They push their "socialist" politics to such an extreme that every opposition is silenced in the process

Good. We've read Marx and Lenin, hence all our positions are accurate.

This is the authotarian left people. Bare and naked!



And if it's resisted, they call the police.


:lol:

That's what they did at the ESF!

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 11:13 PM
Proof?
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/299610.html

[1949]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+Jan 15 2005, 02:20 PM--> (The Anarchist Tension @ Jan 15 2005, 02:20 PM)
[email protected] 15 2005, 11:13 PM
Proof?
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/299610.html [/b]
Okay.

I read a fellow Maoist say somewhere that the SWP supports letting Augusto Pinochet free! Although, I'm not sure which SWP he was talking about. It was probably the Amerikkkan one. What is the British SWP stance on Pinochet?

Also, answer my question about the Maoist parties I named.

[Conghaileach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 09:45 PM
Because they were great anti-imperialist Marxists, perhaps? That doesn't hide the fact that the idea of a Scottish Workers Republic (or an Irish one at that) is preposterous.
That's a very interesting position, considering that even the SWP supports (http://www.swp.ie/html/oppression.htm) an Irish socialist republic.

What would you expect from anti-imperialists like Connolly and MacLean today, that they oppose US imperialism but forget all about British imperialism? This goes very much against the concept of revolutionary defeatism, a theory developed by those two figures at the same time as Lenin was doing it in Russia as well.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 08:25 PM

There probably won't be a lot about the G8. To most of the "Republicans" I speak to the ant-globalization/capitalist movements are "middle class" or even "reactionery". They're too concerned with building the preposterous sounding "Scottish Workers Republic" to be concerned with such things.

I don't regard the 'anti-globalization' movement as middle class. I was quite pleased with what they accomplished in Praha and Seattle. I defended their actions to people who condemned them. I wish I could've been there.

What a useless dig.

Also, the group that publishes the SWR are the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, who although small, are I believe a faction within the SSP which is one of the largest parties in Scotland.

Also, why the hell would someone with a John Mclean quote on his avatar cop that attitude? I remember you used to also have on your sig lines from that song about Connolly.
I don't reagard it as "middle class", but what is middle class, to me being middle class is sending your kids to private schools, lving in the suburbs and having a fancy car, other people seem to think it's other things.

[PRC-UTE]

YouKnowTheyMurderedX, you're another example of a sectarian trendy scenester stealing from the proud history of Republican Socialism. How you can have McLean or Connolly on your sig and so blatantly contradict what they stood for is mindblowing!

I agree fully with TAT's criticisms of the SWP. When they ran the SEA front group in the six counties, they wouldn't let the IRSP join, apparently because they were afraid of us! :lol:

Also, it's documented that the SWP watched as other anti-fascists were brutalised by neo-fascists. They're a dangerous leach on the left, led by windbag dictators like Eamonn 'the Man' McCann.

[YKTMX]

YouKnowTheyMurderedX, you're another example of a sectarian trendy scenester stealing from the proud history of Republican Socialism. How you can have McLean or Connolly on your sig and so blatantly contradict what they stood for is mindblowing!


Where do I contradict what they stood for?

Am I for Scottish Independence? Yes.
Am I for a free, united Ireland? Yes.
Am I a Marxist? Yes.

I see quite a bit of crossover there, don't you?

The reason I have problems with groups like your's is this:

1) You elevate the national struggle to a par with the class struggle, which is a mistake.

2) You dream up notions of socialism being created in small countries like Ireland or Scotland, which, by any measure is impossible.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 07:34 PM

YouKnowTheyMurderedX, you're another example of a sectarian trendy scenester stealing from the proud history of Republican Socialism. How you can have McLean or Connolly on your sig and so blatantly contradict what they stood for is mindblowing!


Where do I contradict what they stood for?

Am I for Scottish Independence? Yes.
Am I for a free, united Ireland? Yes.
Am I a Marxist? Yes.

I see quite a bit of crossover there, don't you?

The reason I have problems with groups like your's is this:

1) You elevate the national struggle to a par with the class struggle, which is a mistake.

2) You dream up notions of socialism being created in small countries like Ireland or Scotland, which, by any measure is impossible.
1) We've said that the national struggle is a part of the class struggle. 'No War but the Class War' is a slogan used by the IRSM.

2) Like Marx we believe that a socialist victory in Ireland would have enormous effects in England and Wales and spark further workers revolutions. On a sidenote, socialism is possible in countries as modern as Scotland and Ireland. Scotland even has abundant natural gas reserves.

You contradicted what they stood for by mocking the term 'Workers Republic', which was used by both McLean and Connolly and by not supporting the RSM's of Scotland and Ireland who follow in their tradition. You have used quotes from both of them while opposing the movements they inspired. That's dishonest.

[bolshevik butcher]

Scotalnd also has enough renewable resources to be more than self suficcent.