The National Union of Students no-platforms George Galloway, Galloway sues the NUS, the left talks nonsense throughout and Paul Demarty wonders what the hell is going on A sad truth about today’s left is that it is pretty irrational, all told. Normally this irrationality comes out in more or less disguised form: the standard practice, adopted ...
As the next Greek elections loom, Paul Demarty takes a look at the lines being taken by the left and the current controversy in the SWP On Sunday June 17, the Greek population will march once again to the polls - this time in even more dramatic circumstances. The polarisation of support between the rightwing New ...
Calling on Egyptians to vote for the Muslim Brotherhood is insane, argues Paul Demarty (first published in the WW) The May 23-24 first round of voting in the Egyptian presidential elections produced, as has been widely noted, the worst possible outcome for the masses, lining up the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi against erstwhile Mubarak crony Ahmed ...
Ben Lewis found the SWP a lot less hostile than in previous years At each and every Marxism there are places where attendees are politely warned not to go by Socialist Workers Party full-timers and more narrow-minded members. The left groups, armed only with pasting tables, books, pamphlets and leaflets (which just might have the odd ...
Harley Filben heard a debate initially consisting of filling in blanks As part of its (often basically nominal) commitment to revolution, the SWP arranged a bloc of three Marxism sessions devoted to that subject. The first saw SWP veteran Colin Barker give some answers to a fundamentally important question - what is a revolutionary situation? His ...
Three CPGB members, two also members of Communist Students attended the Friday June 17th rally organised by the Sheffield Anti-Cuts Alliance (SACA), where rebellious Labour MP John McDonnell was the keynote speaker. Over 150 people turned out, and it was one of those rare occasions when most of the Marxist left in Sheffield could be ...
On Thursday March 31st the Socialist Workers Party held a public meeting in the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, to lay out their perspectives for the direction of the workers' movement in the aftermath of the massive TUC-organised protest against cuts in London on March 26th. Around fifty people attended, about half of whom were evidently ...
Sinead Rylance reports on the occupation of the Edmond J Safra Building at Kings College London Around midday on the second national day of action against tuition fees (December 30th) the ‘we support our teachers’ group and some of its supporters occupied the Edmond J Safra building, which has a capacity of ...
Ben Bawerk reports on the conference of the Education Activist Network On Sunday November 1 around 400 students and lecturers (mainly the former) filled King’s College Strand campus to attend the Education Activist Network conference. EAN is the latest ‘broad front’ group of the Socialist Workers Party in the student movement following the ...
How far does John Molyneux’s critique of SWP bureaucratic centralism go? Ben Lewis reports. “We don’t usually do this”, said leading Socialist Workers Party member John Molyneux in his opening on ‘Democracy and the revolutionary party’ at this year’s Marxism. Indeed, when comrade Molyneux spoke rather candidly of a “recent period in the SWP where it ...
Chris Strafford reports on the 'Right to Work' conference The Socialist Workers Party’s Right to Work conference on Saturday January 30 saw over 800 socialists and trade unionists pack into Manchester’s Central Hall. An excellent turnout, with the SWP bussing in comrades from across the country, to be joined by contingents from other left groups, including ...
Dave Isaacson condemns leading SWP members who continually undermine and sabotage attempts to forge rank and file organisation There was one significant omission in Jim Moody’s article on the sell-out of the postal strike by the Communication Workers Union leadership, which allowed CWU president Jane Loftus to come out of it looking rather good, when actually ...
What does the SWP majority think democracy looks like?, asks James Turley Last year, the dispute between the majority faction of the Socialist Workers Party central committee and John Rees and his allies erupted, and in the aftermath all manner of smaller complaints began to arise; questions about the political basis of Respect, the party regime and ...