Splintered Sunrise

Remember the Left Alternative? Okay, maybe not. The Left Alternative, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is the current incarnation of the post-split Reespect/Left List/Left Party that did so well in the May elections. You remember, when Lindsey German came so close to winning a seat on the GLA? No? Still drawing a blank?

This puts you in the good company of many Socialist Workers Party members, who have been asking themselves “Whatever happened to the Left Alternative?” And so it has come to pass that in the latest Party Notes – made available to us, as so often, via Andy’s good offices – that Martin Smith seeks to enlighten the cadre. Martin sez:

We want to avoid if possible any bruising election contests. We should only decide to stand on a case by case basis.

The Left Alternative should push its supporters into arenas like the Charter, PSNPP and support left candidates in their campaigns.

It should be reduced to minimal, but still existing, role.

This needs to be reviewed regularly because this situation could change very quickly.

So the LA is going to be a parked front, much like Globalise Resistance, kept just about ticking over in case there’s a need to dust it off again. This makes sense. Since the election debacle, practically all the SWP’s allies – who weren’t too numerous to begin with – have flaked off. The four Tower Hamlets councillors have gone, three to New Labour and one to the Tories. Kumar Murshid has gone. The very able Sait Akgul seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. And the SWP itself doesn’t have the membership or the money to keep a halfway serious electoral intervention going under its own steam.

Martin also expatiates a little on changes in the office, the context of which is supplied by a Left Alternative bulletin:

The officers of the Left Alternative are sad to have to inform our members of the resignations of John Rees and Lindsey German from the officers group and National Council. However, they remain members of the Left Alternative.

John and Lindsey have been tireless members of the officers group and National Council since the inception of Respect. As National Secretary, John has provided consistent judgment and direction in the most difficult political circumstances, while Lindsey has been our inspirational Mayoral candidate in the GLA elections in both 2004 and 2008.

The National Council, at its meeting on 6th September, agreed a unanimous vote of thanks to John and Lindsey for everything they have done for our organisation. We are proud to have them as members of the Left Alternative and look forward to continuing to work with them in campaigns from Stop the War to the People before Profit Charter.

Martin continues:

5) Transition
a) Chris B to remain on the steering committee until the October conference.
b) Charlie K and Martin S to go onto the LA steering committee at the conference.
c) In the run up to October conference the CC should discuss who should oversee the LA work after the conference. In the meantime, Chris, Charlie and Martin can both oversee the work and be the CC point of contact.
d) Alex or Chris H will introduce caucus on the Friday before the NC.

What does this mean? Well, the obvious inference is that there has been a coup on the CC at the expense of the Power Couple, and that jazzboy Martin has been the prime mover behind it. And now was as good a time as any, since their power rested, particularly in Rees’ case, in his heading up of the electoral front, a front that’s now moribund. And this palace coup appears to be backed by all the heavy hitters on the CC, including the party’s two theoreticians, Harman and Callinicos.

My first reaction to this is, about fucking time. The period of Rees’ ascendancy has been one long lurch from disaster to disaster, with occasional flashes of potential in between. In this tragic-comic situation, the tragic part is that, in fact, it’s been John and Lindsey who’ve been associated with attempts to break out of the old sectist rut and turn towards some type of united front politics. Unfortunately, they’ve been congenitally unable to make that work. The trouble with united front or coalition politics is that, in the nature of things, you’re going to be working with people to your right, and that creates liquidationist or opportunist pressures. Those pressures are an inevitable overhead, and it’s a matter of taste as to whether you think them a price worth paying for the sake of a possible, but far from inevitable, future as the revolutionary wing of a much bigger movement. Hence the pressures from those who preferred the certainties of the old-style SWP politics, and hence John and Lindsey making openings to other forces, and then ruining it all by the most crass manipulation, or by seeking to square the circle by promising enormous gains right around the corner. You know the phrase, hoist by your own petard? This is a good illustration of what it means.

So that helps explain the SWP’s spotty track record over the last ten years. They went into the Socialist Alliance, then smashed it up for the chance of something bigger and shinier called Respect. They built Respect into something with real potential, then smashed that up for the sake of Rees’ amour propre. They took their members into the Scottish Socialist Party, a hugely positive move, then bore direct culpability for its failure – as there’s no way the Tangerine Man could have got away with doing what he did without the unstinting support of the SWP. You want to know why nobody wants to work with the SWP these days? It’s called experience.

Then, of course, there’s the character of Rees himself. People who have known him for very many years, and at much closer quarters than myself, have told me they never trusted him. Certainly, there have been strong criticisms of his leadership qualities for a long time. In fact, even his elevation to the CC wasn’t unanimously popular. I stick to my position that he’s basically a high-functioning sociopath, and would further point out his tremendous vanity, which explains the explosive reaction when Galloway suggested he could do with someone to work alongside him. His ability to switch from being utterly charming when you’re of use to him, to petulant and spiteful if you get in his way, gives you some clues as to why he’s quite good at putting an alliance together, but a fucking liability if you want to keep one together. So his eventual defenestration shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

So, what now? The first thing you notice is that this has all taken place on the CC level, and if there was any consultation of the membership I’ve missed it. A week ago, any rank-and-file cadre who criticised Rees would have been accused of disloyalty. And so it might be again, once he regains favour. There are, of course, a few things to be tidied up. There is an SWP conference at the turn of the year, which will require a line to be agreed on for the IBs, and a slate for the incoming CC. And John, assuming he stays on the CC, will have to be found a job that will keep him occupied without allowing him to do too much damage. Perhaps he’ll get the SWP’s traditional equivalent of Siberia, being put in charge of the bookstall while he serves out his penance.

If the CC were smart, they would initiate an open discussion amongst the membership as to what’s gone wrong. This is unlikely, as the outcome might be unpredictable. They should also try building bridges to the former allies – and former members – who Rees and German have so royally pissed off over the years. This is also unlikely, as it might involve a loss of face for the infallible leadership.

One thing that’s clear is that the Left Alternative is a dead parrot. Let’s be blunt, a leadership of Martin Smith, Charlie Kimber and Chris Bambery is not designed to be attractive to the punters. What’s most likely is a return to the pre-1997 modus operandi of building a standalone sect through paper sales and agitprop campaigns, with the bulk of recruitment coming through SWSS and adults being recruited in ones and twos from strikes and demos. This is an attractive model to SWP old-timers, and from the apparatchik’s point of view – or, to put it another way, from Martin Smith’s point of view – would be the most sensible way to proceed. There is one big problem, which is that the SWP is about a fifth of the size that it was ten years ago, which would tend to cramp its style a little. But yeah, that’s probably what we’ll see happen.

In the meantime, let us pause a moment and pay tribute to John and Lindsey, who might for a while have considered themselves modern Britain’s answer to Lenin and Krupskaya. It would take a heart of stone not to piss yourself laughing.

Well, we’re on the home straight now, and I have to say that George has played a blinder. I must admit that this isn’t how I expected things to pan out – if you’d asked me six months ago how Respect would break up, my prediction would have been for George to self-destruct and the SWP to be left holding the baby. But George has been very canny – he’s chosen his dogs and the sticks to beat them with a lot of care – and he’s been very fortunate in his opponents. My suspicion is that this represents the SWP terminally jumping the shark.

Was the blow-up inevitable? Probably it was, due not least to the tension between the SWP’s vision of Respect as a “united front of a special type” and others’ view that it should function as a party. The major line of division around that has been the SWP’s tendency to keep Respect ticking over at a minimum level between elections, and others’ understanding that sustained local activism was necessary to build an electoral base. This led in some Respect branches to SWP members turning up at the AGM and voting to do nothing; it also made it difficult for non-SWP members to function within Respect. A related issue was whether Respect should be effectively a subsidiary of the SWP, or have a life of its own. Another related issue was whether the monolithic regime of the SWP created two classes of membership in Respect – the now famous “Russian dolls” analogy.

The “Russian dolls” argument is a compelling one, but it is less the product of conspiracy and more of the SWP’s peculiar culture. In the first place, there is the sectist arrogance that sees the SWP as the repository of political wisdom, as the people who see further and better than anyone else. Sometimes they talk about learning from others, in a somewhat metaphysical way, but they generally assume themselves to know best. This is what makes working with the SWP in movements such an enervating experience – they are manipulative, but not usually in a malicious way. Rather, very much like the old adage that what’s good for General Motors is good for America, they assume that what’s good for the SWP is good for the working class.

More to the point in this struggle is the internal regime of the SWP. Put bluntly, if Respect was to develop it needed a democratic culture, and you can’t have a democratic Respect if you don’t have democracy in the SWP. The SWP’s own democratic structures are so stunted and its commandist culture so entrenched that the permanent leadership of the SWP couldn’t but be aware of the danger to their own cosy little regime if, for example, they were to allow free votes within Respect. It was imperative that they hold to their traditional way of working, that the SWP hierarchy would take decisions, and the SWP membership would follow those decisions en bloc within Respect. Hence the experience, familiar to anyone who’s been to a Respect conference, where the SWP members would turn up knowing in advance which way to vote, and would all vote the same way, even on tiny procedural issues. To say this puts others at a disadvantage, or even puts a question mark over the need for discussion, is an understatement.

This is what determines the way the SWP works in its so-called “united fronts”, including its “united front of a special type”. If you look at the CC document’s account of all the people the SWP has worked with on this or that campaign, you will notice that it’s a list of prominent individuals who’ve been involved with the SWP over single issues. But this in itself proves little. Of course the SWP can work well with Tony Benn or Tariq Ali or even Peter Hain on a single-issue campaign. That’s a matter of diplomacy. Their record of working with other organisations, especially in an environment where their control isn’t assured, is frankly appalling.

This MO couldn’t work long-term in Respect. The SWP CC seem to have predicated their approach on the idea that the SWP would consistently call the shots in Respect, controlling the central apparatus, setting priorities, turning activity on and off like a tap. George could be circumvented by stroking his ego, letting him do whatever he wanted and staunchly defending him whenever he went off on a tangent. Other figures were simply treated as useful idiots. Salma Yaqoob was built up by the SWP after her appalling role in stitching up the Brum STWC, but as she developed into a substantial figure in her own right, attempts were made to shut her out of the organisation. As for the Bengali councillors in the East End… not that these people are saints by any means, but I can’t be the only person to have detected a nasty subtext coming from the SWP, an undercurrent of outrage that these unsophisticated peasants should have pretensions to leadership, rather than just following the lead of the white Marxists who know what’s best for everyone.

So it shouldn’t have been surprising that resentment against the functioning of the SWP, especially its leadership, should have grown up in Respect, particularly in those areas not under the firm control of the SWP. And it wouldn’t have surprised SWP insiders that the national secretary of Respect, whose job it was to maintain working relationships, would have fallen out with just about everybody else. And that’s the context in which to put George’s original letter – amidst the speculation about a snap election, it was painfully obvious that Respect was in no condition to face an electoral contest. And so George made a number of criticisms – quite measured ones in the circumstances – and proposals for putting Respect back on an even keel.

And the SWP CC’s response to that was to declare war, although their reticence showed they were finding it hard to think of a casus belli. A proposal to reduce the power of Rees was portrayed as an attack on the SWP, although George let it be known he would happily have any SWP member other than Rees in the national secretary’s position. SWP leaders started making savage attacks on a man they had been almost uncritically supportive of for four years. Then you had the surrealism of the 29 September Respect NC, where SWP reps were part of a unanimous vote for a package of measures that seemed to assure peace in our time, to be followed the next day by an SWP Party Council where the CC proclaimed that there was a left-right split in Respect, and George was determined to drive out the “socialists” (i.e. the SWP and its close fellow travellers).

Some of the SWP’s behaviour since then has simply been blatant organisational skulduggery. Notably the rows over conference delegates – moribund branches being reactivated to elect slates of SWP delegates; attempts to have fraudulent “student delegations” accredited on the basis of numbers of people indicating a vague interest at freshers’ stalls; the argument that the mostly Bengali Tower Hamlets branch, where fewer than 10% of members are in the SWP, would be best represented by a delegation consisting in its majority of white SWP members. The last case was especially hilarious, as the SWP was calling for gender, ethnic and political balance in a branch it didn’t control, while everywhere the SWP had a majority it turned out the comrades’ idea of “balance” was an 80-100% SWP delegation. This puts into a different light the SWP’s demagogic calls to “let the conference decide”, and appeals to the democratic rights of the Respect membership on behalf of an organisation that doesn’t allow its own members much in the way of democratic rights.

Many of the SWP’s actions, however, simply seem irrational, and can be best understood in terms of the SWP’s own functioning. That’s probably the best way to approach the CC’s Big Document on the Respect crisis. The document itself, in rhetorical terms, is little more than an inordinately long-winded version of what South Park fans will instantly recognise as the Chewbacca defence. There is a lot of fun to be had for someone in unpicking all the hypocrisies and terminological inexactitudes – I am immediately struck by the carping about Galloway’s earnings from the very people who voted against the principle of the workers’ wage, and also by the critique of “communalism” which has been borrowed off-the-shelf from the AWL. Non-SWP members of Respect will hardly be convinced by a document that obviously refers to a parallel universe, so little resemblance does it bear to their own experience, but that isn’t the point. Like all the CC statements during this crisis, it is primarily for internal consumption, and its main purpose is to whip the membership up into a frenzy of party chauvinism.

And where has all this left the SWP? Taking the thousand or so signatures on the CC’s loyalty oath as a starting point, we can firstly discount the CC’s wholly fictional claim that the SWP has 5900 members. Given that the loyalty oath contains some joke signatures, more than a few people who haven’t been active in years and a large number of “Respect supporters” (i.e. SWP members who have either refused or not bothered to join Respect), it’s open to serious question whether the SWP could even command a majority of Respect’s 2000 members in a democratic conference. That would put SWP membership at a forty-year low, which is a hell of an achievement for the post-Cliff leadership.

And the only way is down. The expulsions of Wrack, Hoveman and Ovenden may be passed off as unfortunate, but losing people like Jerry Hicks and Gary McFarlane starts to look like carelessness. One may expect further defections – certainly, the SWP’s “Real Respect” conference, where they are going to be in a room with themselves, will lower morale quite considerably. They will find it exceedingly difficult to forge alliances with anybody for years to come. What could possibly redeem their position slightly would be a turn back towards hard Trotskyist politics, but there is absolutely no evidence that the recent leftist rhetoric has been anything more than rhetoric. What we are likely to get is a small, isolated, propagandist and sectarian SWP with populist Respect politics, which is no earthly use to anybody.

As for the other half of Respect – I’m not inclined to hype up the possibilities. The most optimistic thing I can say at this point is that they will be more open than the SWP, and the Renewal conference may see a genuine discussion about ways forward. Which isn’t much, but it’s more than we’ll get from the SWP.

For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.
Niccolò Machiavelli

Andy has the big news about the SWP CC, in a typically well thought-out plan, managing to yet further reduce its clout in Respect by expelling leading members not deemed to be on-message enough. There’s a limit to what I can say about the concrete situation as I’m removed from the centre of events and I only know Nick Wrack and Rob Hoveman by reputation. I used to know Kevin Ovenden slightly and he struck me as a quite serious-minded and extremely loyal SWP cadre. So I’ll just add a few random thoughts of my own.

The first is that this shows the weakness of the SWP’s position. In days gone by, being an ex-member of the SWP was not much fun, whether you were formally expelled, chose to leave or (very common, this) were encouraged to resign. The only parallel I can think of is the practice of disfellowshipping carried on by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. You are talking here about radical shunning – members aren’t supposed to talk to you, nor are they allowed to sell you the paper, you’re barred from attending the SWP’s public events (boo hoo) and your personal failings, real or imagined, become the source for ever more lurid legends. This often goes on for years on end. A powerful incentive to keep your head down and stay in the leadership’s good books, and it may still be true for those SWP members who have voted with their feet and quietly stayed out of Respect. For those in Respect, however, who may have built up a whole new set of relationships, life on the outside may be looking less bleak these days. If even people like Rob, Kev and Ger Francis who were formed by and were willing participants in the SWP regime are suddenly growing testicles, you know the CC is in trouble.

My second point is to flag up that Respect is something new for the SWP. On the one hand, that speaks well for the SWP, that it didn’t have a history of unprincipled alliances with dodgy characters and dubious organisations. We can all think of others on the British left with much longer records in that respect. On the other hand, nor has it much experience of meaningful long-term alliances with anybody. The SWP of years past had a standard MO of running short-lived self-generated campaigns, the political equivalent of digging holes and filling them in again. You would hold a public meeting to launch a campaign, call a march, spend six weeks postering, hold the march, hopefully get a few recruits and then move on to the next campaign. While a few token individuals of little substance may have been put on the committee, relationships with others on the left were, let us say, sporadic. Importantly, the SWP was always in a dominant position. The CC literally don’t know how to function in an alliance that they don’t control.

There is a further point, which has to do with the post-Cliff leadership vacuum. The problem with an organisation literally built around the personality of Cliff was that the old man’s death would lead to chronic instability if not paralysis. We might draw as a parallel the pious hope occasionally expressed over here that the DUP will “modernise” after Papa Doc leaves the stage. No it won’t, it’ll be more like The Sopranos. Robbo will turn on Doddsy. Doddsy will turn on Jeffrey Boy. Once you throw Baby Doc, Singing Willie and Sammy the Streaker into the mix, you have a recipe for Paisleyite mayhem. Well, the post-Cliff SWP is sort of the antimatter version. And bear in mind that, while the CC may hang together in clique fashion and present a united face to the world, it isn’t nearly as monolithic as it appears. In fact it is a seething nest of egos and ambitions.

If you remember, the Big Idea around the time of Cliff’s death was the “anti-capitalist” turn. Prof Callinicos was the point-man here, and his role in excommunicating the American heretics seemed to mark him out as the coming man. But Alex had a few disabilities. His unpopularity in the ranks wasn’t necessarily fatal, but the fact that he is essentially a part-time SWPer and doesn’t have any base in the apparat meant that, while he could to some extent set the ideological tone, he couldn’t realistically hope to emerge as paramount leader.

So the main thing about the pecking order in the last few years is that, thanks to their high profile in the antiwar movement and Respect, John and Lindsey have established themselves as the effective First Couple. This has not only left them exposed to sniping, as would be the case for any leading member trying to set himself up as emperor, but being the two CC members most closely identified with Respect may have been helpful when Respect looked to be going great guns, however it was always going to be a hostage to fortune if the project all went pear-shaped.

Andy argues that the SWP leadership’s extraordinary behaviour, not least shouting about a left-right split and the rottenness of George for internal consumption, while saying nothing of the kind publicly, can only be explained in terms of protecting Rees’ personal prestige. Well, there is something to this. Neither Rees nor German works for the SWP any more, both are Respect fulltimers and this undermines their material base in the SWP leadership. It is almost certain that, were Rees removed as Respect National Secretary, the CC would reshuffle their portfolios and find him a job back at the centre, but that isn’t the point. A defeat for Rees in Respect would be a huge blow to his credibility and prestige, and Rees is all too familiar with what that means in a culture where comrades are encouraged to put the top leaders on a pedestal.

At the same time, we know that there are different schools of thought in the SWP, although the nature of the regime obscures this for people who aren’t clued in to its peculiar political culture. There are plenty of old-school SWPers who have been unenthusiastic about Respect from the word go; there are also those who are genuinely serious about Respect and really want to build it. Our pal Rees hasn’t been making himself particularly popular with either school of late. In addition, you don’t have to be a Kremlinologist of the stature of Peter Manson to be aware of the possibility that, for motives both pure and base, plenty of people in the SWP, very likely including elements of the CC, actively want Rees to get his arse handed to him by George.

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

Mark Steel has a good story about the Militant tendency. Like many of Mark’s stories, there is probably a little embellishment but there’s little doubt that the core of it is true. It goes like this:

Mark is walking down the street one fine day when he espies a black-and-white poster proclaiming, “The Round London Jobs March Is Coming To Your Area”. Mark thinks this sounds like a good idea, and at the appointed time is waiting for the march along with a couple of mates from the Croydon SWP who he’s press-ganged into this. When the march arrives, Mark walks up to the Militant fulltimer leading it.

Mark: We’d like to join your march.

Militant: Oh yeah?

Mark: Yes, I saw the poster and thought it seemed like a good idea.

Militant (pointing to SWP branch banner): Not with that, you’re not joining this march.

Mark: Why not?

Militant: This march has widespread trade union support, and I’m not going to jeopardise that by having an SWP banner on this march.

Mark: You may have widespread trade union support, but I can’t help noticing there are only four of you.

Eventually some deal was worked out, and Mark and his chums were allowed to join the march. The punchline was that, however bemused the commuters were to see seven people with two banners trudging along the side of the road, they’d have been much more bemused if they’d known four of those people were thinking, “This was a pretty good little march before the other three turned up.”

I cite this because it’s a great double-edged joke. When told to an SWP audience, it would evoke a great roar of laughter from people who would lap up any story of the Militant behaving like dicks. But half of the audience would be uneasily aware that they themselves had behaved just like that before, and doubtless would do again. It’s worth going back to that chapter of Reasons To Be Cheerful where Mark regales us with tales of the lunatic behaviour of left groups – as he says of Militant, either the 5000 rudest people in Britain had all spontaneously decided to join the same far left group, or they trained them to act like that – because it does have this double-edged quality. Mark was a member of the SWP at that time, and his criticisms of the party don’t go beyond talking about Cliff’s endearing eccentricities, but there is a pretty bloody obvious warning there for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Which leads me to something I’ve been pondering in terms of the most recent SWP ruckus. Andy has a good discussion apropos of Lindsey German, of how loyalty to the party can be reconciled with loyalty to whatever broader forum – a union, say, or a single-issue campaign – that the party member is working in. It’s a discussion worth having, but I want to concentrate on something much more basic – why the left, which is supposed to be fighting for a society based on solidarity and comradeship, so often behaves so badly. I’m not just talking here about sheer bloody rudeness on the blogs, but about behaviour in the real world too – the lack of face-to-face interaction in the blogosphere can encourage extra bad behaviour, but that doesn’t explain patterns of bad behaviour in the real world, much of it going back decades.

So, are we just scraping the barrel in terms of human material, or are there explicable reasons? I like to think it’s the latter. It’s not innate but a learned behaviour, traceable back to the left’s social isolation but also ensuring it can’t escape that isolation. There are issues about groups with fantastically grandiose perspectives – small far-left groups most real people have never heard of, but who aspire to overthrow every government in the world – but whose lack of impact in society at large means their posturing carries with it very little in the way of consequences. Allied to that is a cod-Leninism – which is really a cod-Machiavellianism without the merits of either Lenin or Machiavelli – which disdains personal probity as just bourgeois moralism, which preaches that the ends justify any means, and which carries with it a highly elitist view of leadership. There are many worse examples out there than Lindsey German, but when I hear talk about bending the stick, seizing the key link in the chain or the small cog moving the big cog, a shiver runs up my spine and I wonder who’s about to be shafted.

The theoretical justification for this, as far as the SWP goes, is in Cliff’s Lenin: Building The Party, which you will recall paints a portrait of Lenin as someone whose genius resided in his unique ability to see a situation clearly, grasp what action was necessary and single-handedly cajole the party into doing what needed to be done. One particularly remembers that section about the Bolsheviks after 1905, which argues that even though Lenin was completely wrong about the political situation, he was still right, because the course of action he was advocating would have been the right one had his perspective been right. If you think this portrait of Lenin closely resembles Cliff, you have hit the target, rung the bell and may collect a cigar or cocoa-nut according to choice.[1]

So, Andy notes:

Cliff was a wheeler-dealer, utterly charming when you were useful to him, utterly ruthless and impersonal when he saw you as an obstacle; and given the mercurial changes of perspective he was inclined to, then you couldn’t predict your downfall coming! John and Lindsey have the same approach, but neither of them have the genuine charm of Cliff, nor his remarkable ability to maintain people’s personal affection even after he had shafted you.

Which reminds me of what Jim Higgins wrote about Cliff’s MO back in the 1970s:

The most difficult thing, and one in which nobody succeeded, was to convince Cliff that his latest idea was not some kind of revealed truth, in the pursuit of which everything else should be set aside. To get across the simple fact that the workers’ movement has certain norms of conduct and definite procedures that are there precisely because it is a collective movement, at its best involving all members of the collective, proved impossible. For Cliff the “brilliant” insights of an individual (himself) could be submitted to popular approval on two conditions: one; that they agreed with his proposal in double quick time, and two; that if they did not agree he won anyway. This cast of mind is one he shares with some trade union leaders. It drives most militants into paroxysms of rage which is why, whenever the bureaucracy is pulling a fast one, the Conference Arrangements Committee report at trade union conferences, is one of the most passionate debates. The existence of this phenomenon is one of the reasons why a genuine revolutionary party has, by definition, to include many experienced militants in its ranks because, among other things, they are the best guarantee against bureaucratic manipulation and capricious, high-handedness. The failure to grasp this simple fact of working class life is evidence of a fundamental and debilitating ignorance and an absolute bar to revolutionary success.

And here’s Andy again:

But the big issue that is raised here is whether this model of political organisation can ever be effective in advancing radical social change. There is an inherent contradiction between trying to unite in one party the widest number of self-confident and assertive activists and leaders, and at the same time seeking to reduce those self-confident activists into being cannon fodder for a centralised organisation that has its own institutional biases. The result is that the SWP is less than the sum of its parts; as it under-utilises the talents and potential influence of its members; while an internal culture of deference and self-denial, provides a perfect culture for bullying and rudeness to flourish.

Which brings us neatly back to the question of personal behaviour. Because, if the political content is problematic enough, it can be made infinitely more so if the person carrying it out insists on being a cunt about it. Or, more to the point, if there’s a culture encouraging such behaviour.

Allow me to be concrete about this. One thing that was highly controversial on the British left was the move to close down the Socialist Alliance and set up Respect. I freely admit that I was sceptical in the extreme about this. Granted that there were objections to Respect in bad faith, and objections for the wrong reasons – whether this was the Alliance for War and Liberalism on the right, or Students Power on the doctrinaire left – but it was possible to have concerns in good faith without either being crazily sectarian, or thinking that the SA was some unimprovable utopia. I was in favour of a socialist-Muslim alliance against the war, but sceptical that this could be carried through into an actual party. I had my doubts about Galloway, and what political content might have to be thrown overboard to keep him sweet. I would have preferred a more explicitly socialist profile to a populist one. And, while you can’t have an alliance without concessions, I was worried about whether the concessions that were being made were justifiable ones.

In retrospect, this might have been a sectarian position, but I don’t think it was an unreasonable one. The important thing is that while the Respect turn may have been the correct thing to do, even if you absolutely believe it was the correct thing to do there were obviously huge problems with the execution. I’m talking here about the steamrolling of people who did have reasonable concerns, often with some personal nastiness involved. It is simply untrue that those in the SA who didn’t follow through into Respect were all pro-war Islamophobes. With a bit more sensitivity and a bit less bold and decisive leadership, most of the reasonable sceptics could have been won over. Likewise, when Respect split – and this is regardless of whether you think the split was inevitable or who you think was in the right – it was surely the superabundance of bold and decisive leadership that ensured that the SWP lost the entire middle ground.

Moreover, once trust is compromised, it takes an awful long time to win back. I’m going to pre-empt Mark P by making a point about all the horror stories surrounding Militant. Most of these have a foundation in truth even if they’ve grown a little with the telling, but it’s notable that the hairiest stories are all located some considerable time in the past. Partly that’s due to a much smaller SP not being able to operate the way Militant used to, but there’s also a strong element of the SP having calmed down a lot and changed their MO. While it’s very easy to find the SP taking stances you think are wrong, and if you look closely it can’t be that hard to find individual SP members behaving like dicks, it’s been a long time since the SP as a body did something outrageously sectarian in the movements.[2] This means that today the SP has a rather good reputation on the broader left, including among people who strongly disagree with it, for being sensible and constructive. But it took years to get there.

Finally, it’s not just a question of bad behaviour being tactically stupid. There’s also the question of it being morally wrong. Sometimes the means contradict the ends, and further, if we’re committed to the better society then that means trying to set an example, even if we fall short. Socialists should not need to be told that abusing people’s trust, or scapegoating them for other people’s mistakes, or stealing their labour, is flat out wrong. Socialists should not see as normal and unobjectionable an institutional culture of bullying, ostracism and denigration that would land any capitalist employer in front of an employment tribunal. Socialists should not preach about how every comrade is gold dust, then treat the socialist organisation as a personal bailiwick for the aggrandisement of the leader at the expense of the rank and file. Socialists should seek to build relationships on a basis of honesty and comradeship, and using the talents of the membership rather than building up their beer buddies or fuck buddies as the revolutionary general staff. These are things that shouldn’t even need to be said, but as John Rees used to say, sometimes you have to repeat yourself until the penny drops.

We have far too many people who want to be Lenin – or, in the case of the late Paul Foot, who wanted to be Shelley – but whose secular Thomas à Kempis act does not have much substance to fall back on. The lives of the saints are not there for us to re-enact their detailed actions, but to give us exemplars of the good life and to strive to improve ourselves. Perhaps I’m unusual in preferring Ignatius Loyola to Tony Cliff in such matters, but this isn’t the obscurantism it may seem. The Ignatian examen – the examination of the conscience – involves a serious reflection on one’s actions and desires, identifying one’s faults and working on them systematically, with the aim of drawing towards one’s higher self. It’s an approach with a lot to commend it, but unfortunately the left goes in much more for self-justification than self-criticism.

Just as a final point, it never hurts to make a meaningful gesture. There are ruptures – the Respect split was one, this current SWP fight is another – that provide an opening to make those gestures. In these contexts, admitting a mistake – even admitting that, while you still think you were right to do something, you could have handled it better – costs you little and may gain you some good will at least. The SWP say they have changed. That’s all well and good for them, and many members are saying things have improved, but for those of us who are a bit jaundiced, it’s not quite enough to replace the John and Lindsey double act with Martin and Judith and urge us to put our trust in Martin’s good nature. (Since the Jefe Máximo’s personal record is exemplary, and he has charmers like Bradley and Yunus backing him up.) For the other side, one would hope that the experience of being on the sharp end of the regime would lead to some reflection on the regime that was led by those people complaining about sharp practice now. One would hope.

Not wanting to belabour the point, but there is a broader movement containing people who have been left damaged and disillusioned by pocket Lenins playing silly buggers. There are plenty of people who must, on some level, have some conception that their actions have consequences, and who must know that a quiet word in the right ear would go a long way. We’re not talking public flagellation here, just some basic human decency. Go on, you know it makes sense.

[1] Slavoj Žižek’s take on Lenin is remarkably similar, which is why Alexander’s enthusiasm for Žižek worries me slightly.

[2] I know there’s an argument about the Scottish split, but I am absolutely not going to get bogged down in that one right now. Life’s too short.