Workers' Liberty

Regressing to the level of the Weekly Worker are we?

Anyway, this

"whenever one of us raised an issue that the comrades didn't like, the chair attempted to shut us up"

isn't true. One person was asked to stop talking by the chair. I'm not sure if he'd ran over his time limit, or whether it was just because of the ridiculous attempt to crow-bar a personal attack into a discussion about workers struggles 1968-74 - and it wasn't "calm and reasonable" by any normal standards. I understand that there's a dubious, tangential link you can make between the topic and the insults if you want to, but it hardly amounts to engaging in good faith. Not only the chair, but one of the speakers (not of the group) and several other non-aligned people in the meeting also wanted the sectarian drivel taken elsewhere, and voiced this opinion strongly. The first person the chair picked to contribute to the debate was an AWL member, and nobody tried to shut him up because he was succinct and reasonably political. The other AWL person was told to shut up by one of the speakers, who has evidently seen enough sectarian bickering in the past, and threatened to leave if AWL activists didn't stick to the topic, and stop trying to hijack the meeting for their own ends.

Were comrades from the AWL there to contribute to, and learn from, the debate? Or were they there to be sectarian? Of course, it is neither of these things entirely, and I've no doubt it differed person to person - and I hope and believe that the former predominated formost. But there is some reason to believe that the latter - disruptive sectarian intervention, premised on hysterical and absurd characterisations of the people and politics involved - was a major aim. And if this is true, it is completely understandable for AWL members to be asked not to attend.

You're going to ask me for the evidence? I don't mind, as long as you promise to let me publish it in full in a future comment, and not delete it. As it is, in the cause of this healing, I'll leave it off for now. Suffice to say, frankly, most people would have reacted in the same way as the organisers of the meeting did, and the faux-cameraderie of the above post is neither plausible nor helpful. There is no ground for accusing the meeting organisers of standing in opposition to open debate or free speech.

As a non-aligned socialist interested in educating myself about the class struggle, I ask AWL not to get in my way. The questions raised by the series of debates are important ones, and provide an opportunity for people to sharpen their socialist thought from a non-trotskyist perspective. Most objections to AWL activity came, that night, not from the organisers of the meeting, but from independent socialists in the room. The same will be true again, if the performance is repeated - though I do hope that AWL members will attend in future, and will engage politically. For instance, it's clear that the "party question" is going to be the root of strong theoretical differences, and in my view an open debate on this in the future would be useful.

The political root of the above post is an unnecessary obsession with one's own propaganda group (I believe the AWL characterises itself as a 'propaganda group'?), and its significance. This leads to an unnecessary obsession with defending its purity, and an unnecessary obsession with other propaganda groups (which compete for influence and activists). It leads to politics that are ridiculously personalised, due to the inevitable and high rate of personal clashes, externally and internally, in groups whose main activity is competing with each other, while struggling to maintain internal ideological unity. This way, comrades, lies the Weekly Worker.

So, please... "Do better, comrades!"

[edited for comradeliness ;-)]

Someone loves themselves a bit too much me thinks.

Anyway...without sharp debate, and accountability for people's actions and ideas, we're left with limp left public opinion, and big mouths and egos setting the pace, which is where Broder and his chums seem to be at.

1. David Broder tried to shout me down when I raised in my speech the fact that the organisers had tried hard to exclude us from the meeting, and the fact that they had walked out of the AWL in a huff to organise their own separate meetings, without debating through any of their issues. He tried to shout down Rosie Woods when she complained about him trying to shout me down.

So if the organisers try to ban you from a meeting, it's "a personal attack" to comment on that in the meeting? Come on!

2. "Disruptive sectarian intervention... it is completely understandable for AWL members to be asked not to attend". So it is "completely understandable" for any group on the left - and any trade union, too? - to exclude from their meetings anyone who they think will be sharply critical?

a case of those who live by the sword....

Hi Martin,

On the first thing, in my memory it was Shiela C, one of the speakers, who asked Rosie to stop speaking. Perhaps I am wrong, but if it wasn't her initially, she certainly weighed in pretty heavily! On the second point, you write:

it is "completely understandable" for any group on the left - and any trade union, too? - to exclude from their meetings anyone who they think will be sharply critical?

Nope, didn't say that. Critical political debate is fine, just being disruptive is not. In the event, while the AWL intervention was quite annoying, because it diverted from the subject of the meeting, I would not characterise it as being entirely disruptive. It clearly had political elements. However, I think that it was understandable why the meeting organisers might have believed in advance that the AWL was intending to organise a disruptive intervention, not a take part in political debate. I might not think it was the correct reaction in the event - indeed, you'll notice that above I specifically say that I think AWL people should be able to attend. (And even more, I hope they will - because I think the AWL is the healthiest expression of British Trotskyism). But I certainly think that it was understandable that such a reaction would arise based not on hostility to open debate, but hostility to open disruption. (I would agree that terms such as 'disruptive' would be used by an organisation like the SWP to describe even real political contribution - obviously this is a matter of correctly characterising 'disruption' and 'debate' - but I'm not falling into this trap.)

(Also, I didn't say it was a "personal attack" for you to comment on the 'ban attempt', and I agree with you that it would not be, I think it was a "personal attack" to attack the the decision of a particular person to leave your group on grounds you say were invidious.)

Do you not think, Martin, that the meeting organisers, and the speakers, and non-AWL attendees, had a right to insist that the meeting be about the class struggle '68-74? What if I turn up to an AWL London Forum on, say, "Should the Left Back Obama?" and start going on about the AWL's views on (for example) Kosovo, Iran, the Russian Revolution, the role of the party, etc (never mind "what I think about the decision of a particular person to leave the SWP and join AWL")? Do I have a right to insist that the topic of the forum be diverted simply because that is what I want to talk about? Do you have a right to turn each of these debates onto whatever takes your fancy on a Monday evening? I don't think so. I think that the chair would be correct to ask me to "stop speaking", and do so until I did indeed shut up. Which is just what the chair did to you, supported (as far as I could see) by everyone who was in the meeting and not a member of AWL.

I agree that it would be evading clear debate if, over the long term course of a group's existence, a group failed to engage with a key political issue - by refusing to debate it, or comment on it for instance, in press or in meetings. It is not therefore incumbent on the group to discuss that issue at length in its first meeting, and at your instigation. If, in the course of the next year, there is no clear position from the new group on the question of the party and the trotskyist propaganda group, and they refuse to debate that with you, I can see how that is evading the substantive issue. We'll see, eh?

(Though, for goodness sake, if two people leave the AWL, even if they don't do so in quite the way you'd prefer, that's not a class issue, it's not really suitable for public debate*. You only think it's really important, because you think the AWL and its organisational norms are really important. You and I know that those who left have a different characterisation of the circumstances and context of their departure than you do. It's not interesting for you to keep on repeating your perspective over and over again on different websites. People have had their say. Why not just leave it? It's not important.)

* Though, if you think it is, you can always call your next London Forum "The running dogs of the Commune, and why only WE are the bearers of the pure flame of socialism"...

1. I didn't start talking about miscellaneous questions unconnected with the lessons of 1968-74. I argued that the struggles of 1968-74 showed the need for a strong, united, democratic socialist organisation. We need to work for that today, too, to be prepared for the next big wave of struggles. It is entirely relevant in that context to talk about the meeting's organisers going off in a huff to organise such meetings separately, and about their attempt to exclude us from the meeting.

2. The AWL tendency has been active for 40 years now. Over that time we have had many arguments with other socialists. We have never disrupted a meeting (other than when we have helped other anti-fascists disrupt fascist meetings). We have made political interventions in left-wing meetings which the organisers didn't want to hear, but that is a different thing. Now it becomes all right for anybody - Chris and David, but why not also John Rees, Dave Prentis, whoever else - to try to exclude us from meetings because they think (rightly) that we are politically hostile and so fear that we will be "disruptive"?

3. Yes, Sheila tried to shout Rosie down too. The proper role of the chair in such circumstances is to quiet the shouter-down, not the person being shouted down.

1. That's your idea of an 'entirely relevant' connection? You're saying a major lesson of the last period of intense class struggle, one you felt it worth drawing the attention of the meeting to, is that people should be really into following the AWL's internal procedures? Maybe people should, maybe people shouldn't, but it's staggering if that's really the best point you can think to draw out. (Anyway, you hardly argued that the period showed the need for a strong, united, democratic socialist organisation - you just said it did, said something good that people in Socialist Organiser did during that time, then launched into the thing about the organisers of the meeting...)

2. What you say about your record for 40 years may well be true, but I don't have any way to confirm it, and neither does anyone else. I think the question depends not merely on a judgement of political (i.e. ideological, principled) hostility, but on other judgements as well. I think there were grounds for some such judgements, which I alluded to in my first post - intention to be concretely disruptive, not just 'disruptive' a la SWP. I accept, as I say above, that such judgements may in fact have been mostly incorrect. That does not mean they were, as such, unreasonable. My original point was that if I had seen what they had seen, I might have been tempted to believe the worst - and I think that most other people would think the same.

3. Depends on what you think about 1. - and the broader question of whether you were being relevant.

Anyway. This is, as I have just been reminded by someone from the real world, a silly pursuit, so I will do my best not to add a fourth post repeating pretty much exactly the same thing I said the first time. Take care.

1. Strange, but you seem to have been listening to my contribution only during the last minute or so of it, when I was struggling to make myself heard above David Broder's shouting-down. I said a lot more about the 1970s. If there were nothing special or contentious about the way the meeting had been organised, I would not have commented on it. But it was highly relevant to the meeting that it was the first public outing of a new group, and that this group had marked its first public appearance by an attempt to exclude.

(Immediately after I finished speaking, the group would also mark its debut by a screaming denunciation of the AWL as "shit", "disgusting", etc., a speech made with no attempt to wait to be called by the chair, and no claim to be referring to the 1970s at all. But you seem to find nothing out of order in that speech....)

2. If there were examples of the AWL disrupting meetings (other than fascist gatherings), wouldn't they be publicised? After all, we're not short of enemies. You have "no way to confirm" what I say on this only in the same sense that you have no absolute way to confirm that the Pyramids are still in Egypt. (You haven't been there today and looked; but if someone had removed them yesterday, wouldn't you have heard about it?)

3. In any case, David and Chris know about the history of the AWL. They also know that when they were "oppositionists" in the AWL, they had ample, in fact in practice unlimited, freedom to write and to speak for their views.

4. Exclusions and bans are an issue in the "real world". Look at what Unison is currently doing to leftists whom the leadership sees as "disruptive" because they raise awkward issues. To be sure, being excluded by the David-Chris group is a very tiny part of this picture! But the excuses you offer for exclusion will, in the long run, only help the likes of Dave Prentis.

1. Won't repeat myself on the main point. I agree that the 'speech' you refer to was out of order and should not have been allowed - though someone, I can't remember who, did take responsibility for getting that person to be quiet. I am not taking responsibility for the meeting, I didn't organise it.

2. There are obvious differences. I won't humour you. The main one, though, is the absence of a document stating that a body with sufficient resources to do so would like to see the pyramids removed on the night 9 September. (Or rather, considers that the pyramids in their present position are a threat, that there is no reason to respect the wishes of the pyramid keepers to remain in Egypt, and that anyone who thinks they do are some sort of scum. Under such metaphorical circumstances, I would nonetheless still believe that the pyramids are in Egypt, but I would not be too unkind about anyone who wanted to check. If you see what I mean.)

3. You may well be right. I don't know.

4. It is not 'part of this picture'. It is obviously something different - it is a small and highly personalised conflict between a very small number of people, not a political condition in a major class institution. I can't help you if you can't see that. I repeat my support for inclusive meetings, including AWL members. Incidentally, I'm amused by how the word "excuses" is now an acceptable interpretation of "explicitly opposes, but expects to happen, and believes to be understandable". Was that true two weeks ago as well? (Note that I am consistent in saying that it is not in both cases...)

I'm going to do my best to resist the temptation to reply again. Let's see how that goes.