Rewriting the history of the Stop the War Coalition

Submitted by martin on 6 September, 2011 - 5:53

The Stop The War Coalition has declared: "The terrorist attack that destroyed the Twin Towers ten years ago was a crime which Stop the War Coalition condemned at the time, and it reaffirms that condemnation today".

There is plenty more in the STWC statement to query politically, but that first sentence demands comment just in the name of putting the record straight.

Stop The War had been set up, as a fairly small affair, around the 1999 Kosova war. After one of the first demonstrations against the planned US-led invasion of Afghanistan, following 9/11, the SWP (led on this by Lindsey German, now of Counterfire) seized the chance to relaunch STW by way of a fringe meeting at Friends' Meeting House in Euston Road, London.

No public notice had been given that the meeting was going to organise a campaign, and it was more or less randomly-attended. No left group apart from the SWP was present in organised force (as it happened, I was only the AWL member there); but there was a sufficient number of SWPers to enable Lindsey German, by peremptory chairing, to get her way.

It wasn't easy, because two other groups of activists at least (those around Milan Rai and Maya Evans, and Green Party activists, notably Darren Johnson) had different ideas, and in particular demanded that the campaign should clearly condemn the attack on the Twin Towers.

They were bulldozed. STW did not come round to condemning the attack on the Twin Towers until it held a proper conference, some months later, at Islington Green School.

There, the attendance was bigger, the SWP didn't have a guaranteed majority, and people had had a chance to prepare. Lindsey German could not proceed just by shouting down critics from the chair and declaring her own proposals carried by acclaim.

So, did she debate the issue but concede defeat? No.

The SWP had vehemently insisted for months that it was a matter of socialist principle not to condemn the attack on the Twin Towers. The STW relaunch meeting was not the only occasion.

The SWP was then involved with several other socialist groups, including AWL, in the Socialist Alliance. So far it had been able to get its way in the Socialist Alliance on almost everything. We'd won some things in the SA that the SWP would have preferred not to have, but whenever things had been pushed to a vote the SWP had won out.

This was the first issue where it couldn't. People like Mike Marqusee (former editor of Labour Left Briefing), who had sided with the SWP inside the SA on almost everything until then, broke ranks on this and argued strongly (and well, and successfully) for the SA to condemn the attack. John Rees (also prominent in the STWC) led the SWP resistance, but eventually had to live with being outvoted.

Being outvoted in a big STW conference was, however, a different matter for the SWP from being outvoted in a small Socialist Alliance committee meeting.

At the STW conference, Lindsey German responded not by argument but by a quick swerve. All right, she said. Of course we condemn the attack. Of course. It's not even controversial. Let's move on.

That is the true record of the issue. "Exhibit A" of the SWP/Counterfire method of dealing with political debate...

Martin Thomas

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