SWP: more than abuses of power

Submitted by AWL on 2 December, 2014 - 5:26 Author: Cathy Nugent

Martin Thomas objects to my use of the term “rape apologist” to describe the SWP's behaviour over complaints of rape and sexual harrassment, which eventually led to the group's implosion (Solidarity 346). He says the term is inaccurate, the SWP's real crimes were various abuses of power by the leadership and the party machine.

I accept that the accusation needs further explaination and the sentence in which I make the accusation was sloppily written, but I think the substance of the accusation makes sense.

I take rape apologism to be a spectrum of ideas and practices which relate to the structural and ideological marginalisation of the importance of sexual abuse in society especially against women. So it might not be blatant statements like “she asked for it”. Indeed very few people would be that blatant. Martin might reasonably object to the tenor of the language in the term, “rape apologism”, but the phenomena exists and takes a number of forms.

In the SWP marginalisation of the importance of rape and abuse were surely bound up with abuses of power, manipulative behaviour and bullying. But if the outcome was the covering up of complaints of sexual abuse, there is an problem right there.

Granted, the starting point for the SWP was to save one of the leading members who had highly useful connections to the great and the good in the union movement. And they would have made similar attempt to brush aside complaints if he had been accused of bullying, stealing from his comrades and so on. Similar, but not the same.

The point is that one most of the SWP's leadership decided they really wanted to keep Martin Smith in their organisation, that necessarily involved denying the possibility that he was guilty. That led to behaviour from themselves, and which they encouraged in others, that really can be described as rape apologism.

The evidence for this comes from people who observed it first hand. While this is not conclusive proof, I am convinced by many of these observations.

Dave Renton: “Among the SWP majority, a belief is prevalent that nobody can ever really “know” what happens in the privacy of a relationship between a man and a woman. It follows that in the context of multiple allegations of sexual abuse, the party is the only thing that counts.”

Comrade X (who made a complaint of sexual harrassment): “Obviously there are instances where people may come forward with malicious intent, so it’s right to investigate claims. However in our tradition we argue that women do not come forward lightly in cases like these. We should start from that belief and attempt to substantiate the woman’s complaint. I don’t believe that the Dispute's Committee in my case shows this to have happened.”

Comrade X reporting on Comrade W's hearing: The questions ranged from a supposed relationship she had had with an older comrade in her district to asking why she had gone for a drink with M and about her previous boyfriends, with specific people named and whether the relationships had been full sexual relationships.

Could this form of questioning have been “necessary” for the investigation. Really? No, it's a fault of a particular type, one that is been systematically repeated with complaints of sexual abuse in the bourgeois criminal justice system!

Comrade W was also had her general character publicly and semi-publicly smeared and this too, all too neatly follows a depressingly familiar pattern.

It does us no good to inflate our analysis but even less good to minimise or fail to face up to the kind of obnoxious ideas that come to the surface when organisations stifle, put their own interests above the principles which they formally adhere to.

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