SWP

The SWP / IS tradition

Why have the SWP invited an anti-semite?

How low can the “left” sink? It appears that these days belief in a “World Jewish Conspiracy” is not enough to get one “No-Platformed”. Instead, if you make the right noises on Palestine, you might even get invited to speak. The SWP has invited the jazz musician Gilad Atzmon to play at Marxism 2005 and on 17 June he addressed a meeting on “Deconstructing Zionist Identity” at the Bookmarks, the SWP’s bookshop. Here are some extracts from an article “On Anti-Semitism” on his website: “Zionists complain that Jews continue to be associated with a conspiracy to rule the world via political lobbies...

Not really “Trots”?

How long can the Galloway-SWP alliance in Respect last? Galloway appears to have little respect for his main partners, the organisation which after all provided the bulk of the foot-soldiers for his victory in Bethnal Green and Bow. How else to explain his cheerful proclamation of his personal (and reactionary) views on all sorts of issues? On immigration, drugs, abortion... views which were sure to cause consternation among many members of the SWP. We were reminded of his long-term hatred of Trotskyism during his attendance at the Senate Committee he called Christopher Hitchens, among other...

Looking left: SWP and clerical fascists; CPGB; Stop The War and Tories

The SWP and the ‘clerical-fascists’ In Britain the SWP usually claims that it is a “slander” to say that their allies, Muslim Association of Britain, are an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest Islamic fundamentalist party in the Arab world. But the latest number of the SWP’s magazine IS Journal carries an article saying that the left in Egypt should work with the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which SWP founder Tony Cliff, when he was still active in the region, called “clerical-fascist”. The article regrets that the Brotherhood has softened: “The higher ranks of the Muslim Brothers...

Demagogues and Critics: The True Story of "Stop the War Coalition"

“What is demagogy? It is a deliberate play with sham values in politics, the dissemination of false promises and the solace of non-existent blessings.” Leon Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification (1937) The history of the movement against the war in Iraq has yet to be written. No doubt an enterprising student somewhere is already busy reconstructing the story of how it happened and why. Such an account would be extremely valuable, given the numbers that have been involved and the movement’s continuing impact on national and international politics. This book will add little to such an...

Letter to a student SWP member: Why are you joining the reactionaries?

Dear comrade, On 7 April, at this year’s National Union of Students conference, Socialist Worker Student Society members, in alliance with the Islamist-dominated Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), organised a walkout in protest at the speech given by the Iraqi socialist, Houzan Mahmoud, who had been invited to conference as a guest speaker. At the same conference, numerous right-wing speeches by Blairites, Tories and others were met not with walkouts but properly with debate. What must this woman have done to inspire such hostility amongst sections of the student left? Is she one...

When the "left" campaigns against the workers' movement...

Respect and the SWP in Cambridge have launched a veritable campaign against any support for the Iraqi workers' movement and for Iraqi trade unionists facing murder threats. By Stan Crooke At the March meeting of Cambridge Trades Council I moved the following motion on behalf of my Amicus branch: “1) Cambridge and District Trades Union Council welcomes: a) the conference organised by the TUC on 14th February in support of Iraqi trade unions, attended by representatives of the Iraqi Railway and Aviation Union (IFTU), the Journalists Union, the Teachers Union, the Federation of Workers Councils...

The SWP should be condemned, but not for this reason

Solidarity has much to condemn the SWP for — most of all the way it has funnelled thousands of people who want to be socialists into being bag-carriers for George Galloway, for the Muslim Association of Britain (British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood), and for the Islamist militias in Iraq. And in part because we want, and fight for, a proper political confrontation with the SWP on those issues, we are against them being shoved aside and blurred over by slurs and manufactured scandals. Ripples are still spreading through the left from an item posted on the website of the Socialist Unity...

Splitting the movement?

Philip Havering reviews Anti-capitalism: where now? Edited by Hannah Dee. Bookmarks, 2004, £6 In his keynote chapter in this book, published by the SWP, Alex Callinicos describes the political differentiation that he sees in the global justice movement. He dates it from the Genoa demonstration of 2001 and, especially, 9/11 and Bush’s war on terror. Three “parties” have emerged: a reformist right associated with ATTAC France; a radical left (Rifondazione in Italy, the LCR in France and the SWP in Britain); and the autonomists. For years the SWP has played along with the leading reformist...

Debate & discussion: SWP votes down troops out now

At the Stop the War Coalition's National Council meeting in Leeds on Saturday 13 November the SWP leadership forced through a remarkable decision. It voted down a motion which would have committed the Stop the War campaign to an immediate end of the occupation of Iraq. Yes, you did read that correctly. We now have a "Stop the War" campaign that refuses to support an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops. This is a stunning betrayal of the thousands involved in StW and the millions whom have supported it. Anyone opposing the platform (i.e. SWP) position — or even voicing mild criticism...

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