Archive for the ‘Socialist Workers’ Party (Britain)’ Category
British SWP Promotes Marxism 2024 in London: Parody Politics – Ukrainian Left and AntiWar Russians Excluded
On February 24 2022 the biggest war in Europe since World War 2 began : Russia invaded Ukraine.
In London The British SWP promotes Marxism 2024 – like the fictional insular Brit Basil Fawlty, Alex Callinicos (and a supporting cast including Jeremy Corbyn,Tariq Ali, and Yanis Varoufakis) offer parody politics.
This event is planned as 100% free of Ukrainian left and social movements and antiwar Russians. No debate here and no solidarity with victims of imperialism unless it is western imperialism.
For a different perspective, on Tuesday May 14 join socialists from Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere who are campaigning for the freedom of a political prisoner Maksym Butkevich.
John Meehan May 11 2024
Written by tomasoflatharta
May 11, 2024 at 12:51 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Arts and Culture, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Britain, British Empire, Campism, England, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, Fawlty Towers, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Left Evasionism, Migration in Europe, NATO, Neutrality, Russia, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Tariq Ali, Ukraine, Ukraine Russia War 2022, Westplaining
Learning to Swim – “an argument against a retreat from broad parties and electoral work” – Paul Murphy TD
Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West) has written an interesting article :
Learning to Swim,;Paul Murphy; December 31 2023
It is published on the ISJ site, a British website :
“International Socialism is associated with the [British] Socialist Workers Party, but articles express the opinions of individual authors unless otherwise stated. We welcome proposals for articles and reviews for International Socialism..”
Paul Murphy is replying to a Joseph Choonara article; link here Revolutionaries and Elections
Here is Paul Murphy’s core argument :
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jan 3, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Bloco de Esquerda(BE) / Left Bloc, Portugal, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), British Labour Party, British State (aka UK), Campism, Dublin Governments, Emmanuel Macron (President), England, Ensemble! (Revolutionary Left), European Union, Fine Gael, Fortress Europe, Fourth International, France, Greece, History of Ireland, Independent Left (Ireland), Internal Democracy, International Political Analysis, Irish General Election February 8 2020, Jean Luc Melenchon, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Left Evasionism, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Media Sources - Reliable Versus Unreliable, Migration in Europe, NATO, Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) France, Paul Murphy TD Dublin South-West, People Before Profit, Portugal, RISE, Sinn Féin, Sir Keir Starmer, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Socialist Workers’ Network (Ireland), Syriza, Trade Unions, Trotskyism
Britain: The Lecturers’ Union and the Betrayal of the Intellectuals – The anti-imperialism of amoral idiots
Many certainties about global politics were transformed on February 24 2022 when the Russian Federation began a genocidal imperialist invasion of Ukraine, a country in the heart of Europe with a population of 44 million people. The imperialist invaders have forced at least seven million people out of their homeland. This was a seismic shock to many parts of the existing international anti-war movement, which failed to see this catastrophe on the horizon. In itself, that is not a problem. The future cannot be foretold with perfect accuracy, we only have 20-20 vision about the past.
But, what to do?
Readers of this blog will be aware of activities sponsored by Irish Left With Ukraine (ILWU) and the heroic work of Ukrainian activist and academic Yuliya Yurchenko.
This is her take on the behaviour of the British “Stop the War Coalition”, which has parallels in Ireland and other parts of the globe :
Yuliya Yurchenko, a Ukrainian senior lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Greenwich, described the attitude of the ‘anti-war’ left, “who somehow manage to simultaneously recognise Russia’s right to ‘defend its interests’ while denying the right of Ukrainians to defend their very lives or assert their national self-determination”, summing this up memorably as “the anti-imperialism of amoral idiots”.
These issues have erupted inside a British trade union, the University and College Union (UCU) which has a reported membership of about 120,000 people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_and_College_Union . The report below makes for often ghastly reading. All the same, effective left-wing solidarity with Ukraine is essential – we urge readers to engage.
Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66925
Many academics in both Ukraine and the UK are horrified by the Putin-enabling posturing of far-left factions within the UCU
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jul 1, 2023 at 12:08 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Britain, British Empire, Bureaucratically Deformed Trotskyist Parties, Campism, Double Standards, Eastern Europe, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fourth International, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Evasionism, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Lindsey German, NATO, Poland, Razem (Poland), Russia, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine : Women Raped by Russian Invaders, Ukraine Russia War 2022, University and College Union (UCU), Britain, Westplaining, Yuliya Yurchenko
British State : Socialist Worker dismisses pro-Ukrainians as “NATO trolls”
For many decades, some terrible examples of far left crazy polemics have emerged from the British State. In general, this happens when organisations are not capable of accurately reporting the views of people they disagree with. It looks like the British “Socialist Worker” is sinking into a bog of irrationality over its deeply mistaken policy concerning Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
The article below, republished on the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières Site (ESSF), is written by Dale Street. Comrades on the left in Ireland can observe, perhaps with a feeling of amazed disbelief.
John Meehan June 21 2023
Socialist Worker (SW), paper of the Socialist Worker Party (SWP), is ecstatic.
At last it has found a trade union (the UCU, which organises workers in post-school education) that has passed a motion at its annual congress backing the Stop the War Coalition (StW) line on Ukraine.
True, the motion was passed by just nine votes. True, the motion contained an antisemitic trope jumbling up Ukraine and Israel as imperialist outposts. True, Jewish UCU members critical of the motion have been targeted for antisemitic abuse. True, another, and far better, motion on Ukraine was passed by a much larger majority.
All that is true — but, with the exception of the antisemitic trope (which SW, of course, supports), all of it goes completely unmentioned in SW’s coverage of the UCU congress vote.
True also that the passing of the motion has triggered a wave of revulsion among broad swathes of the UCU membership, with many members taking to social media to condemn the motion and, in some cases, resigning from the UCU in protest.
This applies in particular to people who know what they are talking about. Such as Ukrainian members of the UCU and other academics who specialise in the study of Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Europe.
In the best traditions of Stalinist slander, however, SW portrays the backlash against the motion as a ruling-class conspiracy.
The backlash, says SW, was the work of “a vast army of pro-Nato trolls. No one should imagine that this was a spontaneous reaction.” NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Latvia, explains SW, recommends “using pseudonyms to mislead social media users”.
SW and its readers should take a reality-check. A statement condemning the motion issued and signed by UCU members (some of them now former members) at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies has attracted nearly 300,000 views.
That institution really does exist. Those signatories really do exist. No-one needs to “imagine” this was a spontaneous reaction — it simply was a spontaneous reaction.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jun 21, 2023 at 11:36 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Britain, British Empire, Bureaucratically Deformed Trotskyist Parties, Campism, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), Fourth International, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Left Evasionism, NATO, Non-Alignment, Russia, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Socialist Workers’ Network (Ireland), Trade Unions, Ukraine : Women Raped by Russian Invaders
The Strange Rebirth of Stalinism – Colm Breathnach (Independent Left)
THE STRANGE REBIRTH OF STALINISM
The editors of this blog offer recommended reading – an article By Colm Breathnach of the Irish Left-Wing organization Independent Left.
Source : https://independentleft.ie/rebirth-of-stalinism/
A more colourful literary description of this phenomenon was offered by Yuliya Yurchenko at a November 2022 Dublin public meeting organised by Irish Left With Ukraine. The Ukrainian Marxist and Feminist offered us the idea that the USSR is dead – it is not coming back. The worst features of the dead ☠️ USSR have been imported into a new capitalist-imperialist-genocidal monster headed by Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. The good bits have been discarded and killed off permanently. Think of Stephen King’s horror story Pet Sematary :
A well-tended path leads to a pet cemetery(misspelled “sematary” on the sign) where the children of the town bury their deceased animals.
A cat called Church dies, then :
after Church is run over outside his home around Thanksgiving. Rachel and the kids are visiting Rachel’s parents in Chicago, but Louis frets over breaking the bad news to Ellie. Sympathizing with Louis, Jud takes him to the “sematary”, supposedly to bury Church. But instead of stopping there, Jud leads Louis farther on to “the real cemetery”: an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Miꞌkmaq Tribe. There, Louis buries the cat on Jud’s instruction. The next afternoon, Church returns home; the usually vibrant and lively cat now acts ornery and, in Louis’s words, “a little dead”. Church hunts for mice and birds, ripping them apart without eating them. He also smells so bad that Ellie no longer wants him in her room at night. Jud confirms that Church has been resurrected and that Jud himself once buried his dog there when he was younger. Louis, deeply disturbed, begins to wish that he had not buried Church there.
WHAT IS STALINISM?
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jan 21, 2023 at 11:07 am
Posted in Anti War Movements, Black Humour, Bureaucratically Deformed Trotskyist Parties, Campism, Censorship, Colm Breathnach, Double Standards, Eastern Europe, Feminism, Fourth International, Independent Left (Ireland), International Political Analysis, Ireland, Josef Stalin, Left Evasionism, Leon Trotsky, Migration in Europe, NATO, Neutrality, Non-Alignment, Pet Sematary, Revolutionary History, Russia, Soviet Union (USSR), Stephen King, Ukraine, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Westplaining, Yuliya Yurchenko
John Molyneux – “As capitalism’s crises grow worse, his voice will be missed”
Many tributes are online paying tribute to John Molyneux, who died in Dublin on December 11 2022 aged 74.
Tempest member Phil Gasper discusses the work and politics of the prominent and dedicated British Marxist John Molyneux. This article comes from the USA based magazine tempest
Source ; https://www.tempestmag.org/2022/12/in-memoriam-john-molyneux/
The Marxist writer and activist John Molyneux died in Dublin on December 11 at the age of 74. John was a longstanding member of the International Socialist Tendency, first as a member of the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain, later as a member of the Socialist Workers Party/Network in Ireland.
John was one of the generation of ’68. He joined the International Socialists in Britain in 1968 after being radicalised by the antiwar movement and the global revolutionary upsurge of that year. He soon became one of the group’s leading theorists and most popular speakers.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Dec 14, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Anti-Capitalist Resistance (Britain), Arts and Culture, Britain, British Empire, Dublin Governments, Ecosocialism, Feminism, Internal Democracy, International Political Analysis, John Molyneux, Left Unity, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Left Wing Organisations, Mobilising to Oppose Violence Against Women, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Violence Against Women, Women
France : Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA -New Anticapitalist Party) Divides Down the Middle
The congress of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party) took place on 9-10-11 December. It resulted in a separation of the party. The first statement published was adopted by the platform winning 48.5% of the votes. The second by the platform obtaining 45.5% of the votes.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Dec 14, 2022 at 1:06 pm
Posted in Alain Krivine, Black Humour, Bureaucratically Deformed Trotskyist Parties, Connolly Youth Movement (CYM), Ensemble! (Revolutionary Left), Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Union, Fourth International, France, Humour, Internal Democracy, International Political Analysis, International Viewpoint, Ireland, Jean Luc Melenchon, Left Unity, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Left Wing Organisations, Leon Trotsky, Media Sources - Reliable Versus Unreliable, Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) France, Russia, Trotskyism, Violence Against Women, Women, Workers' Party
Socialist Democracy (Ireland) Leaves the Fourth International
This reader of the Fourth International site noticed today (December 8 2022) there is no entry for Ireland. Up to a few days ago Socialist Democracy(SD) was on the list, but that entry has now been removed. https://fourth.international/en/organisations
SD left the Fourth International on November 8 2022.
SD has expressed strong public disagreements with the policies adopted by the Fourth International since the mid 1990’s.
Today the organization’s site is a nest of transphobic articles. It promotes a campist policy on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Socialist Democracy & Evangelical Christianity – bet you never thought you would see that coalition !!”
A comrade recently asked me “Socialist Democracy & Evangelical Christianity – bet you never thought you would see that coalition !!” The organization defended the far-right teacher Enoch Burke, who is currently in an Irish jail.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Dec 8, 2022 at 9:44 pm
Posted in "Vpered" ("Forward"), Russian section of the Fourth International, Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Bureaucratically Deformed Trotskyist Parties, Campism, Dublin Governments, Eastern Europe, Ecosocialism, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, Feminism, Fourth International, History of Ireland, Internal Democracy, International Political Analysis, International Viewpoint, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Evasionism, Left Unity, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Left Wing Organisations, Leon Trotsky, NATO, Neutrality, Non-Alignment, Pierre Rousset, Revolutionary History, Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Transgender Rights, Trotskyism, Ukraine Russia War 2022, Westplaining
A Strange Policy is Reviewed – Support Ukraine’s Resistance Against an Imperialist Russian Invasion “Politically” – But Oppose Giving Arms to the Resisters – A Critique of Irish Left Evasionism
International solidarity between socialists and anarchists in Ukraine and Ireland is growing. We are united in a desire to see Russia defeated, which will be a blow to the right everywhere. We are equally united in our opposition to Western imperialism and the global capitalists circling Ukraine ready to exploit the country after the war.
One of the disappointing developments of the war is that so many socialists in the West have failed to offer such solidarity. The group we are most familiar with is People Before Profit, and analysing the think piece published in August 2022 by John Molyneux explains why. We offer this critique of John’s article in the hope that there are members of People Before Profit who can save it from its current convergence with the ‘campists’. We hope this can happen in time to make a difference to the growth of practical solidarity between Irish and Ukrainian socialists.
Molyneux’s essay begins with an attempt to categorise the debates among the left into three positions:
1. the ‘campists’ in favour of a Russian victory,
2. those who are for a Ukrainian victory without reservations about NATO and western imperialism, and
3. those who are neither for a Russian victory nor for one for Western imperialism (‘neutrality’)
This schema has been derived by working backwards from John’s understandable desire to portray People Before Profit as fundamentally different to the campists, while doubling down on their criticisms of the Ukrainian resistance. For a supposed Marxist analysis it has a deep and irreperable flaw: it has sprung from the head of its author and not from the reality of the situation. Frankly, the left doesn’t have time to ignore reality in this way any more.
Written by tomasoflatharta
Aug 22, 2022 at 5:00 pm
Posted in Anarchism, Anti War Movements, Boycott, Bríd Smith TD, Britain, Conor Kostick, Crimea, Crimean Tatars, Dublin Governments, Eastern Europe, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, FFFGGG Coalition, Fourth International, History of Ireland, International Political Analysis, Ireland, James Connolly, John Molyneux, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, LeftEast, NATO, Neutrality, People Before Profit, President Michael D Higgins, RISE, Russia, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine : Women Raped by Russian Invaders, Ukraine Russia War 2022
Solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance! The Russia-Ukraine war “is not inter-imperialist”
The American writer and activist Ashley Smith sums up the policy of the fighting left which supports the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian masses against the far-right ethnic-cleansing Russian invaders led by President Vladimir Putin. Before the Russian invasion on February 25 2022, Ashley Smith was a featured speaker at an online event hosted by Irish anti-war activists. Unfortunately some of these activists today do not share Ashley Smith’s point of view.
Source :
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?rubrique2
See also : https://www.tempestmag.org/2022/06/solidarity-with-ukraine-resistance/
Ashley Smith reviews the ongoing Left debates about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the continuing need to defend Ukrainian resistance as the starting point for rebuilding international solidarity from below.
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine with the expectation of a quick victory over an outgunned army and unpopular government and a successful installation of a puppet regime in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, Ukraine’s military, volunteer Territorial Defense Forces, and mass popular resistance stopped Russia in its tracks.
Humiliated, Russia has retreated from Kyiv as well as the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, and adopted a new goal—the seizure of Donbas in Ukraine’s east to form a land bridge to Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, followed by a planned partition of the country. The U.S. and NATO, which like Moscow expected the Russian invasion to quickly win, have increased shipments of heavy weapons for the new phase of the war.
[T]he international Left now more than ever must organize solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance, defend its right to secure arms, support the Russian Left and its anti-war movement, and oppose direct U.S. and NATO intervention.
Written by tomasoflatharta
Jun 6, 2022 at 12:08 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Crimea, Crimean Tatars, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Socialist Workers' Party (Britain), Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine Russia War 2022, War