- Q. What’s the hardest part about rollerblading?
A. Telling your parents that you’re gay.
Following Lindsey German’s decision to resign, a small group of right-wing deviationists have also resigned en masse from the Socialist Workers Party (UK), the largest collection of Ygael Gluckstein‘s followers on the globe.
This is officially A Big Deal in Ye Olde Worlde of Leftist Trainspotting.
The gory details may be found on the Luna17 blog: Why we are resigning from SWP: an open letter, February 16, 2010.
Choice quotes:
An authoritarian internal regime has developed as a result of this change in direction…
The use of disciplinary methods to ‘win’ arguments is completely foreign to the traditions to the SWP and should have no place in the socialist movement.
LOL.
Luna17 also asks ‘We Are Many: where were you seven years ago today?’: ‘today’ being February 15, 2010; seven years since a weekend of worldwide anti-war demonstrations that brought millions of people out onto the streets. In fact, according to the BBC: “Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in up to 60 countries over the weekend – the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.”
I was in Melbourne, advocating No War But The Class War. The banner made it on to the front page of The Age, and at some point (on that or a subsequent rally) those responsible for the dastardly act were castigated from the stage for their violent inclinations.
Or something.
Obviously, The Biggest Global Peace Protests Before A War Actually Started™ did not stop the war, which continues, apparently, in a land far, far away…
See also : Shutdown | A phenomenal anti-war movement?, Aufheben, No.12, 2004.
SyStEm Of A DoWn – BoOm
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Well, there’ve always been people going around saying someday the war will end. I say, you can’t be sure the war will ever end. Of course, it may have to pause occasionally–for breath, as it were–it can even meet with an accident–nothing on this earth is perfect–a war of which we could say it left nothing to be desired will probably never exist. A war can come to a sudden halt–from unforeseen causes–you can’t think of everything–a little oversight, and the war’s in the hole, and someone’s got to pull it out again! The someone is the Emperor or the King or the Pope. They’re such friends in need, the war has really nothing to worry about, it can look forward to a prosperous future.
~ Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage (1938)
See also : The White House.
the main “tradition of the SWP”:
“if it walks, sell it the paper, if it buys the paper, recruit it!”
“Does anyone else remember when Bambery as National Organiser [of the SWP] developed an obsession for maps? Party notes for months went on about the need for maps to be produced by each branch showing where each paper buying contact lived. And we had to send them into the centre! And at the Party Conference he just ranted for ages about the fact that half the branches still hadn’t produced these maps. People just looked embarrassed. “
I remember a sign in the DSP hq in Melbourne a decade or so back, “the path to revolution is paved with subscriptions”.
Scientific socialism with a strong cartographic bent, comrade.
“The organisational signature of the NPC — no paper-selling (the Arena ad is accompanied by a sad-faced caricature of a seller, the paper labelled “Green Left or Socialist Worker“, captioned “I didn’t join the revolution to sell papers”) — is more difficult to accept…” ~ Johnathan Strauss, ‘A new way forward for the left?’, GLW, No.241, August 7, 1996.
hi all
I remember some eco/anarcho-types in Sydney a few years ago getting really into the idea of maps – like mapping out all the radicalness that was going on in the inner-west. I also remember some line about when student militants in Italy got into operaismo influenced stuff the posters of Che were ripped off their walls and replaced by maps of Fiat factories… Personally I like maps…
rebel love
Dave