the left
Crap Comrades; Mark Thomas has had enough of the SWP
Written in 2003 in part a reaction to the antics of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) inside the then campaign against the Iraq war (under the SWP's front group Stop The War Coalition or SWTC for short). Mark Thomas comically lays out the problems with the leftist group, namely its conservatism, its uncooperative attitude to other radical groups, its constant emphasis on party building and its hostility to any form of spontaneity which it can't ultimately control.
A friend of mine claims that he and his wife are in the biggest and probably fastest growing political party in Britain - they are both ex-members of the Socialist Workers Party. They, like many, found being in the SWP not unlike being in a cult.
An open letter to members and ex-members of the SWP
A contribution to the debate about recent events in the SWP, aiming to offer some advice and encouragement to members and ex-members feeling disillusioned by the ongoing internal conflict. By Billy P., a libertarian communist and former SWP member.
For many of us, Leninism, and in particular the version of Leninism promoted by the Socialist Workers Party, is our first encounter with organised revolutionary anti-capitalism.
Class War Issue 73 - The Party's Over: The State of the Left in the 1990s
Article from Class War issue 73 surveying the remains of the left
The Left in Britain is at its feeblest for decades, probably since the mid-1960s and maybe even since WWI. And yet this is at a time of lowering living standards and worsening working conditions, and when the institutions of social, economic and political control - the government, police and monarchy - command the least respect since the Victorian era.
