Redmond O’Neill: an assessment by Bob Pitt
Posted on Friday 30 October, 2009
Filed Under The left
REDMOND O’Neill – a man I knew relatively well during my membership of the International Marxist Group in the 1980s, but with whom I have had no dealings whatsoever since – died earlier this month at the young age of 55.
In recent years, he was in the public eye as one of the coterie of £100,000-a-year ex-Trots that played a prominent role in the Greater London Authority under the Livingstone administration. Fine by me; I’ve never had anything against old comrades doing well for themselves, so long as they stay the right side of the political tracks.
Tributes have been paid by a number of leading figures on the left, including Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and Andrew Murray. I have to admit that my memories of the man are not quite as fond as theirs seem to be.
I did think of writing something to mark his departure, but decided to keep my trap shut on this one. However, this morning I received an email from former Livingstone staffer Bob Pitt, offering his assessment of O’Neill’s modus operandi.
After consideration, I have decided to publish it, even though I fully expect take some flak on this. However, given last year’s controversies over the way Livingstone and Socialist Action ran City Hall, and the lessons the experience offers to the wider left, I feel it is valuable to have an insider account from a hard left source who cannot be accused of being in the pocket of the rightwing media.
The following is entirely unedited. If you don’t like it, shoot Bob; I’m only the messenger.
I KNOW it’s not done to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Redmond O’Neill, who played a prominent role in the London mayor’s office during the eight years that Ken Livingstone held power, I feel an exception should be made. Particularly so, in view of the gushing and entirely uncritical tributes to him that have appeared since his demise.
Having had some experience of working with him in the mayor’s office during 2004-8, I saw another side to O’Neill, namely the abuse and bullying of staff for which he became notorious at City Hall. It was the kind of behaviour you would expect from the worst sort of manager in the worst private sector company. Yet it took place under an administration that was supposed to be pursuing a progressive agenda and the individual responsible for this behaviour claimed to be a socialist.
This went on for years. Back in 2002 the chair of the London Assembly received an email from a member of staff stating: “Some of the mayor’s advisers have demonstrated an abysmal grasp of even basic management techniques, frequently bullying and threatening officers to obtain results.” With the backing of UNISON, the editor of The Londoner newspaper was pursuing a grievance against O’Neill on those grounds at the time Ken was voted out of office.
This was why many staff at City Hall had mixed feelings about Ken’s defeat. They were sorry for Ken that he lost the election, and understood that it was a big setback for progressive politics in London, but they really didn’t want people like O’Neill coming back for another four years.
As its programme of job cuts has shown, the current regime at City Hall is hardly a friend of the workers. Nevertheless, there are not a few PAs, portering staff and other non-political employees who actually find it pleasanter working under Boris Johnson’s administration than under Ken’s. On a one-to-one basis they are at least treated with some basic respect and civility, which is more than they got from O’Neill and those around him.
O’Neill’s methods not only alienated staff but also helped to bring down Ken’s administration. The reason why Atma Singh, the mayor’s former policy adviser on Asian affairs, turned against Ken and collaborated in the witch-hunt led by Andrew Gilligan and Martin Bright was because of his anger and bitterness over being bullied into a nervous breakdown by O’Neill. You have to ask – what sort of “socialism” is it that produces results like that?
Some would attribute it all to the corrupting influence of power, and there is an element of truth to this. Having long regarded himself as a central figure in the leadership of the British revolution, O’Neill certainly held an exaggerated view of his own political importance and, after he got his hands on a little bit of actual state power, the delusions of grandeur could only be magnified.
But a more fundamental explanation, I think, lies in the form of organisation that characterises most Leninoid sects – a “democratic centralism” in which the overwhelming emphasis is placed on the centralist component, providing a justification for unaccountable rule by domineering leadership cliques.
The problem was that O’Neill and other individuals who had spent decades running a small Trotskyist group on that basis suddenly found themselves at the head of a much bigger and broader organisation, where they antagonised and repelled people by importing the arrogant, top-down, authoritarian culture that characterises the internal life of the far-left sect. There is a striking parallel here with the behaviour of the SWP leaders in Respect.
The irony is that when I worked in the mayor’s office I was enthusiastic supporter of the administration’s political agenda – its transport and environmental policies, defence of multiculturalism, anti-racist campaigning, opposition to Islamophobia, promotion of LGBT rights, support for the anti-war movement and solidarity with Venezuela. It was just a shame that this progressive programme was soured by the organisational methods employed by some of the people charged with implementing it.
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57 Responses to “Redmond O’Neill: an assessment by Bob Pitt”
I knew/know neither of these guys from Adam, but the story rings true for me. One of the greatest problems for the left is to overcome the tradition, acceptance and even glorification of bullying. Good leaders need to have the ability to be brutal and devious. But not all the time and not with their own side. When the end justifies the means, including bullying and undermining, in even the tiniest of disputes, we present an unedifying and unprepossessing spectacle even to possible sympathisers.
Before the censors began snipping the less than gushing comments at socialist unity I posted the comment below. I should also add that after posting this to an e-list I received a large number of unsolicited emails from other people who knew Redmond- none of them had anything good to say about his politics:
I never knew Redmond personally- politically he was a bully who did much damage in the labour party and the movement generally.
Redmond always preferred manouvering, backroom deals or straight untruths to an open argument, clearly put positions and democratic votes. It’s no surprise that his political career ended in the scandal of a huge payoff from public funds for helping Livingstone lose the mayoral election.
My most abiding memory is of being the youth organiser/secretary for the campaign group, giving my 3 minute annual report to agm and then having a 15 minute speech of corrections to it from Redmond (who was many years my senior)- which took up all the remaining allotted time for youth and students. Redmond used his position of senority within the campaign group to quash the youth section.
While we should all mourn the loss of life, we should be under no illusion that Redmond’s politics and organisational methods posioned an (albeit ever decreasing) section of the left for a generation and help destroy the labour left.
I’m amazed that the quaint notion of working for Labour or Livingstone as being on ‘the right side of the political tracks’ has any currency at all.
What a bizarre idea – as if enabling the corporate sector’s most able political proxies somehow confers credibility.
The only significant difference between the two wings of the business party is this: Labour gives a small piece of the action (£100,000 in the case mentioned) to hacks in unions and other lower level apparatchiks to advance the neo-liberal agenda, and the Tories don’t see any need to bother. Well, that’s just a tactical difference within the political class.
From the perspective of working people it makes no difference if successful opportunists like Alan Johnson or Redmond O’Neil get well paid sinecures, or not.
The myth of Labour as the ‘workers party’ is long dead. You ain’t gonna flog that dead horse across the finishing line.
It is interesting that the kind words for Redmond O’Neill come from leaders of political formations, rather than rank and filers.
My memory of him is that as a keen supporter of a certain faction within the IMG he fortunately failed to involve himself in our local political actions because we were not within his clique. (His full-time role demanded that he should have provided support.)
He, Brian Grogan and John Ross were amongst the most unpleasant people I have ever met politically. (Wrong ‘tendancy’, you see.) Perhaps they were jolly good fun at parties, or something.
As I understand it Grogan drifted of into the bizarro world of support for the US SWP.
Ross and O’Neill found that Socialist Action functioned better by not admitting that it existed.
Nothing to praise, I’m afraid.
Tend to agree with Dora Kaplan on this one.
The problem is not that Grogan, Ross or Redmond O’Neill were particularly obnoxious but that, as Bob Pitt says, (if this is a true post – it bears the hallmark of one in any case), that
“the form of organisation that characterises most Leninoid sects – a “democratic centralism” in which the overwhelming emphasis is placed on the centralist component, providing a justification for unaccountable rule by domineering leadership cliques.”
Very much the case in the IMG’s hey-day. WHen I think about it, which is not often, it often strikes me as bizarre that we were expected to defer to such types. But, having experience of the French left can I say that this is not a universal experience. Not that the Lambertists would be much different, nor LO, but the LCR many other left groups do not have quite such a heavy-handed approach. Example. You can talk to Krivine as you would any comrade – he has (as far as I know) little ‘side’.
“The problem was that O’Neill and other individuals who had spent decades running a small Trotskyist group on that basis suddenly found themselves at the head of a much bigger and broader organisation”
Exactly. Though I note that New Labour has quite a few rivals for just as bad managerial practice without any background on the far-left.
Like Martin Ohr, I had comments snipped at Socialist Unity, though Andy left standing both my main positive comment, and the observation that there was too much de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but without the criticism which supported this point.
Bizarrely, one of the snipped comments was positive: I remember Redmond, in IMG days, standing up to John Ross in defence of Revolution Youth (the IMG’s youth group) ‘s policy of calling for the abolition of age of consent laws, when Ross was trying to bully a reversal through the IMG leadership by threatening to ‘go public’ (i.e. to the bourgeois press) to denounce it.
The negative comment snipped was that Redmond was already *also* a cynical bureaucratic manoeuvrer when he emerged as the IMG’s “yoof” leader. (The student unions produce plenty of them …)
I said that the combination of genuine political commitment with cynical top-down bureaucratic methods was regrettably all too common on the left, and in particular in people who worked full-time for the movement; it is a profound obstacle both to any unity of the left, and to any ability to build on the ground.
Contra to Bob’s post, I think it has bugger all to do with either (a) ‘democratic centralism’ or (b) small groups. The type is just as common in trade union officialdom and in the Labour Party. Cynical manoeuvring, top-down bullying and ‘authoritarian culture’, etc., is in fact also common in any number of large bureaucratic organisations (the state bureaucracy, corporations, university administrations, and so on).
A PS to my previous post. I was surprised to discover from the obits that Redmond was 55 when he died, the same age that I am. I had always assumed he was younger, because of his role as ‘youth organiser’: I didn’t myself in the 1980s think that people in their mid-20s needed to be in youth organisations. But I now suppose it was the same thing as the fake estuary accents a lot of IMG majority-ites used to put on.
I agree with Mike, bullies are to be found in every area of capitalist society, including private business, even celebrated. Just think Alan Sugar
‘your fired’.
I first met Red in the mid to late 70′s. He was my first national contact in the IMG, just as Revo youth was to be launched, at that time he was inspirational and educational, we differed later and ended up on different sides of the faction fight in the IMG, but whenever we met, he was socialable and friendly. I never knew him at County Hall or in the LP. I have no doubt Redmond operated politically, outside of any mass struggle, or real fights, that usually means, underhand, bureaucraticaly, etc
none of us are perfect, at least Red did something.
Mike and non partisan stole my thunder.
What the hell is tearing a dead mans character to pieces going to achieve?
I mean the logic being offered is, Redmond was a socialist, Redmond was a bully, and therefore all socialists are bullies. Do me goddam favour.
You could have said, Redmond was a man, Redmond was a bully, and therefore all men are bullies.
Or how about….
Redmond was a leader, Redmond was a bully, and therefore all leaders are bullies.
The stuff about O’Neill’s MO is important, but not a lot here about the guy/group’s POLITICAL record. For comment and some debate:
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/10/28/redmond-oneill-socialist-action-and-respect-dead
Redmond O’ Neill was a member of the degenerate ex-Trotskyist “Socialist Action” group who became semi-Stalinists and (as Pitt accurately describes) bag-carriers and apparachics for Ken Livingstone. So I’m quite prepared to believe that what Pitt says is true. Unfortunately, it comes from the ex-Trotskyist and ex-Marxist who edits the loathsome “Islamophobia Watch” site that champions Islamism and Islamist bigots against women. gays, the left and secularists – especially Muslim women, gays, leftists and secularists. So Pitt’s comments are like water drawn from a poisoned well and count for fuck all as far as I’m concerned.
But a more fundamental explanation, I think, lies in the form of organisation that characterises most Leninoid sects – a “democratic centralism” in which the overwhelming emphasis is placed on the centralist component, providing a justification for unaccountable rule by domineering leadership cliques.
So how many ex-trots ended up in the New Labour leadership?
The problem starts with Lenin. Whether Stalinist or Trotskyite, they carry the same bad baggage.
Re Islamophobia watch,
As physical attacks on Mosques and Muslims increases and propaganda against Muslims spreads in the wake of the disastrous war on terror I guess an organisation such as this was an inevitability.
I mean it’s not like Jim Denham would ever report such crimes and trends is it, being as he is so insensitive to racism against Muslims! His discrimination radar, so ‘effective’ in detecting anti-Semitism seems to fail him when it comes to Muslims. Strange that.
Trust Denham to look at this issue from the perspective of a bourgeois idealist and not a Marxist materialist.
Pity the people that now moan did not moan when he was alive, it’s easy now to hit out because he is dead and cannot answer him self, I suspect he has family though, who may well read this and think why not do it when he could answer them, perhaps cowardice.
The last time I met Red was at the funeral, 12 years ago, for an unsung comrade in the IMG (who’d long since departed) Frank Elvy. A good comrade who fell victim to manic depression and died of an overdose.
Everything else I heard second hand and none of it surprised me.
I first met Red when he was at Sussex University when he, like me, was a student agitator, except that I was at Brighton Polytechnic 2 miles down the Lewes Road. At that time we were competing to see who was the more militant!
I also found Red warm and inspirational and I can remember he and his American (I think) girl friend coming over to sleep the night. It was the first ever occupation at the Poly.
I was very close to the IMG in student politics but couldn’t stand their hopping from one campaign to another and their pretence of not being sectarian, unlike the SWP. In fact they were the same underneath and their support for anti-imperialist campaigns, in particular Ireland, attracted me to them. Unfortunately it crossed over into uncritical support for the leaderships of national liberation movements.
Re, in the year when we and Sussex Uni were fighting big battles over autonomy (the Sussex President, Richard Flint, was expelled as was another anarchist Sean Fensom) Red and a much more unpleasant member of Socialist Action, Val Coultas, were elected delegates to NUS Conference.
In later years my encounters with SA, not least in Palestine Solidarity Campaign which they are busy trying to take over, are entirely negative. There is no socialism left in them, they put out no literature, they exist as political freemasons giving comrades and friends a helping hand upwards via good jobs etc. In other words it’s a form of political corruption.
People in PSC such as Sarah Colborne and the front-person for their Student Broad left, Ruquah Collector, who magically obtain jobs from their friends on PSC Executive. The promises of the IMG in those heady days has degenerated into political corruption and parasitism on existing campaigns.
Redmond O’Neill has a lot to answer for not least for abandoning genuine working class comrades like Bob Pennington to die on a park bench in Brighton of alcoholism.
They are an utter disgrace to socialism and none more so than the ‘left’ exponents of corporate politics, which effectively Livingstone was.
The likes of Redmond O’Neill were endemic in the Scottish Trade Unions during the 50s, 60s and 70s. The bullying should not surprise anyone. They have no people skills. They pretend to represent the working class to their own end. When they are sussed they have no other course but to shout, bully and gather their gullible supporters around them in the pretence that the imaginary revolution is under threat. One thing about Trots, they can talk the hind legs of a donkey. And there are an abundance of young naive leftie donkeys to listen to them. It seems like the London Crash Helmet is gobbling up massive ammounts of taxpayers money in over inflated salaries. The so called Trots seem to have got a good handful of it.
I didn’t really know Redmond. He became the Student Organiser just as I was leaving university, and I was also in a faction opposed to the majority. (Who would think so!). I just remember that he wasn’t a very ‘clubbable’ sort of a fellow. But, I am genuinely shocked to hear that Bob Pennington died in such unhappy and unfortunate circumstances. He had given his life to the Trotsyist movement and it seems dreadful that he should have ended up as a tramp. Funnily enough, I have over the years often wondere what happened to Bob Pennington, well, nodw I knodw.
JimD: “Trust Denham to look at this issue from the perspective of a bourgeois idealist and not a Marxist materialist.”
JimD, my near-namesake: *how* precisely have looked “at this issue from the perspective of a bourgeois idealist and not a Marxist materialist.” Give me a clue, and I’ll respond. What have I said/written that’s factually incorrect? I’m willing to defend anything I’ve siad/written, here or anywhere else. Let me know what you think is “bourgeois idealist and not a Marxist materialist” parspective. I’d be genuinely interested to hear from someone who is – clearly – an expert Marxist scholar.
Tony Greenstein: despite your anti-Israeli and and “absolute”-anti-Zionist hysteria, you may be interested to know (Re: “Redmond O’Neill has a lot to answer for not least for abandoning genuine working class comrades like Bob Pennington to die on a park bench in Brighton of alcoholism”) that the “Zionist” Sean Matgamna was one of the few people who rallied to Pennington and visited him, giving him support and friendship in his last days
I don’t think the behaviour being discussed is anything to do with Democratic Centralism.
That’s just the perennial whine of the unorganisable lefty. Face facts, people degenerate poltically outside of an organisation.
It’s more to do with student politics, which
O’Neill, Ross, Grogan and Val Coultas were all all trained in and some of them never quite outgrew. They could all be remarkably unpleasant if you were on the wrong side of them, but in my experience Grogan and Val Coultas could also be quite pleasant company too.
But because the MIG’s recruited highly talented students, they faced a crisis as they got older and moved into academia and local government jobs.
Bob Pennington was an entirely different kettle of fish because he was a working class militant and once he stopped being a soldier for Gerry Healy was quite civilised.
Other working class militants I’ve known like Jim Higgins and Harry Wicks were just the same.
Jim Denham writes:
‘Tony Greenstein: despite your anti-Israeli and and “absolute”-anti-Zionist hysteria, you may be interested to know (Re: “Redmond O’Neill has a lot to answer for not least for abandoning genuine working class comrades like Bob Pennington to die on a park bench in Brighton of alcoholism”) that the “Zionist” Sean Matgamna was one of the few people who rallied to Pennington and visited him, giving him support and friendship in his last days’
Yes Jim, I am opposed to a situation where Palestinians receive a tenth of the water of settlers, where mobs shout ‘death to the Arabs’ and Arab children are barred from kindergartens because of parents objections. And I am also opposed to Border Guards not being prosecuted because their beating of 2 Palestinans didn’t cause major injuries. http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/10/beating-arabs-is-not-crime-unless-it.html
However what has that to do with Redmond O’Neill and Bob Pennington? I’m quite prepared to believe that even a Zionist like Sean Matgamna has, somewhere within him, a sliver of the milk of human kindness.
I think what Redmond and Sean represent is a crisis of British Trotskyism, some of whom have fallen into the arms of Stalinism (read Andrew Murray’s obituary in the Morning Star – his only quibble seemed to be Redmond’s support of striking Morning Star workers!) and others like Matgamna became arch supporters of imperialism.
“I think what Redmond and Sean represent is a crisis of British Trotskyism, some of whom have fallen into the arms of Stalinism (read Andrew Murray’s obituary in the Morning Star – his only quibble seemed to be Redmond’s support of striking Morning Star workers!) and others like Matgamna became arch supporters of imperialism”…
…and others (like Greenstein) are just fucking idiots, who represent nothing.
So, Tony and Jim, you’re in agreement then. Redmond O’Neill was an underhand shit.
And you of course Jim represent an organisation that proved itself completely incapable of building anything of any value (organisationally or politically) in the last thirty years.
Tony,
Thanks for the information about Bob.
What sad ending, tis a terrible end to such a varied life. No one should have to suffer the indignantly of a spike, and certainly not Bob Pennington.
It is a sad indictment on British Trotskysism that a one time leader should finish up on a park bench.
Ok Denham let’s take your logic to its obvious conclusion,
“Unfortunately, it comes from the ex-Trotskyist and ex-Marxist who edits the loathsome “Islamophobia Watch” site that champions Islamism and Islamist bigots against women. gays, the left and secularists – especially Muslim women, gays, leftists and secularists. So Pitt’s comments are like water drawn from a poisoned well and count for fuck all as far as I’m concerned.”
So we as socialists must disregard everything uttered by those who in any way step outside the Jim Denham circle of acceptability. We should disregard every utterance of every Jew, Muslim and Christian because they have failed to adapt to a way of life that we have deemed acceptable.
Therefore, we can’t judge objectively whether Pitt’s assessment has any validity and he must be placed on a black list until he has come to his senses.
Thanks but you can keep your special brand of Marxism and shove it up your backside.
I will forget the debate about Islamophobia watch for obvious reasons (Which is your inability to reason in case you were wondering).
Pennington could ball people out after he’d had a session at the pub at lunch-time. It’s also a question of how people react to this behaviour. Having left school at sixteen and worked in manual jobs etc, I was quite prepared to stand up to this, but I wonder if everyone was.
On Coutlas, I found her okay, but then I am a bit of a bastard as well if need be. Wonder what she’s doing now.
Nobody’s mentioned the IMGers still in the 4th (whatever their present name is). They don’t seem to behave in the SA fashion at any rate.
In general I think the description of how people manage the transition from student politics is an important one. But as some have said of the labour movement, and, hey, life, is full of people who, given authority, abuse it.
Yes the world is full of those who have abused power. Thankfully there are also some exceptions such as Redmond who used power to do such things as improve the lives of working class londoners, allied with the socialist government in Venezuela and opposed the rising tide of racism and the far-right (particularly agaisnt the Muslim communities)
There are too many on the left who do nothing but spread virole against those who do something to advance humanity.
Redmond was an unflinching fighter for international socialism. His contribution has been recognised by leading representatives of mass struggles against imperialism. This includes tributes from Gerry Adams, Nicolás Maduro Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela and Ma Hui,Deputy Director General, International Department, Central Committee, Communist Party of China.
Further recognition comes from key representatives of the British labour movement including Ken Livingstone, George Galloway MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP and numerous struggles for justice.
Far from the idea of not being able to break out of working in small sect, the tributes from Tim O’Toole (former London Underground Managing Director)and others show how Redmond worked with a wide range of individuals and communities.
All of these can be seen at http://www.progressivelondon.org.uk/
I have really mixed feelings about this blog post. There will always be a range of views on someone that has died, particularly when they are a leading member of an organisation like Socialist Action, so I think providing this space is helpful and I do think it is wrong that critical comments of Redmond have been removed from the Socialist Unity site.
On a personal note, I did not know Redmond very well, but he did offer me a place to stay when I moved from Oxford to London. I was a complete stranger to him, I was a young member of Revolution Youth and I needed somewhere to stay. He offered me a room until I found somewhere. That’s what comrades do, and I regarded him as a comrade.
I think the criticism of Redmond about Bob Pennington is misplaced. As everyone knows, who is at all intrested in these things, Bob was a member of the ISG and had very little time for Socialist Action. It is not Redmond’s fault how Bob ended up. Comrades of Bob’s from the ISG and ex-IMG did spend a lot time visiting him and trying to give him support in his final years. But Bob led his own life. Alcoholism is a horrible disease and in the case of Bob it killed him. Could more have been done, possibly, but it is highly moralistic to blame Redmond for any of this.
Jon Green (ex-ISG Brighton)
O’Neill’s tributes also came from the TfL and Tube bosses – the same people who have repeatedly tried to crush the RMT. How do you explain that?
Sacha,
Human decency?
Maybe I’m one of those much described as an ‘fundamentalist atheist’, but I can’t understand why the dead are considered worthy of a special kind of respect not available to the living. Of course, one can mourn, show recognition for a person’s life and achievements (or otherwise) and empathise with those living for whom the person had a special significance. But the idea that one should refrain from criticism of someone because they’re dead (especially when you’ve made the same criticisms during their lifetime)seems to me rather odd.
2p worth on Redmond: I was in the same LP branch as him in the late 80s and the thing that particularly annoyed me was how he always tried to present Socialist Action’s views as some kind of left Labour orthodoxy that one couldn’t disagree with because it had been passed by CLPD, Black Sections etc. He spoke as if teaching this to a group of rather backward pupils and if anyone dared to disagree would go bright red in the face. No need to think for yourself, just do as I say!
Mark O,
I think if Bob Crow dies suddenly you can be sure that the TfL and LUL execs won’t be issuing tributes. The reason they did so for O’Neill was nothing to do with human decency, and everything to do with the fact that in his official GLA capacity he repeatedly sided with them against their workers.
I have been negative about Redmond O. I am aware he was liked, admired, loved by many personally, politically and both.
I do not like secretive politics on the left. Do Socialist Action exist (and how?) and if so, what are their politics?
One thing is sure, the politics are not public, except in the sense that the consequences of ‘their’ actions are public. Nobody ever even voted for Redmond O.
Mark O, The incentive to side with them would be the excessive salary and the lifestyle working class people dream about. Trot principles are no different from the rest. They usually leave by the same window.
I spent an evening with a trade unionist who works at the GLA. They had no idea that Redmond ONeill had died. I asked what was the main difference between Ken’s regime and that of Boris. They said to me two things; first, that the bullying had stopped under the Tory regime and second, that they were now able to get on with their job. I then asked abut Ross and ONeill as managers and they replied ‘Ross was respected’ ‘ONeill was feared because he was a terrible bully’. i do not believe in means and ends arguments but in the end what happened to socialist action was that they went the way of all those who attach their futures to this left leader or the other…much like Ovenden and Hoveman with Galloway…defending minor gains by closing down democracy and manipulating organisations. This, of course, has nothing in common with the method of Marxism and more to do with personal delusion about the role of individuals in history and the class struggle.
A response to some of the comments. I’m not of course arguing that “all socialists are bullies”, nor am I denying that this sort of behaviour occurs in many organisations. In any case, O’Neill’s bullying was just part of his general approach of treating working people like shit.
To give one example, if O’Neill needed to speak to one of the other policy directors in the mayor’s office, he would phone up their PA, bark “Where’s X” at them, and on receiving the information would just slam down the phone.
City Hall employees couldn’t understand why O’Neill and others adopted this contemptuous attitude towards them. As one member of the portering staff said to me, “The Tories don’t treat us like that”.
That workers should be treated badly in large corporations is hardly surprising. What requires explanation is why socialists of all people should behave in this way.
And I do think it has something to do with the organisational methods of far-left sects. If you read an account of, say, John Rees peremptorily instructing Salma Yaqoob to call off a meeting she had organised at Birmingham Central Mosque after 7/7 because he disapproved of it, this was I think a product of the same arrogance that individuals acquire from running an organisation in which they can just order the members around.
I would, however, dissociate myself from Tony Greenstein’s position on the PSC. It seems to me that Tony is involved in a political conflict over the future course of the Palestinian solidarity movement, but instead of fighting the issues out politically he tries to smear his opponents by accusing them of being involved in some sinister conspiracy. It has unfortunate overtones of anti-communist witch-hunting.
And the charge against O’Neill that he abandoned Bob Pennington is nonsense. As Jon Green points out, Socialist Action and Pennington went their separate ways after the split in the Socialist League in 1985. I remember John Ross asking me a few years ago what had happened to Pennington (who had recruited him to the IMG back in the early ’70s), unaware that he had died. They hadn’t had any contact in years.
To reiterate a point I made earlier, “arrogant-lefty” behaviour is strongly correlated to student politics.
The NUS breeds it because it unites students of different classes, who only have temporary interests in common.
This encourages a confrontational political debating style and ultra-leftism.
As is well-known, ultra-leftism often transmutes into reformism and careerism in “life after the NUS”.
Not even a union official can get away with this because the office staff would walk out!
Many of the people discussed above came straight out of the NUS into full time jobs in Marxist sects and illustrate the phenomenon quite well.
In the case of the SWP, there was a clear turn away from the working class when the I.S. opposition was expelled and the “party” was declared. Since then it’s mainly recruited amongst students, whereas in the early 70′s students were directed to industrial work and recruiting manual workers.
The whole background of the split in the IMG-SL in the 1980′s was the turn to industry.
Socialist Action opposed this by counterposing LP deep entryism and none of its leadership had/have any TU experience.
They could best be described as a Pabloite- bureaucratic current.
“ultra-leftism often transmutes into reformism and careerism in “life after the NUS”"
Got any stats to back this up? Thought not!
It seems to me that since the war on terror it is the “practical left” that have veered to the right. To the point where they see the ruling class as the saviour of mankind!
Jim Denham: “(read Andrew Murray’s obituary in the Morning Star – his only quibble seemed to be Redmond’s support of striking Morning Star workers!)”
The exact opposite, in fact.
Jim Denham misread Andrew Murray’s comments: Redmond O’Neill and his clique did not support the Morning Star strikers 11 years ago.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
They, together with Mary Rosser (who attempted to install her son-in-law as editor), Mike Hicks et al, were behind and completely supportive of the suspension and sacking of then editor John Haylett on trumped-up grounds (it is worth noting that ACAS practically laughed at their so-called ‘dossier’ and that the individual chosen by Rosser to act on their behalf at ACAS was so embarrassed by the aforementioned ‘dossier’ against John when he saw it, that he walked away).
It was O’Neill and his coterie who made sure that Ken Livingstone actually used Parliamentary privilege to table an EDM condemning John Haylett and accusing him of anti-semitism (oh, the irony!), thus quashing another EDM that had been tabled to call on the Morning Star management to go to ACAS. This is on record in Hansard.
Personally, as someone who was very much involved in the strike, I have always regarded those actions as little more than scabbing.
As I said, Jim Denham misread Andrew’s column. The strike and the subsequent political campaign to see the management committee substantially changed at the later AGMs succeeded – ensuring the survival of the paper.
In spite of the ‘best’ efforts of O’Neill and his dishonest, underhand cronies.
In the spirit of ‘where ae they now’ what happened to the old ‘leaders’ of the IMG? I know some are in the ISG, Ross advising Livingstone and A Chinese uni economics chair, I heard Grogan got religion? any info? I’m just curious…
Annie Marjoram spent some time with Livingstone et al at the GLA as a ‘policy advisor on women’s issues’, having had to leave the Morning Star when their little schemes went pear shaped.
Paul Corry – Rosser’s son-in-law and would-be Star editor – was long suspected of being involved with O’Neill and co (for rather obvious reasons). He went on to become director of public affairs of the mental health charity Rethink.
O’Neill’s hostility to the rights and struggles of workers wasn’t limited to his treatment of City Hall employees. It extended as far as working with TfL etc management to smash the RMT.
” “ultra-leftism often transmutes into reformism and careerism in “life after the NUS” ”
“Got any stats to back this up?”
Doubt if the stats have been compiled.
Examples abound though. Try Lord Triesman (now chairman of the F.A.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/oct/18/highereducation.uk1
(For queries re. former IMG leadership, use Google)
Annie Marjoram was not a member of the IMG CC as far as I remember. Ross, Freeman, ONeill Woodward all joined Livingstone in building progressive capitalism in London. Grogan is a law lecturer. Siblerman is with the Communist League but god knows what he makes of the ‘objectively’ proletarian Gadaffi… Phil Hearse runs Marxiste.com. Val Coultas is living in south london doing bugger all. Steph Grant is alive and kicking in Haringey are for some unknown reason is connected to the green socialist reformist pro Galloway current called the ISG.
To respond to Bob’s points (because it is futile time-wasting to respond to Jim Denham’s drunken ramblings):
1. The dispute, as he calls it, in PSC is of course political. E.g. over whether or not one should criticise the US/Israeli imposed Abbas Junta in Ramallah. Socialist Action believes it should not be criticised despite leading Palestinians e.g. Ali Abunimah of the most prestigious Palestinian web site calling for him to step down after he took instructions from Israel and the USA to withdraw a motion endorsing the Goldstein Report. Another example is SA’s opposition to breaking links with the Zionist apartheid union, Histadrut, because it would upset its friends in the Trade Union bureaucracy.
However the FORM that the criticism has taken revolves around the undemocratic methods of SA in taking over PSC. Denying their membership of the organisation until it is forced out of them. Replacing staff with SA trusties. Treating the membership as campaigning fodder whilst they provide the ‘(mis)leadership’. Get a sense of deja vu?
Maybe people need to get the basics first. Socialism is about democracy or it is nothing. Totally meaningless if not worse. That must be the lesson of Stalinism, born of a contempt for the working class which turns on that class with horrendous results.
The charge of an anti-communist witch-hunt is a cheap jibe, but nothing else. It is a subjective interpretation based on nothing. As I’ve shown above, my political criticism of SA comes from the left, not the right. How can it be other? As others have shown, SA’s role in the GLA was one of being an employer, using the power of a section of the capitalist state to achieve nominally progressive things whilst squashing workers in the process. If that is socialism fine, but count me out.
And it is because of the lack of democracy, the command structure of tiny far-left sects, who ape the structures of the Bolsheviks without ever having a mass implantation in the class, that leads to the bullying that Redmond O’Neil is accused of. I know nothing of the internal relationships at the GLA but what is said of Red rings true and no one has denied it. That comes of the same contempt that holds a leadership of a pedestal distanced from the membership.
The charge against Socialist Action, of abandoning Bob Pennington, is apparently nonsense. Bob the confirms that which he says is nonsense by telling us what John Ross asked him a few years ago about Bob Pennington. I’m speechless. Bob Pennington was one of the leaders of the IMG. He was one of its few, if only, genuine working class militants. Socialist Action saw itself and indeed I believe was recognised as a representative for a time of the FI. Surely certain common and human decencies transcend sectional differences?
My references to Redmond in this case should really be read as referring to Socialist Action, not just him personally. I also mentioned someone much less well known, Frank Elvy, whose funeral Red attended but his ex-comrades were not around when he needed them in the years running up to this. Jon Green, who was in Brighton for some of the time when Bob P was here, is of course entitled to his opinion. I know that ISG members did keep contact with and help Bob. I had no criticism of them but I still say that there was a common human duty extending beyond that.
The reality is that the demise of the IMG was one, sorry mess which epitomises in its own way the sad and sorry decline of the far-left in Britain.
Political criticisms of Socialist Action are perfectly justified. A lot of the personalised stuff in this thread is just scurrilous garbage though. There’s quite a lot of inaccurate rubbish in what Paul Walker has written above, for instance.
My main criticism of S.A. being that they sacrificed their independent journal.
At one time, the Healyites also did this, in order to avoid expulsion from the LP.
During this period they sold Tribune.
Eventually, the came back even more strongly with Keep Left and Workers Press.
So perhaps Socialist Action will re-emerge with some independent profile?
Personally I doubt it.
Their political history since 1989 has been to position themselves as left advisers to the bureaucracy. Whether in Russia, China, or at the GLC.
This is the same method as the former F.I. leader Michel Pablo used.
He managed to become a Minister in the Algerian Government, but never built an organisation.
Socialist Action are even more liquidationist than Pablo was, in a period in which the Communist Parties were far weaker.
Despite Sacha’s comments that Redmond sought to smash the tube workers, John McDonnell has left a warm tribute to him and it was good to see a senior RMT Political Officer at Redmond’s funeral.
I don’t quite understand Tony’s point re SA and Abbas though. Did Ken interview the Hamas political leader in the New Statesman of his own volition or did SA encourage it?