Nicolai Gentchev, Chris Patten: political affiliations at the BBC
IT IS well known that Nick ‘Blue Robbo’ Robinson is former national chairman of the Young Conservatives, and hardly a secret that Paul Mason was once a member of Trotskyist grouping Workers’ Power. Yet both these television journalists are highly regarded in their current roles as, respectively, political editor of the BBC and economics editor [...]
ACAS sit-in: the future of the Socialist Workers’ Party
THERE might be times and places in which it would be warranted for the far left unilaterally to disrupt talks aimed at settling an industrial dispute; it’s just that yesterday was clearly not among them. Whatever justifications the Socialist Workers’ Party advances for invading the headquarters of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and staging [...]
A petty-bourgeois opposition in the Socialist Workers Party
SEVENTY years ago this very year, the Socialist Workers Party – the American grouping of that title, of course, and not its entirely unrelated present day British namesake – saw the outbreak of a short but bitter internal polemic. Within a matter of months, matters reached a conclusion that could have been foreseen long before. [...]
SWP crisis: the political cost of self-delusion
THE reality-based wing of the socialist left does not occupy a political territory that is keenly contested these days; truth to tell, adherents are distinctly a minority tendency, and it gets a little bit lonely out here sometimes. So it should be encouraging to see leading figures inside the Socialist Workers’ Party attempting to reintroduce [...]
Democracy, democratic centralism and John Molyneux
Back in the 1980s, I eagerly bought Socialist Worker every week, simply because each edition contained a few hundred words from my all-time journalistic hero Paul Foot. My second favourite feature was the ‘Teach Yourself Marxism’ column, penned by John Molyneux, pictured left. I strongly admired his ability to condense complex Marxist ideas in an [...]
Left List: does my 0.68% look big in this?
We haven’t had a good old intra-Trot happy slap on this site in, oooooh, ages. And how will I ever match the stat porn at Socialist Unity if I don’t facilitate the occasional opportunity for the Socialist Workers’ Party and Respect Renewal to scratch each other’s eyes out? So here is a guest post from [...]
SWP: Central Committee climbs down on Khansaheb donation
The latest edition of the Socialist Workers’ Party bulletin Party Notes includes what must be history’s only recorded instance of a Central Committee climbdown. It relates to the story of an illegal foreign donation from Dubai-based Khansaheb Civil Engineering to Respect the Unity Coalition, which at the instigation of national secretary John Rees, subsequently found [...]
Khansaheb Civil Engineering: business backer of the SWP
Respect’s 2007 financial statement – filed with the electoral commission – revealed that the ‘unity coalition’ returned a cheque for $10,000 from a Dubai construction company as an impermissible donation. Little more was heard of the story since. But the new edition of the East London Advertiser takes up the tale. According to the local [...]
SWP source: Rees not in control?
This just in from an SWPer with serious working class implantation, who tells me that the SWP actually did not want the Tower Hamlets Gang of Four councillors to resign the whip: I’ve no reason to believe it was orchestrated … SWP “Leninist discipline” is such that the two councillors who joined the SWP could [...]
Respect: Tower Hamlets Deep Throat says …
I’ve just had a second email from a source with an intimate knowledge of the ins and out of Tower Hamlets politics, containing further information about talks between the SWP-sponsored Continuity Respect group on Tower Hamlets council and the local Liberal Democrats. Like all journos, I like nothing more than a good tip-off, so many [...]
