Sunday 22 January 2006

Why The British Left Sucks In 2006: episode IV - A New Hope

What is your name!? The Communist Party of Great Britain.

What is your quest!? In the words of perennial Stalinists alpha-male Harpal Brar, "a group of Trotskyites who run a gossip rag". But what Trots...and what a rag!

How many of you are there!? About 20. Considering the group's been around for as many years - initially as a Stalinist sect within the 'old' CPGB - this is poor showing. What puts them above the parapet is that they efficiently seized the CPGB name after the latter's reformation into a toothless third-way think-tank, and also the 'gossip rag', Weekly Worker, which enjoys a total circulation, including the online edition, of around 10,000. to put it in perspective, if the SWP could make a proportionally similar claim, Socialist Worker would outstrip all of the mainstream broadsheets put together.

You might remember me from... You almost definitely don't. There's 20 of them, for fuck's sake. They're in Respect, but i can't really see why, since I've never seen a WW article expressing support for a Respect position, ever.

Pros: Weekly Worker, the best Trot rag in the whole wide world - it's half Morning Star, half Popbitch. Basically 70% of its articles are catty critiques of the SWP, and frequently chucklesome - for the right reasons. Hell, even their appeals for money are smartly written, and pleasingly free of messianic exhortations about the great task of building a proletarian party blah blah blah...the actual analysis and so on, the other 30% isn't so good - but they have a policy of printing replies to controversial articles, and are one of the only Leninist groups to put their money where their mouths are in terms of democracy and debate.

Cons: They'll never amount to much. (I say that, hoping I'll appear in the same bit of history as Einstein's physics teacher.)

Overall: it will suffice to quote an email exchange published in December between them and luckless grumbling Swerp Dave Crouch (original article
here):

"Original statement from comrade Crouch

On the front page of your November 24 issue you published my contribution from an internal SWP document. You did so entirely without my permission. I wish to make it clear that I am not a member of your party, I share none of your criticisms of the SWP, and I never read the Weekly Worker - unless forced to by a circumstance such as this.

Dave Crouch
SWP, north London

Manson to Crouch

Further to our telephone conversation, I would be happy to publish the statement below. However, as you know, the contribution itself was not published on the front page, as your statement says. Would you like me to change the wording in the first sentence to read: 'In your November 24 issue you published my contribution from an internal SWP document and carried my photograph on your front page'?

Comradely
Peter Manson

PS: Tomorrow (Wednesday) I will be at the Weekly Worker office (020 8965 0659; weeklyworker @cpgb.org.uk) if you wish to discuss this further.

Crouch to Manson

Drop dead.

Manson to Crouch

Dave, I know you're upset, but I'm trying to help by publishing a statement that both expresses your feelings and is technically accurate.

Crouch to Manson

Get a life.

Manson to Crouch

I take it you no longer want the statement published. If I am wrong, please let me know some time today.

Crouch to Manson

Go fuck yourselves."

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