SWP meltdown: blogging “filth” spoiling our game

“Any influx of young members presents challenges that we have to be able to respond to …”

SWP faction leader and Central Committee member Pat Stack wrote to members of his beleaguered party, saying: “I think a lot of comrades would like some respite from the filth that is out there (here I’m talking about non-party bloggers), but these expulsions will only give that filth fresh impetus.”

Thanks for the impetus, Pat. Aside from noting the commonplace party practice of throwing people off the back of the sleigh to save one’s own skin, let us explore the question you raise:

WHAT IS FILTH?

“Filth” is an alleged rape taking place when a woman is nineteen, 2 years after she and her party leader meet, at which time he is forty-six and she seventeen.

“Filth” is an appeal to the party’s internal disciplinary body being met with a kangaroo court run by several of the party leader’s friends, who then exonerate him.

“Filth” is the woman denied access to his evidence while he sees hers: the game is surely “I’ll show you mine IF you show me yours.”

“Filth” is a woman ostracised, cast out as unclean with a scarlet letter “A” carved into her forehead.

“Filth” is her friends put under heavy manners by the party’s attack dogs, fresh from their two-minute hate.

“Filth” is power relations that exist under capitalism going unchallenged and amplified in the party playground. All that youth and pulchritude — yummy!

“Filth” is continuing to claim exemption from “bourgeois morality”: may I remind you once again that Trotsky wrote “Their Morals and Ours”, not “Their Morals and We Ain’t Got None”.

“Filth” is saying “you don’t lie to the class”, and then lying to the class about how many members you have. Claiming 7,000 while actually having far fewer than 2,000, even after it has been brought to your attention (remember?), is far from clean.

“Filth” is honeytrapping people who want to change the world for the better, who bring love and hope to the party, and then find themselves smashed up on the rocks of the politics of envy and the drive for personal power.

“Filth” is love-bombing potential recruits and then treating them like your property once they’ve joined.

“Filth” is demanding their full-time intellectual and physical labour for no pay while you draw a salary.

“Filth” is paying your printshop workers well below the minimum wage. How many staff are employed at below Living Wage rates and with no workplace trade union representation — and what happened to that fulltimer’s tax and National Insurance, by the way?

“Filth” is expelling four members for the thought-crime of discussing issues on Facebook. The internet to the party in 1998: “What does that mean to a postie on eighty quid a week?”

“Filth” is denying potential recruits the free information with which to make an informed choice: in the public interest, Caveat Comrade.

“Filth” is Professor Darkside’s puppies fed the stolen milk and apples and now look: lynch-mobs and goon squads patrolling the perimeter.

“Filth” is practising filth and yelling “Filth” louder than the next guy.

“Filth” is watching your party go from excess to excess and being surprised when, like a child given no boundaries by the grown-ups (of which you are supposed to be one), it does something RE-E-E-E-ALLY ba-a-a-ad!

“Filth” is knowing all these abuses exist while in a leadership capacity and doing nothing about them.

“Filth” is pointing the finger when three fingers point right back atcha.

“Filth” is a mirror.

Read the background in SWP Sex Implosion