SWP Conference

national | anti-capitalism | news report Thursday October 07, 2004 15:45 by Party Pooper

Democratic debate or Rallying the troops?

The SWP helds its annual conference on the 24th-26th of September at the Teachers Club, Dublin but, going by their own report, there was little in the way of democracy or debate at it.

The SWP helds its annual conference on the 24th-26th of September at the Teachers Club, Dublin. It was described in the party paper as the party's most successful conference ever'. It was claimed that over 100 delegates attended.

The report tells us nothing about the nature of the internal health and workings of the SWP being largely a feel-good summary of the party's success and a few positive snippets from delegates. Only two items of real significance are reported, the indication that the SWP is increasingly turning to 'community politics' following the relative success of their rivals in the Socialist Party and the limited electoral sucess of the Respect coalition in England (An SWP/George Galloway dominated alliance). This along with the setting up of an Industrial Department to cordinate work in the Unions may well signal a recognition of the overly middle class membership and image of the Party.

The glaring ommission, of course, was any report of what you would expect in a healthy and democratic left wing party: democracy and debate. There is no report of any motions being discussed and voted on, no report of any comradely debate in which different viewpoints were expressed. Most importantly of all there is no comment on how the leadership of the SWP is elected or selected.

Unless things have changed, we can guess fairly accurately that if motions were discussed these were sanctioned by and always fail to challenge the leadership. we can guess that votes are almost always unanimous. The leaders would have been elected by the slate system: A slate of candidates is recommended by the out going leadership. Technically a minority slate can be proposed by dissidents but this never happens. The same core-elite is therefore re-elected year in/ year out, the only changes being the inclusion of those most willing and able to display fervour and loyalty to that elite. So no sign of what one new member of the SWP stated: “As a new member it was important for me to see how open the party is to change and to new ideas and approaches in
dealing with issues"

Needless to say this report stands open to correction if someone who attended would like to clarify if the internal regime of the SWP has really changed. How about it Valerie from Dun Laoghaire or Joe from North Dublin?