The "Public Sociologist" blog has published an exchange of letters in which, on 10 February, Lindsey German resigned from the SWP.
As German says in her resignation letter, she "joined [the SWP] more than 37 years ago... was on the Central Committee for 30 years..."
After the collapse of the SWP's shameful alliance with George Galloway in Respect, German and her partner John Rees were scapegoated for the fiasco. Since then they and others have been in opposition. For the SWP conference in January 2010 they formed an opposition faction, the Left Platform.
The ostensible reason for German's resignation is that the SWP leadership instructed her not to speak at a Stop The War meeting about which there was some dispute, and vaguely threatened disciplinary action against her if she went ahead and spoke.
German is employed full-time by the Stop The War coalition, and so has an easy option to keep busy politically without trying to form an alternative would-be-Marxist grouping. Presumably in 37 years in the SWP she learned that for serious revolutionaries, broad campaign activity (even in a campaign much better than Stop The War) is not sufficient, and that we must always strive to build at least a Marxist nucleus, but her resignation letter says nothing about that.
Several questions remain open:
- If Lindsey German thought that speaking at the STW meeting was a make-or-break issue, why didn't she force the SWP leadership either to expel her - which would surely have caused some dissent, even among loyalists - or to back down?
- What do John Rees and the rest of the Left Platform intend? Will they drop away from the SWP one by one and convert into campaign-only activists?
- What does the current SWP Central Committee leadership, around Martin Smith and Alex Callinicos, think it is doing? It scarcely looks like a case where they had to expel German or suffer a serious blow to SWP functioning. Smith's letter to German acknowledging her resignation is rude and bureaucratic. No show of regret or thanks for German's 37 years' work for the SWP. Nor even what might be appropriate when receiving a resignation from someone who you thought had irreparably "lost it" politically and become damaging in practice - a welcome for the resignation as clarifying things, coupled with a political indictment of the course which had let to resignation.
Smith and Callinicos must know that with the deaths of Cliff and Harman, the resignation of German, the banishing-to-the-ranks of Rees, and the effective semi-retirement of most older SWP members, the "talent pool" in the SWP leadership is looking very shallow indeed. Or are they really not aware of that?
Comments
"Why I resigned" by German
on hearing about lindsey
on hearing about lindsey german's resignation a friend and comrade asked me if I remembered a stop the war meeting at the tyne theatre in Newcastle (March 2003 i think) some years back at the height of the stop the war movement when lindsey commented that "at least the taliban educated some people" i cannot remember the context but someone shouted yes but what about women and there were shouts of shame. I will consult with people involved with stop the war from different groups to see if we can remember the exact wording, but this is how i remember it. I have never had any respect (sic) for her from this point on, perhaps at the time attempts to work with SWP members within the SA in newcastle had been reasonably successful and therefore i was willing to believe that these were serious socialists who we disagreed with but there were actually socialists. This was one of the turning points for me and perhaps others in newcastle at the time. I am sorry to see the lack of democracy on the left and the lack of transparency within one of the biggest left groups in britain today. But i saw any evidence that at her height of authority within the party she sought to drive it in a better direction. Soon after this meeting in newcastle the SA was closed down to lash up with Galloway and MAB (at a conference where the SWP had the majority of people in the room and so could win the vote whatever any independents or smaller groups felt, and by this time the SP and WP had already left). Neither Smith nor German but independent working class politics!
Another 60 odd follow Lindsey out
http://solomonsmindfield.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-we-are-resigning-from-swp-open.html.
Today's SWP mass resignation (Rees, Nineham, Guy Taylor - those are the people I've heard of but there are about 60 of them now) is really weird. All very dignified but can't they stir things up inside the party more - if they think it's worth saving and their politics are worth fighting for? And are they now going to form a new 'party'? There's enough of them!
Another letter from Martin Smith
A further letter from Martin Smith to Lindsey German has been made public, in which he claims that his initial rude response to her resignation was "for legal reasons". Smith's line is now to "regret" and be "surprised" by German's resignation, though he pointedly omits to ask her to reconsider the resignation.
Another question raised is, what happens in Stop The War? With German in the SWP, the SWP CC could presumably keep enough control to be going on with. With German outside the SWP, will they attempt a faction fight to regain control?
Dear Lindsey,
I am responding to your letter of resignation you sent to me earlier today (my earlier acknowledgment was required for legal/banking purposes).
On behalf of the CC I would like to say that we regret very much your decision to leave the SWP. We are very surprised that you regarded this matter as a resignation issue.
As we made clear to you in our correspondence we felt the disagreements could have been resolved at a meeting between you and ourselves.
The question of disciplinary action was brought into the discussion by you, not by us. Your resignation is your personal choice and was not forced on you or demanded by the Central Committee.
I would also like to assure you that we will continue to build the Stop the War Coalition and where possible work with you in a constructive and positive way.
Martin Smith (SWP National Secretary)