Anarchist Bookfair London Saturday 19th October 2013

[jondwhite]

The CWO reported the IP (is this a CWO affiliate?) being "banned" (and used this term) from events without specifying which ones or dateshttp://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-07-01/midlands-discussion-forum-meeting"… The ICC and IP apparently have (in France) banned each other from their public meetings. …"

[ALB]

IP is "Internationalist Perspectives", a breakaway from the ICC. They are reasonably ok (despite being anti-elections and anti-unions). In fact, when I left Belgium, I gave much of my collection of French-language "ultra left" pamphlets, leaflets and journals to one of their members.The French section of the ICC is particularly "cultish". They even have or had their own internal police force. See this article (which also has relevance to the thread on the so-called "slavery case"):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1215-november-2005/cult-professional-revolutionary

[imposs1904]

The IP is holding a joint meeting in NYC on December 2nd:http://fischerzed.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/can-redistribution-solve-capitalisms-crises-public-meeting-in-new-york/I'm hoping to pop along to it, but it depends on family considerations.

[slothjabber]

jondwhite wrote:

The CWO reported the IP (is this a CWO affiliate?) being "banned" (and used this term) from events without specifying which ones or dateshttp://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-07-01/midlands-discussion-forum-meeting"… The ICC and IP apparently have (in France) banned each other from their public meetings. …"

 Though since 2009 they have held joint meetings in the US I've heard. It's a pity the SPGB didn't bother to take up our invitation to speak at this meeting, or the one the following year you were specifically invited to present at (as opposed to the general invitations to come and take part over much of the last 14 years), should we have got the message and stopped asking you, and then gone round saying you'd banned SPGBers from talking to us?

[fischerzed]

To my knowledge IP has never held joint meetings with the ICC in North America. The ICC have attended meeting we (ah ha!) organized in Toronto and probably New York as well though.The meeting in December is with the Marxist Humanist Initiative, a group which came out of News and Letters a few years back.

[jondwhite]

slothjabber wrote:

jondwhite wrote:

The CWO reported the IP (is this a CWO affiliate?) being "banned" (and used this term) from events without specifying which ones or dateshttp://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-07-01/midlands-discussion-forum-meeting"… The ICC and IP apparently have (in France) banned each other from their public meetings. …"

 Though since 2009 they have held joint meetings in the US I've heard. It's a pity the SPGB didn't bother to take up our invitation to speak at this meeting, or the one the following year you were specifically invited to present at (as opposed to the general invitations to come and take part over much of the last 14 years), should we have got the message and stopped asking you, and then gone round saying you'd banned SPGBers from talking to us?

Which meeting(s) are you talking about?

[slothjabber]

I'm talking about the meeting that you are quoting – the Midlands Discussion Forum that happened in April 2009. I don't even think you replied to the invitation. I do have to make a correction though – SPGBers have attended 4 of our forums in the last 14 years, not 3 as I stated in an earlier post. 

fischerzed wrote:

To my knowledge IP has never held joint meetings with the ICC in North America. The ICC have attended meeting we (ah ha!) organized in Toronto and probably New York as well though…

 My mistake, I must have misunderstood, or misremembered.

[jondwhite]

slothjabber wrote:

jondwhite wrote:

The CWO reported the IP (is this a CWO affiliate?) being "banned" (and used this term) from events without specifying which ones or dateshttp://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-07-01/midlands-discussion-forum-meeting"… The ICC and IP apparently have (in France) banned each other from their public meetings. …"

 Though since 2009 they have held joint meetings in the US I've heard. It's a pity the SPGB didn't bother to take up our invitation to speak at this meeting, or the one the following year you were specifically invited to present at (as opposed to the general invitations to come and take part over much of the last 14 years), should we have got the message and stopped asking you, and then gone round saying you'd banned SPGBers from talking to us?

I think it's a pity the SPGB didn't bother to take up the invitation to speak at Midlands Discussion Forum 2009 too. "Banned" might be appropriate for a host repeatedly turning down a guest application but "banned" is not appropriate for a guest neglecting to reply to a host invitation. The WSM Forum has been in existence over a decade, all meetings are open to the public so it's not like the SPGB are hard to get hold of by other means.

[slothjabber]

Of course, you're right. 'Boycotted' is probably a better word than 'banned' in the circumstances. Should we have 'got the message' and stopped asking?

[jondwhite]

You can't leap from neglected replies to a political boycott without any grounds.As far as I know the SPGB have never declined to attend the Midlands Discussion Forum on political grounds as oppose to time, distance and organisational pressures. Occasionally replies might slip through the net, but this is neglect not a boycott.By contrast, the Anarchist Bookfair have rejected the SPGB application and specified political grounds more than once. Again unlike Midlands Discussion Forums, which the SPGB have attended this year, nothing between the Anarchist Bookfair and the SPGB (except lack of application) subsequently has changed, hence the term 'banned'. Not one I would use, but also not a term that is as objectionable as the critics are trying to make out, especially critics who also use the term themselves.

[LBird]

As far as I can tell, slothjabber is literally correct in their contributions to this thread. That is, they have a good case for their argument, which probably needed making, that that SPGB were being a bit sloppy in their own use of language/terms.But I can't help feeling that slothjabber has alienated comrades from, rather than attracted them to, their side.Politics isn't just about 'winning a case', but more like 'garnering support'. It doesn't pay politically to be 'right', but end up isolated. It's possible to 'win support' by comradely means.There's a lesson here somewhere, for all of us Communists. And I include myself in that judgement.

[slothjabber]

jondwhite wrote:

…By contrast, the Anarchist Bookfair have rejected the SPGB application and specified political grounds more than once. Again unlike Midlands Discussion Forums, which the SPGB have attended this year, nothing between the Anarchist Bookfair and the SPGB (except lack of application) subsequently has changed, hence the term 'banned'. Not one I would use, but also not a term that is as objectionable as the critics are trying to make out, especially critics who also use the term themselves.

 'The critics', as far as I'm aware, means me, and just me. Where do I use the term myself? In my description of the SPGB's refusal to even answer something like 50 invitations to take part in meetings? I'm not a member of the CWO, who are quoted as refering to the ICC and IP banning each other from their meetings. Ban they did; they each (in my understending anyway, perhaps fischerzed could clarify if I'm mistaken on this) forbade members of the other organisation attending their meetings, on an ongoing basis – not just one meeting. The SPGB has not been 'banned' in either of these senses; SPGBers were free to attend meetings at the Bookfair (so not banned from attending, unlike the IP/ICC banning); and my understanding of the Bookfair decision-making process is that each bookfair is a seperate event and if an organisation is denied a stall in one year it may be allowed one in another. Therefore, there is no concept of a 'permanent' ban, which is the implication of the statement that keeps appearing that the SPGB is banned. It isn't; it was banned, some time ago. Now it doesn't bother to even ask to be let in, but still manages to imply that that's the fault of the people inside instead of its own decision.

[jondwhite]

'Banning' individual members sounds more sectarian than political, since it would be simply based on which members of the groups were known to one another (and unenforcable against unfamiliar members). Using the term 'ban' in this instance is a bit grandiose compared to a situation where a group has been rejected from having an official space explicitly on political grounds.

[slothjabber]

As IP were a split from the ICC, the ICC and IP members in a particular country would be known to each other. We're not talking massive numbers here. And it's not 'banning individual members' it's banning an organisation. Even if there were 'unknown' members (as I say not very likely) then when they made their first contribution and said 'I'm Jaques from the ICC' then people would know that they were from the ICC (if they'd bothered to turn up in the first place which they woul be unlikely to). And, it was on specifically political grounds, each organisation considered the other to be detrimental to the working class. But, what has the CWO talking about the mutual banning of the IP and ICC, to do with me talking about the SPGB's so-called 'banning' by the Anarchist Bookfair? For the SPGB to have been 'banned' it must have had a request to hold a stall turned down, and it didn't, because it didn't request a stall. Yes, it may have been 'banned' in the past (though 'denied a stall' is more accurate, as SPGB members were not prevented from attending meetings), but it has not been denied a stall under any grounds, political or otherwise, for several years, has it? Was the SPGB 'banned' either from attending, as individuals, the Anarchist Bookfair in 2013, or from having a stall in 2013? No – SPGB members were able to attend meetings, and the SPGB didn't apply for a stall in 2013. That's the simple truth of it. 

[jondwhite]

I actually think the SPGB use of the term 'ban' is about as misleading as the ICC-IP/CWO use. The purported political grounds of each organisation being detrimental to the working class is so vague, it could equally apply to the Anarchist Bookfair's rejection (who actually specified it was to do with the SPGB being a party). The Anarchist Bookfair's never stopped members of the SPGB attending as individuals. If individual guests were stopped from attending a public event by the hosts, this would be plain old sectarian of the hosts, not really a principled political stance that could be called a 'ban', unless those individuals (even new members) were so disruptive or following orders to push a party line irrespective of the event. In which case, it would be more of an indictment of the organisation whose members were guests were banned.

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