Bijou Drains
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I used to have a van, but I’m still in the party and I sold the van!
If your suspected infiltrator was a spook, part of me thinks fair play to him. At least he got 4 years of fairly easy wage slavery and a period of four years’ company with interesting and amiable people. He may have actually learned something and in that respect they have more to fear from us than we should fear from them!
Due to our democratic approach the most damage he would have made is one vote in a vote of many.
You’re absolutely right that our openness is a great protection. Our principles, our procedures and our anti authoritarian approaches are also hugely protective. Fact is he could have won the “names in the hat” raffle to win be the “leader” of the party and it wouldn’t have mattered.
I often wonder if the plod and the spooks were daft enough to infiltrate us. Let’s face it most of the information they would need is in the public domain and if they had infiltrated us they would have had to pay party dues to get information that was freely available.
Also the SWP accusing anyone of using Orwelian tactis is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle dirty arse.
Re the SWP, I’m just re reading Tariq Ali’s book “Redemption”. I would recommend reading it if you can get a copy of it. I think I’m enjoying it more this time around because the expose of the sexual proclivities of their “leaders” are now fully out in the open.
Anyway the SWP have a persecution complex, they’ll be made up that the Spooks were infiltrating them, they would have been distraught if they hadn’t been infiltrated!
I think ALB’s view that Putin could quite easily occupy the Donbas is probably not quite as straightforward as it looks.
The Donbas has an area of about 60,000 sq km, which is over 4 times the size of Northern Ireland. It is estimated that The Provisional IRA had a maximum strength of about 2 – 3,000 active members during the Troubles. That tied down up to 30,000 members of the British Army, not including the RUC and other quasi military bodies.
Although the IRA was reasonably well funded, it’s funding would be minuscule in comparison to a similarly based Ukrainian insurgency group. A Ukrainian insurgency campaign could be very costly (in troops and material) for Putin.
The little know anti USSR guerrilla campaign in the Baltic states between 1945 – 1953 cost the USSR an approximate 30,000 lives. This would be even more costly.
If ALB is correct in saying former Captain Ben Wallace is suggesting that NATO should March on Moscow, he’s not only a fool, he clearly never studied the work of Montgomery when he was at Sandhurst.
Montgomery said “the first law of military strategy is Don’t March on Moscow”. Although Montgomery was a vain, opinionated, racist )and possible Penderast). I’d rather trust him in terms of military strategy than the jumped up fuckwit who currently holds the office of Minister of Defence.
I’ve always been a little confused when members/sympathisers say, why don’t you do this/that/the other, with regard to various activities that the party undertake. Over the years I’ve seen comments like, why do you organise debates when we should arrange cooperative forums? Why do you have election campaigns as opposed to leaflet drops? Why do you arrange paper sales at left wing rallies as opposed to anarchist book fairs? Etc.etc. etc.
The thing is, none of these things re mutual exclusive. We can do leaflet drops and also do elections, we can attend left wing rallies as well as anarchist book fairs. We can do all of these things (the fact is, we SHOULD all do all of them, it’s not like we are short of a bob or two)
That some members think that it is worthwhile for them to carry out election campaigns, does not stop the critics of that type of activity from undertaking the kinds of activity that they think we should undertake. I cannot perceive the EC or the Party at large blocking the critics from undertaking the activities that are suggested. To those comrades who criticise this activity, go out and do it the way you think it should be done, no one is stopping you.
I do not wish to be harsh, but to reiterate “the critics” are not being prevented from doing what they suggest.
We are not some Leninist clique that needs to have some prescribed way of campaigning. We have the funds (within reason) for individual groups and members to do whatever they chose to do. If you’re not happy with election campaigns and think that we should do something else, what is to stop you organising and doing that activity yourself? The Party at large and the democratic structures of the Party are not stopping you!With regard to the campaign and the results, congratulations to all of the party members that got involved with the campaigns. In term so of results, the result that the Possibilist candidate received more or less the same number as the Impossiblist candidate, is pretty significant!
I acknowledge that it is difficult to extrapolate from small numbers but, if we got a 1.5% result in a General Election, in the way that we got in Clapham East, based on the last election turnout, that would give us 480,212. I for one would be ecstatic with that!
There have been reports of explosions in Transnistria, Russian state media claiming they originate from Ukrainian agents, it may well spark an attempt to link the Russian invasion to the Transnistria/Moldova situation. Strategically, this would make sense for the Russians, allowing them to have unhindered access to the Black Sea, for trade routes and other reasons.
If the Russians achieve a link up from Transnistria to The Crimea, the next pinch point will be access to the Med through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, no surprise that Erdogan has been quite quiet about the whole situation.
The situation might get worse with regard to confrontation between NATO and the Russians as well, with Moldova being heavily linked to Rumania (a NATO member).
As Kenneth Wolstenholme may once have said “They think it’s Moldova, it is now!”
With regards to public urination, my experience is that a long term solution is not exactly what is needed. Usually, at my age, what I need is a very, very quick solution.
That’s terrific news MS, can you send me a link to it?
My Spanish is pretty weak, but I amsure I can pick up the jist of the conversation.Perhaps I’m just cynical, but is it a coincidence that Britain has agreed to pay its previously denied debts to Iran (and precipitate the release of Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe) at the middle of a crisis for Western oil experts.
With Iran and Venezuela back on board, maybe the Western Oligarchs will breathe a little more softly in their beds tonight, surely a small price for all of the dead workers and the thousands of children of future workers from Russia and The Ukraine to be deprived of one or both of their parents.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the Express AC, the Viz has more accurate news coverage than the Express.
“But wait! Drunk people can be convinced of the case for socialism, no?
And you haven’t answered my question. Sometimes you can’t avoid drunk people when putting the case for the abolition of the wages system. And sometimes, with drunken shitwitted buffoons, they want to offer you violence. I’m interested in what the party line might be.”
IDABM
Generally drunk people can be convinced about the case for socialism, however they generally forget about it the next day.
As to violence, if threatened I have been more and happy to “put the boot in” if required to keep myself safe.
I remember vividly in the 1980s a rather pasty faced SWP student member, who thought himself a “bit of a lad” taking exception to me describing him (correctly) as a red fascist and saying that he was going to put a glass in my face. As a result, then Cde Paul Robinson (last seen in Japan) pulled out a primed crossbow, which somehow calmed him down enough to start a reasoned debate.
In a similar way my mate, but no longer a party member, diffused a confontation with a bunch of Combat 18 fascists by explaining to them in very explicit ways, that if they didn’t stop threatening our group of Comrades selling Socialist Standards, he was going to kick the f**king shit out of them.
It must be also recognised that ex Comrades Marratty and Colburn (and some of the ex miners at Seaham Branch) were particularly useful to have around if the “ultimate dialectic” needed to be explained,.
So it is not the case that the SPGB is a pacifist party, just not prepared to kill or be killed for capitalsim.
That said, I also am also aware that as nowadays being a person in his early 60s, I might show a little more caution in such a situation (but not much).
The Times is reporting that Russia has stated that it would end the war on condition that the Crimea was recognised as Russian, the two de facto republics are recognised and that The Ukraine doesn’t join NATO or EU.
In effect that is recognition of the existing arrangement as being de jure.
Perhaps an end is in sight, depending on whether the West are willing to let Putin save faceWelcome to Roberto, we agree not a drop of working class blood is worth supporting either side of this war for control of markets, resources and influence. I hope you have had time to read through the information on our website and if you agree with our views, we would love to welcome you to our movement. Our Sister Party The WOrld Socialist Party (US) has the following website http://www.wspus.org/
Yours for Socialism
TimFrom a Tory perspective they must think that they have their third eleven out on the pitch.
The 1st eleven being Cameron and his cronies, the 2nd eleven was May and her lot and all they’ve got to put on the pitch are the political equivalent of three asthmatics, four fat kids, two kids with heart trouble and a couple of volunteers from the chess club. Still they can still outsmart Starmer and his mob.
Report from Katya Adler re the EU on BBC website
She says:
“The violence on the ground in Ukraine and the fact that the EU sees Vladimir Putin’s actions as an attack on wider European stability and security has focused minds in the EU.
It’s working in a much faster, more united way than we normally ever see.
The EU today announced for the first time that it would be purchasing weapons and delivering them to a country in conflict, Ukraine.
The words “unprecedented” and “watershed moment” are something you’re hearing a lot in Brussels at the moment, but it’s actually relevant.
Over the weekend, Germany really made the headlines across all of Europe by turning its modern day defence policy completely on its head.
It is traditionally very weary of getting involved in military conflict because of its history in World War Two.
Now it’s saying that it will be sending weapons directly to Ukraine and it will be massively investing in its own military, which will come as a relief to Nato allies.”
Is that a sign of NATO/EU’s worries? My take is that NATO is that has come to the conclusion that Russia’s military might has been exposed as being less frightening than it appeared to be and that they are taking the view that it is time to make hay when the sun is shining. The worry is that they push Putin into a corner.
It goes without saying that the working class have no dog in any of these fights.
