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I went for a walk this morning and passed the staging area, by Marble Arch, for the now weekly Palestine protests. On opposite sides of the street, and in an excellent bit of unintentional visual comedy, sat the information tents for the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party respectively, both in many ways orthodox Marxists, and yet sworn enemies for reasons you can read about in this twelve-part volume. (They largely concern just how disastrous the fall of the Soviet Union was for the world revolution, and an apparent disagreement over the nature of North Vietnam’s specific form of communism.)
Both factions have seemingly determined that these Palestine protests are the main way they might attract new blood, and therefore hand out many posters and flags with their respective logos on them. So a bizarre spectacle plays out on London’s streets, as two bands of aging white communists try to appeal to young Muslims (who likely neither know nor care about Marx) in the waging of this strange internecine war among Leninists.
A bit over a ten years ago I participated in a SWP event in London, at some local university. Around the campus, it seemed like every other Trotskyist group, and some others, were prowling around, trying to pilfer potential recruits from the SWP (back then still quite a bit larger - the Corbyn movement did a number on them, from what I understand, and so did a rape scandal which got revealed soon after my visit.)
I asked one of them, from some group I can't remember (wasn't SP) what their disagreement on current policy with SWP was, and the guy launched into a spiel on how the SWP had been on the wrong side on whether it was correct to demand the British troops out of Northern Ireland in the 70s, I'm not sure which side of this he represented. I asked what the difference was now and he just looked at me and relaunched the same spiel abut Northern Ireland in the 70s. I came away from the event mainly with a strong conviction that it's a great positive there's never been a sizable Trotskyist movement in Finland.
When I was active in student politics in the early noughties (As a Liberal Democrat, I was part of the "minority right-wing faction" within the students' union, according to the student newspaper) the SWSS (student group of the SWP) was by far the largest maggot extremist group on campus. They were also the most organised group on demos - as well as being the ones handing out the "Free Palestine" placards at demos against spending cuts. As far as I could see, every left group that actually did stuff was an SWP front organisation.
Although the SWP claimed to be Trotskyite, the main argument against them made by other maggot extremist groups in rooms where it was assumed that everyone was a leftie was that they were closet Stalinists. The main argument made against them by everyone else on the left was that they were entryists who took over any attempt to do organised left-of-Blair politics and turned it into something that only appealed to the usual suspects.
It was the rape allegations that did them in - all the most competent people left.
Apart from Life of Brian, the best material on the culture of sectarian maggot extremist groups in the UK is the work of John Sullivan, who was a Trot with a sense of humour. The details of individual groups are out of date (As Soon as This Pub Closes is a 1986 update of an earlier pamphlet), but the culture has not changed.
What exactly do you mean by "maggot extremist group"? That reads like a completely unnecessary bit of vitriol.
It is a term originally used by Neil Kinnock (leader of the UK Labour Party from 1983-92) to describe far-left entryists in the Labour Party. The main group he was talking about was Militant, but almost all the far-left groups listed in As Soon as This Pub Closes practiced entryism in the Labour Party at some point in their history. When I was involved in centre-left politics in the UK, the term was an approximate British equivalent of "moonbat".
I agree that the term is (intentionally) offensive and I am happy to stop using it. Is "Loony Left" allowed here to refer to the same people?
Generally speaking, we prefer you not call your outgroup names unless it's actually making some kind of point (besides "I really despise these people"). It doesn't add to the conversation, you can certainly explain in your post why you think they are bad or "loony," but casual derogatory labels like "loony left" or "alt-Reich" quickly become a back and forth game of insults.
We may not enforce this rule with 100% consistency, but it stands out when you call your outgroup "maggots" repeatedly throughout a post.
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One of the few vaguely sympathetic/interesting groups I encountered while at the SWP event was a bunch of older gents who seemed to be connected John Sullivan, had copies of As Soon as This Pub Closes and regaled me with British Left anecdotes. The one I remember (they were not old enough to have witnessed this personally) was that when Mosleyites were going around in the 30s they had a bunch of young guys who formed the "Drum Squad" and the communists nicknamed it the "Bum Squad" due to, eh, allegations, since it was the 30s and homophobia was still in the vogue among the left too.
Even in the current year, leftists are happy to make homophobic comments about the aesthetic of Naziism (and other all-male right-coded groups such as British boarding schools). The joke is on them, because the Nazi propaganda movies were directed by Leni Riefenstahl and so the erotic portrayal of the male characters is entirely heterosexual.
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