Granted it is not as majestic as this piece of journalistic sabotage from yesteryear, but hats off to the copy editor on the editorial staff of the Socialist Worker who let this wee sideswipe against the authoritarian culture of the Socialist Workers Party slip past its editor, Chris Bambery, into its latest issue:
"I’d like to see the party [the Scottish Socialist Party] run by the rank and file.”
(Norma Anderson, a member of the Moray branch of the SSP, and a supporter of Sheridan, speaking in response to the political fall out between the contesting factions in the SSP, following the verdict from libel case, and quoted in the Tommy Sheridan defeats injustice article).
What do you mean the article's author, Esme Choonara, quoted Ms Anderson in all sincerity, and that in all probability neither she nor the copy editor cottoned onto the irony of rank and file party democracy being talked up in the pages of the Socialist Worker? Next thing you'll tell me is that the Socialist Worker Platform in the SSP acted in all sincerity in politically aligning themselves with Tommy,and didn't see it merely as an opportunity to mobilise against what was the old International Socialist Movement platform, whose members made up the bulk of the leadership positions within the SSP?
I also wonder how this passage from the article, A Win For Machismo, in yesterday's Guardian, ties in the SWP's commitment to rank and file democracy?:
"At an emergency national council meeting in May, a number of male members of the Socialist Workers Party heckled the women who spoke against him. "They were shouting, 'You cunt' and 'Shut up, you bitch,'" says [Catrinoa] Grant. "It was really scary."
Christ, I wonder how that ties in with democracy full stop?
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