Tag Archives: Socialist Workers’ Party

'Islamism' in Swansea University

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Friday - 16 September 2005
The Guardian reports today that many universities across the UK house extremist and Islamist groups which 'pose a threat to national security'. Swansea University is listed as one of the institutions where Islamist groups have been found to operate by professor Anthony Glees, head of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security studies.

While I haven't been a student at Swansea for some time now, it's true that there was a fair degree of student activism on campus. I took part in campaigns for the abolishment of university tuition fees, to prevent the closure of university departments and on behalf of the Socialist Workers' Party against the war in Afghanistan.

At around the same time, a motion was put before the student union council to boycott Israeli academics and institutions because of acts being committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians. These were the days of Ramallah and Jenin where crimes against humanity were carried out by the Israeli army.

The main critics of the motion to boycott Israeli academics and institutions were American and Jewish students, understandably fearful that the left wing of the student body were turning to an anti-Semitic position. A synagogue was damaged in an attack in 2002 – and though it was never proven that this was connected with Muslim or socialist students – the suggestion was that the socialists had helped to create a culture of hatred in the town.

Naturally, I think that this was the wrong conclusion. At a time when the BNP were trying to claw their way into local politics, race riots were taking place in Bradford and Leeds, the US had started its racist war against Muslims in Asia, there were a lot of violent and malicious incidents occurring. I believe that the intellectual boycott brought about by the student union was one of the best considered political acts I have witnessed. It was absolutely not anti-Semitic, and I find it personally insulting that whenever there is any discussion of the wrongs that have been committed on either side of the Palestinian conflict, accusations to that effect will be made.

The reason I have brought this up is that I have a sneaking suspicion that Swansea's 'extremism' and 'Islamic' will be found to be intrinsically linked with the boycott of Israeli academics and institutions – which just isn't the truth. As ought to be expected in the climate of fear that the British government is doing its best to create, any free thinking or direct action is automatically challenged as a threat to security.

Anyone familiar with Swansea university, Swansea City Council and the Swansea Police's attitude towards leftist student activism will already be aware of the attempts made to silence lecturers, terrorise students and prevent demonstrations. It seems that the next attempt might be to refer to Muslim student activists as 'terrorists'. This is exactly the sort of thing warned about before, throughout and after my brief time in Swansea.

The defamation of any politicised student or worker body has reached such a degree of acceptance in the UK that we may well have gone beyond the point of no return. It's imperative that anyone who can, speaks out against this attitude.

Franco, Begone

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Saturday - 13 November 2004

There is an excellent column in today's El País about Franco's legacy. Unfortunately, I can't copy any of the text to here, but if you visit http://www.iht.com/pdfs/elpais/ep2.pdf today, you should be able to read it.

Benjamin Prado makes some very interesting points about how if you look around these days you could almost believe that Franco ruled for 36 years "in absolute solitude" – so few are those who admit to having been supporters of the fascist, treacherous dictator.

Articles like Prado's, which actually focuses on the current drive by the ruling Socialist Workers party to remove Fascist images and statues from Spain, always stir up a strong sense of indignation, anger and righteousness in me. Is it something I learned as I grew up? That however conservative boarding schools and naval colleges are, English conservatism is bound not to fascism but to liberalism. Don't get me wrong – there were fascists in the Tory party right through the last century, and even some who admired Franco and Hitler. But in England, this was always extremism. In Spain, it's sad to say, it wasn't.

Indeed, there are many members of Spain's 'conservative' Popular Party who were actively involved in state fascism before Franco died. Not least Manuel Fraga, premier of the region of Galicia – and party grandee. Fraga was minister of propaganda under Franco, and one of the most fervent fascists Spain had. Even now he wields considerable power. There seem to be far too many people around who are not willing to criticise Franco's regime unless pushed to. In many families, almost half a century of recent history is never, ever discussed.

When Spain became a democracy again (remember: Franco overthrew a democratically elected government), it was agreed that all the groups who had been involved in the civil war and the dictatorship would accept an 'act of forgetting'. It seems that the fascists could hold the socialist republicans to this because many atrocities were carried out by anarchists under the republican flag. To be fair though, the anarchists and the republicans certainly seem to have paid for their sins – a 36 year dictatorship which was marked by brutal oppression and tens of thousands of murders by the state.

So what Spain has been left with is a living memory of fascism, but laws to prevent anyone being punished for the overthrow of a democratically elected government, a horrific civil war, the suppression of human rights, state-sponsored murder, destruction of regional cultures and rape of the environment.

Perhaps before Fraga dies, the Socialists would be kind enough to introduce an act of remembrance so that at last Spain can truly bury its dead. If this doesn't happen, this country genuinely risks slipping back towards a time that everyone seems to be forgetting.

Politics

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Wednesday - 13 August 2003

It's interesting how ones politics change so rapidly at a young age.
This time last year, I was a member of the Socialist Workers' Party, a revolutionary Marxist party in the UK.
Now, I don't think I'd ever be a member of any political group again.

Have I succumbed to the indifference I used to loathe in others? Or perhaps I'm becoming a Tory even faster than Modbury Lucy's fat bastard of a father/Conservative activist prophesied?

Of course, I don't think the solution lies in either of those directions. After lots of discussion, both with myself and with Joe and Gareth, my intelligent friends, I have started to grasp something important about politics: its meaninglessness.

That's not to say that I'm not interested in who runs the country, or what they do with public money or any of that. More that I'm disillusioned with Politics with a capital 'P'. Understand? No, I thought not.

When you realise the futility of life, and the futility of attempting to change things, what do you do? I think Joe would advocate suicide as an acceptable cure for all unhappiness; but does the recognition of ones own uselessness necessarily make one unhappy? I suppose it normally does, but that's not the same thing. The solution is to stop worrying about that sort of thing and enjoy your life like people who don't think do. Why be doomed to Andromeda status? Drink and forget, reproduce and spend, swim and smoke: that's what I'd like to be able to do.