Below is a LU resignation letter sent yesterday from Mick Napier, Glasgow Left Unity Branch Chair, and just posted on the e-mail list of the Republican Socialist Network. Mick is an experienced political activist. People who live in the Yorkshires and the North West may remember that he spoke in four cities there last spring (in support of the ‘Yes’ side) as part of the Scots Solidarity Speaking Tour. zzzzzzzzzzzz From: Mick Napier Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 5:50 PM Subject: Letter of resignation from Left Unity Kate Hudson Left Unity National Secretary Dear Kate This is a letter of resignation from Left Unity. As a veteran, victim and then observer of increasingly dysfunctional British left formations, I remained politically active in Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign until I joined Left Unity this year. It promised a focus on anti-austerity campaigning and outward-looking socialist politics with a broad appeal. Size wasn’t the determining factor; a readiness to listen and learn, to relate to those actively involved in working class and progressive struggles was the most important criterion. As folks will see from other Scottish letters of resignation, our experience has been mixed; we’ve met some great people but also a brace of determinedly inward-looking, sectarians endlessly delivering anathemas against virtually the entire Scottish Left. I felt like a friend who many years ago got a cut price flight to Yugoslavia for a cheap holiday and ended up with straw hat, shorts and Hawaiian shirt on a planeload of pilgrims going to where the Virgin Mary had apparently put in a brief appearance. Survivors of earlier experiences of sectarian degeneration, we ended up in a stew of sectarian madness where the denunciation of all other socialist groups as ‘anti-working class’ was common currency, and every delegate at a 3,000-strong RIC conference, many of them life-long socialists and campaigners for progressive causes, were sneered at as ‘nationalists, ex-leftists, middle class anti-establishment self-promoters’. Ultra-left quietist abstention from a mass struggle was blended with childish disdain for the demographic that any socialist party worth joining would fraternally debate with. We strove to democratically debate and then vote but were attacked for our efforts with disgusting, publicly broadcast libels. There was even a bizarre, choreographed attempt to prevent a branch vote when some found the likely result unacceptable. As a member of Left Unity aligned with none of the sects who have joined, I witnessed the murky manoeuverings of a cohesive closed group run by two members within LU Glasgow. Working through Left Unity proved sterile – effort and hard work was negated. Shortly after joining, still sanguine as to LU’s prospects, I developed, wrote out at length, and took to the LU Glasgow Branch a proposal to campaign for Edward Snowden to become Student Rector at Glasgow University on a programme of opposition to state surveillance and support for whistle-blowers in general, e.g. in the Army, NHS, and other state and corporate institutions. The aim - successful, as it turned out - was to secure an electoral, a democratic mandate for campaigning on and off-campus on anti-war, anti-corporate issues that could generate the kind of discussion and broad-based active campaigning within which socialists could have a role and an influence. Stupidity must compete with a lack of imagination to explain how the Snowden campaign’s success against powerful vested interests at GU has run into nothingness, but a group within Left Unity was quite prepared to put its interests before the responsibility to build on Edward Snowden’s successful election. (You will have heard nothing since that success and a quick look at Google confirms that nothing of interest has happened involving Glasgow University and the world’s most high-profile whistle-blower and fugitive from the Pentagon since his election to office. Quite an achievement!) Indifferent to the opportunities presented to socialists by the success of the Snowden campaign, a self-styled ‘Left Unity Glasgow South Branch’ was set up by two dyed-in-the-wool sectarians who had just lost a vote in the Glasgow LU Branch in favour of supporting independence and a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum. This self-styled LU Glasgow Branch campaigned for a unionist ‘No’ position in the September Scottish referendum, and claimed to be doing this in the name of the whole of Left Unity Scotland. This followed a constitutionally correct meeting of Left Unity Scotland which voted overwhelmingly to critically support the independence campaign. This nonsense has killed Left Unity in Scotland but the death has only been possible because, while some were showing a blatant and destructive disregard for LU rules, all our efforts as the LU Scotland committee to have them reined in were ignored by the national leadership. The national Disputes Committee shielded those breaking basic rules essential for any party to function and declined to investigate or rule on complaints of gross misconduct made to them. Anyone who takes even a cursory look at the DC’s role in this sorry mess in Scotland will be struck by their blend of incompetence and arrogance. The National Committee [ words left out in original…] In Scotland we are still in the midst of an unfolding crisis in which mass anger at austerity and the Westminster elite is driving what will appear as a constitutional crisis after May 7th. The Labour Party in Scotland will be shattered and an SNP which has successfully positioned itself in the popular consciousness to the left of New Labour will continue to rewrite the local political rule book as it grows as a mass party. At some stage the SNP will surely disappoint many of its almost 100,000 members and the many hundreds of thousands of the poorest workers who have deserted Labour in hope of an escape from misery; the race is now on to build an open campaigning socialist formation, a party that can relate to their aspirations and help to build the maximum unity in action to defeat the proponents of austerity and victimisation of the weak at home, and aggressive wars and aggressive wars abroad. We saw Left Unity in Scotland as a party that could related to a mass ferment driven by a desire for an end to austerity, obscene inequality and endless wars. Some of us tried but are now giving up the ghost. At such an exciting political juncture, we’ve had enough of the ghetto LU has been allowed to become. There is still a world to win, or lose. Best Wishes Mick Napier Glasgow Left Unity Branch Chair 01501 78 55 63 / 0795 800 2591
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:21:42 +0000
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