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Weekly Worker 542 Thursday September 2 2004
BNP infiltrates SWP
Two leading members of the Socialist Workers Party’s youth wing
in Manchester have revealed themselves to be members of the far-right
British National Party, employed to gather information on the British
left. Joe Finnon, 21, and Diane Stoker, 19, both originally from the north
east, joined the SWP at Manchester University freshers’ fair last
September with the sole purpose of supplying misleading information about
far-right activists in Burnley and relaying information back to the BNP,
it emerged last month.
This, it seems, was not a particularly difficult task. Only a month after
making contact with the SWP both were nominated to attend the party’s
national conference, apparently pushed forward as ‘leading activists’
in the student movement. In double quick time Stoker found herself on
the Stop the War Coalition’s treasury committee, while Finnon was
appointed regional treasurer for Respect in the north west - both on the
recommendation of their unsuspecting ‘comrades’. The SWP even
bureaucratically demoted the Socialist Worker Student Society leadership
in Manchester, only to replace them with the two shining, hard-working
activists, who had been members of the organisation for well under a year.
It must be said in the SWP’s defence that at any time, in the absence
of extensive intelligence, it is difficult to tell whether a new recruit
is genuine or not, and of course such fascist ‘moles’ are not
commonplace on the British left in this historic low point in the class
struggle. Young people often begin to become politically active at university,
and recruiting people with no previous political experience at university
freshers’ fairs is common. However, we must certainly ask how two
new ‘comrades’, obviously without any real leftwing politics
of any description (and thus, one would imagine, no capacity to seriously
develop or question their ideas), were able to climb so far up the SWP
ladder in such a short space of time.
The answer, you may think, could lie in the method by which the SWP carries
out its ‘recruiting’. Indeed, anyone and everyone the party
encounters is encouraged to become a full member immediately, regardless
of their level of political development. Of course, it would be ludicrous
to suggest comrades should sit an exam or demonstrate an inside-out knowledge
of Lenin’s collected works before they join the revolutionary left,
but promoting and rewarding comrades with responsibility on the grounds
of activism alone in fact moves the emphasis away from politics. Future
leaders of our class will not be judged by workers on how many leaflets
they can hand out in an hour, or how many demonstrations they have attended,
but by their programmatic outlook and the content of their politics. Emphasis
on the former rather than the latter not only makes it easier for our
organisations to be infiltrated by agents of the far right (or the state),
but actually detracts from the task of creating a political vanguard of
the working class.
An even more puzzling aspect of the whole fiasco, however, is what exactly
the BNP believes it has achieved from its ‘infiltration’ mission.
From scanning over the organisation’s literature online, it seems
the two did not uncover any dirty laundry or anything that the SWP had
not already placed in the public domain. Even their venture to national
conference does not seem to have turned up very much and, according to
leading comrades in the SWP, the two fascists were not given access to
major contact lists or databases. Indeed, contrary to the BNP’s ludicrous
claim, the pair did not actually infiltrate every “most prominent
leftwing group in this country” at all, but rather a selection of
the SWP’s various fronts, organisations where the real politics of
the SWP are concealed behind whatever single issue is in question, and
criticism is rarely encouraged or even tolerated. It appears that the
main achievement of the BNP has been a propaganda coup.
None of this means that the left must not be on guard against infiltration
by the far right or the state. As well as discrediting the fascists at
meetings and on the streets, we must make a serious effort to prevent
this sort of violation from happening again. Undoubtedly by fostering
a healthy revolutionary culture in which difference are discussed openly
and debate of high politics becomes a duty, rather than the remit of an
elite, we make it more difficult for all but the most determined and dedicated
actors to pose as working class leaders.
Despite the SWP’s predicament being something of a misfortune, there
are perhaps some lessons to be learnt.
Sam Davies
