The Bains Agenda

If you’re from the UK, you will have seen the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) even if you’re unaware of it.

Their banners have been present at every major social protest across the last year or so; anti racist demonstrations in the wake of the summer race riots, anti Reform UK demos etc.

There are many vulnerable, upset and angry groups right now who feel ignored or stepped on by our government, politicians and mass media. Notably, people of colour, the pro Palestine bloc, trans people and sections of the left.

The SWP realise this and use these groups for recruitment for their party.

I will say now; I applaud their efforts (damning that none of Labour/Lib Dem/Green show up like SWP do at these events) and on many of their campaigns I agree but people should be aware of the full facts.

They are a group that has formed an alliance with the deplorable George Galloway in the past (they severed ties later on), hold banners such as ‘globalise the intifada’ and in 2013 had allegations of rape and sexual assault made against a leading member of the party.

They also take up other positions such as “no deportations, open the borders”. None of these are remotely popular slogans. Nobody outside ideological far leftists believe in that. All it serves to do is alienate everyone they should wish to win over.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling for mass deportations or closed borders like Trump or Rupert Lowe but the answer is clearly somewhere in the middle for most people.

They are parasites to genuine social movements and take what should be something great and mobilising for all sorts of people (anti racism for instance) and alienate people.

The aim should be to win people over. Parading through the streets as open communists, carry banners such as ‘globalise the intifada’ (what does that mean in reality and does that mean we support groups like the Houthis?) and call for open borders; you will nobody over outside the far left.

As a social democrat, I don’t like this. They are using people with legitimate grievances to recruit them because they have no other means; the percentage of ideological communists is negligible outside universities.

We should be able to have anti racist demonstrations (and others) with all sides of spectrum made to feel welcome. Anti racism is not partisan.

Instead, if you turn up you will have to accept you are associating with a certain position on politics, Palestine, immigration, Starmer etc.

As I said I mostly agree (I am broadly pro Palestine, I don’t like Starmer much either) but you are, let’s say, “inappropriate” if you use desperate people to force feed them your politics.

It is quite irritating that I don’t think I want to join some of the protests which I’d otherwise agree with because of them. I also wonder if many of the people at these demos bother to so much as Google the organisation on their placard. I strongly suspect many do not.

They work to ensure anyone protesting against legitimate issues (rise of far right, racism, the government) look terrible and unattractive to the majority of the population.

I think racism is bad but no I don’t want a communist revolution. I actually want to win elections. We will never win an election running on an SWP manifesto, no matter what they say.

The cynic in me suspects they don’t actually particularly care about these issues but the more support they get, the more money and the more attention they get.

Without Reform UK, without Starmer, without a rise in racism they don’t really have a point or a message to offer people outside the tiny slither of the UK population who have read Trotsky.

They’re gaining ground. The extreme right and left both are right now. The centre is dying. Young people in particular are moving to either extreme and polarisation is at an all time high.

Being a social democrat means opposing the far right also the communist left but most of all being inclusive of all political beliefs that uphold democracy and winning elections.