Many readers will remember the huge divisions that erupted in the Socialist Workers Party over the "Comrade Delta" affair when one of their leading members Martin Smith was accused of rape and harassment by one of their 17 year old members who felt he had abused his position to abuse her. The SWP fell apart with members leaving in droves setting up new organisations, most short-lived or drifting away from activism completely.
What was left in the SWP were the hard-liners. The cultists who followed the leadership regardless. It was a much reduced organisation after the scandal exposed the degeneration of the party's internal regime.
Yet even amongst those who remained problems have persisted as this latest split in which a group of members in the North East have quit over bullying & harassment issues exasperated by the SWP National Secretary.
Given the group that has left includes long term hack Yunus Baksh the latest split is bound to effect what remains of the SWP elsewhere.
The group have issued the following statement. A link to full allegations is included.
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April 25th 2020
We, the undersigned, have resigned from our membership from the SWP. It saddens us deeply to have to take this action, but we feel that the Central committee and sections of Disputes committee have left us no other options in their failure to take seriously, or indeed even investigate, ongoing complaints of a bullying, misogynistic and sexist culture in the Newcastle branch; as well as their failure to investigate the conduct of Joint National Secretary Amy Leather, following a ‘special members meeting’ held in Newcastle on 11th March 2020, following which 6 formal complaints were submitted to the DC by comrades in the branch. These complaints included concerns around safeguarding, accessibility, bullying, harassment, slander and institutional racism.
All 6 complainants have been met with a point blank refusal on the part of DC to even investigate their complaints, which spurred the complainants to submit a ‘Open Letter to the CC and DC’ dated the 16th April, which was signed by 14 members of the Newcastle SWP branch, urging the DC to investigate these complaints. Despite the fact that a larger proportion of the active membership of the Tyneside branch signed this letter, than those who did not, we have still been met with a point-blank refusal to investigate our concerns.
Please click here to view the bundle of evidence provided by all 6 complainants.
These concerns originate back to August 2018 when a branch member MD was suspended for 6 months for abusive and aggressive conduct towards one of the female complainants RM. During his suspension, and following his return to party activity, RM continued to raise concerns about MD’s conduct toward her (and her 9 year old child on one occasion) and the fact she felt he had broken confidentiality and spread mistruths about the nature of his suspension, misleading others into believing that they had been in a relationship, and that she had received unfair treatment and animosity from some sections of the branch as a result. RM and YB had also raised concerns with the DC and the CC about the ‘toxic’ culture in the branch, and the conduct of members of the branch (including SH the branch secretary), which predated the meeting on 11th March.
On the 11th March, a ‘special members meeting’ was held, an hour prior to the meeting for International Women’s Day and facilitated by Amy Leather. It was clear from the branch group messenger prior to the meeting that AL and SH, the branch secretary, had given contradictory explanations as to the reason for this meeting and some comrades in the branch were more privy to the purpose of the meeting than others ( please see screenshots in Folder 3 from the bundle of evidence). When some members of the branch sought direct clarification as to the purpose of the meeting in the chat, and in direct messages to AL and SH, they were ignored. These included requests for clarification from FH, a female comrade who wished to discuss her accessibility needs, which went ignored and unaddressed.
The meeting itself was later described by all 6 complainants as a ‘kangaroo court’ in which AL gave untrue and a slanderous account of the suspension of YB in front of his partner RM ( who was given no prior warning as to the purpose of the meeting). This is despite the fact that AL and SH knew she was planning to attend, and that she normally attends meetings with her 9 year old daughter. She left the meeting in tears, as did another male comrade.
Indeed another comrade felt so concerned by the content of the meeting and the bullying conducted by AL, that they felt that they had a duty of care to record the meeting. We offered the recording to the DC as part of our complaints, and yet they refused to consider it as evidence.
We believe that Amy Leather’s conduct on the 11th March emboldened an already toxic culture of bullying, harassment, sexism and misogyny within the branch. This became apparent in the branch group messenger when 3 female comrades (RM, EN and C’OD) and later a male comrade (LA) left the group, citing bullying, sexism and misogyny as their rationale for leaving ( please see Folder 6 from the evidence bundle).
This then prompted JH, one of the male members of the branch whom RM had previously raised concerns about predating the meeting on the 11th March, to post in the group branch messenger:
“Women complaining about misogyny from men in the branch. Some would say fake news”.
These comments go unchallenged by both AL, the National secretary and SH the branch secretary.
JH then sent distressing, sexist and unsolicited private messages to C’OD and RM (Folder 6 ).
The DC’s response to receiving these screenshots was to “ask JH not to post on social media in relation to this” and to not contact either women again, despite RM stating at the time that she felt this was an inadequate response on the part of the DC. However, JH continued to attack both women in comments in the group messenger, even after the DC had told him to desist.
It took the DC nearly two weeks to suspend JH pending investigation, and when he was eventually removed from the group chat by Simon Hall, he was allowed to mislead members of the branch by posting that he was leaving the group as he was taking a break due to health reasons, when in fact he had been suspended. He continued to be invited to branch activity and meetings on Facebook, even after his suspension, which RM had to highlight with the DC and branch secretary.
Not only do we have major concerns with the DC’s failure to investigate our complaints; we also have concerns as evidenced in our email correspondence, that the DC failed to adhere to their own ‘Terms of Reference’, that sections of the DC were biased and clearly working under the direct instruction of the CC, that they allowed malicious and fictitious complaints to be made (which can be proven as such in the evidence bundle) to be made against SM, one of the complainants, whilst his and the complaints of the other 5 comrades were ignored.
More so, we feel that the actions and conduct of Laura Miles, Chair of the DC has been reprehensible. As you will see from the emails, she has at no point shown any concern or empathy for the welfare of the complainants. The female comrades particularly feel that they have been treated with contempt and utter dismissal, and that in fact, the complaints process with the DC in itself, has been an abusive process to those women.
We would urge anyone reading this, to follow the link and view all of the bundle of evidence that we have attached, including various email correspondence, complaints, screenshots and a tape recording of the meeting on 11th March.
We want to be clear that we hold the leadership of the SWP responsible for this current crisis in the Tyneside branch; the same leadership who presided over the mishandling of the Comrade Delta crisis back in 2013. A leadership that has never been held to account for their mistakes; and a leadership that has clearly learnt nothing from their handling of the Comrade Delta case.
We would therefore urge any non-party members, not to view this as a reflection of the majority of the rank and file membership of the SWP, but as a symptom of the rotten leadership of the organisation and sections of the DC, whom we believe have acted under the direct instruction of Amy Leather.
To those SWP members, we apologise that we have had to release this into the public domain. We hope that you will see from our evidence attached, that we exhausted every opportunity within the internal party procedures to have our voices heard and have our complaints investigated.
The final straw for us, was when CO’D, one of the female comrades who was a full subs paying member at the time of her complaint, wrote to the DC to enquire as to why she had received no response from the DC regarding her complaints of a toxic culture of misogyny, sexism and bullying in the branch ( as well as the unsolicited messages of a sexist and distressing nature from JH), informing Laura Miles that she had since been driven out of the branch by such behaviour and that she had ‘suspended’ her subs, but hoped to reinstate them once the complaints had been addressed by the DC, and was told by Laura Miles:
“Regarding the complaint you made, obviously the DC cannot action a complaint by someone who is not a party member and so it has been set aside and is not being actively pursued”. (Please see the document 5 in the evidence bundle).
We feel that this gives a free pass to those who would seek to abuse and harass women in the party, that as long as they do a good enough job that they drive the women to leave the organisation, then they won’t have to worry about an investigation into their conduct. It is an abusers’ charter, and we cannot remain part of an organisation that despite its protestations of having learned from the Comrade Delta debacle, fails to take seriously the oppression and harassment of women, fails to safeguard its female members and effectively colludes with abusers and covers up cases of abuse and harassment within the party.
We would urge rank and file SWP members to hold an investigation into this scandal and hold those in the leadership to account for what they have done to the party that we were once proud to be members of.
In solidarity,
Catherine O’ Donovan
FH
Rachel Meenan
Val P
AE
Adam Laurie
Liam Anderson
Mark Thompson
Conor Taylor
J Alice Brown
Simon Mulligan
Yunus Bakhsh
