Thursday 24 January 2013

Warmly received

The University of East Anglia's student magazine Concrete reports on the meeting at which a CC member was, according to Party Notes, "warmly received":

In an announcement on the society’s Facebook group, society president Hattie Grunewald stated “we had invited Judith to speak to us long before this story broke.
“In the interest of free-speech and lack of censorship, we are not planning to withdraw our invitation; however, we do plan to hold Judith accountable for the actions of her party.”
After giving her intended talk on women’s liberation at the meeting, Orr opened up the floor to questions. Several audience members expressed concern at the SWP’s handling of such serious allegations.
It was questioned whether it was fair of the SWP to deal with the matter internally instead of going through the court system, and whether an internal body could effectively punish such a serious offence if the party member had been found guilty.

The report in Party Notes was used to argue that the issue is not significantly affecting our work in the wider movements.  This suggests the opposite.  Members should probably be informed that this controversy is going to hit them whenever they try to organise - particularly if they have anything to say about feminism.  The fact that this reality was occluded further underlines the current purpose of Party Notes as an internal faction sheet for the Central Committee.

3 comments:

  1. That's not very enlightening. What did Judith have to say?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't of been an easy situation for her given her history with Delta.

    ReplyDelete