“...the disorganisation of the Homeless left...” Sects play "Rule or Ruin"

It appears that the SWP and SPEW dominated “disunited Left” are up to their usual tricks of “Rule or Ruin”. Unusually they are working together on trying to wreak the North East Shop Stewards Network (NESSN). This is being led by their local full time paid staff (bureaucrats?). Their reasons for this are essentially sectarian and their methods completely divisive and destructive. Which I think the minutes of the meeting below prove. This brings the labour movement into disrepute. A good thing that at least UNISON activists in the north east do not have to experience any of this in our internal union democratic structures. This to me proves the importance of the union upholding its rules when unscrupulous elements organised by their political sects attack the union while defending the indefensible.

Check out also the public statement put out by the SWP about the secretary of NESSN who is one of their own members (not for long methinks). In the meanwhile the witch-hunting SWP have expelled a SOSA student organiser that I posted on before here.

Hat-tip thingy to Tynesider.

Report on the ‘Whither NESSN – Building the Network’ meeting, 19 November 2009
Sue Abbott declined to take her turn as chair and Alan Docherty volunteered.
1. Present:
With the right to vote: Sue Abbott, Alan Docherty, Bob Murdoch, Dave Harker, Ed Whitby, Fran Heathcote, Hannah Walter, John Malcolm, Julie Young, Paul Baker, Ray Smith, Simon Hall, Stuart Bracking, Tommy Gardner, Tony Dowling, Vicki Gilbert-Jackson
Without the right to vote: Elaine Brunskill, Kieran Picken (non-member), Norman Hall, Paul Phillips, Phil Wilson,
Simon Elliott, Trevor Bark, Yunus Bakhsh
2. Apologies:
Dave Ayre, Dave Hardaker, Geoff Abbott, John Gilmore, Kevin McHugh, Ross Carbutt, Shirley Winter
3. Secretaries’ Reports.
1. The Regional Secretary made the following points:
* This is an ordinary meeting of NESSN.
* The AGM takes place in spring each year and requires proper notice to the 111 comrades who are entitled to vote, propose and second candidates - and stand - for the Committee, and due notice of any motions and constitutional amendments.
* A small number of comrades did most of the work in NESSN.
* NESSN has grown to 205: 111 with full rights, according to the National Shop Stewards Network’s Founding Basis - which allows only those holding elected trade union positions to vote, and which NESSN abides by - and 96 with the right to use the email network and speak at meetings, but not to vote or proposes, second or be candidates for the Committee.
* NSSN is a voluntary body in London, dominated by one political group, and is largely a paper organisation.
* No regional SSN is anywhere near as big as NESSN, and most controlled by that same political group.
* The Northern TUC does little or nothing to support workers in struggle and Trades Councils barely exist.
* The NE left as a whole has built nothing of any size that has lasted, for at least forty years.
* All the organised left groups are very weak, and amount, at most, to 40-45 active comrades.
* The two larger left groups have ‘democratic centralist’ structures and appointed organisers.
* The voluntary structure of NSSN and the ‘democratic centralism’ of the larger political groups were bound to come into conflict with NESSN’s democratic structure, and this has now happened.
* There is a huge hole where sound rank and file organisation should be in the face of the growing attacks
on the working class, largely because of the disorganisation of the Homeless Left (grayee emphasis).
* NESSN is an information network, and this meeting has been called to discuss moving forward.
At this point a comrade who had no right to vote proposed a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Regional Secretary, which was seconded by another comrade who had no right to vote. Both were appointed paid organisers of small political groups. The discussion that followed was often incoherent, but raised the following issues:
* One comrade complained that NESSN had ‘done nothing’ to support the CWU dispute.
* Several comrades pointed out that all the original platform and almost all the known organisers of the Public Service Not Private Profit event were Networkers, yet none of them had asked NESSN to help build the meeting or be represented on the platform. NESSN is a network, not a hierarchy, and the responsibility to network on such important matters is everyone’s. Why was this not done in this case?
* Three comrades, who had gone to the NSSN’s Annual Conference in London and ‘volunteered’ for the Steering Committee, claimed to have been ‘offended’ when Dave pointed out the fact that the Committee decided who should represent it at NSSN events.
* One of the ‘offended’ accused Dave of being ‘sexist’.
* Another of the ‘offended’ alleged that NESSN had ‘merged’ with the Tyneside Socialist Forum, but a leading comrade in TSF completely denied that was the case.
* Dave had challenged whether some events were really broadly-based, politically.
* Dave had allowed the ‘Morning Star’ event – a ‘Communist Party front’ - to go on the website. * Dave was ‘bureaucratic’ and his tone was sometimes tart.
Dave thanked his supporters and replied to the criticisms:
* There had been no serious political or organisational criticism of him, but there had been smears and lies.
* All but one of the critics belonged to ‘democratic centralist’ political groups, and the other was an embittered ex-member, and they clearly found it hard to accept genuinely democratic elections and accountability.
* They had tried to bully Dave to support their various front organisations, but had been unsuccessful.
* Their problem was not with ‘bureaucracy’, but with democracy.
* They had not recruited to NESSN, and were a brake on its development.
* All Networkers are entitled to email each other, without ‘going through the Secretary’, but the critics’ wanted a hierarchy that their small political groups dominated.
* NESSN had very few rules, but the Committee had to enforce them, and, between Committee
meetings, Dave bore that responsibility.
* All Networkers can complain to any elected comrade on the Committee, but not one had done so.
* Dave had received a complaint that the Youth Fight For Jobs event was not advertised on the websites of the unions it claimed to be supported by, and he found this to be true, so he asked for hard evidence to support the claim, which eventually arrived, and the event appeared on the website.
* After Dave gave his reasoned response to the YFFJ comrade’s vicious complaint, he received a second vicious message, which he also circulated widely, and at that point three Networkers resigned in disgust. This sort of ‘broadcasting’ was turning comrades away from NESSN, just as had happened in the past.
* Two NSSN Officers in the same political group as the YFFJ organiser had tried to bully Dave, but failed, so they refused to send NSSN documents to NESSN until the NSSN Chair took over that responsibility.
* Another event organiser was asked to provide similar evidence for the broad based character of his event, but said ‘don’t’ bother, so Dave didn’t.
* Dave tried to find out who Public Service Not Private Profit were, since all but one of those involved were in the same political group, but they had chosen to use their own name. The PSNPP website had nothing about the event and the email address on the leaflet did not work. Dave contacted several of those who advertised themselves as PSNPP and asked who was on its committee and how to contact their Secretary, but they all failed to respond. They were all in the same political group. NESSN took a stall to the meeting, where the chair, doorkeeper, bookstall organiser and ‘supervisor’ were in the same political group, and two speakers on the platform were in the same group as the YFFJ organiser.
* The decision to put the ‘Marxism Today’ event on the website was a close one, but it was organised by the People’s Press Printing Society, which includes many comrades not in the Communist Party, and the organisers had brought together a very broad-based political platform, including one leading Green.
* The false accusation of ‘sexism’ was beneath contempt.
* The allegation that there was any organisational link between NESSN and TSF was wholly untrue. Dave Ayre and Dave Harker had agreed to speak at the first Left Unity meeting in their personal capacities.
* NESSN had supported the principles for which the voteless seconder of the illegal no confidence motion had been attacked, and had incurred great displeasure in genuinely bureaucratic and right-wing quarters; so if this illegal motion were to be carried, the right-wingers would be laughing their socks off at their new allies.
* The illegal motion was designed to wreck NESSN, because a few members of two small political groups saw it as competition, and they wanted to take it over and ‘front’ it with a few fellow-travellers.
The Chair proposed postponing the vote until the 2010 AGM, but sixteen of those present (including several with no right to a vote) insisted on voting on what the Chair described as a ‘wrecking’ motion. Dave confirmed that the vote would be unconstitutional and illegal. If it was passed those voting for it would be seen by the 180 other Networkers as making an attempted ‘coup’ by a handful of people in two small sects; but the Committee elected at the 2009 AGM would remain in office until the 2010 AGM.
Several comrades without the right to a vote put up their hands, but among those who would be entitled to vote on a legal motion, the illegal motion of no confidence in Dave was passed by a majority of three. This took almost all of the two hours and the other Secretaries’ reports, and the rest of the agenda could not be discussed, so the Chair had to close a meeting designed to focus on Building the Network.
Dave Harker, Regional Secretary, North East Shop Stewards Network

(I'll post in "comments" a truly python alternative account of this meeting)

UPDATE: Andy Newman on Socialist Unity has linked to this post and it has set off an “interesting” series of comments on this issue.