Note to Laura

[David Walters <dwalters@xxxxxxx>]

Laura, first, it's a pleasure you are on this list. I don't write this
to blow smoke in your face, but sometimes we do get carried away with
the issue of the SWP. As you may of assumed, there are many ex-SWPers
on this list, including me. A large percentage of us had been in the
SWP, but I don't think a majority were. The SWP played a VERY important
role in all our lives, thus we pay attention to what we consider a
wayward parent....so you bring us back to more serious issues by
speaking up in defense of your party, and I, for one, respect this.

When most of us joined the SWP, it was a very different kind of party,
it had the revolutionary continuity, invested in it's human cadre, of
free thinking, disciplined action and a mass movement orientation. Most
of that, in most our opinions, is no longer there. Thus the emphasis
here on the control over party members that has arisen over Cuba. Most
that cadre were driven out or expelled by the leadership of the SWP.

The majority of members during the big purge in the early 80s were in
unions or in industry...and this included those that were expelled. I
left the Party in 1980 and have remained in an industrial job for the
last 20 years, 19 years of which I've been a steward, and represented
my union for 10 yeas on San Francisco Labor Council. Barry Sheppard,
AFTER he left the SWP, at age 52, got a job in an oil refinery and only
recently retired from United Airlines at age 6 or there abouts. I'd say
that Louis is probably in a minority of those that left the SWP in that
he doesn't hold a union job. When the turn was first conceived, it was
supposed to be a voluntary effort to get "most of the members" of the
Party in designated unions. It was also supposed to be move to enhance
the continuity of Trotskyist tactics in the unions, to be full union
activists, provide communist leadership, organize around the
Transitional Program and integrate ourselves completely into the life
of the working class. None of this happened except for the very early
days of the Turn.

I actually work with one 35 year ex-member of the SWP who is not a
member of the party because he had to leave because he wouldn't work at
the plant the Party assigned for him to work at...he remains a very
loyal member of the Party to this day. In my opinion, this has nothing
to do with Bolshevism, this control over members lives that is alien to
the Marxist movement in a period of relative quiescence. So it's not
just "here-say" as you state, rather it is a question that is important
for a party that claims to be the revolutionary continuity of the US
section of the International Left Opposition.

----
The people on this list are active in all aspects of their unions (and
not just "industrial" unions), in the anti-war and anti-imperialist
movement, the womens movement and struggles for national liberation.
And this is just a very small cross section of the left here and around
the world...something the SWP and their allied "Communist Leagues" have
basically abstained from for the past 2 decades.

David Walters