Sexual abuse: Don’t toe the party line

A scandal broke in the Socialist Workers Party a few weeks ago after a woman member claimed a Trotskyist tribune of the working class had taken time off from promoting world revolution to rape her. The SWP did not behave as any decent person would and advise the woman to contact the police. In its paranoid mind, the criminal justice system conspires to discredit true revolutionaries, if given half a chance.

Instead of involving detectives and judges, the party’s disciplinary committee set itself up as a kangaroo court, and “tried” the man it would identify only as “Comrade Delta”. The minutes show the paranoia with great clarity. One of the seven “judges” said that the SWP had ‘no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice’.

But then nor could its “proletarian” disciplinary committee. The “judges” had no independent evidence – how could they when they were a bunch of Trots rather than a competent court? They were not impartial.