영국 사회주의노동자당의 분열

Abstract

This paper examines the political controversy and divisions that the SocialistWorkers Party(SWP), a Trotskyist revolutionary party in Britain, has gonethrough during the last ten years. The SWP has recently divided five times andas a result, five organizations based in Britain all claim to representInternational Socialist Tendency. A first division seemed not to be so deep. As the Respect coalition wentthrough a crisis in 2007 caused by a phase of stagnation of in British socialmovements, some of the main members were expelled by the CentralCommittee and shifted to Respect Renewal, a party led by George Gallowaywho had attacked the SWP in the crisis. During the evaluation of Respect, theCentral Committee of the SWP eventually became divided after these politicaldisputes and in 2010 John Rees and his supporters launched Counterfire. Notlong after, former members of the SWP based in Scotland formed theInternational Socialist Group(ISG). A sexual assaults-related scandal broke in2013, and at that time a lot of members, mainly in the Socialist Workers’Student Society(SWSS) departed the SWP due to the leadership’s failure tohandle the scandal effectively. Most of them formed the International SocialistNetwork(ISN), which included high-profile members such as Richard Seymourand China Mieville. Lastly, in January 2014, SWP senior members foundedRevolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century. A series of splits of the SWP should not be simply considered as politicalgossip; rather, this incident needs a close analysis. The context that influencedthe SWP’s divisions can be characterized to as public suspicion aboutrevolutionary Marxism after the destruction of socialism, a capitalist economiccrisis and a declining working-class struggle. Incidents in the SWP revealed thatthe far-left party continued to dispute and divide over a series of class issues. Therefore, analysing these incidents can be a useful reference for the Left of South Korea.