John Rose re SWP + my reply

My old friend John Rose has asked me to put this letter up on my blog. Here it is:


Mike,

You and I have been good friends for years - more or less since that great year of '68. You have not only been a trusted friend - but a trusted comrade as well, even if your disagreement with our 'Leninist' model of organising inhibited you from joining us. Your close and critical reading of all of the chapters before publication for my book The Myths of Zionism helped guarantee its success.We recently spoke together at the Bookmarks Holocaust Day event at Bookmarks, the Socialist Bookshop on the subject of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Bookmarks tell me that you have kindly offered to help promote the new 70th anniversary edition The Ghetto Fights by Marek Edelman which I/we launched at our Marxism Festival last week.
Over the last few months you and I have had furious e mail and text exchanges about the swp's internal developments. More recently in the light of important changes that are now underway in the organisation which address all the issues that you raise, I offered to meet you and discuss them. I pointed out to you that only a face to face discussion can clarify matters in a way that is simply not possible by relying on e mail and text exchanges, given the proper necessity of respecting principles of confidentiality.
For reasons best known to yourself, you have felt unable to do so, but I be obliged if you would let readers of your blog know that that my offer remains open.
Many thanks
John


My reply:

Hi John

Thanks for this.

The problem here is that I've become the story. I'm not the story. The story is a) the mishandling of a dispute b) the mishandling of the mishandling c) the lack of an open approach to your friends and allies in what we call the 'movement'.

As you've asked for this letter to be made public, I can only think that you feel that some part of it makes a point to the outside world. I'm guessing that this is the part where you ask me, in effect, why I haven't discussed this matter whilst 'respecting principles of confidentiality'.  Aha - surely this shows that Rosen has not been totally honest in his open letters...he could have heard the whole truth...he would then have not needed to go public about all this...etc etc.

I can explain. It is precisely because you wanted to have a 'confidential' talk about this that I found myself resisting your suggestion.  I'll be blunt, I don't want to be the recipient or owner of any confidences in this matter.  That's the last thing in the world I want.  The dispute has been played out in various kinds of public forums. The consequence is that many of us who've been involved in eg Marxism, LMHR, UAF, Respect, ANL, Stop the War etc etc feel that we are entitled to be told what's going on  - but not in terms of confidences - only in terms of why a proper procedure wasn't followed, why the SWP couldn't have admitted that it should have followed a proper procedure, why it couldn't have admitted that its committees were the inappropriate means by which this dispute was heard, why it hasn't hurried to put a proper procedure in place and why the person we call Delta went on being involved in LMHR and UAF long after the dispute was underway. And, I hasten to add, this is not because I am prejudging him as guilty. I repeat: I am not prejudging him as guilty. It is because this would have been the right way to proceed - for the benefit of all parties: the accusers, the accused, the SWP and the rest of us on the outside. I repeat, the SWP has set out its stall in relation to sexual oppression, liberation and equality. It can hardly complain if people on the outside ask how this dispute matches the principles and analysis that the SWP has put before us.

You mention 'The Ghetto Fights'.  In fact, my offer was more than the one you mention. I said to Bookmarks that if they wrote an appeal I would kick off some crowd-funding with a contribution.