nb. This time I am being literal rather than bitterly sarcastic.

Wouldn’t disagree with what is being said above but the antics of the SWP, the rest of the Trot groups don’t matter, has had serious negative effect on the anti fascist movement for the last few years.

What I have experienced in East London and out in Essex is repeated all over the country. UAF exists or doesn’t according to the whims of the SWP CC. Throughout the 2006 campaign in Barking and Dagenham we saw no sign of them because they wereall in Tower Hamlets with their Respect hats on campaigning for Galloway.

What they did was to concoct a fictional campaign which allegedly had distributed 1.7 million leaflets in that area alone involving hundreds of activists and several days of action. The whole thing was a lie and you wonder how many of the other campaigns reported in Socialist Worker are lies as well.

What is truly pathetic is the attempt to build yet a new united anti fascist front. The open letter from the SWP which calls for this is an admission that they have completely failed with UAF and are desperate to be allowed back into the mainstream. It will be interesting to see what their pathetic conference in Manchester produces.

With TU money being pulled from UAF and directed at the Hope Not Hate campaign the SWP is facing a financial crisis as large amounts of that money was diverted to pay the salaries of the SWP full timers. There can’t be any profits from the Bloomsbury bookshop as no one seems to buy anything and membership subscriptions must be at an all time low.

There was a huge loss on the farce at Stoke football ground and most of those there were let in free because only a couple of thousand actually paid and initially photographers were not allowed on the stage as the crowd was so sparce.

What is moving against them is the fact that not only are they control freaks who lie about all of their campaigns but that the left is becoming more diverse with people who would have joined a Marxist party twenty or thirty years ago now involved in many specific campaigns that by their very nature cannot be taken over and used.

The record of collapsed campaigns is getting more frequent with a demoralising effect on what remains of the leadership. Everything they seem to touch and have done in the last ten years has ended in failure with bitter infighting and recriminations.

All of the leadership are coming up to retirement age and looking back on failed lives might just be tempted to pack it all in. We could see the company being wound up and the directors put out to grass.

The News Quiz would consist of a chairman asking himself questions