So who is Alex Snowdon of the Counterfire Party, and why is he persecuting me from his Newcastle residence and using Sunderland activists to do his dirty work? Well to understand whats happening to me in the here and now we need to go back some way and explain the history. I first crossed paths with Alex Snowdon when I joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 2005 and started attending Tyneside branch meetings (there was no Sunderland branch at that time). We didnt really speak much throughout my entire time as a member (not till near the end anyway - more on that later), but I did connect with his friend and political ally inside the party, Tony Dowling. Tony was the partys organiser inside an electoral coalition called Respect, which was led by George Galloway, and was also involved heavily in the Stop the War Coalition - which was the movement I first became involved in, and where, through Tony and others, I discovered the SWP. Alex was the man in the background pulling the strings during those Respect/Stop the War times, and Tony was very much the friendly face of the projects (they still work that way now). They were a political partnership; but the reasons for their relationship wouldnt become clear to me till much later. It wasnt until I was given a six week suspension from the party in 2007 (I was having trouble abiding by the rules) that Snowdon spoke to me in any meaningful way. I was at Marxism - a political festival in London organised by the SWP - when he suddenly began chatting to me in the bar about the party and general politics. I didnt think much of it at the time, but looking back I can see he was questioning me for the party, or at least for the fraction he was part of inside the party, and studying how I dealt with a period of punishment, and perhaps interviewing me without my knowledge for a role inside his sub-group. That was the longest conversation I had with him - all of a few minutes - in two whole years, and I wouldnt have much more to do with him till late 2009. It was early 2009 when the tension between Snowdons faction, led at national level by John Rees, and the leadership of the SWP, led by Alex Callinicos, culminated in a battle for the top positions in the party and the direction of the party as a whole. Politics and personalities clashed fiercely at the party conference in January, and the inevitable defeat of John Rees group - which included Snowdon and Dowling - resulted in a covert operation (factions were contrary to party rules outside of the three month pre-conference period) that would later become an official faction called Left Platform. The Sunderland branch - which Id created from scratch in 2006 and built with new Sunderland members - became tangled up in that whole factional mess later in 2009 after I met with Snowdon and Dowling in a Newcastle cafe to discuss the conflict within the party. I knew about the battle for control and wanted the Sunderland branch to choose the correct side. Snowdon and Dowling convinced me to join their faction, and together we arranged a secret meeting with the rest of the Sunderland group. At that meeting Snowdon and Dowling argued their case and asked the Sunderland branch as a whole to join them. After some deliberation we decided that the faction, although still illegal at that point, had the right perspective and would improve the SWP and take it forward. We had no idea of the carnage that was to come!
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:06:34 +0000
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