In contrast, the ISA continued to support his candidacy for Unison general secretary in the 2020 contest, and then his election as the union’s president in 2021. Socialist Party members on the NEC argued that these serious allegations should be thoroughly investigated by the union and that, in the meantime, Paul Holmes should not be the left’s candidate for the then upcoming general secretary election (1). Or could it be that rank-and-file ISA members have seen how the organisation which claims to support a ‘zero tolerance approach’ to sexism, harassment and abuse actually conducts itself when confronted with a concrete situation, as ISA in England and Wales has been in the public sector union Unison? In 2019 Paul Holmes, a left-wing member of the Unison national executive council (NEC), was accused of bullying and abusive behaviour by rank-and file members in his area, Kirklees, including by fourteen women, and was suspended by his employer and the union. So why, three years later, after an intense and exhaustive debate, have ISA decided to publish this article now? Could it be that in those three years members of ISA have discovered in practice that the criticisms the leadership of ISA made of the CWI’s approach were completely baseless? That they have seen clearly how Socialist Party members in England and Wales responded to the protests around gender violence following the terrible murder of Sarah Everard the approach the CWI has taken to the protests at the overturning of Roe vs Wade in the USA and the solidarity movements internationally our strategy in the universities for campaigning against gender violence and harassment and our fighting programme for women workers? That far from ‘underestimating’ or ‘dismissing’ the movements of women internationally around issues such as violence against women, sexual harassment, reproductive rights and sexism generally, as ISA claimed, we have been active in campaigning on these questions, providing a programme and strategy to both defend and extend existing gains and for ending women’s oppression? This issue was at the core of the debate that led ISA to split away from the CWI.

This article, The CWI and Socialist Feminism – Redressing a Checkered History, is written by Laura Fitzgerald and claims to be an analysis of the CWI’s historical and current approach to the question of women’s oppression and socialist feminism, focusing primarily on the Socialist Party in England and Wales. On 18 August, an article suddenly appeared on the website of the Irish section of International Socialist Alternative (ISA), the organisation which split from the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) in 2019. The cover of the book by Christine Thomas: 'It doesn't have to be like this'.Ĭhristine Thomas, Socialist Party Executive Committee

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