Talk:Socialist Workers Organization (New Zealand)

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Untitled[edit]

this article is far from neutral and appears to have been written by a member of the NZ ISO. No NPOV. Is also outdated - the organisation is now just called "Socialist Worker". The article doesn't mention any of SW's activities after the ISO split in 1997 - eg. Workers Charter, Residents Action Movement, involvement in the Unite Workers Union.

As noted by the contributor above, there are problems with this article. The article as a whole lacks a NPOV. For example, this statement:

"After a period of working together the core of the former ISO felt that the SWO was dominated by elements who had not broken from Stalinist organisational practices and politics and split to refound the ISO"

... asserts an opinion about the cause of the split in the SWO. There are conflicting views about this. These views are not presented fairly, as a NPOV requires.

Also, the article cites no sources. For a statement like this:

"It came as a shock to them then when they found that the leadership of the SWP (Britain) had entered into discussions with the CPNZ and they only reluctantly fused into the new Socialist Workers Organisation at the behest of the SWP"

... it's difficult to see that any reliable third party sources could exist to verify it. Presumably, the alleged discussions were private and unpublished. Therefore, this represents original research. OR breaches Wikipedia policy. (The prohibition on OR, of course, is to prevent users from presenting unverifiable personal theories as knowledge in the encyclopedia).

It also contains irrelevant information. This sentence:

"The new ISO was initially confined to Dunedin but has since experienced some modest growth."

... does not belong in this article, as it does not relate in any way to the organisation under discussion. The irrelevant claim appears be included simply to promote the International Socialist Organisation.

Finally, again as noted above, the organisation described in this article changed its name four years ago. It has not been known as the Socialist Workers Organisation since 2002.

I am flagging these issues on the main page as I intend to do a substantial edit of the article to remove these problems. I also intend to do a Redirect to a new page, to reflect the change of name.

In the interests of consensus, I will give others a chance to respond on this page before starting the edit.

Wikipedian382 06:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed, isn't exactly neutral in its language or bias, but is reasonably true in fact. I was on the periphery of these groups around the time of the merger/split, so as I recall/understand it:

Essentially the largely Trotskyist ISO merged with the formerly Stalinist CPNZ in 1995 with predictable results - each went their own way again within 2 years...

The CPNZ had formally dropped its Stalinist views, but some members (notably in leadership roles) had been Stalinists for 30 years or so and naturally operated in a habit formed way when it come to strategy, running meetings, planning actions, etc. This approach was less democratic than ISO were used to operating and lead some (former ISO) Trotskyists to believe they were still Stalinist in practice - and hence the split.

I make no judgement if they did operate in an undemocratic or Stalinist way or not, but this is how the ISO felt they operated and why they split from SWO (this is somewhat discussed, amongst many other things, in an ISO letter at http://www.iso.org.nz/section.php?Section=resources&id=30).

Not sure how it was formerly/informally broken up and renamed, but indeed as noted former ISO people became ISO again and the remainder (former CPNZ people and assorted others) became SW.

Both are now somewhat similar but separate Internationalist/Trotskyist groups. Their political philosophy pages even look to share a common text, though they remain different in international affiliations - SW are affiliated to the UK based IST/SWP, while ISO remain faithful to the expelled US based ISO.

Now, if I changed people to animals this could shape up to make a great book... Oh yeah it's already been done. :)

Tartanperil 14:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]