Everybody knows that the Socialist Worker, the weekly ‘newspaper’ published by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), is extremist. The supposedly communist ideology that the paper espouses seems largely harmless, however. Few would be offended by the publication’s call for the abolition of all immigration controls- it’s just amusingly naive. Unfortunately, the paper has offended the public with an article making light of a schoolboy being killed by a starving polar bear on Svalbard. The full article is available here.
The schoolboy, Horatio Chappie, was a pupil at the elite private school, Eton College. He had been taking an adventure holiday when he was dragged out of his tent and fatally injured by the bear. The Socialist Worker writer joked “now we have another reason to save the polar bears”.
Eton College epitomises the extreme privilege that a tiny elite enjoys in this country: the all-boys boarding school, whose fees exceed the average worker’s annual salary, The school boasts over 30 cricket pitches; 24 football fields; its own boating lake; 3 theatres and palatial buildings. 19 of its alumni have become British prime ministers (including the current one); whilst more of the school’s 1300 pupils go on to attend Oxford and Cambridge universities than of all 550,000 pupils receiving free school meals. An Etonian is more than 400 times more likely to attend ‘Oxbridge’ than his poorer counterparts. So yes, Eton lends its students an arguably unfair advantage over other pupils.
Does that make Horatio Chappie a bad person?
No.
Is his death any less of a tragedy because of his parents’ decisions about his education?
No.
Is it appropriate to joke about his death because of some sort of twisted ‘class warfare’ instinct?
Of course not.
The Socialist Worker is not worthy of its title if this is the counterproductive bile it insists on bothering the world with. Workers don’t laugh at boys being slaughtered by starving animals. Socialists don’t judge people on their background: that applies to the rich just as much as it does the poor.
Not that we should be too surprised. We’re talking about the journal of a political party which almost collapsed last year after its leadership responded to allegations of sexual assault (said to be committed by a senior party official) with a series of cover-ups and insinuations about the drinking habits of the alleged victim drinking habits. It seems that SWP leaders have a radically different idea to normal people about what is acceptable and what is not.
That disparity cannot continue if the SWP wants to survive. Until recently, it was perhaps the only far-left organisation with a shred of influence. Its newspaper; thousands of members; strength within organisations like the National Union of Students and Stop the War; and plethora of prominent intellectual members made it the ‘centre of gravity’ on the far-left. It lost much of that following last year’s events. The SWP cannot withstand another scandal, which is another reason, other than basic decency, it should instruct the editors of its paper to apologize to the Chappie family for insulting their dead son.
If the SWP fails to do this, it will only drive away yet more potential support. That would be no tragedy.
