Mistakes and Mishaps

On first joining the Socialist Workers Party, I was full of enthusiasm and hope for the future and as I was still very young, (19 years old) I felt hopeful in general.

However there were and probably still are some dodgy and unsavoury characters in the SWP.

Whereas I would normally have told my Mum everything that was happening in my life, my joining the SWP was not something she wanted for me, therefore I believed it would cause a rift between us, although in reality although she would not have liked it, she would be very supportive of it later on. But I didn’t realise this.

I was having other personal problems that I was not dealing with very well. One was that my Dad had left the country for good (divorce and all that) at the same time I left home to go to college. Secondly, a relationship I was having with a nice Jamaican lad from school was getting strained to the point of a break up just before I decided to join the SWP. So I was vulnerable.

Then I met this very smarmy 25 year old man in the SWP who took me under his wing when I first joined as a wide eyed 19 year old. He spent ages with me telling me all about the history and traditions of revolutionary and left wing politics and I lapped it up. Then at some sort of conference ( I cannot remember which one) he arranged it so that I would stay with him. I was unsure, but agreed, then during the night he made a pass at me and at first I turned him down, but then I can’t remember why but I eventually relented (even though I knew he was in a relationship with someone). I really regret that decision, and just cannot explain how much I regret it now and how bad the whole sordid two year affair made me feel.

I continued as an SWP member, finished my degree which I passed, but was in a god awful clandestine affair with an uncaring and advantage taking so - called socialist in the SWP. Eventually after suffering for two years (after a year I started to self harm), I found out that he had been sleeping with about six or seven women, many of them my friends and I think he got one or maybe even two of them pregnant. I froze emotionally and became very depressed.

He left to do a job within the SWP elsewhere and I was very glad because I was at last released from him, although he still rang me from where he was then living asking me to ‘visit’ him as his partner was away for a weekend (the utter sod). But I felt no inclination to carry on with him surprisingly!

I was very glad that this awful liaison was over, but I was becoming emotionally very unstable. I contacted my old boyfriend (my childhood sweetheart), but he lost respect for me when I told him what had happened and he was starting to become abusive and hurtful.

Then I went back home to live with my Mother, who was now living alone (but she had always told us that this is what she wanted) and my relationship with her was terrible, and I started to feel suicidal. My local branch of the SWP was not in the least bit helpful or offered any kind of light or hope in these dark times, mainly because it was effectively a one man band, and that one man was crushing my spirits too.

I would have gone to the doctor because of the extreme emotional strain I was under but I decided to try to talk to my mother about it first. She was not supportive of my going to see a doctor for my mental health and although I was really upset that she thought it was not the right thing to do, I didn’t go after all, which was another very big mistake, for which I paid heavily later on.

Part two coming soon …