The SWP set up a pop-up gazebo, which is visible in some photos.
And yes, the SWP seem very invested in this issue. They declined to distance the party from the behaviour of protesters outside a WPUK meeting, even though the protesters were on film shouting racist abuse during the protest. Screaming racist abuse at black passers-by who had nothing to do with WPUK, in fact. There happened to be an entirely separate conference being held near the WPUK meeting that same night, on the subject of black people in business, and the protesters leapt to the conclusion that anyone else in the area must be a WPUK attendee and thus fair game for their racism.
I will quote WPUK's letter on the subject, but without citing the extensive description of exactly what was screeched at black people going past to their own conference. If you want to read it, follow the link at the bottom.
Dear SWP,
Your paper’s coverage of the protests against Professor Kathleen Stock at the University of Sussex made it clear that the SWP believes it is legitimate for women who recognise that sex is a material reality to be harassed and intimidated at their workplace. The protests have now resulted in Professor Stock being obliged to leave the university. While the piece does say that women like us should not be driven out of our jobs, it gave a signal to your members that they have your organisation’s support if they take part in such protests, whatever the professional or personal impact on the targeted woman.
D, who identifies as an SWP member on Twitter, organised just such a protest at our public meeting A Woman’s Place Is (Not) In Prison on Wednesday October 27th at the QE2 Centre in London.
D’s public Twitter feed encourages people to join the SWP. D has retweeted statements suggesting that protesting at events like ours is a form of “anti-fascist solidarity”. The same individual also tweeted the time and location of our meeting encouraging people to protest at it and described Joanna Cherry MP and women who share her opinions as “absolute Nazis”.
Almost 600 women had bought tickets to hear an all-woman panel discuss how prison punishes women for being poor, violently abused and vulnerable. It was a meeting which would have been of interest to any socialist or feminist as it was discussing the cruelties of the prison system and alternatives to it for vulnerable working-class women.
There were only about six protestors and videos of them are circulating widely online.
Our event coincided with a conference for Black people in business as part of Black History Month.
People attending our event and the Black business meeting, venue staff and our stewards were subjected to the most extreme outpouring of racist and misogynistic abuse. The apparent organiser and leader of the protest, D, and the SWP by association, bear responsibility for the protestors’ language and behaviour.
Rest of letter
The SWP's public statement afterwards failed to acknowledge the racist abuse, much less condemn it.
Some may find it curious that the SWP should be so interested in any of this. I remind you of how this party handled it when a young female party member alleged that a Very Senior Person (Comrade Delta) from the central committee had raped her. They decided to keep the investigation inhouse because they didn't want to involve anything so bourgeois as the police, and simply referred it to the disciplinary committee, (composed of people he knew and had worked with for years) who promptly exonerated him.
It became known as the Comrade Delta incident. One wonders whether the disciplinary committee would have been considered a preferable option to the bourgeois police if someone had murdered Comrade Delta. One suspects not.