The most recent estimates suggest that Respect has something around 4,000 members across England and Wales: every big rally or conference fringe meeting at which George Galloway or other leading figures from Respect comes to speak recruits more members.
On one level this indicates the potential size of the only credible organisation to offer a left wing political alternative to Bomber Blair’s privatising New Labour: but the apparent size of the membership masks two serious problems.
The first is that we have so far only scratched the surface of potential support. At this stage in the crisis of Blairism, with New Labour visibly wilting, and tens of thousands of angry members having left in fury over the war and the relentless agenda of privatisation and Blair’s reactionary and xenophobic social policy, the potential membership for Respect has to be much higher than 4,000.
National Secretary John Rees has correctly set the organisation’s sights on developing a mass membership base: yet there does not seem to be any clear vision on how the next 10,000 or 20,000 members will be recruited.
The present methods have got us to this point: what new methods can take us onwards and upwards?
There is no doubting Rees’s energy and commitment. But while his efforts and those of other top names in Respect who have been trekking around the country recruiting more individuals through rallies can nudge the membership figures upwards, the danger is that an equal or even larger number of individuals – who have joined over the last 18 months, but never been really integrated into Respect as an organisation – could begin to drift back out again, leaving the organisation no bigger or stronger.
The real issue to be confronted is how Respect can begin to organise and work with the members who have already joined, to construct viable local branches in every major city, which can then open up and sustain ongoing recruitment.
The second major concern is that while there is a continuing trickle of local level defections to Respect among Labour councillors and former councillors, it has not made the substantial qualitative gains that might have been expected within the trade unions, where again a large anti-Blairite constituency can be identified.
Many of those who have joined – in response to Respect’s strong anti-war stance, its intervention into last year’s Euro elections or this year’s General Election campaigns, or after attending meetings in local towns or at union conferences – are isolated individuals, who have yet to be incorporated into any form of branch structure or activity.
For many members their only regular means of contact with Respect is through logging on to its national website.
The network of branches has emerged in ad-hoc fashion, with big gaps including a number of large cities – and many of the branches that do exist are weakly organised, with little independent political life.
To some extent this is an inevitable by-product of an organisation which has vigorously (and successfully) targeted its electoral interventions in a relatively restricted number of areas, leaving the rest of the country to work out ways to support from outside and resource their own local campaigning.
But it is also a result of the limited horizons that have been set for the political development of Respect.
George Galloway and other leading figures at national level have stressed their wish that it should NOT become a “party”, but should remain at the level of a ‘coalition’ of political forces united on a fairly limited platform of policies.
Since there is no “party”, there can by definition be no “party line” – and no organisation that can hold its elected representatives to account: Therefore George can say what he likes, while those who disagree may find it hard to find a forum in which they can raise their concerns.
But this same looseness also creates a credibility problem in building Respect among trade union activists, who are suspicious that Respect may not develop as a political party with its own life, disciplines and programme, but remain stuck at the level of an electoralist support group for Galloway and a few other prominent candidates.
Activists in the trade unions need to be convinced that Respect can offer an inclusive, democratic alternative to the arrogant, bureaucratic machinery which runs many unions and New Labour: they want to see leaders accountable to the organisations which secure their election – and the experience so far falls short of these aspirations.
Addressing these problems, and beginning to tap the potential support for Respect, demands a substantial change in the way it is organised and communicates with members.
While the language is not crucial, it is vital that Respect begins to organise and project itself more like a party.
We can expect the mass media to continue to largely ignore Respect – except where it is able to make itself a news item. This means that we must find alternative ways to make a wider public aware of our existence and the policies we put forward: we need to generate our own publicity machinery that can adequately reflect the strength and size of the organisation we want to build.
Individuals who have joined Respect will come in with different levels of commitment to active work and different levels of previous political experience and organisational flair. They all need to be encouraged to develop politically.
To get the most out of all of them, each member needs to be given the tools they need to recruit more people and to raise the profile of the organisation in their workplace, union branch, neighbourhood or campaign.
Local branches may already be strong enough to produce local newsletters and publicity, but there are limits to the value of what can become quite parochial and amateurish publications. Many branches, especially outside London, would also benefit from the availability of national publications that help to raise the profile of Respect and draw on the strengths of the organisation and what has been able to achieve in its key areas such as Tower Hamlets.
This points to the need for some form of national newspaper – the tried and tested traditional means for most organisations on the left, such as the SWP, to communicate with and organise their membership: Despite the website and the production of leaflets, postcards and local-level publicity Respect has so far clearly not been able to develop adequately without it.
Indeed while Respect’s National Council recently voted against establishing any form of regular publication, it is conspicuous that when the same leading members of Respect wanted to help promote a recruitment drive targeted at students they were ready and willing to sanction a large print run of a special tabloid newspaper, which is able precisely to project the strengths of Respect into Freshers Fairs and the September 24 Stop the War demonstration.
To gain the full benefit of a national publication it is important to devise a sustainable method of administration and distribution that can deliver copies of all national-level publications to all individual members as well larger branches. This can be done on a subscription basis: but it should also be possible to develop a publication that would have a big enough distribution to generate advertising income, which could also help cover production costs.
The publication would serve to inform members and to assist in recruitment: but the dynamic must be towards organising and mobilising individuals wherever possible to begin working together as city-wide, (London) borough-wide or possibly county-wide branches, with regular political meetings which combine debate on current domestic and world political issues with planning further activities, electoral intervention, campaigning and anti-war work.
An action plan needs to be drawn up for building Respect branches in the key cities which don’t yet have them, calling on support from National Council members to build launch rallies and attempting to draw in individual members from surrounding postcode areas.
The trade union conference planned for early next year should also be a focus for a renewed effort to open up dialogue on policies and campaigning on key issues in the main trade unions, using the pages of the publication to develop the necessary debates and appeal for the involvement of activists who have so far remained outside Respect.
Perhaps the biggest turn-around needs to be at the top, in the National Council and national office, where the political imperative of holding on to the members already recruited and developing a strategy to strengthen the organisation must take the place of the single-minded focus on two or three target constituencies and reducing every political question to one of organisational detail.
This seems likely to mean bringing in additional volunteers to help drive forward a development programme that can bring in the membership, build functioning branches and generate the resources to enable Respect to punch its weight on the national stage.