Alan Thornett
Respect has had a difficult and contradictory year. At times even its survival was in question.

Many independent activists – along with SR supporters – were dismayed at the outcome of the 2005 conference, which put a question mark over Respect’s development as a genuinely pluralist organisation.

When faced with a clutch of off-message resolutions (“on message” was that everything is brilliant - onwards and upwards) calling for better administration, better democratic functioning, better contact with members and branches, and more collective policy discussions and Respect’s own publication – John Rees and George Galloway berated the conference saying that it was not a matter of minutes and reports it was a matter of political leadership – and they and others were giving it.

It was leadership by individual inspiration rather than collective development.

Then came Celebrity Big Brother, by far the biggest crisis Respect had faced in its short existence. It was not just the humiliation of Respect by the antics of George Galloway, it was the fact that Galloway was shown to be completely unaccountable when push came to shove. The refusal of the majority on the NC to make a statement clearly separating itself from the CBB fiasco made the matter worse.

Despite this, Respect had good results in the May 2006 local elections. It was not as good as it would have been without Big Brother, but it could have been far worse.

A huge campaign in the key areas, along with the passage of time, had repaired some of the damage CBB had wreaked at the level of the electorate. The damage it had done on the left, amongst the activists and Respect members, however, will take a lot longer.

Respect won 13 new councillors in Tower Hamlets, 3 in Newham and one in Birmingham. To get these seats it polled a massive 86,000 votes across the two Boroughs – 23 per cent of the vote. In Birmingham Sparkbrook Salma Yaqoob won 55 per cent of the vote.

The results again showed that Respect has a resonance in some sections of the working class which no other left party has been able to achieve. They were also a product of a political situation that remains heavily in favour of building an alternative to the left of Labour.

The war remains the key to this. Not just the strategic disaster, which is now obvious, but the brutal daily carnage in Iraq and the growing resistance in Afghanistan. Also sleaze, the cash for peerages issue and new Labour’s relations with the super-rich. The Blairites have managed to convince the majority of the population that they are more sleazy than the Tories under John Major.

There has been progress inside Respect on the implementation of the decisions of the last conference – though this was not without difficulty. The profile of Respect on women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights has been much improved, working groups have been established and a reworked policy pamphlet has been published. Minutes of the NC are now available and NC meetings are open to observers from local branches.

There have also been advances on accountability, at least with the councillors. The election of so many new Respect councillors, particularly in Tower Hamlets where Respect is the official opposition, has led to new arrangements to discuss the work of the councillors and give them back-up and support.

A major problem remains unresolved, however. That is the failure Respect to built itself as a properly functioning national political organisation. Over the past year the problem has become more acute.

This is partly due to Respect’s election strategy, which has been to concentrate on the strong areas to try and beat the first-past-the-post system. It has been the right strategy. But, in the absence of special measures to deal with it, it has deprioritised areas of the country where Respect was not standing.

This problem also comes out of the SWP’s continued opposition to building Respect as a party – a position they strongly share with George Galloway.

The results of all this are most clearly expressed in the moribund state of a number of Respect branches and declining membership figures, which now stand at 2160 according to the annual report – down from 3040 last year. True some of this membership decline may be down to poor administration, and the right figure might be a bit higher– but the overall picture is clear enough.

The fact is 2160 members is a fraction of the potential membership available to an organisation which emerged as the political expression of a mass anti-war movement at a time when new Labour was loosing it traditional supporters hand over fist and which quickly won a high degree of name recognition. It is substantially less than the membership of the SWP itself.

At first Respect’s true potential did express itself.

After Respect was formed in January 2004 its membership rose to over 5,000 by the time it fought the European elections five months later. The National Council initiated a recruitment drive, at that time, with a target of 10,000. It was a realistic target.

I raised this glaring contradiction between the electoral success, and general potential, of Respect, and its declining membership – at the National Council on September 9 when the annual report was discussed.

It was argued that I was “being pessimistic”, that “membership figures are not the only way to assess the strength of Respect” and that “we are a coalition and whilst membership figures are important they are is less important in a coalition”.

This is the crucial point. Membership is not seen as so important in a loose coalition as it is in a party. The SWP treat Respect mainly as a platform for electoral interventions and SWP members can be called upon to provide the troops in an election campaign.

Nor is it just membership which is seen as less important for a coalition. It reflected in the downgrading of Respect’s independent public profile, in opposition to it having its own independent publication and its own internal political life.

It is reflected in Respect’s failure to develop leadership structures which are properly independent of the component organisations, particularly the SWP, its dominant component.

We still have a situation where the SWP bases itself around Socialist Worker in building the SWP, but opposes Respect having its own paper in order to build itself.

And it cannot be accepted that the occasional once-off broadsheets which are produced in the Respect office are any real substitute for a political newspaper reflecting the views of Respect on an ongoing basis.

Respect does not have a long-term future with this model for its development. None of the successful broad parties in other parts of Europe have organised in this way.

The Red Green Alliance in Denmark organises as a party and takes recruitment and membership development seriously. It has twice the membership of Respect (in a much smaller population) and has a newspaper and an internal discussion bulletin.

The Left Block in Portugal – much admired by some SWP leaders – organises in a similar ways. It functions as a party and appears in public as a party.

The success of the SSP, despite the crisis brought down on it by Tommy Sheridan, was based on these kind of organisational principles.

There has to be a serious approach to both the recruitment and also the retention of members. If members are to stay in an organisation after they have joined it there has to be something real for them to relate to. They have to feel that they are involved and that their ideas and involvement make a difference.

This is why Socialist Resistance strongly supports the constitutional amendment to conference (submitted under the 20 member rule) designed to open up the structures of respect and connect them more directly to the local branches.

This calls for the current NC elected by conference to be replaced by a delegate based NC which will be its very nature involve the local branches far more in the functioning of Respect.

It also calls for an end to the slate system of election at conference, which has long been a bone of contention for many of the independents in Respect who feel powerless and disenfranchised by it.

If Respect is going to turn its self round as far as recruitment is concerned it has to bend over backwards to be democratic and open. It has to be seen to be the right place to be for all those sections of the left who are not currently a party of it. Its elected bodies need to be seen to be in control and running the organisation.

The task at the upcoming Respect conference is to tackle these problems and to build on the success in the local elections and build Respect into a national organisation with a clear national profile.

The potential Respect had so clearly in its early days has not gone away. The war continues. The crisis of New Labour continues. The crisis of working class representation continues. It is time for Respect to rise to the challenge.