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As events in Respect have spiralled downwards into crisis, various calls
for unity have been raised which have a certain superficial attraction.
Wouldn’t it be better if the two sides of the National Council (basically
the SWP and fellow travellers on one side, and everyone else, including
recent expellees from the SWP, on the other) could just sort out their
differences and work together?
But the idea has had less credibility by the hour: the actions of the
SWP and its immediate supporters (in response to a crisis entirely of
their own making) have been so damaging, so cynical and so reckless that
it is now impossible to find a core of members of the National Council
who would be willing to trust them to honour any agreement that might
be proposed.
We already have the experience to show that these fears are well founded.
This is not the first time around for a unity drive: after the acrimony
of the September 22 NC in which 13 out of 14 SWP speakers had personally
attacked George Galloway, seemingly determined to force him out of Respect,
the September 29 National Council carried a succession of unanimous votes
for unity.
Since then every one of the unanimous decisions has been opposed and obstructed
by the SWP leadership and its coterie who voted for them at the time.
The frenzied, back-biting attacks on George Galloway have continued and
intensified in closed SWP meetings and in more public arenas. This same
process of polarisation has alienated more prominent members of the SWP.
Nick Wrack has been hauled before an SWP Star Chamber and expelled. Rob
Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden, long-standing and experienced SWP members working
in George Galloway’s office, were instructed to resign their jobs
or be expelled: they too have now been expelled from the party. Leading
trade union militant Jerry Hicks did not wait to be expelled: he drafted
a devastating critique of his party’s leadership and resigned from
the SWP.
The masquerade of unity was also promptly undermined by polarised meetings
in Tower Hamlets, and more recently in other towns and cities, in which
the SWP has battled to secure the lion’s share of delegate positions
for the conference, and hyped up the rhetorical attacks on Galloway, Salma
Yaqoob and those who have supported them.
The conflict has not been accidental but deliberate: every clash, and
every angry, frustrated statement or expletive that has been provoked,
has then in turn been exploited to build up the fiction of a “left-right”
clash in Respect, a “witch-hunt” against the SWP – in
which all of the various currents and individuals which have criticised
the way Respect has been run, and identified with the points made by George
Galloway and Salma Yaqoob, have been branded as the “right”
wing.
A “petition” against the non-existent witch-hunt has been
whipped up as a test of loyalty to hundreds of SWP members up and down
the country, many of whom have as a result signed as “Respect supporter”,
indicating that they are not even members of the organisation.
Four Tower Hamlets councillors, two of them SWP members and two very close
to the SWP, who have held a press conference to publicise their resignation
of the Respect whip and the establishment of a new party grouping in Tower
Hamlets – Respect (Independent) which may run candidates against
Respect. The press conference was arranged by a full time worker in the
Respect Office (an SWP member clearly working under the direction of Central
Committee member John Rees), with the £300+ venue billed to Respect,
and attended by Respect National Secretary John Rees, who has yet to voice
any criticism of this very public and very damaging split in the organisation.
The SWP leadership has resorted to ridiculous manoeuvres in their efforts
to manipulate an artificial majority behind their position at the Respect
conference, scheduled for November 17: large numbers of phantom members
have been claimed for “Student Respect”, an organisation wholly
owned and controlled by the SWP, allowing the SWP to send along one delegate
for every ten claimed members, and potentially outvote genuine delegates
from real branches. When challenged to produce evidence that these students
were genuine members, the SWP leadership has responded by claiming this
is another part of the “witch hunt” and an attempt to exclude
students.
Looking over the period since Galloway penned his critical letter at the
back end of August, it is impossible to avoid concluding that the SWP
leadership’s tactics have been an absolute and unmitigated disaster
not only for Respect, which can never be restored, but also for the SWP
itself.
From the prestige and credibility it gained by acting as the principal
organised political current in the most successful political regroupment
to the left of Labour since World War 2, the SWP leadership has now cemented
itself into the position of a rigidly centralist and dogmatically sectarian
current that would rather smash three years’ work and destroy hard-won
political alliances than tolerate any genuine pluralism or political development
in Respect.
All of the worst fears and reservations so widely held on the left about
the SWP and its methods have been confirmed: the Party’s line has
been so appalling that its every tactic appears designed to demoralise
its best members, alienate non-SWP members and further isolate the party
within Respect.
Even their very worst enemies could not have hatched up a scheme half
as destructive as the one the SWP Central Committee has imposed upon itself.
It must be the first time such a large-scale left current effectively
launched a witch-hunt on itself, driving towards a split which –
if they were to go to a stitched-up Respect conference and win the vote
– would be a Pyrrhic victory, leaving only a downsized SWP and a
wafer thin layer of hangers-on in Respect.
Such a formation would never attract any broader forces – many of
whom will instinctively recoil from the SWP for years to come as the reality
becomes more widely known.
The SWP leadership have also broken from most of the well-known figures
who could draw a crowd for Respect – notably Galloway and Salma
Yaqoob, but also Victoria Brittain and Ken Loach.
In other words the SWP leaderships tactics have driven off virtually all
of the independent forces that made Respect a genuinely broad-based coalition.
After three years of work they now stand to walk away from the project
weaker and more discredited than they were before it launched: their track
record is one of politically hobbling Respect, under-selling it and failing
to tap its potential in a period uniquely favourable to building a left
alternative.
And having failed to build it to its potential, rather than face up to
any of the errors that have been made, or correct them, they have embarked
on a suicidal policy of polarising Respect for and against the SWP.
However, for those of us who have not stopped looking to build a broad
left-wing party, the fact that the SWP leadership appears to have pressed
the self-destruct button opens up a far from a satisfying situation. They
are threatening to destroy something far more than the SWP itself.
The problem is that if the SWP leadership stick to their guns, reject
the proposals that we have made for postponement, and insist on convening
the conference on November 17 there is no viable basis for non-SWP members
to participate in it. There could only be a negative outcome.
We already know that there is no way we would be allowed to win any votes,
and that the process of checking credentials of delegations from Tower
Hamlets, Student Respect and other areas would be a nightmare, with a
real possibility of anger and frustration on both sides exploding into
threats and even violence.
But we also know that even if by some fluke we DID win a vote on a contested
issue, there is no chance of the policy being implemented as long as the
SWP leadership calls the shots.
Worse, we know from grim episodes in the history of the sectarian left,
and from the way the SWP has now drummed up signatures for its current
“petition” that it is possible for highly centralised groups
such as the SWP to march in squads of delegates who know what they are
going to vote for before they get there, who will be oblivious to the
damage that they and their antics do to the organisation.
We also know the impact a polarised, packed conference like this would
have on independent forces and those with no experience of the far left:
they would be profoundly shocked, alienated and demoralised: the result
would be that many valuable people would be lost to the project and quite
possibly lost to the left for years to come.
So we have a real problem: do we march whoever we can gather into a stitched-up
conference to be abused and reviled and voted down by SWPers accusing
us of witch-hunting them – and decide only afterwards how to regroup
and rebuild?
Do we participate in a conference that not only cannot solve the problems,
but which could make them many times worse and also parade them on the
national stage in front of the press and mass media, to the delight of
the real right wing and witch hunters?
Or do we decide that that is a not a useful expenditure of energy and
that the time has come to build something new and inclusive which can
address the problem of working class representation for which Respect
was originally launched to address?
Of course it would be a setback to accept that Respect as we have known
it, with all the effort involved in getting it off the ground has been
destroyed by the SWP leadership. But the fact is the political conditions
which created it are as relevant now as they were then, even more so.
And it is already clear that there are people all round the country who
are ready to join or rejoin a more inclusive organisation.
With the emergence of Brown the situation is far worse in the LP than
it was when Respect was founded. The possibly of reclaiming Labour for
the left is dead in the water. The defeat of the John McDonnell campaign
saw the Labour left at it lowest ebb for 60 years. There has to be a recomposition
of the left which goes far beyond what Respect has been able to do.
We need a new organisation as soon as possible which will start to address
these issues and create the condition to unite with those from the Labour
left, the trade union left and the activists of ecological and climate
change campaigns which can present a political alternative to the betrayals
of new Labour.
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