Lack
of respect
We
look at the shipwreck of yet another attempt to organise a
left-of-Labour reformist party.
Respect
– acronym for Respect,
Equality,
Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community, Trade unionism –
was set in January 2004 by George Galloway and the Socialist Workers
Party to try to make political capital out of the widespread
opposition to the Iraq War.
The
SWP is a Leninist vanguard party and as such is always on the
look-out for protest movements to take over with a view to recruiting
more members and followers for itself. Before the Iraq War the front
organisation which the SWP pushed, in a bid to create a
left-of-Labour political party it could influence, was the “Socialist
Alliance”. But they had been thinking
about “playing the Muslim card”
since the time of the first Gulf War.
According
to “author and academic”
Jamal Iqbal, writing in the East London Advertiser (8
November):
“Leading
figures in the SWP had been advocating the alliance with religious
groups for some time. In the 1994 pamphlet, Prophet
and the Proletariat, Chris Harman –
then as now one of the SWP’s chief
ideologists – argued that the party
should make common cause on the issue of ‘anti-imperialism’
with Islamists, in part as a way of recruiting their members”.
Much
to the annoyance of others who had participated in the project, the
SWP decided to pull the plug on the “Socialist
Alliance” so that its members could
concentrate on building up and controlling Respect. For a while the
strategy of building up Respect as a left-wing alternative to Labour
seemed to be working. In the 2004 European Parliament and London
Assembly elections Respect polled over a quarter of million votes.
Then, in the General Election the following year, Galloway scored a
spectacular victory in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in the
East End of London over the sitting Labour MP, Oona King, becoming
the first left-of-Labour MP to be elected at a General Election since
1945.
Galloway’s
victory was followed by an equally spectacular breakthrough at local
level, when 12 Respect councillors were elected to Tower Hamlets
borough council where they became the official opposition to Labour
ahead of the Tories and the Liberals. Some on the left saw this as
the beginning of an electoral challenge to Labour from the left which
could spread. But they overlooked two things. First, that all 12
Respect councillors were of Bangledeshi origin and had been elected,
not as leftwingers, but on the basis of Muslim “communalism”,
of playing the Muslim card to win the Muslim vote. Second, that not
far away in Dagenham there was another spectacular result: the
British National Party with 11 councillors emerged as official
opposition. Their votes had been obtained by playing the “white
working class” and “anti-Muslim”
card – and there are more “white
workers” in Britain than “Muslims”.
What Respect and the SWP were doing was splitting the working class
on religious and communalist lines and in effect opening the door for
the BNP.
Now
the whole thing has blown up in their face. In September Galloway
issued a circular denouncing the SWP’s
stranglehold on Respect. He and his supporters began to organise to
put the SWP in its place. The SWP responded by expelling some of its
members who refused to break with Galloway and then provoking a split
in Respect.
At
local level, in Tower Hamlets, this took the form of four councillors
breaking away from the Respect group and forming a new “Respect
(Independent)” group on the council.
Their leader was Councillor Oliur Rahman who, as Respect candidate in
Poplar and Canning Town at the 2005 General Election, had come third,
polling a respectable 6573 votes or 17 percent. According to the
local paper, their press conference on 29 October to announce the
breakaway “was overseen by John Rees, the
main man in the Socialist Workers Party and still currently the
national secretary of Respect” (East
London Advertiser, 1 November).
In
a letter in the local paper the following week, expelled SWP members
Ken Ovenden and Rob Haveman revealed that two of the breakaway
councillors were card-carrying members of the SWP. Their letter was
also revealing in other respects as it was written by two people who
until a month or so ago had been leading SWP “cadres”
(even though, as Galloway’s parliamentary
assistants, their salaries are paid out of his expenses as an MP):
“It
is extremely regrettable that a fundamental division has occurred in
the Respect between the leadership of a very small organisation
called the Socialist Workers Party and almost everyone else in
Respect. The SWP acquired a stranglehold over our organisation, which
has caused a deep rift at national level. Our MP George Galloway
(Bethnal Green and Bow) raised criticisms of the direction the
national organisation was heading in August. Instead of a reasoned
response from senior SWP members, the criticisms were met with
growing hysteria. This has finally come to a head, with the SWP
leadership seeking to undermine the democratic structures of Respect
and abusing many of its leading members. The SWP has also sowed the
seeds of division which have seen four Tower Hamlets councillors turn
their backs on Respect after trying to stage a coup against the
democratically-elected group leader. Two of these councillors are SWP
members and the other two are the SWP's closest allies. If they had
any principles, they would stand as SWP candidates – but know they
would get no votes.” (East
London Advertiser, 8 November).
Respect’s
annual conference was to have been held on 17 November. What happened
was that two conferences were held that day, one organised and
controlled by the SWP and the other by Galloway and his supporters.
Respect has split into two rival organisations. It remains to be seen
what the political fall-out will be.
There
are a number of lessons to be learned from this.
First,
the dishonest tactics of Leninist groups such as the SWP which set up
front organisations to attract the support of well-meaning people
concerned about some issue. The honest approach would be to say “we
are the SWP, this is what we stand for, join us if you agree”.
But this is not how Leninist organisations operate. For them, workers
are not politically intelligent enough to work things out for
themselves and so need to be led – by
them. They see themselves as leaders and discontented workers merely
as foot soldiers to be used to further their political influence and,
ultimately, to help them into power. They really are officers looking
for infantry.
Second,
as workers are not that stupid, they eventually get found out. This
happened once before, in the 1970s, when the SWP (and its predecessor
IS) managed to obtain considerable influence over the rank-and-file
shop stewards movement of the time. They thought they were using the
movement for their own Leninist ends. The shop stewards went along
with this because they welcomed the research work done by SWP
academics and students and the printing facilities the SWP provided.
At some point the SWP leadership decided to tighten its control. The
shop stewards demurred and eventually a whole section of the SWP was
expelled for syndicalist deviationism.
Third,
playing the Muslim card always was playing with fire. The Islamist
groups the SWP worked with and hoped to influence were never going to
be manipulated by secular Leninists. Once again it was a question of
who was using who and of when those who the SWP thought they could
manipulate would turn on them. The SWP –
together with Galloway and his supporters – must take a
heavy responsibility, having encouraged a split in working class in
Britain on communalist lines. The SWP might now try to take up a more
secularist position, but the damage has been done. Not only have they
burnt their own fingers, but they have left a legacy which genuine
socialists will have to undo by re-asserting the need for working
class to organise on class, not communal, lines.
ADAM
BUICK