11.03.2004

Fight inside Respect

The Respect unity coalition faces a tough fight if it is to make a mark on June 10. The Greens are repositioning themselves to the left in the aftermath of the anti-war movement and the ongoing stresses and stains between Labour and the trade unions. The Greens have started issuing leaflets encouraging trade unionists to join them.

Nonetheless, local Respect meetings are a qualitatively different experience compared to the moribund culture that now exists within the Socialist Alliance. They are big, lively and enthusiastic. The Socialist Workers Party, through its hopeless “united front of a special kind” perspective, has overseen the gradual death of the alliance. The SA’s internal logic towards a party, even acknowledged by SA national secretary Rob Hoveman of the SWP, was suffocated by the SWP’s active inactivity. The sidelining of the alliance during the anti-war upsurge - held back by the SWP as it sought sectarian advantage - was the final straw. The SA has never recovered.

Respect, while a political step back from the unity won around People before profit - still the SA’s collective political programme - is now the place for SA members who want to fight for the perspective of a working class party. Of course, it is not the only site in the struggle for such a perspective, but is where SA members should put their energies.

The Manchester Piccadilly branch of the Rail Maritime and Transport union has voted to back Respect, if not affiliate. Other RMT branches are expected to follow suit. The London region of the Fire Brigades Union may also support. Only the blind can ignore such developments. The SA represented a real advance, but it was never our final goal. We do not cling to formations that clearly can no longer serve the fight for party. Of course, Respect is not the answer either. But for the moment at least it is where the action is.

On behalf of the CPGB I have critically backed the unity appeal issued by the Democracy Platform of the Socialist Alliance, but without a concerted struggle to take the fight for a workers’ party into Respect, the appeal is in danger of simply being a piece of nostalgia for what the SA might have been. Communists are not sentimentalists, despite our sympathy with the intention of some of those in the Democracy Platform. (The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s involvement is purely cynical. It never backed the Socialist Alliance as a possible avenue towards a workers’ party. But that is their concern.)

Between now and June 10, communists must throw their energy into Respect, building, arguing, discussing, recruiting, seeking clarity. After June 11 it will be time to draw up a balance sheet.