11.03.2004

Fighting shy of principles

Respect

As expected, George Galloway and Lindsey German have been selected to top the list of Respect candidates for the European Union and Greater London Authority slates respectively. They were endorsed at an all-London convention on March 7, held in Hammersmith town hall.

There was, of course, never any doubt that the Socialist Workers Party’s recommended lists would carry the day. Their slates for the 10 EU and 11 GLA candidates for the two proportional representation polls were accepted overwhelmingly. Both lists included an unnamed “nominee from south London mosques”. However, despite this worrying pandering to religious organisations - allowing them to choose whatever candidate they liked, without Respect members having any knowledge, let alone control, over them - there is no mistaking the overall composition.

Both lists are made up of a good proportion of SWP members, together with suitable trade unionists, anti-war militants and minor leftwing celebrities. Besides George Galloway, the Europe list consists of Unjum Mirza (RMT), Ken Loach (film maker), Elaine Graham (former Green), Frances de la Tour (actor), Paul Foot (SWP), Rita Carter (former UN employee), Victoria Brittain (ex-SLP and former Guardian journalist) and Gary MacFarlane (SWP).

After comrade German the GLA list runs as follows: Oliur Rahman (East London PCSU), Linda Smith (FBU), Janet Noble (Unison shop steward), Sait Akgul (Kurdish activist), Salvinder Dhillon (Indian Workers Association), John Mulrenan (Southwark Unison), Greg Tucker (ISG and RMT Waterloo), Tansy Hoskins (anti-war activist) and Mike Rosen (SWP).

It must be said that the turnout of Respect members was disappointing - Hammersmith town hall holds close to 1,000 people, but only 130 or so attended, including a smattering of observers. Despite this, an enthusiastic Nick Wrack, the convention chair, thanked all those who had given up their Sunday as part of the drive to make a “huge impact” in the June 10 elections. Comrade Wrack declared that there was enormous potential for the unity coalition - already nine branches of the RMT union, for example, had invited Respect to address them.

Comrade Galloway gave a brief speech, in which he committed himself to spend the whole of May and the first 10 days of June campaigning in London. However, he was unable to wait for the results of the selection process, as he had been invited to speak at a gathering of representatives from 70 south London mosques, for whom a place had been left open on both lists.

CPGB comrades intervened at the convention with the aim of strengthening our electoral challenge and putting it on firm, principled foundations. In particular we highlighted the need for a clear position in solidarity with migrants and the necessity for all our candidates to commit themselves to take only the equivalent of the average skilled worker’s wage if elected, and donate the balance to the movement. Our comrade Anne Mc Shane stood for the EU London list in order to highlight these points and force them back where they belong - at the heart of any left electoral challenge to New Labour and the capitalist political system.

Comrade Mc Shane told the convention of her work as a criminal lawyer that constantly brings her into contact with migrants who are at the rough end of Blunkett’s immigration controls. Many, she said, are not asylum-seekers: they are economic migrants who must be defended. The distinction between the ‘genuine’ and the ‘bogus’ was something we ought to completely reject: everyone should have the right to travel, work and settle in any country. If the product is free to move anywhere in the world, so too should be the worker.

Although a common theme of SWP speakers was that of making sure Respect “looks like the anti-war movement in all its diversity”, there was also a certain overlap with the role previously envisaged by the SWP for the Socialist Alliance: the need to keep Respect “broad” and appeal primarily to Labour voters on a lowest-common-denominator basis. It is this that leads the SWP to reject time after time the very politics they profess to hold so dear.

The SWP’s John Rees - fresh from his selection to head Respect’s EU list in the West Midlands - addressed the convention in his capacity as national secretary. He said that the recommended slates for London (without comrade Mc Shane’s name) contained “some of the most impressive people to emerge on the left for a very long time”, and from a wide variety of backgrounds. This variety was necessary at this “absolutely critical moment in British politics” - it was now possible to build an alternative, he declared.

Comrade Rees claimed that Anne Mc Shane was one of many people who had been considered as a candidate, but he said that, while it was legitimate for members not to agree with every aspect of Respect’s platform, it was essential that candidates, although able to put their own interpretation on Respect’s policy, did agree, so as to be able to “fight wholeheartedly on the doorstep”.

In response comrade Mc Shane said she had been selected - and fought hard - as a Socialist Alliance candidate despite having important differences with aspects of its programme: “Yes, of course, I will campaign, but I will also retain my principled views.” She also emphasised that, if elected, she would only take the average wage of a skilled worker and hand over the rest of her MEP’s salary to the movement.

This last point earned her a good deal of applause - perhaps half of those present were not members of the SWP. The SWP, International Socialist Group, et al noticeably shuffled uncomfortably and muttered to each other. The SWP in particular now finds this general working class principle acutely embarrassing. Having preached for many years that limiting representatives’ pay was essential, they have now ditched it in order to secure an alliance with George Galloway, the mosque and a few dozen leftwing celebs.

Next to speak was Stan Keable of the CPGB. he pointed out that comrade Mc Shane had a long history of contesting elections - EU, Westminster and local - and had always been an energetic and forceful candidate. By adopting her, he said, we would be putting out the healthy message that minority views, far from being suppressed, would be “seen and represented” at every level.

In my contribution I repeated a remark made by the very first speaker from the floor - a comrade who had left the Green Party to join Respect. The Greens, she had said, were “only radical on paper”. How then, I asked, should we differentiate ourselves from the Green Party, who, after all, had claimed Respect’s programme as a “pale imitation” of their own? By showing that politicians were not ‘all the same’; we were not ‘just in it for what we could get’. I called on other candidates to come to the platform and, like comrade Mc Shane, commit themselves to take only a worker’s wage if elected (an invitation that, unfortunately, none of them took up).

I stressed that the CPGB was not using this question as “a stick to beat George Galloway”, who, after all, has stated that if he were to accept a worker’s wage he would no longer be able to pay his own travel and other expenses incurred through his continual, tireless campaigning for the movement. Claiming expenses would mean he “would be richer”, while “local left organisations … would be poorer”.

This is to misunderstand our call. We do not wish to prevent candidates donating their income, from whatever source, to the movement. Our elected representatives must be - and be seen to be - beyond reproach. No-one must be able to accuse them of ‘jumping on the gravy train’ by virtue of their Westminster, Brussels or City Hall salary. Comrade Galloway would still be able to subsidise the movement as at present, but with the difference that Respect would take responsibility for that part of his MEP income over and above an average skilled worker’s wage.

Apart from the point of principle, such a commitment is actually a vote-winner. Past experience has shown that, far from rejecting the notion as ‘too advanced’, workers understand instantly that it marks our candidates out as genuinely wanting to serve the movement, not feather their own nest. That was the point of the leaflet we handed out at the convention, headed “E for ‘equality’ or ‘enrichment’?”

But Alan Thornett of the ISG, did not see it that way. For him the CPGB argues that Respect is “unprincipled” and, what is more, “continuously attacks Respect in public. From reading the Weekly Worker you would think Respect was a complete dog’s dinner.” That was why he was motivating against Anne Mc Shane - “You can’t have an elected candidate who adopts that attitude.”

He was followed to the platform by Ghada Razuki, a prominent figure in the Stop the War Coalition who is close to the SWP. According to her, “Voters are not interested in what George Galloway or John Rees are going to earn, but what they’ll offer them.” Incredibly, this drew a round of applause from SWPers - which only goes to show that, once you start to adopt unprincipled politics for opportunist reasons, you soon end up believing in them.

Comrade Razuki said she had read in the Daily Mirror that the Weekly Worker had described Tory leader Michael Howard’s belief that “the state should be small” as a “good starting point” and therefore she wanted “nothing to do with” the CPGB. You have to be confident in your candidates, she said, and should certainly not adopt those who are always “talking against Respect”. Socialist Worker editor Chris Harman joined in the condemnation, stating that we should not have someone on the list who “hands out leaflets saying, do we want enrichment or equality?”

Despite the obvious sympathy from many non-SWPers for our call for a worker’s wage and open borders, in the end loyalty to the newly elected Respect leadership prevailed and comrade Mc Shane received only a small minority of the overall votes.

Following the selection, the convention went on to discuss the possibility of standing a candidate for London mayor against Ken Livingstone. In introducing this section, comrade Rees described three “political forces on the left with which we have to reckon”. Firstly, despite previous rejections, we had to “try to come to political agreement with the Greens”. Respect had offered a pact whereby Green Party leftwinger and anti-war campaigner Caroline Lucas would head a joint list in the EU South East constituency - “I think that is entirely correct”, said comrade Rees, even though it would have meant forfeiting a national election broadcast (to qualify, a party must contest each constituency under its own name). But the Greens had adopted a “sectarian stance”.

Secondly, in Wales, there had been “very promising discussions” with John Marek, the leader of Forward Wales, about the possibility of a joint slate. These had also involved the RMT, of which Marek is a member. Again, a non-Respect list in Wales would jeopardise a party political broadcast nationwide.

Thirdly, there was the thorny question of whether or not to oppose Livingstone. The majority of activists distrust the mayor, said comrade Rees, and his plan for London is a “plan of the big corporations”. But in the eyes of the majority of voters Livingstone is seen as a person of the left, which is borne out by his attitude towards the war and the European Social Forum. Taking into account also that Livingstone “works closely with the trade unions”, all in all it was a “finely balanced political judgement”.

A possible solution - one which comrade Rees clearly favoured - was to stand a Respect candidate for mayor while at the same time giving Livingstone our second preference vote. In that way we would not “divide the left” and be seen as making a “hostile bid”.

Greg Tucker - ISG and the only member of a left group apart from the SWP on either list - said that STV meant that we could “stand and not stand” at the same time. The SA had made a mistake four years ago by not contesting in this way - a point backed up by Kambiz Boomla of the SWP. In 2000 we missed out on several large hustings, where only mayoral candidates were on the platform. Dave Landau pointed out that a decision to stand would mean we would get a page in the GLA election brochure delivered to all of London’s six million households.

Ian Donovan of the CPGB also favoured a contest, but his reasons were entirely political rather than logistical. Four years ago Livingstone was seen as the left candidate in opposition to Blair - as demonstrated by the blatant ballot-rigging engaged in by New Labour to prevent him winning the party nomination. There was the real possibility that his stand - although made for reasons of personal ambition - could despite this have produced a left split and given impetus to the fight for a workers’ party.

Today the situation is rather different and Livingstone is the official Labour candidate. While his role remains ambiguous, his main boast is that he has recruited more police. He has a leftwing reputation, but in reality has more of a populist appeal. A Respect candidature should “draw a real line against the rightwing aspects of his politics”, said comrade Donovan.

At the instigation of comrade Wrack, it was agreed to remit the decision to the national executive, who would decide in consultation with the London regional committee - which the convention agreed should be set up. This body will consist of two representatives from each GLA constituency, together with London-based members of the NEC.