25.03.2004

Candidate demands open borders

Respect meeting: North East London

Over 130 people attended the March 23 meeting to select Respect’s candidate for North East London in the elections to the Greater London Assembly. Long-standing SWP member Dean Ryan will undoubtedly do a good job and all socialists in the area should work hard to secure him the best possible vote on June 10.

The meeting, which brought together comrades from the three boroughs of Waltham Forest, Hackney and Islington, also chose a steering committee that will oversee comrade Ryan’s election campaign. Unfortunately, the Socialist Workers Party majority did not feel confident enough to allow even a single critical voice onto the committee and voted against the CPGB’s Anne Mc Shane.

As the first speaker, George Galloway set the tone of the meeting. His speech was bold, radical, and if anything to the left of the SWP: “Respect is different,” he said. “We can do so much structural damage to New Labour on June 10 that we will bring the government down in the weeks and months to follow. Just like the Spanish people brought down their lying, twisted war government, we can bring down ours. No other party stands for the things we do. No other party represents the anti-war movement like we do.”

Quite clearly a dig at the newly revamped Green Party and the Liberal Democrats. “We have to tear off the anti-war mask of the Liberal Democrats”, comrade Shaun Dougherty (SWP) later declared. “They are total filth, hypocrites, a sham. They run Islington in order to push through more privatisations.” True, true and true. However, it was the SWP in the Stop the War Coalition that allowed the Lib Dems and Greens to present themselves as the political representation of the anti-war movement during its high point. No other party representatives were allowed to speak at the big anti-war demos: Respect had not yet been born, while the Socialist Alliance was already half-buried.

Comrade Galloway went on to explain what the ‘s’ in Respect stands for: “We want socialism. We want a system that is not based on the exploitation of other people or the exploitation of other countries. We want to bring back into public ownership all the big privatised companies. We are against globalisation, which is just a trick name for the exploitation of the many by the few. We want a system that is based on public services and cooperation.” That sounds nice, but is it socialism? He did not mention the working class once, let alone stress that socialism must be the rule of precisely that class.

“We are a broad and diverse movement,” comrade Galloway explained. “Respect candidates stand up for what they really believe in. They speak clearly what they think. We act according to our consciousness and our beliefs.” One example: “We stand for asylum-seekers. We stand for immigrants, the legal ones as well as the illegal ones.”

Quite right. So why did we not include it in our list of founding principles? When the CPGB put forward a proposal in favour of open borders at the launch of Respect, this was rejected by the SWP majority. Far from standing up for “what they believe in”, the comrades voted against principle after principle. “It makes me sad to vote against something I agree with,” SWP member Elaine Heffernan, who spoke against our motion, had said. And of course, in the undying words of John Rees, who summed up the conference: “Today we voted against the things we believed in, because, while the people here are important, they are not as important as the millions out there.”

To his credit, Dean Ryan, Respect’s unopposed candidate for the North East London constituency, was more honest. Unusually for an SWP comrade, he openly presented himself as a “long-time member of the SWP and the Anti-Nazi League”. When questioned by CPGB members if he would fight for open borders, he made a firm commitment to do so: “I totally agree. There should be no restrictions at all, no immigration controls whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, we live in one world and everybody should have the right to live wherever they want.”

However, the fact that this was the only question that was put to comrade Ryan is slightly troubling. Surely, a vibrant and new political movement would be interested in finding out more about each other, finding out what their political views are - especially as Respect’s founding principles does not exactly cover things in detail. While there were a couple of new faces in the room, the overwhelming majority of those present knew each other well: most of them had been involved in the three local Socialist Alliances. If anything, the meeting was smaller than even Hackney SA meetings used to be and a lot of committed and prominent SA members seem not to have made the leap into Respect.

The new interim steering committee, too, has few surprises: the majority are SWP members or SWP hangers-on, such as Will McMahon (full time SA office worker) and Fred Leplat from the International Socialist Group. Comrade Mc Shane, who served as a long-time chair of Hackney SA, was the only proposed candidate to be rejected. Although she said in her speech that she would “work hard for Respect, despite the differences we have”, the SWP could simply not bear the thought of a dissident voice.

Their member Gareth Jenkins, who had previously advised comrade Mc Shane to “fuck off and die”, got up to oppose her candidature (see Weekly Worker January 29). “It is very important that we have a steering committee that is completely in favour of Respect’s manifesto. The CPGB has opposed Respect and it has opposed Respect’s manifesto. Anne would undoubtedly be operating in a way that would not be very helpful.” Another SWP member, John Rose, who is a leading activist in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, shouted: “And she supports open borders!”

As the SWP chair, Diana Swingler (who will also sit on the committee), did not allow us to reply to the charges, most were left positively puzzled and abstained. Although a few prominent activists cast their vote for comrade Mc Shane, including Nick Rogers from the Scottish Socialist Party and Eddie Barnes, an ex-Labour councillor who is on Respect’s South East region executive, the large SWP bloc was enough to keep her off the steering committee.

As the last item of the meeting, this did not make for a positive ending and half a dozen or so people crowded around Anne once the meeting had finished. “What the hell was that all about? I thought Respect was all about inclusivity and building a broad movement,” a young Turkish comrade commented.

Hopefully she and other local socialists will stay involved in Respect and fight to make it a more democratic force. If we are serious about building a movement that is capable of taking on the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, we need to involve far more different and dissenting voices, not fewer. We need more politics, not less. Comrade Ryan Dean has set a good example in honestly stating his view - irrespective of the shortcomings of Respect’s platform.