07.04.2004

No unconditional vote for Respect!

The following argument against the resolution passed at the March 21 aggregate of the CPGB was drafted by Manny Neira and is supported by fellow members Peter Grant, Jem Jones, Ben Lewis, David Moran and Cameron Richards

We are living through a period of some political complexity. Within the last year, for instance, Sean Matgamna of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty defined Zionism as simply the recognition of the right of the state of Israel to exist. As one of his own comrades pointed out, this would make Yasser Arafat a Zionist. Yasser Arafat - Zionist? It would make a surprising news headline. What next? ‘Peter Tatchell launches gay islamic jihad’? ‘Elvis found in packed Iraqi WMD warehouse’? ‘CPGB calls for unconditional Respect vote’? ‘George Galloway voted AWL man of the year’?

Did you spot the odd one out? Yes, one of those headlines was true. At the aggregate on March 21, the CPGB passed the following resolution: “Recognising the need for the anti-war, pro-working class opposition to Blair to take on partyist form, the CPGB will work to ensure the biggest possible vote for Respect on June 10.”

If you have not followed our coverage of Respect, you may find my surprise, well, surprising. A brief summary of the ‘story so far’ may help.

The Socialist Workers Party-dominated Respect coalition was founded on January 25. The Weekly Worker following the launch carried the headline, “A bonfire of principles: John Rees ditches the politics of the Socialist Alliance for the platitudes of Respect”. Jack Conrad’s ‘Party notes’ from that issue commented:

“Under the leadership of John Rees the SWP’s craving for respectability is palpable. Increasingly elections are seen not as a means of making propaganda and enhancing class combativity; rather as an opportunity to say what you think people want to hear in a desperate bid to get yourself elected - the fond hope is that lucrative careers as councillors, GLA members, MPs and MEPs beckon” (Weekly Worker January 29).

Not overly enthusiastic, then. What of Jack’s view of the coalition’s class basis? “There can be no doubt that Respect, even with the addition of Mohammed Naseen of the Birmingham central mosque, is a manifestation of left populism. Nor can there be any doubt that the SWP leadership is nowadays consciously acting as a conduit for bringing petty bourgeois influences into the socialist and workers’ movement - not least from their Stop the War Coalition reservoir.”

I wrote a report of the conference itself. Reading back over it, it employed a tone so critical, it suggested a writer with a bad case of piles. My own summation ran thus:

“More likely, though, Respect will fail to improve on SA results, because socialism was never the problem. The SA needed to go forward, not back. Instead of moving on from a socialist alliance to a socialist party, as the Scottish Socialist Party did, the SWP has moved back from a socialist alliance to a non-socialist alliance. Non-socialist? Well, perhaps a bit socialist. Aretha had it again: ‘Just a little bit, uhuh, just a little bit …’ This last was a reference to the soul hit Respect, which the conference organisers, in an aching but ultimately doomed desire to be hip, had been playing before and after sessions.

Marcus Ström, in the same issue, commented on John Rees’s dismissal of the Socialist Alliance: “This speaks volumes about the SWP’s attitude to electoral activity and to the unity of the socialist left. The SWP treats such adventures lightly. Rather than providing serious, long-term engagement with the working class along principled socialist lines; rather than a means to unite the whole left around a coherent Marxist programme in order to forge the weapon needed by our class (ie, a Communist Party); the SWP views elections as just its opportunity to break into the mainstream. To that end any principle can be junked. Parliamentary cretinism par excellence.”

Altogether, seven of the 12 pages of the January 29 Weekly Worker concerned Respect. The quotes are not selective. Stick a pin in that issue and, chances are, you’ll spear yourself a quote something like those above. We were critical: and there was much to be critical of.

As might be imagined, most of the rest of the left was little more impressed than the CPGB. The AWL, chiefly citing their near fundamentalist distrust of George Galloway MP - Respect’s shiniest acquisition since the days of the SA - refused to join. So did the Socialist Party, Workers Power, the Revolutionary Democratic Group … and indeed every other ex-SA group other than the SWP-faithful International Socialist Group.

Except, that is, for the CPGB. We argued that the SWP, as Britain’s largest revolutionary group, could not simply be ignored. Without them, the SA was largely moribund. For good or ill - no, just for ill - it had been supplanted by this opportunist project cooked up by comrades Rees and Galloway.

While the project might be opportunist, we believed then and now that the majority of the membership were not. People do not serve long spells in the SWP rank and file for fun, unless they are desperately unimaginative, or for political careerism, unless they have been spectacularly misinformed. We might have political differences with them, but they remain comrades and socialists. We determined not to hold our breath until Respect went away, but to go in and fight: to fight for socialism, to fight for democracy, and to fight for the socialist, workers’ party that the Socialist Workers Party was not but we believed could be won to.

At the founding conference, we supported motions calling for three basic, socialist demands. First, republicanism: no demand for democracy could be satisfied within the framework of monarchy which extended beyond merely the person of the queen and into every branch and twig of government. Second, open borders. New Labour was scapegoating asylum-seekers and immigrants for social problems of their own creating, and using the law to maintain a desperate, non-unionised underclass of near-slave workers. Thirdly, workers’ representation on a worker’s wage: a demand common to working class political movements for generations.

The SWP leadership whipped their membership into voting against all three - and the strain this caused them was evident in the resentful speeches given through gritted teeth (yes, it seems it is possible) their speakers made as they argued, time and again, that, while they supported these principles, they would vote against them. Why? Because Respect was not socialist, because the SA had tried all that and it had not worked, and because Respect was to be the mirror of the anti-war movement, and anti-war members of (for instance) the Countryside Alliance might be put off by policies like republicanism.

For two months, in issue after issue of our paper, and Respect meetings all over Britain, Respect leaders and possible electoral candidates have been challenged by members and supporters of the CPGB on these issues. They are starting to twitch. At home in the evenings, they check under the beds for Weekly Worker reporters. We have reported both the good (as when Respect candidate and SWP member Dean Ryan clearly endorsed the call for open borders), the bad (as when fellow SWP member Unjum Mirza declared himself “against the idea of a workers’ party, quite frankly”) and the evasive (as when Liz Wheatley, also SWP, also a Respect candidate, claimed that whether she would take a worker’s wage if elected was “academic”). We called this critical engagement.

Chris Bambery, clearly infuriated, challenged us on this at the SA conference: “I’ve heard them talking about ‘engaging’ with Respect, whatever that means.” In my report of the event, I tried to, as it were, fill him in: “It means exposing to the mass of its membership, the rank and file of the SWP, the gap between the opportunism of the leadership of Respect and the political passion which led them to join and support a socialist party. It means principled political opposition to the opportunism that rejects republicanism and open borders which we believe most Respect members support. It means democratic criticism and debate: or did you really think that just setting up a new organisation would relieve you of the responsibility of facing that?” (Weekly Worker March 18).

In short, the CPGB has sought to win Respect to the project to build a revolutionary workers’ party - the aim shared by so many genuine SWP comrades - and to expose every effort of the SWP leadership to drag it in exactly the opposite direction. We have no interest in building a mere vehicle for the electoral ambitions of the Respect leadership Jack Conrad so rightly identified. We do not wish to build Respect regardless of its form, whatever its programme, paying any price in principle. It either brings working class organisation closer or moves it further away: and that will depend on whether we win our fight within it.

No leader of Respect is unaware of what the Weekly Worker is saying and, judging by our sales and web access, we know thousands of the rank and file are also turning to us to find out what their coalition is doing. None can be in any doubt where we stand. Chris Bambery has already warned that if Respect fails he will blame those whose support was merely “conditional”. We wish to see success more than he does, but we measure that success not simply in votes, but in the increased power and organisation of the working class. Any support which is ‘unconditional’ on these terms is mere electoral populism - and not socialism.

It is for this reason that the resolution passed at our aggregate must be reversed. It breaks with the essential strategy of winning Respect to a revolutionary perspective, and simply lauds a crude tally of votes. It takes the Respect’s leadership’s intermittent claims to be “pro-working class” at face value, rather than testing them. It does not serve our aims or represent our strategy, about which we have been consistently open. We wish to win Respect to socialism, and thus have it elected: not elect it in the hope it can be made socialist.

We cannot, therefore, call for an unconditional vote for Respect. We must continue to demand socialist policies and oppose opportunism, all the way to the ballot box. Candidates must know that they cannot simply rely on the whipped vote of socialists and spend their time pandering to a sprinkling of petty bourgeois groups - and worse. Let the ‘s’ in Respect really be for socialism.

About this article

It is only fair to comment that some comrades had reservations about the inclusion of this article in the Weekly Worker. It might be used as a stick to hit us with, or seem inconsistent with our membership of Respect.

I believe the very opposite. It is a tribute to the democratic culture of the CPGB that this minority opinion was published. It expresses no aim which any sincere socialist in Respect could possibly disagree with: they would not support Respect themselves if they did not believe it would serve their principles. It is, above all, the demonstration of the very democracy which we have missed in the Respect coalition itself.

Some comrades have also pointed out that we have not always demanded a minimum platform before endorsing candidates of other parties: and this is perfectly true. We have called for votes for some left unity projects unconditionally, such as the Socialist Labour Party. The reason, though, is clear. No Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context. The SLP represented a move left from Labour: perhaps towards a real prospect of a revolutionary, partyist perspective. Respect is a move right from the SA. It is driven by an increase in opportunism. It is our job to demand that move be reversed, and to check that it is.

Resolution to reverse

Comrade Cameron Richards has proposed a motion which will be put to the next aggregate of the CPGB. I recommend all comrades attend the aggregate and support it: we have made a mistake, and it is vital that we acknowledge it openly, and reverse it. One comrade commented that we had stubbed our toe, but there was no need now to shoot ourselves in the foot. I counter that we have already shot ourselves in the foot: it is no use grinning and pretending we meant to do it.

The motion runs as follows: “This aggregate overturns the decision of the previous meeting to give blanket support to Respect in the June elections. Instead, the CPGB will advocate voting for Respect where individual candidates in single-member constituencies (GLA, mayor, council) announce their support and campaign for the following: open borders, republicanism and a worker’s wage.

“Given the closed list nature of the multi-member constituencies for the European elections and the ‘top-up’ section for the GLA, it will be impermissible to vote for Respect in these elections except where the candidate at the top of a slate campaigns for open borders, republicanism and a worker’s wage”.