14.04.2004

For political revolution within Respect!

Comrade Marcus Ström feels that Respect candidates would not support republicanism, open borders, and workers' representation on a worker's wage without a "political revolution within Respect". Manny Neira argues that this is why we must continue to demand that they do!

Comrade Ian Donovan has found a new approach in countering the argument I presented last week under the title ‘No unconditional vote for Respect!’ He is trying to confuse me to death.

If you missed it, I, and indeed five other comrades, argued that we should reverse the following resolution passed at the CPGB aggregate on March 21: “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.”

His snappily titled ‘Communist tactics, not sectarian subjectivism’ (printed across the page in the same issue, but with prior sight of my own piece) asserts that I offer either no arguments, or only irrational ones. In fact, by my count, it argues this 17 times in the space of one page, so he clearly feels it quite strongly. I must have had a bad day: what did I fill the page with - recipes?

Presumably driven by the absence of any arguments in my article to respond to, Ian chooses the only possible course: write some of his own, and then knock them down. It was with a certain bemusement that I watched Ian’s brutal shadow-boxing begin.

“I suppose one slight saving grace of Manny’s article is that he does not seem to be pushing the idea that Respect somehow constitutes a ‘popular front’. This confused notion …”

Well, he’s got himself on the ropes there. I don’t know who to back in this fight: Ian or Ian. This swift uppercut to his own jaw seems to have woken him to the absence of an opponent. He turns to where he thinks I am standing …

“Manny claims to be driven by some kind of principled programmatic intransigence …”

… only to punch the air and fall over. Having read my article again several times, I cannot find this claim, do not support it, do not wish to make it, and (if all else fails to persuade him) would like to formally withdraw any intention of ever claiming it in the future. This is chiefly because, while I have no idea what it means, I feel confident it does not mean ‘I’m happy with any tactic which advances the building of a Communist Party, and don’t think unconditional Respect votes fit the bill’.

There is still not much for me to do in this fight.

“Nowhere does Manny even begin to put forward any coherent evidence that calling for a vote for Respect candidates in this election - which by a terminological sleight of hand he dubs ‘unconditional’ support - amounts to ‘giving up’ any aspiration to win Respect to a ‘revolutionary perspective’.”

Here, at last, is something I actually said. Now, first, let me explain the sneaky trick behind the “terminological sleight of hand” Ian accuses me of for using the word ‘unconditional’.

I am arguing that we should only recommend votes for candidates on the condition that they commit themselves to stand for republicanism, open borders, and workers’ representation on a worker’s wage: hence ‘conditional’. The resolution passed at aggregate imposes no conditions, and simply calls for the “biggest possible vote”, hence ‘unconditional’. I apologise unreservedly to anyone who was misled by this clearly dishonest use of these words.

Like Ian, for instance. “It is perfectly obvious to any intelligent observer that our support is conditional on Respect maintaining basic class demands in its programme - such as opposition to privatisation, anti-union laws, the persecution of immigrants and asylum-seekers, imperialist war, etc. Those are our conditions for support for Respect.”

But not republicanism, open borders, and workers’ representation on a worker’s wage, eh? This is fascinating. It seems that Ian is happy to impose conditions, but for some reason just not on those issues we presented to the founding conference and have been questioning Respect leaders and candidates about ever since.

So to impose republicanism as a condition is “sectarian subjectivism”. To impose “opposition to privatisation” as a condition, though, seemingly is not. What possible logic can lie behind this?

A moment’s thought makes it clear: Ian has chosen to make ‘conditions’ all those things he feels Respect is already committed to! This is truly a fighting stance. These are the conditions he is selecting: things that the Respect leadership have already volunteered before the conditions were raised. It is on these grounds that he considers the label ‘unconditional’ to be unjust.

Perhaps I can illustrate Ian’s use of these terms by an example. Your employer demands a pay freeze. Your union strikes in support of a demand for a 10% increase. The union leaders then come back to you and recommend a return to work without additional pay. You are outraged: ‘What, we’re just going to give in unconditionally?’ ‘No,’ you are told, ‘not unconditionally. We’re going back only on condition they don’t cut our pay.’

And this brings us to his substantive question, and indeed the question on which the politics of this whole tactic depend: how is calling for an unconditional vote (or, in case anyone can see the difference, restricting our conditions to what was granted before they were raised anyway) giving up any aspiration to win Respect to a revolutionary perspective?

I cannot do better than quote comrade Marcus Ström in last week’s ‘Party notes’.

“Yet for these conditions to be generally accepted by mainly SWP candidates it would take a political revolution within Respect. Therefore to adopt such a position is to deliberately seek a situation whereby electoral support for Respect can be withheld. This must be rejected.”

The statement deserves the most careful attention, because it is a direct answer to Ian’s question, and goes right to the heart of the issue. Imposing these conditions is equivalent to withholding electoral support only if we have already decided that the conditions will not be met. And, as Marcus rightly says, for the conditions to be accepted would take a “political revolution” within Respect: precisely the revolution we sought to bring about by demanding them in the first place!

Is it not transparently clear, therefore, that any hope of winning that argument, and causing that revolution in Respect, have been given up with the call for an unconditional vote? Do Marcus’s words bear any other analysis?

Well, I think he is wrong, and I do not think we should give up. The pressure has been effective: we have exposed the regressive, rightward trend of Respect clearly, and I see no reason to stop now. But, having said that, if I was as certain as Marcus and Ian that this fight was already lost, then I would question why we are still in Respect at all. What would we have left to gain? John Rees MEP?

It has been argued that this, in itself, is a worthwhile victory - indeed, this is all that is left if the political revolution we sought to bring about is really impossible. So let us finally turn to this question.

What is likely to happen if Respect is successful and John Rees elected?

I can see two consequences. Firstly, John Rees will argue that this is proof that his trajectory was right all along. Remember his speech at the Respect launch? “Whatever went before was not as strong as this. We fought for the declaration and voted against the things we believed in, because, while the people here are important, they are not as important as the millions out there.”

This opportunist garbage was the high point of his speech: the central message. The Socialist Alliance failed because it was too socialist. We will not make that mistake again. We will give people what they want, whatever they want, if it gets us elected.

Of course, the real reason the SA failed was precisely because of the on-off electoral front treatment it received at the hands of the Socialist Workers Party leadership. Remember that no SA speaker was allowed onto the platform at Hyde Park during the biggest demonstrations in our history, though the Greens, Plaid Cymru and even Charles bloody Kennedy were welcome: Respect has been rather better treated.

But in the most cowardly move of all, rather than leave the SA, which would clearly have been more honest as they no longer believed in it, the SWP leadership used their majority to force it to commit suicide, hand over its support to Respect, and prevent it standing candidates of its own.

We understood and exposed this clearly enough at the time. In the Weekly Worker of January 29, Marcus wrote: “This is the two-faced nature of opportunism. Talk left, act right. It’s already socialist, that’s why we should have absolutely no socialist principle in it! Leave the socialist principle to the SWP and its recruitment machine.

“... We shall energetically work in Respect and seek a wider audience there for what is needed: a mass working class alternative to both Labourism and the non-class politics of populism.”

The second consequence, perversely, is that John Rees will be in a more central position to peddle exactly the lack of principle Marcus decried so eloquently. And what is the usual course of opportunists once they have got their positions and their expense accounts? Do they tend to become more assiduous class fighters? Is John Rees playing a trick, acting soft now but ready to fight the corner of the working class once he has tricked them into electing him?

If this is the way to use elections to raise political consciousness and advance the argument for a workers’ party, then I’m a sectarian subjectivist.