05.05.2004

Unprincipled compromise

The publicity recently given to George Galloway’s reactionary views on abortion has once again drawn attention to the method that the Socialist Workers Party uses in putting together so-called united fronts and other coalitions as vehicles for building its own organisation.

Instead of a fight for political clarity, and thus for clear policies based on the actual views of participants and reached by majority decision, the SWP is in the habit of playing down principled questions in pursuit of the lowest common denominator. Sometimes the approach leads to such inconsistencies as to produce laughable results. But it is hardly a laughing matter if, because of the combination of comrade Galloway’s political weakness (on this question he is an unreconstructed catholic) and the SWP’s opportunism, Respect appears by default to have a position that is flatly counterposed to the interests of the female half of the population. That will not earn us ‘respect’ at all.

What should happen, of course, is that the Respect executive, without doubt having a pro-choice majority, should issue a statement making clear the policy of the organisation. In the process, they should pay the closest attention to the views of the trade union branches that have voted to support Respect. After all, the fact that such branches are able to take such steps is a product of a policy decision taken by the RMT to allow support to non-Labour Party working class candidates. The RMT has a national policy on abortion that is pro-choice - along with the overwhelming bulk of the trade union movement that Respect seeks to win over. And that undoubtedly is the position of the majority of Respect’s actual and potential audience. Comrade Galloway, and anyone else who shares his views of whatever creed, have a right to their views, but not to make Respect policy. A statement to this effect should be issued post haste.

However, giving a veto to those with the most rightwing positions in any putative bloc or alliance is the very essence of the SWP’s approach. As a result, the actual work the organisation does normally has little connection with the ‘revolutionary’ positions contained in Socialist Worker’s ‘Where we stand’ column. Thus, for example, in the Socialist Alliance, the SWP supported the former Labour Party freelancer, Mike Marqusee, when he argued against including the demand to ‘disarm the police’. Thanks to the SWP bloc vote it was not included in People before profit, the SA’s 2001 general election manifesto.

In the context this amounted to a significant concession to reformism regarding the question of the state. However, the complexities that have since been thrown up by the war, with the anti-war radicalisation of many from the muslim community, who instead of being drawn into the destructive dead-end of jihadism, are looking to alliances with the secular left, poses some more complex problems and makes this method of operation much more damaging.

Socialists should welcome the opportunity to work with these brothers and sisters. But we must not allow this alliance with new forces - whose militancy on issues directly relating to the war is considerable, but whose understanding of other questions may still be determined by traditional, reactionary social values - to lead us to the right. We must, on the contrary, fight to raise newly radicalised elements to the political level of what is best in the labour movement, not allow ourselves to be dragged backwards by unprincipled deals on questions involving women’s rights or similar issues. We must not allow such things to be treated as expendable, to be dismissed as an unwanted “shibboleth”, as the SWP’s Lindsey German publicly mused last summer.

At the Respect conference on January 25, SWP comrades voted down the demand for opposition to all immigration controls, in favour of one of merely ‘defending the rights’ of asylum-seekers and refugees. In doing so, it is not clear who they thought they were appeasing by putting in place a policy that depends on picking holes in particular deportation cases, instead of a blanket position in favour of freedom of movement. They do not seem to have been appeasing comrade Galloway on this occasion; he has made clear he is in favour of defending economic migrants who are not refugees against deportation. Nor were they appeasing any putative muslim bloc: Anas Altikriti, Yorkshire and Humberside Respect candidate and former president of the Muslim Association of Britain, has made clear his approval for the demand for open borders (Weekly Worker April 29).

No, it appears the SWP comrades were appeasing something in their own heads, a caricature of ‘old Labour’, when they voted down their own cherished position on this issue. In reality, no matter how good your intentions, without a clear position on the rights of all migrants - ie, the abolition of all restrictions on those rights - it is not possible to consistently defend asylum-seekers and refugees.

Regarding abortion rights, and the pre-history of Respect, it is notable that the original draft of the Monbiot-Yaqoob statement included in it a significant phrase calling for “the self-determination of every individual in relation to their religious (or non-religious) beliefs, as well as {I}sexual and reproductive choices{$}” (my emphasis). George Monbiot made clear right at the beginning that he had played effectively no role in drafting this statement, which thus appears to have been drafted by an apparently pro-choice Salma Yaqoob. A redraft was produced shortly afterwards - it is rumoured by the SWP’s Alex Callinicos - in which the phrase “sexual and reproductive choices” was replaced with “lifestyle choices”. This semantic change is barely noticeable, but is now clearly revealed to have been a fudge - of course “lifestyle choices” could include “sexual and reproductive choices”, but it ain’t necessarily so. One is driven to suspect that this alteration was agreed to by the SWP - not only because of comrade Galloway’s beliefs, but in order to win over MAB and the so-called muslim community.

One thing comrade Galloway will be very aware of from his 35-year membership of the Labour Party is that his position is that of a distinct minority in the workers’ movement. Within Labour he and others with similar views were allowed a certain amount of latitude in the form of free votes on such ‘issues of individual conscience’. However, he must certainly be aware that in an organisation whose centre of gravity is considerably to the left of Labour, such latitude for a leading figure would be much less likely to be granted. Rightly so - after all, on issues like abortion that are fundamentally about basic freedoms of working class people, such flabby excuses as ‘individual conscience’ are simply unacceptable.