14.07.2004

Marxism 2004: White working class

Leading SWP members Chris Bambery and Charlie Kimber stressed the need to fight for the "white working class", reports Anne McShane, while Cerys Dowling is embarrassed about Chris Bambery's hysteric chants of "Let's hear it for the SWP!"

Maybe some of the criticisms have hit home. Or maybe the fact that Respect did not do well in general in white working class areas has begun to bother some SWP leaders. Either way, SWP national secretary Chris Bambery was at pains to show that he was certainly not intent on ignoring the majority of the working class in favour of the so-called muslim community.

The debate began in a session on whether the left should reclaim Englishness. Charlie Kimber, the platform speaker, believed it was profoundly wrong. He rejected those like Billy Bragg who have argued that we need to claim the heritage of the Chartists as something English and progressive. Against all the historic evidence, he insisted that the nation was not a plastic concept.

Bambery, speaking from the floor, was not concerned about such matters. He was worried about the growing alienation of the English white working class, the excessive alcohol consumption among young people, teenage pregnancy and the growth in the prison population.

Later he claimed that there was a big difference between those who voted BNP and those who voted UK Independence Party in the European elections. UKIP was a complex phenomenon and not necessarily completely rightwing. He admitted to being annoyed at criticisms that Respect was simply going out to get an islamic vote. He compared the Respect campaign to that of the CPGB in the East End of London in the 1930s, when it won over a big swathe of the working class Jewish vote - which to a considerable degree it went on to successfully recruit and encadre.

He called for Respect to move into areas like Barnsley, where sections have begun to vote BNP. Although he did not like it when people talked about “the muslim vote”, he acknowledged that there are “vast swathes of working class England where we do not exist”.

In many ways confused and sometimes deeply patronising, Bambery at least appreciates that the BNP vote cannot be dismissed as the “white lumpen scum living on the housing estates” - as his comrade, Julie Waterson, insisted at the 2003 Socialist Alliance conference.

"Let's hear it for the SWP!"

Chris Bambery delivered one of the most embarrassing speeches I have heard in a long time during the session on ‘What sort of democracy do we want?’

“The reason the rest of the left hates the anti-war movement is that it was the SWP that has brought the issue of democracy to the fore. When I hear the word ‘democracy’, I can say only one thing: Let’s hear it for the SWP! Who played a leading role in the postal strike? Let’s hear it for the SWP! Who will bring tens of thousands of people to the ESF? Let’s hear it for the SWP!” And on and on it went. His poor SWP comrades seemed almost as embarrassed as myself.