01.09.2004

Familiar arguments and getting rooted

Mark Fischer reports from the recent Respect activists meeting in Hackney

Members of the Socialist Workers Party dominated the 30-strong audience at the August 24 organising meeting of Hackney Respect. Apparently there are around 220 members of the local coalition - far more than were in Hackney Socialist Alliance, we were assured by SWPer Charlie Hoare - but the holiday period had thinned the ranks considerably.

So a high percentage of familiar faces in the room … and some depressingly familiar arguments.
The two speakers opening proceedings gave good, upbeat openings, stressing the possibilities for Respect - although our newly elected councillor, Oli Rahman, speaking after Dean Ryan, our GLA candidate for North East London in June, sensibly cautioned the audience that building something substantial “will take time”, citing the slow progress made by the early Labour Party. Dean had told us that “Respect is on the up” and that the task was twofold: to “keep up the momentum” and “sink some roots”.

This theme - of Respect attempting to develop some organic roots in sections of the Hackney population - cropped up repeatedly in contributions from the floor. For instance, local SWPer Seth Harman suggested that Respect must be “the party [this label also came up over and over again] that not only issues a broadsheet in elections, but also issues a broadsheet when there are no elections”. His SWP comrade, Sean Doherty, told us that the only way to counter criticism, including that coming from “so-called leftwingers” is to get “rooted”. He left the rather obvious question of how tantalisingly unanswered.

A few other SWP comrades did help him out with suggestions. Charlie Hoare said that we have to be in contact with “the people who are fighting”. Sue Jones correctly observed that “people need to trust us as activists”, before underlining the importance of attending all events in a community - she mentioned church and school fetes - to get your face and politics known by local activists.

Despite the transparent sincerity of the comrades making such proposals, without integration into a more serious political project they are dead ends. And there’s the problem, of course. For all the talk on the night of Respect being a political “party” of some sort, the sect project of Respect’s core constituent organisation, the SWP, simply precludes the organisation developing in this way. Take the question of a political paper - an indispensable tool for a national organisation attempting to dig local roots.

Rather than the steady stream of broadsheets envisaged by comrade Harman, the task of engaging working class voters with Respect would be hugely facilitated by the coalition having a political paper of its own. But then this argument was had in the Socialist Alliance, of course, but the sect-integrity of the SWP came first and its compact majority voted down the proposal for an SA political paper - pushed most energetically by the CPGB. While our organisation does not invest the same hopes in Respect, there can be no doubt that the whole project would be qualitatively lifted with the publication of something like a Respect weekly. On the other hand the SWP appears intent on mindlessly repeating the tragic history of the SA. Respect is to be nothing but a ‘party’ front.

Similarly, the two interventions of CPGB comrades on the evening stressed the need for Respect to have functioning, accountable and democratic structures going from the top to the bottom of the organisation. In particular, comrade Tina Becker stressed the need for political meetings to draw working class people into the orbit of the coalition - the emphasis coming from some in Respect on social events rather than “boring meetings” was a worrying one, she said, to the obvious annoyance of some.

Comrade Dean Ryan briefly took up these questions during his reply to the debate. He had the notion that the key to involving local people was to galvanise them, a process of “decision-making around activity”. Presented like that, who could argue? But again, with the experience of the SA under our belt, the suspicion must be that this could (at best) simply translate into genuinely boring, deeply alienating meetings, where people turn up to be told where they will be handing out leaflets that week for the latest initiative of some SWP front. If this is to be the format of the promised “regular monthly meetings”, then building genuine, political roots locally will be impossible in practice.

The chair of the meeting had attempted to steer the debate following the two lead speakers towards contributions “around activities”. By and large, she failed (meetings stuffed with politicos tend to discuss politics), but halfway through the debate she seized upon a contribution on housing by a comrade, suggesting he put together a local Respect petition, as “you seem to know what you’re talking about”.

This sort of approach smacks of floundering. It is essential that the coalition’s conference over the weekend of October 30-31 in London clearly sets down key political priorities for Respect and gives the impetus to the creation of democratically accountable local structures that can draw wider forces into a political dialogue upon which campaigning must be based.

If it does not, then a huge question mark hangs over the future of the whole project.