29.09.2004

Open letter to Respect executive committee

The CPGB has serious misgivings about the forthcoming conference on October 30/31

Comrades and friends
We are writing to express our serious misgivings about the proposed arrangements for the forthcoming Respect conference at the end of October. We are very concerned that the format for the meeting reveals a desire on the part of the executive committee to squeeze the already narrow space for minority voices and critical trends within the coalition.

Currently, we have three immediate areas of concern:
- The decision to have a delegate-based conference is clearly motivated by a desire to avoid the type of robust and educative debate that characterised the founding convention in January of this year. At that meeting, there was energetic discussion over a range of issues, particular the demand for open borders, the principle of a worker’s wage for elected Respect representatives and the abolition of the monarchy. Members of the Socialist Workers Party took the lead in arguing against the inclusion of these principles as Respect policies - while assuring us that they agreed with them 100%, of course.
It seems that a delegate-based conference is a means to avoid - or at least minimise the chance of - an embarrassing repeat performance for our comrades in the SWP.

The justification we have heard for this arrangement is that, with just under 4,000 Respect members nationally, we cannot book a venue big enough to hold them all. This is clearly nonsense. Nothing like the full national membership will make the trip to London for a two-day conference - comrades’ experience of the conferences of the Socialist Alliance should tell them that. Given the still embryonic nature of Respect’s national infrastructure, a delegate-based conference is premature at best, at worst a crude means to exclude dissenting voices. Reports we receive from local branches of Respect around the country unfortunately appear to confirm the latter.

- The provision in the executive’s draft constitution for 20 members to have the right to submit resolutions to conference appears be a guarantee that minority voices will have some degree of representation. Indeed, it is described by the comrade who actually wrote the draft as a “similar provision to the existence of platforms in the Scottish Socialist Party” (Alan Thornett Socialist Resistance September).

But is this true? Provision is indeed made in the SSP for political platforms (such as the SWP’s sympathising organisation, for instance) to have real political representation at varying levels of the organisation. Nothing like this is being proposed in Respect.

Indeed, according to Rob Hoveman in the Respect office, unless one of the 20 members who have sponsored a given motion is actually an elected delegate and thus able to move it, then there is no guarantee that the motion will even be discussed or voted on! We believe that the Respect executive must clarify this situation immediately.

- Our belief that the leadership of Respect is determined to restrict debate and controversy in the ranks of the organisation is confirmed by the proposed timetable for the conference. Just one hour, on the afternoon of the second day, is devoted to resolutions from the executive, branches and groups of members. Only 90 minutes is given over to the discussion of our constitution and 45 minutes to the election of the national committee.

Frankly, this is an insult to the hundreds of comrades who will attend this important event from around the country. Inevitably, sessions will run over and the already pathetic amount of time allocated to these core elements of the conference will be further restricted. Indeed, we wonder why delegates are needed for an event that seems to have more of the character of a two-day school rather than a gathering that democratically debates and decides on the future political direction of Respect.

The EC must urgently reconsider the whole structure of the conference. The proposed discussions on ‘War and imperialism’, ‘Housing’, ‘Kashmir’, ‘Kurdistan’, ‘Asylum’ and ‘Crime’ are important. So surely the place to debate these and other vital topics is on the floor of conference itself, around motions that attempt to fill out the political programme of Respect and to map out what it is going to do about these questions.

What we are proposing is hardly original. The substantive business of the conference of Respect should be democratic debate around, amendment of and votes on motions submitted by its constituent parts. We are aware that there is tendency of some comrades in the ranks of the coalition to dub such arrangements as the “boring” habits of the “old left”.

On the contrary, full democratic accountability, transparency and a commitment to inclusion of dissenting voices would be a welcome - long overdue - break from the old, bureaucratic methods of work that have done so much to discredit the left.