13.10.2004

Hackney: SWP voting against principle

The latest meeting of Respect Hackney unfortunately followed the same pattern as other pre-conference meetings around the country: attendance was small, the atmosphere unpleasant and the political outcome extremely worrying. In a bid to please the largely imaginary right wing of Respect, members of the Socialist Workers Party voted down principle after principle - despite the fact that the only other people in the room (CPGB members and a handful of independents) voted consistently to the left of the SWP.

One would think that an organisation that takes its internal life seriously would maybe not organise its only pre-conference meeting on a Friday night. The reason that only 34 people turned up, however, seems to have more to do with the fact that Respect Hackney turns out to be very small indeed. Only a few months back, membership secretary Mike Simons boasted about “over 230 members”, which was “far more than the Socialist Alliance ever had”.

When it came to choosing our delegates, however, the number had shrunk to 151. “Respect centre had also sent us the names of people who had only attended meetings locally or gave donations - they are not all members,” confessed comrade Simons at the October 8 meeting. It seems that nobody can remember how many members Hackney Socialist Alliance actually had (including the membership secretary), but I would be very surprised if it was less than today’s Respect branch.

So far, the rightwing drift has not paid off. Gone are the dozens of independents that used to attend SA meetings. Gone are all the other groups on the British left that used to send representatives (apart from the CPGB). Gone are the lively political discussions. Instead we have an unholy alliance of SWP with their latest allies in the Turkish community centre, Day-mer. Politically stuck in that terrible place where Stalinism and liberalism overlap, these comrades happily accept the crumbs off the SWP’s table: three of the 11 delegates, seats on the local and national executive, platform speakers, etc. In return, the Day-mer representatives consistently (and silently) support the SWP. In fact, none of the five Turkish comrades spoke once in the meeting.

But they happily followed the SWP’s lead in voting down our motions for free abortion on demand and a worker’s wage for elected Respect representatives. Julie Waterson presented an alternative motion on abortion, which, she wrongly said, was “in total opposition to the one proposed by the CPGB”. While it restates the existing ambiguous formulation in Respect’s founding declaration (“the right to self-determination of every individual … as well as their sexual choices”), she has added the sentence, “Respect therefore opposes any change in legislation that restricts abortion rights.”

Yes, but what about extending abortion rights? As a comrade in the audience pointed out, today women in Britain do not have the right to choose. She proposed amending our motion so that it would merely read: “Respect supports a woman’s right to choose. To facilitate this, Respects campaigns to defend and extend existing abortion rights.” That certainly caused SWP comrades a problem. Comrade Waterson had directed her fire solely against the formulation in our motion that “elected Respect representatives are bound by this policy”, citing George Galloway’s well known opposition to abortion. Instead, she argued, every elected Respect representative should be allowed to vote on this matter as they want to - ie, exercise a ‘conscience vote’.

SWP comrades quickly regrouped and Gareth Jenkins then delivered the killer blow. He declared that he had “a big problem with extending abortion rights. Women today are in a much better position then they were pre-1967. That’s what we should defend. Extending abortion rights could mean all sorts of things”. Yes, Gareth - it could, for example, mean that you join us in the fight for a principled position that allows a woman to make decisions about her body and her future life - not doctors, the church, the mosque, the state or anybody else.

He and his comrades proceeded to vote down even this amended version by 15 to nine - to the outrage of most non-SWP comrades in the room. “How dare you make such a decision over our bodies. After all these years, you give up the fight for women’s rights. What is the matter with you?” shouted an enraged woman in the audience.

But more was to come. First, the SWP comrades voted for a motion by independent Tom Rubens which demanded that “Respect seeks to dismantle Britain’s multinational corporations and put their resources and assets under common ownership and control”. This motion was not discussed at all, which gave the distinct impression that it had been given the all-clear from the SWP leadership in advance.

But when we presented our motion on a worker’s wage for all elected Respect representatives, the SWP again thought this was going too far. The SWP’s Sean Doherty said this demand was “part of a full revolutionary programme, that we simply cannot impose on all the different traditions in Respect”. All the “different traditions” in the room, however (apart from SWP and their silent Day-mer supporters), certainly did support this demand. As does, of course John Bloom, the Respect candidate in the recent Hartlepool by-election. Ditto the Scottish Socialist Party, whose representatives in the Scottish parliament take only £23,000, donating the rest of their wage to various SSP campaigns.

“Excuse me,” intervened a young independent comrade in the audience, “but if I go to my workplace and ask my colleagues if they think that abortion rights should be extended, they will tell me ‘of course’. If I ask them if they think it is a good idea if their elected representatives live on the same wage as them, they will support that too. But if I ask them if they think that all multinational companies should be dismantled tomorrow, they will think I’m nuts.”

Nevertheless, most SWP comrades followed the ‘party line’ and voted down our motion on the worker’s wage - apart from Dean Ryan, who stood as Respect candidate in the European elections and has maybe come closest to actually talking to the so-called ‘normal’ people that the SWP wants to bring on board. Still, the motion was lost, again with nine people voting for it and six abstentions.

That still was not all. CPGB comrades moved an amendment to a rather bland (but generally supportable) motion on education, which contained the pledge that “in the long term we would support the creation of an integrated, multi-ethnic and multi-faith education system”. In the long term? Like, under socialism? We argued that instead we should fight for an “integrated secular education system”. The state should have no right to promote religious education, we argued. This does not mean that people should not be allowed to exercise their religion - but this should not be enforced by the state. Who would decide which religions are deemed appropriate? What about atheism?

Again, it was Gareth Jenkins who felt most keen to renounce his revolutionary principles: “It is totally outrageous to put such an amendment. You just have to look across the Channel to France to see how the left has sold out there. Discriminating against and attacking muslims - that’s what secularism does.” And so the comrades from the SWP went on to vote for “multi- faith”, etc, schools as a “long-term” aim - as if they do not already exist in the here and now.

Needless to say, the nomination of the CPGB’s Anne Mc Shane’s as a delegate to the October 30-31 Respect conference rounded off the evening quite nicely and she received five votes. “This is not about silencing minority views,” said an SWP member. “If Anne goes off and recruits 30 new Respect members on her estate, she can become a delegate - no problem,” he said. “I wouldn’t care what her political views were.” Comrade Doherty added that “these people [he meant CPGB comrades] are not interested in Respect succeeding, let’s be honest”.

In fact, CPGB comrades have been pointing out that Respect cannot succeed if it carries on in its current path. Bland, liberal politics and a gerrymandered internal life are not designed to bring the masses on board. By chasing largely phantom rightwing allies, the SWP will quickly alienate the few real members Respect has outside its own ranks.