04.11.2004

SWP in denial

Many independent delegates and observers were deeply unhappy with the intolerant atmosphere and blatant gerrymandering

JOHN NICHOLSON
Manchester delegate
Conference started with a really good debate on ‘War and imperialism’. Most, if not all, agreed with the direction of that discussion, on how to fight Bush and Blair. Contributions from all the different speakers were received really positively.
However, for me there was a huge low point by the end of the first day - not just because motions on abortion rights and others were defeated, but because of the scale of the defeat. At this point, particularly the SWP introduced the notion that the movers were being “deliberately divisive”. That was a complete insult - particularly to those women and men who have fought for of a woman’s right to choose for many, many years. It was totally out of order.

This attitude was reinforced as soon as we got back into the hall on the second day - I don’t think there was anything positive at all on the Sunday. It felt like back in the 80s, when I was involved in the Labour left. We encouraged any delegates we had at Labour Party conference to give out leaflets and petitions. They would come back, having of course totally failed to do so, saying, ‘You don’t understand what the atmosphere was like. People simply wouldn’t take our stuff.’

That’s what it felt like today. As soon as there was the slightest hint of dissent you were targeted as a troublemaker. I got the impression that this was wider than the actual SWP membership. There seemed to have been quite a few people there who have come into politics through the anti-war movement. I don’t want to be disparaging about anybody coming new into politics, but, on the other hand, they were very rightwing.

A lot of views that were expressed from the platform about housing, about anti-social behaviour orders, council tax, etc were not challenged and the leadership view was simply accepted. People simply did not put any speaker’s slips in - which is of course the reason that the chair got through conference so swiftly. I am not used to being at a political event where people do not seek to speak. There were more than 300 people and so many resolutions were moved formally, such as on proportional representation. This is a very important issue, which I have spent many, many hours discussing - you need to have some sort of debate on such questions.

Then of course we had the sequence of attacks by Michael Lavalette, Salma Yaqoob, Chris Bambery, Lindsey German and others. They were making accusations of being “deliberately divisive”, “dishonest”, “undemocratic”, “deceptive” and then finally saying that people were not in favour of the anti-war movement - attacks that were thrown at every single mover of motions in the constitutional section. These were motions that were calling for an internal newspaper; for democratic platforms inside the party; for proposals on how the national council could work better, etc. Simple, constructive motions that were not meant to be divisive at all (such an accusation may or may not be true in relation to the CPGB’s motions).

But the idea that those dissenting motions were somehow targeting George Galloway, because he said that he cannot be expected to live on a worker’s wage and he does not agree with a woman’s right to choose, is just patently silly. I would say that those movers were actually more in tune with George Galloway than they were with the SWP. The SWP have denied their own politics completely, in order to appeal to some unspecified group of people outside.

The worst thing for me was Lindsey German’s speech, saying this is “not a socialist organisation” and that as socialists we have failed to reach out to wider sections of society. Now that is almost word for word what Tony Blair said at the Labour Party conference in 1994 when he announced that clause four would be removed from the constitution. At that point I left the Labour Party and now I am leaving Respect.

If the room today had been full of all those newly politicised young people from all sorts of backgrounds that I am working with in the Manchester No Borders campaign and the anti-war movement, our task would have been to convince them that socialism is not what they have been taught at school. That it has nothing to do with Stalin’s dictatorship. But that was not what Lindsey German was doing today. She was saying that there is a more rightwing population out there that we need to bring on board. She is looking at a very respectable set of people to whom we can appeal for votes.

Electorally, there is of course some sort of logic to this: people who can vote normally live in houses, are registered, are not migrants, are not homeless, are not destitute - in other words, a stable, sitting, residential population. Their views are well to the right of the organisations and people who have been involved in building the Socialist Alliance and Respect. I certainly do not want to be a part of this. I left the Labour Party with Arthur Scargill, because not only had Labour dismantled any commitment to socialism it ever had: it had removed any method of challenging the organisation from within. I have just witnessed Respect not only removing any direction towards socialism, but, by voting against the rights of platforms to organise, they have also removed the democratic possibility of challenging it.

This is not the end of politics. But there is a short-term problem: the SWP is the biggest force on the left in England and it is difficult to be involved in politics without engaging with them. But let’s see what happens in the general election. If they put all their eggs in the Respect basket, maybe they will suffer the consequences. There is a real possibility that many SWP and Respect members, who have been told that they will win seats and massive amounts of votes, will be awfully disappointed and demoralised.

The anti-war movement was a liberal movement, so we should not be surprised if the vast majority of people involved in it will be voting for the Liberal Democrats. The Socialist Alliance input into the Stop the War Coalition was never explicit. That was done on purpose by the SWP and it was wrong. Some of it was accidental, but it was never rectified. In consequence, you will have Charles Kennedy being able to present the Lib Dems as the anti-war party at the next election.

At some point, the left in this country has to stick with something. It cannot keep launching the Socialist Alliance, Respect and this or that. Even if it will take a long time to do it, the left has to sit together in the same room, talking through things and agreeing to stay together for a foreseeable future. I think this conference has made this prospect considerably harder. I cannot go to other people now and advocate that they join Respect. There is a better chance to get something useful out of the Campaign Group of MPs - and that is very depressing.

GREG TUCKER
Lambeth delegate and International Socialist Group member
There were some good decisions taken from our point of view, particularly, of course, the decision to have a national newspaper. That was a step forward in the direction of making Respect more than a coalition - ie, a real party. However, it is quite clear that there is a democratic deficit, to put it politely. You do not have to agree with every point that somebody is making in order to hear them out. It is quite a negative and sad view that some comrades have taken in this respect and this needs to be overcome.

I do not think that the right to form platforms, the right to have an internal bulletin or the right for self-organisation of oppressed sections are particularly revolutionary positions. It is hard to understand why some comrades have reacted so defensively against them. They would have helped to build Respect, not hindered it. We heard lots of good speeches on Saturday about broadening out Respect, involving the whole left and so forth.

But on Sunday we have clearly taken a step back from that. People have to realise that we cannot build a broad organisation with only one revolutionary party in the centre. This has been tried in the last century and it has failed. We need to build an organisation that involves all sectors of the left and not just one particular organisation. Unfortunately, this is not what we are building at the moment. In some cases, I agreed with the SWP’s position - but their motivation behind it made me often change my mind and vote against them.

However, overall this weekend has been positive and we have taken some big steps forward. As the ISG we have of course been deeply involved in writing the constitution and we are quite happy with what has come out of it.

The best way of overcoming the problems in Respect is by building it. At the moment, it is heavily influenced by the SWP. But when it has thousands of members and the SWP is in a small minority, we will not hear speeches like we did today.

BEV LAIDLAW
Sheffield reserve delegate
Unfortunately, I had not been given notification of the deadline for motions and delegate nominations, so at our selection meeting the chair turned up with a pre-produced list of 11 people, which did not include me, although I had indicated for months that I would like to be delegate. I was finally elected as a reserve delegate - ie, number 12.

As only 10 of our 11 delegates turned up at conference, I asked if I could take up my position as replacement delegate. However, our local chair, Maxine Bowler (SWP, and newly elected member of Respect national council), told me from Saturday morning onwards that comrade Phil Turner was “on his way”. She said that she saw no need to actually phone him, so I offered to phone him instead in order to find out when exactly he would arrive. She refused to give me his mobile number.

At 3pm on Saturday I asked again if I could take up my elected position as a delegate. After all, Sheffield branch is entitled to 11 votes and we were one short throughout the day. She again told me he was on his way and that I couldn’t be a delegate. He eventually did turn up - at 2pm on Sunday, just two hours before conference ended!

In my union, the PCSU, the practice is obviously different: if somebody does not turn up, their position is taken over by the replacement - at least until they show up. It seemed quite clear to me that they did not want me in there.

The only motion that our branch submitted was the emergency resolution on the PCSU that I put forward and it is very disappointing that as an observer I was not allowed to move it. I will certainly report this at our next union meeting where a fair number of Respect members will be present. I will also complain at my next Respect meeting that elected me a reserve delegate in the first place.

DAVE LANDAU
Islington observer
Nothing in this conference has surprised me much and it has confirmed some quite rightwing trends inside Respect. This was very clearly illustrated in the discussion on abortion and secularism. I was slightly taken aback at the vehemence with which particularly the SWP spoke against these kinds of motions. Rank and file SWP members were quite clearly not thinking about these motions, but were under the whip to vote in specific ways.

Having said that, there were some interested contributions despite the stage-managed character of the event. In the discussion on asylum on the first day, for example, some members did get up to question immigration controls. Of course, this debate was not supposed to talk about immigration controls (the motion on open borders was shifted to the end of the second day), but quite a few people spoke to the left of the resolutions that were adopted.

The conference seemed to be composed mainly of people in and around the SWP. It is hard to say how that reflects Respect on a national level, because delegates seemed to have been hand-picked. Having made such a great play of “breaking out of the ghetto” of the Socialist Alliance, there was little evidence of it at conference.

GRAHAM MARTIN
York delegate, former SWP member
Having a two-day conference was a good idea and it is great that so many motions came forward. Unfortunately they did not make enough space to have any real debate on any of them. There should have been more time to discuss things properly.

In my speech I put forward a policy on ‘open borders’, which was opposed by Elaine Heffernan from the SWP. She was absolutely adamant that what I am standing for is completely counterproductive. Her weakest argument was that immigration policy is now decided by the European Union, implying that we do not have to take a position on it. But didn’t we put George Galloway and other candidates forward in the European elections? Shouldn’t we have a policy for all areas of decision-making? Surely, we would not be voting for closed borders and immigration controls in Brussels. Or would we just leave it to ‘trust’ and hope that our representatives get it right on instinct?

Of course we lost the vote, but there was considerable dissent of about 20 or 30 people, probably the biggest over the weekend. I am not a member of the CPGB and I find it outrageous that it was claimed that I am moving this motion in order to harm Respect or am interested in letting the British National Party in. I stood up because I simply want people from all over the world to be welcome in Britain.

JIM JEPPS
Colchester delegate
Conference was not as bad as it could have been. There was a worry initially that motions would all be tucked onto the end of the conference, with many controversial things falling off the agenda. This did not happen.

On a downside, I found the discussion quite flat and not as political for what is supposedly the ‘only show in town’ and ‘the place to be’. Also, some of the arguments have not been the most principled. For example, on the question of abortion they wheeled out one of their big guns, Lindsey German, to make sure that the motions from the CPGB and the ISG would not get accepted, although the latter was almost indistinguishable from the SWP’s motion. I was quite concerned about some of their arguments, which went like this: ‘I feel very strongly about this, but there are others with different opinions who also feel very strongly.’ I think as socialists we should try to persuade these people that they are wrong. Respect should be a broad organisation and members should be at liberty to disagree with some of its policies, but that the policy should be there and clear.

Worse still was Michael Lavalette’s response to the CPGB’s motion on the worker’s wage that I moved. He accused me of being dishonest, because I believe candidates coming out of the movement should be with the movement and not placed above it with extra wages, extra importance, sharp suits and all the rest of it. Michael’s response was not meant to persuade comrades that I am wrong - he tried to persuade them that I had underhand motives.

I explained to George Galloway afterwards that the motion was not directed against him, as comrade Lavalette had claimed. I am a great fan of Galloway’s and I think he and Mark Serwotka gave the best speeches of the conference. They spoke about unity, solidarity, pluralism and about building a democratic party. If we could translate into Respect branches what those two comrades advocated, then Respect would be fantastically transformed.

I think the SWP tried to smear all those people who opposed their motions or put forward independently minded resolutions. Frankly, the repercussions of this lack of fraternal discussion will be that normal Respect members feel that they cannot raise their head any more or put forward heartfelt independent motions. If you want to build a democratic organisation and encourage debate you have to accept that some people will say things you disagree with.

JOHN BLOOM
Hartlepool delegate and by-election candidate
It has been quite an impressively organised conference without too many hiccups. The quality of most of the discussion and particularly of the resolutions has been of quite a high standard. A lot of thought has gone into them. Very little that has been decided I would disagree with.

Maybe we are in some kind of honeymoon period, where a good deal of people seem to keep some of their deeply held opinions to themselves, in order to set up some basic ideas within the organisation. I would expect that maybe next year we might be seeing some more debates around particular points of view. So far, we have only discussed those very important policy areas where we need to come to joint decisions, like the war.

Take the electoral strategy. Of course many people throughout the country feel the urge to stand
against their particular MP, but that would possibly deliver us some very poor results. If we were five years down the line and the executive still had a veto on who would be allowed to stand where, that would be unacceptable. But we are still at the beginning and it is very important that we establish ourselves by having some very good results in a few selected areas. In Hartlepool, for example, we had a very good campaign, which was not really translated into votes. But at the end, we had the editor of our local paper complaining in an editorial that we were the only organisation with a decent, honest campaign and that we should have had a higher vote. The seeds have been planted, but you cannot win people over to socialism overnight.

If the national executive said that we should not stand in Hartlepool in the general elections then I would accept and defend that. We have to give each other a little more leeway and maybe put more trust into the executive than perhaps we would do in the years to come.

Respect is a coalition and none of us are hopefully trying to repeat the exact nature of our own organisation. No question, we will have to come back to some issues, like the worker’s wage - but maybe it was correct to leave them aside for the time being. When the organisation is stronger or it is challenged on some of these points, than we need to have answers. Hopefully we will find them in a comradely manner and argue hard without falling out.

Our local Socialist Alliance initially felt that we were bounced into Respect without much consultation, but maybe that was as much our fault for operating almost as an autonomous branch. In retrospect, our initial misgivings were misplaced. I am more and more confident that this organisation has the potential to be a genuinely open, comradely and useful vehicle for left politics for the coming years. I don’t think anybody is saying that Respect is the final article, but it is pretty much the only game in town.
As a libertarian socialist I am not in politics in order to be told what to do. I walk from an organisation when I am told what to do by an unrepresentative or undemocratic leadership elite. But I accept that there is a process by which we make this organisation more open, accountable and democratic. You cannot win all your battles in one day. As long as those with minority views have the possibility to become the majority, then Respect remains the organisation we can all work in.