24.03.2005
Drawing a class line between candidates
Should communists urge a vote for Respect in the general election? Only when the individual candidates can be broadly regarded as part of the working class movement, argues Peter Manson
Lindsey German: yes The CPGB's position - confirmed overwhelmingly at last weekend's aggregate of party members - is that we will only support working class anti-war candidates in the coming general election. At a time when the whole of British politics is characterised by continuing movement to the right, we need to draw firm class lines on May 5 - the date widely expected for the general election. Not only are New Labour and the Tories vying with each other to put forward the most anti-working class, anti-women's rights, anti-minority, anti-migrant and generally anti-democratic proposals, but the largest revolutionary grouping, the Socialist Workers Party, is following at a distance behind, hoping to garner support from amongst the ground vacated. Thus for the SWP even the old-Labour-type, economistic wish list that was the staple of the Socialist Alliance is now thought to be too 'extreme'. Added to that, an openly working class, socialist platform does not suit what is held to be the need of the hour: an alliance between the "secular socialists" (ie, the SWP itself) and the "muslim activists" radicalised by the anti-war upsurge. Naturally, when such an alliance takes on electoral form, in the shape of Respect, a great deal of compromise is required between what are, in the final analysis, the fundamentally opposed world views of religious idealism and working class socialism. As we know, it is the SWP that has been doing the giving away in terms of principle - on open borders, a republic, a worker's wage, abortion and on secularism itself - in order to keep onside what remains a largely phantom muslim right wing. George Galloway: yes When it comes to Respect, then, it is the working class element in our 'working class anti-war' formula that will be the determining factor. Whereas for other candidates - whether from the Labour Party or those to its left - a clear, consistent line in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and in favour of an immediate end to the occupation will often be the acid test, Respect candidates are more or less united behind a relatively principled position on this key question. However, what about the range of other vital working class issues that a party contesting a general election ought to be addressing? What about the vision for a different society - one based on the rule of the working class? As part of the left populist compromise, in place of such a vision Respect's manifesto will consist of ill-defined platitudes. It has already been made clear that each candidate will be free to interpret the lofty phrases in whatever way they see fit and, should anyone actually be elected, to vote on them in parliament according to their individual 'conscience'. Yvonne Ridley: no In such circumstances we can no longer urge a blanket Respect vote, as we did in the June 2004 European Union elections, just a few months after its formation. Since then it has become clear that Respect has not recruited on any scale from the anti-war movement and that the SWP domination on the ground is overwhelming. Yet the SWP stubbornly insists on sticking to its preconceived template - where the "secular socialists" are just about to be massively outnumbered by the floods of new activists, amongst them hundreds, if not thousands, of muslims. Of course, the CPGB has consistently argued that newly radicalised elements are actually more open to revolutionary ideas and that it is not only fundamentally opportunist, but counterproductive, to water down socialist principle in an attempt to win them to a left-led formation. Our tactics must be aimed at forcing the abandonment of this disastrous SWP line, at driving a wedge between Respect's two objectively opposed wings. That is why we will refuse to vote for Respect candidates who are not part of the working class movement. Of the 26 constituencies where Respect has confirmed it will stand so far (there are unlikely to be more than one or two others), 25 have selected their candidates. Predictably, the SWP has the lion's share of those whose political origins are working class, with 11 in all. These are: Lindsey German (West Ham), Michael Lavalette (Preston), Tony Staunton (Plymouth Devonport), Paulette North (Bristol East), Heather Falconer (Neath), Mark Krantz (Manchester Stretford and Urmston), Jill Russell (Tyne Bridge), Maxine Bowler (Sheffield Central), John Tipple (Harwich), Tom Woodcock (Cambridge) and Dean Ryan (Hackney South). Despite the SWP's opportunist electoralism, these individuals are all working class politicians with a record of hard work as trade union, anti-war, pro-migrant, etc activists. The election of any of these would - despite the undoubted problems posed by the left populist platform they are upholding - give our movement a boost: hopefully they could act as workers' tribunes in parliament, on the picket line, in the press. The same would apply to four other selected candidates: George Galloway (Bethnal Green and Bow), Oliur Rahman (Poplar and Canning Town), Berny Parkes (Dorset South) and Paddy O'Keeffe (Hove). (It is worth noting, by the way, that the SWP is the only organised group within Respect whose members are candidates. The International Socialist Group, for example, has not seen its sycophancy rewarded with even a token contest.) George Galloway's record as the main spokesperson of the anti-war movement, expelled from the Labour Party for daring to call on British troops to disobey illegal orders, speaks for itself. Of course, Galloway is a highly contradictory figure. He combines left Labourism with a soft spot for Stalinism and hobnobbing with 'third world' dictators. He also has some extremely backward views on a number of social questions - abortion, border controls, etc. But, despite his considerable defects, on balance his defeat of the diehard Blairite, Oona King, and re-election to parliament would represent a plus. Comrades Parkes and O'Keeffe are Labour men who have come over to Respect. O'Keeffe is a "lifelong socialist" who works as a full-timer for Unifi (part of the Amicus union), while Parkes is a former Merseyside Labour councillor and Unison militant, who describes himself as a "green socialist". Comrade Rahman is a PCS union activist from a (not very religious) muslim background, who is Respect's first councillor elected as such, in London's East End. His views have more in common with the SWP than the Muslim Association of Britain, as his interview with this paper demonstrated (Weekly Worker June 24 2004). Talking of MAB, none of its members are amongst the Respect candidates, to the best of my knowledge. Anas Altikriti, former MAB president, was asked to stand, but declined for personal reasons. However, the "muslim activist" wing of Respect has (at least) six candidates, none of whom should receive the votes of socialists and working class partisans. Salma Yaqoob (Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath) might have the ear of the SWP, but she is also a MAB ally, and first and foremost she ought to be considered a "muslim activist". Her views are a mix of anti-imperialism, bourgeois socialism and liberal islam. Another candidate said to be "close to" MAB is Mobeen Qureshi (Luton South). Like Ali Zaidi (Tooting) he is a member of the muslim 'community' (read: representative of the local mosque). Abdul Khaliq Mian (East Ham) is described as a muslim elder, while Mohammed Naseem (Birmingham Perry Barr) is an official at Birmingham Central Mosque, with whom the SWP first attempted to strike a deal in order to bring together a 'peace and justice coalition'. Another Respect candidate undeserving of support is Yvonne Ridley (Leicester South), the former Express journalist who converted to islam after being held hostage by the Taliban. She was once a Labour member, true, but her views are closer to liberalism than any kind of working class socialism. Essentially she is a middle class do-gooder who sends her daughter to a £16,000-a-year private school and mocks the idea of a workers' candidate on a worker's wage. She famously told this paper that she would need "three or four times as much" as the "meagre Westminster wages" of an MP (Weekly Worker July 1 2004). The position of Raja Gul Raiz (Cardiff Central) is contradictory. He is secretary of an islamic centre in Cardiff and a member of the central working committee of the Muslim Council of Britain. A bus driver, he is a trade unionist and former Labour Party member who switched to the Welsh Socialist Alliance, standing as its candidate in the 2003 Welsh assembly elections. For the moment I will reserve judgement on whether he should be supported. Another candidate who is difficult to categorise is Janet Alder, sister of the 'unlawfully killed' Christopher Alder, who was racially abused by police and died, half naked, in a Hull police station in 1998. Janet has campaigned tirelessly to bring his killers to justice (the case against three police officers was eventually dismissed when the judge directed the jury to find them not guilty of his manslaughter) and has frequently featured in Socialist Worker. Janet is definitely working class sociologically. But what matters first and foremost for us is her politics, which are still vague. She is standing against arch-Blairite David Lammy in Tottenham, and has moved down from her Lancashire home to contest the seat. She says she is now concerned about much more than the single issue of deaths in custody, referring to "injustices in healthcare, employment, civil liberties" and comparing the treatment her brother received with that meted out to Iraqis under occupation. She is clearly someone who is moving leftwards, towards the adoption of a working class world view, and, on balance, I think she should be supported. The two remaining candidates are Jazz Khan (Slough) and Nadia Fazal (Walsall South). As yet I know nothing about them, apart from the fact that they are both muslims, and am not in a position to offer advice on whether or not they deserve working class votes. The candidate for Bradford North has yet to be selected.
Worker