19.10.2005
Stop press
The Socialist Workers Party is again trying to run from debate by not accepting our motions to Respect conference
As this issue of the Weekly Worker was going to press, we received a phone call from Ghada Razuki, an SWP member who works in the Respect office. She informed us that she had decided - after consultation, we presume - not to accept the two motions for the forthcoming Respect conference sponsored by the CPGB and submitted with the signatures of 20 Respect members. (One sought to commit Respect to opposition to the Blair government's religious hatred legislation, the other to make opposition to immigration controls policy). We were informed that is because these resolutions arrived at the Respect office on October 15. In fact, they had been emailed from the CPGB office on October 14 - the official deadline - but had bounced back. They were re-submitted the next day with a note requesting a phone call "if there is any problem". It took a full six days for that call to come; our motions are rejected, apparently. CPGB national organiser, Mark Fischer, comments: "Of course, this has nothing to do with deadlines. This is politics. "The leaders of the SWP are travelling to the right at a breathtaking speed. Rather than justify this openly, they prefer to silence or intimidate left critics and censor principled motions. And that's not surprising. They should be ashamed of the fact that they vote down calls to abolish inhuman immigration laws; they should be deeply embarrassed about supporting Blair's attacks on free speech. "The odd thing is that the SWP appears to think that this sort of incondite, toy-town Stalinism actually works. I can assure them that CPGBers will be making a great deal of noise about this crude censorship - and the cowardly opportunism that prompts it. If John Rees and his comrades seriously believe that this sort of nonsense will kill the debate, then they are being very foolish. It actually draws attention to it, comrades. "The obvious truth is that if the SWP felt confident about the political implications of the Respect project, then it would have no problem debating the politics of our motions. The attempt to bureaucratically circumvent that debate underlines just how politically vulnerable SWPers are - from the very top of the organisation, down to the local branches." The CPGB will not accept this diktat. We campaigned against the Respect office's crude attempt to deny the right of 20 members to submit resolutions to conference and - as conceded by comrade Razuki in her terse phone call this morning - we won (Weekly Worker September 8). Send letters of protest to the Respect office, if you can in time for the next executive committee meeting on Saturday, October 22. Send protests to office@respectcoalition.org and don't forget to pass us a copy at office@cpgb.org.uk. Form a Respect left opposition Conference fringe meeting Saturday November 19 6pm, Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1 all welcome, lots of time for debate
Worker