27.09.2006
Anti-CPGB ritual?
The CPGB's motions to Respect conference have again been ruled out of order - before being accepted after protest. Mark Fischer reports
We do hope that it will not become an annual ritual that CPGB motions to Respect conferences are initially disqualified because they have supposedly missed deadlines.
Last year, readers may recall, we had a little argy-bargy with the comrades in the Respect office because our motions initially bounced back to our e-account and were resubmitted with a covering note the next day (admittedly after the formal deadline by then). We provided the comrades with evidence of the date and time of the transmission - they were a tad reluctant to take our word for it - and our material was eventually accepted. Grudgingly.
This year has been even sillier. Our two motions - one on accountability in Respect and the other urging support for John McDonnell's challenge for the Labour leadership - were sent well before the official deadline of midnight on September 14. However, on the day after this deadline - during the afternoon of September 15 - the Respect office emailed a message to all members informing them that the e-address previously advertised to receive conference motions was in fact faulty. An alternative was given for people to contact.
This message was initially missed by our hard-pressed comrades in the Party office - when it was finally retrieved, we immediately sent our motions to the new address, with a note explaining the delay.
On September 20, we received a letter from Elaine Graham-Leigh informing us that our motions were not to be taken by conference, as "we do have to adhere to the strict deadline of midnight on September 14, as set out in the conference standing orders, and we cannot accept any resolutions submitted after that date".
This was odd, you might think. After all, we presume that the Respect officers had sent out the email warning about the dodgy e-address (after the deadline had already passed, remember) precisely because it anticipated the sort of problem that we had encountered - and we surely cannot have been the only people who were caught out by this technical hitch at their end?
To be fair, comrade Graham-Leigh was subsequently helpful with this problem and certainly did not display the sort of curt hostility we habitually attract from the Socialist Workers Party comrades in the Respect office. We do suspect, however, than this incident is indicative of a more general culture of intolerance and anti-CPGBism that pervades the upper echelons of Respect. If this technical problem had potentially hampered any comrades' ability to submit their democratically agreed motions to the annual conference, then the logical solution would have been to simply extend the deadline and acknowledge that some flexibility was called for.
On September 25, comrade Graham-Leigh wrote to inform us - after we had again provided conclusive proof of the date and time our motions were sent - that they had been accepted after all and would appear on the conference order paper.
If it happens again in 2007, comrades, even the most generous-spirited souls in the ranks of the CPGB may spot a pattern emerging "¦