19.09.2007

Make or break moment

Here, the CPGB introduces its motions to conference - if you support them, sign up now!

Respect's annual conference, to be held over the weekend of November 17-18, will be a decisive moment. Not so much for the Respect coalition itself. While it was impossible to predict its exact form, it was inevitable that this unprincipled and extremely unstable lash-up would hit the buffers at some point.

Clearly, this will be a make or break moment for the Socialist Workers Party itself. The SWP central committee document replying to Galloway's bombshell letter to Respect national committee members will perhaps raise a smile from more seasoned members of the organisation when it states that Respect's socialists have "made plenty of compromises" in order to keep the show on the road. However, the SWP now wants to draw a line in the sand. It refuses to withdraw John Rees from Respect's leadership, as demanded by George Galloway. Amazingly, that would amount to "subordination of the socialist left within Respect".

In fact the SWP took the lead in subordinating the socialist element of Respect to non-working class politics right from the very beginning. Indeed, it is this that gives it its distinctive - popular frontist - character. The CPGB is sponsoring a motion that highlights SWP's past betrayal and gives the comrades the chance to redeem themselves (motion 1). Will they vote for socialist principles this time around, or will they continue the voluntary "subordination" of principled socialist politics?

Our second motion calls for the setting up of a commission of enquiry into a violent incident that took place on July 7 during the second full day of the annual Marxism event (see Weekly Worker July 12). Martin Smith, the SWP national organiser, attacked our comrade, Simon D. This event - outrageous enough as it is - has a relevance to the current crisis of Respect and the SWP. Simon was expelled from the SWP in 2006 for a few minor political differences.

Martin Smith subsequently informed him that it was in the organisations "constitution" that "An expelled member of the SWP cannot attend SWP public events (that includes Marxism/rallies/public meetings)" (Weekly Worker June 8 2006). The current buzz phrase for this sort of practice is "anathematisation".

This is not the first time that CPGBers have been attacked at Marxism. The last time it happened we wrote to the SWP CC making it clear that it was "incumbent on the leadership of what is currently the largest group on the revolutionary left to make its position on violence in the workers' movement crystal clear to people both in the wider movement and to all members of the SWP, at every level of the organisation" (see Weekly Worker July 7 2003).

We received no reply to this letter and commented at the time: "It is a requirement of the leadership of [the SWP] to condemn physical attacks on political opponents in the movement - including ones undertaken by their own membership. Unless this is forthcoming, the movement is justified in the presumption that the SWP actually supports the resolution of political differences with fists and boots."

Now, as controversy and differences begin to emerge in the ranks of the SWP-Respect, it is important that thuggishness is rejected and replaced by a culture of civilised debate.

If you are a Respect member and would like to register your support for either or both of these two motions, please contact us via our box number or sign up online.