15.11.2007

Salvage operation

There are now two Respects nationally. And in Tower Hamlets - more than anywhere else - this split is replicated on the ground. Simon Wells reports on the latest conflicts

There are now two Respects nationally. And in Tower Hamlets - more than anywhere else - this split is replicated on the ground. But there is still one common e-list for the borough's membership. On November 4 an email was circulated by the Socialist Workers Party's Jackie Turner, inviting members to a public meeting on November 12 with the title 'Our vision'.

A couple of hours later another message was posted to the e-list asking, "Why has an advertisement for this meeting been sent out on the authority of Jackie Turner? The Tower Hamlets committee has not approved this meeting and Jackie Turner is only the joint secretary of Tower Hamlets Respect. She has no right to call any public meeting in the name of Tower Hamlets Respect. This meeting advertises two of the councillors who have resigned the Respect whip. These councillors have done enormous damage to Respect in Tower Hamlets. Why should they be on any Respect platform?"

This was posted by Azmal Hussain, chair of Tower Hamlets Respect, prominent businessman and an ally of George Galloway. Hussain was not best pleased by the fact that the chair of the 'Our vision' meeting was to be Ken Livingstone's former adviser, Kumar Murshid, a recent defector from Labour who is firmly in the SWP Respect camp.

Hussain continued: "And who is this Kumar Murshid? He has been a member of Respect for five minutes and does not hold any elected post in Tower Hamlets Respect. If the SWP wants to hold a meeting with the councillors who have resigned the Respect whip, then they should hold it in their own name. They should not pretend it is a Respect meeting. Of course, the SWP does not want to do that because they know only they would come to such a meeting. The meeting advertised for November 12 with the ex-Respect councillors is not a Tower Hamlets Respect public meeting."

This was backed up the next day by another supporter of the Galloway-businessmen Respect. "As a fully paid member of Respect, I would like to request that none of my membership fee goes towards paying for any event such as this which has no endorsement from the current Respect Tower Hamlets committee." He added: "I am sure many other members feel the same and should voice their concern about our money being misused in such manner!"

However, the Galloway Respect main counterattack came with a message posted from their official address, info@therespectparty.org. The email declared comrade Turner redundant, along with all her SWP comrades on the committee: "Kevin Ovenden was coopted as the joint secretary of Tower Hamlets Respect, along with Aulad Miah. Tony Collins was coopted as treasurer, and Jahid Ahmed was appointed as joint moderator of the Tower Hamlets e-list."

As for the next Tower Hamlets meeting, it had in fact been arranged for November 25: "Please note - the meeting at Kingsley Hall tomorrow (Monday) evening is cancelled." This provoked a speedy riposte from comrade Turner, who urged: "Dear all, please come along to this very important meeting. It is not cancelled."

Sure enough, shortly after 7pm on November 12 a cohort of SWP members were waiting outside Kingsley Hall - along with a couple of comrades from the Socialist Party with their paper, hoping to pick off a few disillusioned SWP/Respect members. They were eventually joined by a number of non-SWP members and around 45 people gathered as the meeting was called to order.

Comrade Murshid began by apologising for the late start in a small room rather than the main hall. This was because "someone underhand" had cancelled the booking and so we would have to make do. Things did indeed become a little cramped, as another 20 or so people dribbled in during the course of the evening.

Murshid said the meeting came at a difficult time for Respect and that the problems are being played out in the wider Tower Hamlets community. Particularly affected, he said, was Oliur Rahman who the previous night had been attacked by three people he could not identify - the split has generated a fair amount of thuggery and we should roundly condemn it.

Next up was comrade Rahman himself, looking none the worse for the attack he had suffered. Compared to the violence they were prepared to employ, the sneaky cancelling of a booking by the other side was small fry. He avoided naming names or pointing fingers, but in his opinion violence was unacceptable and disgraceful. All four councillors who had resigned the whip had received direct and indirect threats, but there had been lots of calls of support from friends and opponents. But there had been not a word of condemnation from Galloway, he complained.

He then turned to the recent rumours of the four breakaway Respect councillors, led by himself, entering into "coalition talks" with the Liberal Democrats. He categorically denied this (although he did not deny talking to the Lib Dems - he was prepared to work with other groups, he said). The rumours were started by a mischief-making article in the East London Advertiser, which had been picked up and reported by numerous blogs such as Socialist Unity.

Second on the platform was SWP leader Lindsey German, who commented that the attacks were a "sign of strength" (I think she meant the SWP's rather than Galloway's) - they show that the opposition do not have a political argument. Giving us a foretaste of what we can expect from the SWP Respect conference at the weekend, she said that Respect is a home for all those left of Labour - not for "one community", but everyone. She said that there are "those people" who will not vote for women or socialists, but "I am proud to be a socialist". Rather optimistically she hoped to get "a good vote" in the May 2008 Greater London Authority elections - although she did acknowledge that this would now be harder. An understatement, I think.

Councillor Rania Khan was third on the platform. Like comrade Rahman, but unlike the other two breakaway councillors, Ahmed Hussain and Lufta Begum, she is not formally an SWP member. People needed to know why she resigned the whip, she said. Her image of Respect was as an anti-war party, an anti-capitalist party, a party of trade unions and social justice, but she said there are people using the Respect platform for their own self-interest, people who are "career politicians". That, of course, is the SWP's new code for Galloway, the people's anti-imperialist hero until just a few weeks ago.

Comrade Khan said her resignation of the whip had been a unilateral decision, and that the SWP's John Rees had even urged her to stay and fight within the Respect group. Strange, then, that the other three had also rejected comrade Rees's advice (instruction?) and agreed on the same "unilateral decision". Obviously we can expect comrades Hussain and Begum to be summarily expelled from the SWP for breaking party discipline.

She commented, without any trace of irony in her voice, that there had been a steady deterioration in principles in Tower Hamlets Respect. But, as is usual with the breakaway four, there was a marked absence of detail concerning this "deterioration". But she did say that group leader Abjol Miah had treated his councillors with disrespect and like children, and for him socialists are not welcome.

Kumar Murshid now joined in the attack on the Galloway camp from the chair. "The community" had bestowed a huge honour on George Galloway, but he did not "live up to their aspirations". He had not responded to the trust placed in him or taken responsibility for his actions. Comrade Murshid made no comment on the SWP's consistent position, adopted to accommodate Galloway, of rejecting measures of accountability within Respect. He said Galloway should have been a champion for Tower Hamlets, but he had missed an historic opportunity - he should have "died in the ditch" to prevent a split. Instead, he had aligned himself with the most backward, rightwing elements within Respect.

In line with the SWP's sudden conversion to anti-islamism (or is it "islamophobia"?), Murshid declared that the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe "do not represent the whole community", although Galloway has other ideas and thinks they do. Furthermore, we cannot build a coalition on the basis of "one community", yet Galloway was happy to fight alongside the "islamist right wing" with their "pocket members", who are prepared to "flout democratic procedures".

After that little outburst, Murshid got his breath back and then opened up the floor for debate. However, this was an SWP-dominated meeting (most of the muslim members, who made up perhaps a third of the audience, did not speak) and a good many of the contributions from the floor were self-delusional, blithely ignoring the battle for Respect and concentrating on housing, health and union issues.

Nevertheless, loyal SWP member Paul McGarr was prepared to reveal more than John Rees would have owned up to. He said that up until a week ago the two sides had met to attempt to reach a compromise in Tower Hamlets, but Abjol Miah would not budge. He had been a "thorn in the side" of the SWP since Respect got going in Tower Hamlets. Comrade McGarr pointed out that the divisions went back a long way - Miah had opposed the selection of comrade Rahman, Respect's first elected councillor, because he did not have "the right connections".

So what was the SWP thinking back then? Presumably Rees and co thought they could control Miah or get him onside. This shows that it was the SWP leaders, not Galloway, who did not understand "the community" - they were no match for the businessmen's network with their ability to conjure up many dozens of "pocket members".

Another comrade complained that Galloway was acting in an unprincipled way by sharing platforms with rightwing people within Respect. Presumably the SWP's welcoming of "community leader" defectors from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives and even proposing them as election candidates is beyond reproach. Amongst the long list of other newly discovered Galloway crimes, for which he was denounced by SWPers, were not believing in the white working class, compromising on Respect's principles and being unable to work in a coalition.

John Rees's contribution was rather anodyne by his standards. Comparing the current meeting with the recent chaotic affairs at the Galloway Respect's Club Row headquarters, he said this was a properly chaired meeting, properly organised, where everyone was allowed to speak and where you were "not picking your mates for councillor".

Of course, the SWP would never dream of picking its "mates for councillor" or for conference delegate. Comrade Rees said that "no-one is bigger than the community" - including himself, clearly: he would never ditch the organisation he helped create once he realised he could no longer hope to be selected to contest a winnable council seat. However, he informed the audience that "We are going to be here when George Galloway is a memory."

It remains to be seen, though, how much comrade Rees can salvage from his Tower Hamlets mauling at Galloway's hands. A lot less than he went in with, that is for sure.