04.06.2008
Rees project disintegrates
Peter Manson looks at the fallout from the Respect debacle in Tower Hamlets and reports on another big-name resignation from the SWP
Oliur Rahman, Respect’s first elected councillor, has confirmed to the Weekly Worker that he is considering leaving the Left List (formerly Respect - Socialist Workers Party version) and either switching to Labour or getting back together with “the George Galloway group”. John Rees, SWP-Left List leader, has surely now met his Waterloo.
Comrade Rahman was one of four councillors who, egged on by the SWP, announced in October last year that they had resigned the Respect whip on Tower Hamlets council and formed the Respect (Independent) group. It was a decisive moment in sealing the national split, which became a reality the following month.
Although comrade Rahman says that everything is “just rumours”, he confirmed that he had been in talks with both Labour and Galloway’s Respect Renewal. Even the Conservatives had approached him, he said, but “As a socialist I would rather not do politics than go to them.” That, of course, is precisely what his fellow Respect (Independent) councillor, Ahmed Hussain, did in February. Hussain must be the only SWP member (!) ever to have defected straight to the Tories.
The other two councillors are Lutfa Begum, who was also (still is?) an SWP member; and Rania Khan. Begum, who represents Limehouse ward, told me politely: “I don’t want to comment, thank you”, while Rania Khan (Bromley-by-Bow) was a little more abrupt: “I don’t really have time for this, thanks.” A similar tight-lipped response came from all the Labour people I approached.
But the SWP leadership is clearly preparing its comrades for the worst. The May 28 Party Notes, its internal bulletin, carried the following brief item: “Tower Hamlets council - Last week, the Tower Hamlets local paper, the East London Advertiser, ran a story stating that our three councillors were going to leave us and join the Labour Party. Comrades have to be aware that in the current political climate our three Tower Hamlets councillors are coming under massive pressure from the Labour Party and the local community to join the Labour group on the council. Obviously we are doing everything we can to hold them and give them support.”
Comrade Rahman commented that he had no control over what appears in Party Notes. It is up to the SWP what conclusion it comes to, but “for the moment I’m happy where I am”. However, “for the moment” is the operative phrase, for comrade Rahman is far from “happy”.
He said: “Respect has been destroyed. It has no future in the longer term.” Although he had “no regrets” about resigning the Respect whip, which he saw mainly as an act of rebellion against the methods of Respect group leader Abjol Miah, he very much regrets the chain of events which that decision helped to spark: “If we had stayed together, then Respect would now be representing working class people” in the London assembly (and the British National Party would not have got elected, in his view).
That is why comrade Rahman has not ruled out some kind of reunification - especially in view of the result for City and East constituency in the May 1 assembly elections. While the vote for Respect-Galloway was “good” - 26,760 (14.59%) for Hanif Abdulmuhit - the return for the Left List was “not so good” (an understatement): Michael Gavan polled only 2,274 votes, or 1.24%.
So the writing is on the wall for Oli when his St Dunstan’s and Stepney Green seat comes up for re-election in 2010: “It is not easy to win. It was disappointing that there were two sets of candidates with two different leaflets saying the same thing. We will have to see if we can work together again.” Comrade Rahman is clear that as a sitting MP George Galloway “had to stand” in the GLA elections, even though he himself was part of the rival Left List London-wide slate.
So does this talk of getting back together with Galloway mean Rahman has categorically rejected the “rumours” that he may join the Labour Party? Hardly. “I’m 27 and I would never say ‘never’, but at the moment I am where I am. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds.” Right now he is keen to continue his “work in the local community” - he mentioned campaigns on housing and against the anti-terror laws. He has been in talks with the police and does not want to see his work on alcohol and drug abuse go to waste.
Looking at it from this point of view, the logical thing for the three councillors to do would be to switch to Labour, with the promise of renomination for their respective wards. You can imagine how Lutfur Rahman, who is Labour group leader as well as leader of the council, is trying to entice his namesake: ‘We all value your dedication, Oli, and admire your socialist principles and sincere opposition to the war. But there are plenty of socialists in the Labour Party. Why not join them and continue to make a difference?’
What are the alternatives? Face obliteration standing for the Left List (or whatever any successor to it may be called in two years’ time) - the patriarchal businessmen’s network that saw him elected twice has now swung behind Respect-Galloway. Of course, that network could just as easily be used to the benefit of Labour or the Liberal Democrats in the future, but one thing is certain: there is no way it will be used ever again to garner votes for candidates of the SWP or its allies.
How about both wings of Respect getting back together? What a joke. Comrade Rahman may have been more concerned with local matters when he agreed to resign the Respect whip, but the SWP knew exactly what it was doing in provoking the split. Respect had proved to be a dead end for the purpose of getting its own comrades into the council chambers. Instead of being able to ride on the backs of the businessmen and muslim ‘community leaders’, the reverse was true. The SWP was providing the foot soldiers to help elect small capitalists and their friends and associates.
Now the SWP is looking to destroy the monster it created, not try to resurrect it. If comrade Rahman wants reunification with Respect Renewal, he will have to go back to Galloway and Miah with his tail between his legs. He says he is hoping that, whatever the three do, there will be a collective decision - at least that would give him a little more to play with at the negotiating table.
Steel will
Oli Rahman is not the first Left List candidate to have written off the whole Respect project. Within days of the May 1 debacle, Glyn Robbins, former chair of Tower Hamlets Respect and part of the Left List London-wide slate for the assembly, posted this message on Liam Mac Uaid’s blog: “So farewell then, Respect! ... I’ll miss it, but remember it fondly, in the belief that we can do it better next time.” Comrade Robbins went on to state the obvious: neither the Left List nor Respect “has a viable future in its current form” (May 6, http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com).
But neither comrade seems to have learnt many lessons from the Respect disaster. For them and many like them it was an alliance of a variety of forces to the left of Labour - and that can only be good, can’t it? The fact that it represented a further watering down of the revolutionary left’s Marxism, and - worse - was an alliance with bourgeois layers, seems to have escaped them.
Nor is there any sign that John Rees and co have learnt those lessons. They may have ditched the Respect popular front, but they have not ditched popular frontism. Their whole method reeks of it - just look at how they intend to mobilise their members against the BNP: “The strategy for anti-fascists is to unite the broadest possible forces against the Nazis, to expose and confound their attempts to pose as a legitimate democratic party, and to confront them on every front until they are driven out of the political mainstream and back into the gutter where they belong” (Socialist Worker May 24).
The SWP leaders really do believe that they belong in the “political mainstream” - alongside the “legitimate democratic” parties like Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories. Their strategy is not to mobilise against the system of capital, but to carve out a niche for themselves on the extreme left of the “political mainstream”. The abandonment of working class independence goes hand in hand with internal bureaucratic methods of control. Both in combination have led to the haemorrhaging of members - comrades who can easily identify the huge deficiencies in the SWP regime, but who by and large either drop out of politics altogether or drift further to the right.
A recent big name to have joined that growing band of ex-SWP members is comedian Mark Steel, who has confirmed on his official website that, while “I haven’t joined any party, or anything else”, he has indeed left his former organisation. He promises: “I will shortly write my reasons on here for parting company with the SWP” (www.marksteelinfo.com/pt/blog/default.aspx).
Comrade Steel was among those few who slated the SWP leadership in the run-up to the January 2008 conference. In Pre-conference Bulletin No2 he criticised the leadership’s lying method, its hyping up of the latest political opportunities and its dishonesty in “resisting discussion” (November 2007).
But he did not criticise the SWP’s overall political perspectives and even declined to “take sides” over the Respect split. So it came as no surprise when he publicly came out for Respect-Galloway during the London assembly elections. Recently he has featured quite prominently on the Respect Renewal website - he has an article and is advertised as appearing at a Southwark Respect fundraiser in July. I hear he is also due to speak at a meeting of the US International Socialist Organization later this month - the ISO was, of course, expelled from the SWP’s International Socialist Tendency in 2001.
But neither he nor any of the other fallout victims of the Respect catastrophe have identified the SWP’s real problem - its thoroughgoing opportunism and betrayal of the principle of working class independence.
