Walking away from an organisation when it starts to become uncomfortable because the political differences are sharpening is tempting but wrong. Life would be a great deal more pleasant if Respect were a different sort of organisation. However what is being thrashed out inside Respect is a struggle between conflicting views of how British politics are realigning and the organisational forms that follow from that.

The common view of Socialist Resistance supporters is that social democracy is in decline across many of its former heartlands. This process is more rapid in some places than in others. In Britain it has outflanked the Tories so far to the right on war, civil liberties, asylum, the unions and even Venezuela that David Cameron thinks that by talking left he may win the next election. It has changed from the party of reforms to become the driving force behind the neo-liberalisation of Britain.

Something like this perspective is commonplace on most of the British left which has responded to it in a variety of ways. The Socialist Alliance, Respect’s precursor, was weakened by the withdrawal of the Socialist Party and practically killed off by the SWP’s refusal to use it as the vehicle for intervention into the anti-war movement.

Bulwarks and limitations

Respect’s two main bulwarks are also its principal limitations. Despite his long labour movement history George Galloway has always operated as an individual. This habit has got a great deal worse in recent months. His long delayed statement on Big Brother is contemptuous of the organisation’s members and structures. Yet his methods are perfectly agreeable to the SWP leadership, itself a group which seldom has to defer to the views of the rank and file. Their leading members in Respect have transferred their own working practices into the new organisation. Decisions are made in closed and privileged circles and are retrospectively endorsed by the membership. Galloway holds the unspoken threat that he will walk away over Respect if its collective leadership looks like it may try to hold him to account.

Just at the moment when British politics is going through a realignment Respect is not part of the national discussion. Muslim votes have been used as a battering ram to win some seats on a principled basis. However outside the forces clustered around the Respect Party Platform there is no meaningful discussion or understanding of relating to the rest of the labour movement. We are offered a perspective of recruiting ones and twos and having the slow accumulation of electoral breakthroughs.

These are several and serious negative facts. Yet there are a lot of positives too. The first is that Respect has won 250 000 votes for a platform that is seen as anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. Every vote cast for it is a conscious vote for the left. In a period when levels of class struggle are so low this is some achievement.

If we look at the campaign around the council elections there is much to criticise. Candidates are spread thinly and the electoral challenge seems tokenistic in much of the country. But in Tower Hamlets and Newham every seat will be contested. There is a real chance of getting a core of class struggle councillors elected. If this happens they may become a national focus for anti-privatisation struggles and completely change Respect’s profile.

A transitional organisation

Our work around Respect Party Platform has demonstrated that there are people who are serious socialists who share our views. We would want them to be part of any new formation that emerges. We have also seen that individuals we might once have thought in the pockets of Galloway and the SWP are very capable of thinking for themselves. Salma Yaqoob is the obvious example. Moreover there does seem to be evidence of some discussion in the SWP on these matters.
Something similar is also true in the groups of activists who will be working in the elections. Virtually everyone who spoke at meetings in Tower Hamlets was critical of his TV appearance. Many of them are drawing our sort of conclusions about the need for organisational structures to control elected representatives. It is wrong for Marxists to walk away just when their demands are the centre of the controversy and are winning new adherents.

My view is that Respect is a transitional organisation. It does not have the right constellation of forces to develop into a new working class party. We have long argued that there is much about it that actively dissuades many working class militants. Yet it is the first organisation in decades in Britain to have electoral success opposing an imperialist war and there is no doubt that it, or at least many of its components will be part of the next stage of the creation of a new workers’ party in Britain. Nor is there any question that some of the forces gathering around other initiatives will also be part of this process. That’s the reason we have started to relate to them, albeit modestly. It is because our current has a unique contribution to make in terms of its understanding of socialist democracy that we continue to endure the slings and arrows of Galloway’s semi Stalinist antics.