I can say with some confidence that there will be a pretty detailed report of this forum in the next issue of a weekly paper for workers. For those of you who can’t bear to wait that long here is my utterly one-sided and partisan description. I’ll be putting up the video over the weekend once I’ve chopped out some of the more graphic scenes of sex and violence.
This forum, which was rather on the small side, was mainly intended as a chance for SR supporters to reflect on last year’s developments for Respect and look at the year ahead. Bear in mind as you read this that several of the participants in the discussion made real efforts to build Respect branches in their own areas, worked in Tower Hamlets during the parliamentary and local government elections and want to build an alternative to Labour that is more than a propaganda group. These are not professional whingers. If you want to find out what Alan said you’ll have to watch the video. I’ll summarise the content of the discussion.
There was a spectrum of views. These ranged from “it’s as dead as a dodo” to “it’s as dead as a dead thing that died a few months ago”. Alternative views were “it’s not quite dead yet but it’s going to take a miracle to restore it to health and as a Marxist I’m unconvinced about miracles” and “in some parts of the country it is fairly healthy”.
Pretty much everyone agreed that Respect’s failure to grow is a big setback for the project of creating a new socialist mass party and that the reason for this was a return to its most sectarian methods of operation by the SWP. George Galloway’s role was seen as particularly negative. Most of those who expressed a view on the matter felt that his appearance on Big Brother was a significant factor in the decision of about one thousand members not to renew their membership of the organisation.
The problem was distilled to its essence by one comrade who put the question “How can I ask someone to join Respect? It’s got a MP who does what he wants, no internal political life and is dominated by a semi-Stalinist organisation?” This is a harsh description. I’d be interested in comments on it.
We were given a report on what’s happening in Manchester where a group of SWP members left that organisation so that they could stand as Respect and there are branches with a strong layer of independent activists. The same is true in Bristol and some of Birmingham. The picture in London is much worse with most branches having little life other than that breathed into them by SWP branch committees.
We didn’t much discuss what happens next. We’ll do something more structured in the near future on that theme. We wish John Mc Donnell well but are not convinced that work in the Labour Party offers any productive scope. That said, some contributors explored the idea of leftists leaving Labour if the union link is severed. It is apparent that the opportunity to create a new party from the anti-war movement has been blown. Time to hunker down.
Liam redux 
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