Respect crisis and the way forward: Socialist Resistance Forum Speaker: Alan Thornett Wednesday 12 September @7.30 Indian YMCA,41 Fitzroy Square, W1 (Warren Street tube) It’s a public event but it’s most likely to interest people interested in creating a class struggle alternative to New Labour. Technorati Tags: Respect, Socialist, George Galloway, British politics
It’s a public event but it’s most likely to interest people interested in creating a class struggle alternative to New Labour.
What do you think about the claim in Weekly Worker that because Galloway’s letter is so similar to Alan Thornett’s article in the current Socialist Resistance, maybe he wrote the letter for Galloway?
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Damn! Foiled again! The Weekly Worker saw through our cunning plan.
Sorry Prinkipo. That’s about as likely as Emmanuelle Beart ringing to find out if I’m free this evening.
If you were looking for an off the shelf critique of how Respect has blown its chances over the last couple of years ours is pretty watertight.
I’ll be putting up the video of the forum Alan is doing this coming Wednesday and you will see that his views on GG’s lack of accountability to the organisation have not mellowed.
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prinkipo exile, isn’t it more likely that galloway wrote it for thornett?
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Liam, when you say that Respect has blown it’s chances over the last couple of years what do you mean?
it’s chances of what? electoral success seems high on their agenda…
hasn’t galloway said he’s standing down at the election? mind you, if gg told me the time i doubt i’d believe it!
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My thought after reading George Galloway letter was that somehow it did not sound quite like him and I wondered if someone else had written it.
I thought some time back that Galloway would eventually want to dispense with the SWP or reduce them to size, but did not expect SR would be used, as I did not think they were all that keen on Respect.
Still, its non-class appeal does accord with a strain in the USec tradition and I do remember how Alan Thornett was sent to sell Respect to our Socialist Alliance branch (even though it had an SWP majority they only came into the discussion afterwards, though clearly primed, with one exception).
Something else I remember from that meeting was Alan T. saying the new party would need to have something on the environment, to get the Greens on board. A young guy protested that we had to say something on the environment because capitalism was destroying the planet, not just as some tactical ploy for coalition purposes. Anyway, as we know, the Greens did not jump on board. But I heard the other day that SR had begun calling itself “eco-socialist”. My friends were impressed, but I being old and cynical had difficulty supressing a yawn as I remembered “student vanguards”, women’s lib etc. Still it is good to preserve traditions, even if my USec friends are also getting old and no longer so quick at keeping up with trends.
Still, whither Respect? I hope it does soon.
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“creating a class struggle alternative to New Labour.”
Good. How do you see that coming about, though?
What wider forces can be attracted? How can we begin to go about it?
I think to some extent an engagement with the alternative tot he labour party conference being planned in Manchester would be good
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1941
as would a network of campaigns on local issues- going beyond the mere electoral
Jason
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also an interestin discussion piece by Hilary Wainwright here in relation to the sort of politics we need
http://www.conventionoftheleft.org.uk
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Liam redux 
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