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Saturday's Respect National Council – Alan Thornett

Ironically within 24 hours of last Saturday’s Respect NC democracy had been finally snuffed out in the Labour Party without resistance and by an overwhelming majority. For the first time for nearly 100 years Labour Party conference can no longer make policy for the Labour Party. The need for a party like Respect could hardly…

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Ironically within 24 hours of last Saturday’s Respect NC democracy had been finally snuffed out in the Labour Party without resistance and by an overwhelming majority. For the first time for nearly 100 years Labour Party conference can no longer make policy for the Labour Party. The need for a party like Respect could hardly be more clear.

Fortunately Saturday’s NC represented, in my opinion, a new opportunity for Respect to break out of the impasse it has been in for the last two years and make some real progress. This has not been achieved yet. But the meeting was a step, even if a faltering step, in the right direction. It confirmed my view that the old top-down structure dominated by the SWP is no longer an option. Respect will either change or it will go into repeated and ultimately terminal crisis. That was my conclusion from the meeting.

The catalyst for change has been George Galloway’s letter to the National Council circulated a month or so ago. It was the main item discussed last Saturday and produced the biggest debate the National Council has ever had, and its fullest attendance. The meeting ran out of time and is being reconvened this coming Saturday Sept 29 to complete the agenda.

George Galloway’s letter pointed to a number of uncomfortable truths which some of us have been raising for some time: that the poor result in Southall was a wake-up call; that Respect has not fulfilled its potential either in terms of votes or membership; that in whole areas of the country Respect is effectively moribund; that there are problems of office administration and procedures and that relationships had broken down amongst key figures in Respect.
The resolution George Galloway put to the meeting on Saturday was a series of action points in the framework of his letter designed to address this situation. These include: a serious approach to developments on the left such as the debate in the RMT, the end of the slate system of election at conference, a major membership drive, a better organised and more inclusive executive committee, improved communication and accountability, overhaul of office organisation and the creation of the position of national organiser alongside the national secretary.

John Rees and Michael Lavalette moved several amendments to this. The contentious one being on the issue of the national organiser. This was to the effect that the national organiser would not work alongside the national secretary but would work under the direction of the elected officers ­ i.e. the national secretary. This caused a heated debate but in the end George Galloway’s resolution was adopted unanimously with an “in principle”decision to have a new national organiser with a sub committee to discuss the practical implications and report back.

In my view George Galloway’s proposals are a good start but the process of changes must go a lot further. John Lister and I have a series of proposals on this in the form of a resolution for the Respect conference which are to be discussed on Saturday which would if adopted reshape Respect. Yet even this would not be enough unless Respect successfully turns itself outwards towards new forces like the CPB and the RMT who have in various ways started to discuss the acute crisis of working class representation which now exists. This was the main point I tried to make as strongly as possible in the meeting.

At the present time however the ball is in the court of the SWP. They must have the political will to carry through genuine change otherwise there will be no viable way forward. The bottom line is that the SWP must loosen their grip and put Respect in a position to engage seriously with those on the left and in the unions who are grappling with yet another new stage in the crisis of labour representation.

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4 responses to “Saturday's Respect National Council – Alan Thornett”

  1. Mark Perryman Avatar
    Mark Perryman

    This is soooooooo disappointing.

    Alan Thornett, for a number of years one of the most tireless campaigners for the democratisation of Respect reports on the National Council. Yet he doesn’t offer one single word on Salma Yaqoob’s outstanding document to the National Council ! Not of any significance, absent-mindedness or airbrushing out of history?

    George Galloway certainly started this process and is to be congratulated for doing so. But it is in Salma Yaqoob’s document the basis for Respect’s future will be found. No limit to the vision of who can be involved, a real sense of the size of the space for a Left-of-Labour party, a party founded on participation and pluralism. A fundamental break with the one-dimensional Maxism and ciontrol culture of the SWP and their ilk.

    Of course engaging with the CPB, the RMT, Bob Wareing and his supporters is a start but if that is the central activity in broadening Respect then the narrowness of the vision is mind-boggling.

    And as for ‘the ball is in the SWP’s court’ . Come on, yes there needs to be an internal contest and some sort of end-game but the SWP have to date managed to staff and organise Respect to the heady heights of around 2000 members, roughly the same size as their own organisation which makes it a ‘united front of a special type’ of a very special type! The electoral successes have been crucial of course, but if Respect is to grown into a credible political organisation then a fruitless argument with an SWP of virtually no relevance outside the highly depleted ranks of the Far Left is not a rosy future to deal with. Instead there needs to be an engagement with the tens, hundreds of thousands who have stood still since 1994, cherishing our practical idealism whilst Labour marches ever further rightwards. This is an audience which puts the irrelevance of the SWP outside of those marginal politiocal cultures they are capable of controlling into some perspective.

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  2. Andy Newman Avatar
    Andy Newman

    I agree with everything mark says here.

    BUt I would go further, there are two parts of this.

    the Shadwell by-election was absolutley crucial, becasue it proved that respect has a base that can be defended among a section of the most disadvantaged working class.

    But the only way to capitalise upon that is to broaden out. Think of Jesse jackson’s rainbow Coalition that pulled into political activity whole sectors of American society that had previously been voiceless. given that we start with more favourable objective political circumstances than Jesse, this should be the scale of our ambition.

    Of course that will be hard, and it may be a long haul, but it can only be done by abandoning some of the organisational conservatism and vested interests of the far left groups.

    But secondly, Socialist Resistence in general and Alan in particular have consistently failed to understand how the SWP work and think. And in particular the institutional interests that underpin their conservatism.

    There is no prospect of the SWP voluntarily loosening their grip, we have to be prepared to play hard ball with them.

    the secret to that is not having a debate within the tiny crucible of far left politics where the SWP are able to dominate, but to widen the debate out, using the reach that GG and Salma have into wider society, to discuss what a new vision of progressive politics would look like.

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  3. Chris Brooks Avatar
    Chris Brooks

    Both these comments are valuable because the underlying tensions and conflicting desires in Respect, and in the SWP, are not transcended by the current truce.

    Andy does make a good point here: we need to produce a serious pathology of the SWP, especially if the CPB will become around the forces now in Respect. The CPB also has its strengths and weaknesses, and the way in which the CPB and SWP leaders are able to form bureaucratizing blocs together, for example in the Stop the War Coalition, needs to be understood.

    Mark, of course, makes a good point about Salma’s document. It exposed a number of the strategic blinkers that many participants are still wearing.

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  4. John Mullen Avatar
    John Mullen

    I am not sure it’s true, but someone told me that Alan was supporting the idea of boycotting the Respect conference and participating in a rally organized ON THE SAME DAY by Galloway.

    This is absolutely extraordinary. The accusations of rigging the conference have not been very convincing. The only principled approach is to attend conference and defend one’s views.

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