The new bits are in bold at the bottom
I sat through a three hour car crash last night in my first branch meeting since rejoining Respect. You can read some of the more detailed argumentation at the Socialist Unity site but here is my take on the matter. I’ll expand on it later.
Two factions have hardened and the issue was fought out over the selection of conference delegates. The Tower Hamlets branch is entitled to 57. Jackie, the branch secretary presented a list with 36 which included me. They had followed the procedure of contacting her and nominating themselves. 30 of them are SWP members who are familiar with the procedures of the workers’ movement. Several of them were comrades who have not been notably present in politics in Tower Hamlets since I started living here in 1999. An alternative hand written list was presented to the meeting which omitted some of the SWP members. I was on that as well.
This was the sort of meeting that required a firm chair, or even a chair who had a dim understanding of the job. Since no such person was present the meeting dissolved into a shouting mob and two thirds of the participants left. This was pretty much every non-SWP member. Having been out of things for a year, and because it seemed to be what convention required, I remained.
There is a serious risk of a split dynamic developing. This would be an absolute disaster for the project of creating a class struggle alternative to Labour and the responsibility for avoiding it lies with the SWP.
We are watching the disintegration of the top-down, anti-democratic, leadership based method of building an organisation that has been the approach explicitly favoured by the SWP’s leadership. Even Brown’s Labour Party has a sufficient memory of Labour Movement tradition to retain procedures to allow some degree of discussion. To preserve the absurd concept of “electoral coalition” Respect was never allowed to generate its own political culture. That’s why debates end up in name calling and walk outs.
Some initial steps that can be taken to arrest the split dynamic are:
- No more democratic centralism inside Respect. Let the organisation breathe. Permit SWP members to disagree with each other and vote against each other. When someone proposes an act of class treachery crack the whip. Most of the time it isn’t necessary.
- Stop inventing “student” delegates and trying to pack meetings. It is unconvincing and alienates anyone who knows anything about politics. One of the reasons Tuesday’s meeting was such a shambles was because many members had the completely correct impression that the SWP was trying to pack the Tower Hamlets delegation. If other branch members were not familiar with Labour Movement procedure it was because the SWP had spent the last couple of years pretending that barbeques and picnics were more important.
- Let’s have a properly constituted Conference Arrangements Committee that is agreed by the National Council, not one that has a straight SWP majority. That does not inspire trust at a time when it is badly needed.
- Postpone the conference until early 2008. Trust has to be re-established. Agreed delegations have to be elected. Both sides of the argument have to put their case in the branches. Feelings are running too high at the moment and a November conference could destroy the British far left’s most promising creation.
Now, with the benefit of perfect hindsight, let’s pick up where I left off. I remained in the meeting. A discussion followed on how to proceed, with various SWP members expressing a range of views. Chris N was plainly leading their intervention which had been pretty well rehearsed. You may find this hard to believe but it really did look like some of them wanted to compromise. The problem was that their leadership on the night refused to accept that the central point of contention was the perfectly correct assumption that they were trying to stack the delegation. I’ve since found out that there is an active campaign to recruit lots of “student delegates” to use as SWP voting fodder at conference and that no one is able to explain in what way these people are Respect members.
I made a significant tactical error. Having decided to stay in the meeting I voted for the secretary’s slate. On a formal level this was in order but it was politically wrong. But this was in the context of not having a clue of what the people who walked out were proposing, having sat through an incoherent shouting match, not having any information about the packing activities and having spent my previous career in Respect arguing for procedures to be adhered to. Who lives may learn.
The Tower Hamlets committee is meeting as I write. At the moment it looks like there is a better than 50% chance of a split. Splits are sometimes a positive development but I’m not convinced that this one would be. For a start it would deprive Respect of a huge chunk of its socialist membership. The pre-conference period beginning in the SWP offers a chance for a reflection on the dreadful way its intervention in Respect is being led at the moment and how this is feeding into the branches. To give an example, a supporter of SR had the audacity to send out an e mail suggesting that local Respect supporters meet to elect conference delegates and maybe even discuss a conference resolution. A couple of hours later he got a phone call from the local SWP organiser. It wasn’t to commend his sense of initiative in trying to reinvigorate a moribund branch. It was to give him a bullying harangue about his damned cheek, arrogance and presumption. That sums up the problem.
Liam redux 
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