Another walk-out

Below is a slightly abridged account of last night’s committee meeting of Tower Hamlets Respect. This time it was the SWP’s turn to walk out. George Galloway spoke about his and members’ concerns over the abandoned meeting on Tuesday night and the responsibility of the Committee to resolve matters. He said the Committee must ensure…

Liam

October 19, 2007

1–2 minutes

Below is a slightly abridged account of last night’s committee meeting of Tower Hamlets Respect. This time it was the SWP’s turn to walk out.

George Galloway spoke about his and members’ concerns over the abandoned meeting on Tuesday night and the responsibility of the Committee to resolve matters. He said the Committee must ensure the completion of the business left over from that meeting. He proposed that the Committee vote to convene a members meeting on Thursday next week to decide on the lists of delegates to national conference.

Paul McGarr also spoke about the potential to build Respect and spoke against convening a members meeting on the grounds that the matter of the delegation had already been decided.

Jackie Turner said that there was only one properly constituted list presented to Tuesday’s branch meeting and the other was invalid.

George Galloway responded to the points raised and asked the chair to put his proposal to the vote.

The vote was taken and recorded by roll call as follows:

For: Azmal Hussain, Abdul Kahar Chowdhury, Ana Miah, Beauty Akhtar Lili, Nazir Ahmed, Goyas Uddin, Shamsul Syed, Farhana Zaman, Mr Khan, Ishmael Hussain, Ezaz
Ali, Aulad Miah.

Against: Sam James, Rebecca Townsend, Jackie Turner, Ayesha Ali, James Meadway, Shaun Doherty, Paul McGarr, Mehdi Hassan, Maggie Falshaw, Kambiz Boomla.

The vote was declared: for the proposal to convene a members’ meeting on Thursday 25 October to resolve the delegation to national conference: 12; Against 10, no
abstentions. The proposal was carried.

Shaun Doherty then announced that he and others were leaving the meeting in protest. Azmal Hussain in the chair decided that with eight members leaving the room it was best to close the meeting even though there was very important unfinished business, including the
timetable for selection of our candidates in both parliamentary constituencies.

There will now be a full members meeting on Thursday 25 October at 7.30pm. The venue will be confirmed tomorrow morning.

34 responses to “Another walk-out”

Andy Newman

October 19, 2007 at 11:37 am

Good report Liam

I have a transcript of the meeting, and also several e-mails of reactions from leading players in respect.

But at this stage I decided against publishing the blow by blow, becasue I feared the detail can overwhelm the politics.

What we need to be doing now is arguing the clear different political alternatives behond the two camps.

However, if the SWP start spreading rumours then we can respond with more details if we have to.

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Muon

October 19, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Is that because the detail is a damn site less flattering to George Galloway?
If you have a transcript publish it – I’m an swp member who is taking a good hard look at everyone in this controversy, but your reluctance to publish the deatils that don’t back your version of events is becoming a habit. You did it with tuesdays meeting – where we got the ‘soundbites’ you thought appropriate, and you’re doing it now.
Publish or be damned.

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Andy Newman

October 19, 2007 at 1:26 pm

Muon,
,i> You did it with tuesdays meeting – where we got the ’soundbites’ you thought appropriate,

That is totaly 100% untrue.

I published Jackie Turner’s e-mail in full at the time.

Sharia begorrah – Rowan Williams and John Charles McQuaid

and linked to it from the original article (there was an embedded URL, if you had clicked on it you would have found the full text)

My decision not to publish further details of the TH committee meeting now, is that it substantially doesn’t add anything political to the discussion – it is just more of the same likeTuesday’s meeting.

My editorial judgement is that we need to develop more the political bases of the different sides in the dispute. And the blow by blow is overwhelming us with detail. that is why I piublished Salma’s interview instead today.

There is notting unflattering about george in the transcript. And i will publish it.

BTW – given that Liam and I have been the ones who have published nearly everything about this debate so far, then why be cross with me?

Ask the SWP why they haven’t publishe the transcript.

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Andy Newman

October 19, 2007 at 1:29 pm

Oh I just replied to muon and it got lost in the etyer – i;ll try again.

I made an editorial judgement that we shoudl try to move the debate towards more political ground.

It is 100% untrue that i didn’t publish in full Jackie Turner’s account of the meeting it is here:

Sharia begorrah – Rowan Williams and John Charles McQuaid

this was linked to from an embedded URL in the post.

There is notthing unflattering to Geoge about the TH meeting, and I will publish the transcript later, but it is just more of the same like Tuesday night.

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Neil Wiliams

October 19, 2007 at 1:40 pm

I am confident that George Galloway and friends made the correct decision (this could have been made at the Tuesday Tower Hamlets Respect meeting ofcourse).

In the ideal world the proposal for the second slate should have been presented to the Chair prior to the start of the meeting on Tuesday night but we do not live in a perfect world (not all Respect members have spent their lives in the political movement!) and if I had been chairing the meeting (and I have Chaired many diffferent types of meetings in the past) I would have accepted the slate (as it clearly represented what many at the meeting wished to vote on) but adjoured the meeting for one week, as has now occured.

The one week adjourment for the election of conference delegates in Tower Hamlets gives both slates time to consult those on them and for as many members as possible to be consulted. The vote will then reflect better what the majority of Respect members in Tower Hamlets want as regards their delegates to conference.

As Councillor Salma Yaqoob – National Vice Chair of Respect stated (http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=748):

“In a situation where our opponents remain far stronger than us, it is essential that we seek to operate in the most consensual and pluralistic manner possible, open to cooperation with all those, regardless of party, who share our commitment to peace, equality and justice.

This will be impossible if Respect is perceived as the property of a single organisation. To build a coalition of like-minded individuals and organisations we must go the extra mile in our efforts to include different voices and experiences. We have to consciously and proactively demonstrate to all those outside Respect that they have a place in our coalition, and that by joining us they are signing up to a genuine coalition in which no single component of it is in a position to impose its views.

If our coalition is currently insufficiently broad, it is all the more important that we act, and are seen to act, in such a way as to reflect the coalition we want to be”.

I have reposted this post on the Respect Supporters Blog along with other links and your comments are most welcome.

Neil Williams
Respect Supporters Blog

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Liam

October 19, 2007 at 3:02 pm

Muon it’s impossible for me to give an account of Tuesday’s meeting that can do the thing justice. Not being inclined to join in a shouting match at the top table I missed many of the more subtle arguments.
My error, on reflection, was in not supporting a call to re-schedule the meeting to a time when tempers would be calmer. That’s one of the reason I’m convinced that any attempt to hold a November conference will destroy Respect.
I’m aware that a version of last night’s Tower Hamlets meeting is circulating which puts a different perspective. This may be an opportune moment for the SWP’s leadership to acknowledge to the world that this debate is happening.

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Mike

October 19, 2007 at 3:18 pm

Liam and Andy as the split looms nearer just how concerned are you that the majority of socialists in Respect will soon not be in that organisation?

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modernityblog

October 19, 2007 at 3:37 pm

the political manoeuvrings continue, doesn’t it remind anyone of the 1930s!

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cameron

October 19, 2007 at 4:40 pm

Well, at this rate the reconvened NC meeting might just decide to expel the SWP – if Galloway has the majority in the meeting for this.

It might be this or the SWP expels the ‘Galloway faction’ either at conference or in a swift officers meeting before the NC meeting

No wonder it has been reported that Galloway told a leading SWPer in TH last night that ‘I’ll see you in court’.

Liam’s hopes that there isn’t a huge split in Respect is well-meaning, but naive. The split is now inevitable.

The SWP’s project of a ‘united front of a special type’ is dead in the water.

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newleftparty

October 19, 2007 at 4:51 pm

‘united front of a special type’ = a front which we (swp) rigidly control and which doesnt even advance a clear socialist programme!

how about a united front of a non-special kind in the form of a broad and democratic socialist party with a clear working class orientation?

ks

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bill j

October 19, 2007 at 5:09 pm

Yes a split is not only inevitable, this is a split happening now.
As for a new workers party, if you think about the two main proponents of this idea, the Socialist Party and Workers Power, then neither group are exactly good adverts for the proposition.
The Socialist Party simply regard it as another front, in just the way that the SWP wanted to use Respect and Workers Power, want to use it as a way of creating a broad front within which they can be the revolutionaries. While of course, as an organisation, they couldn’t even tolerate the existence of a minority who pointed out, correctly as it happens, that the world economy is not stagnant.
For which of course that minority were denounced as petit bourgeois criminals and what not.
Why would anyone want to be in a party with either of them?
And then you have to consider who’s going to want another party after Respect explodes? The SWP certainly won’t. And neither will the Respect loyalists, who will hope to build that organisation as a left alternative – but will fail because GG and the career politicians in TH have a very different idea of what Respect should be. And they will have just expelled the Trots. So the idea that its going to have any future as a “socialist” alternative is absurd.
So the New Workers Party has even less future than Respect.
Rather I think we should look at where the left can co-operate, undertake a thoroughgoing reexamination of where we’ve gone wrong over the last couple of decades, and see what develops.
In my view that needs to be a new revolutionary organisation, but that is most definitely a minority view and I don’t see the point of forcing the issue by making some sort of ultimatum that a pre-condition for collaboration is that we are in the same “party” type of organisation.

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Gadget Queen

October 19, 2007 at 6:46 pm

>The SWP’s project of a ‘united front of a special type’ is dead in the water

If it is, it was them what drowned it.

We had our AGM in Bristol a couple of weeks ago – part of its agenda was to elect delegates to conference. We had sorted out a good ‘mixed’ slate of people who wanted to go, rumour has it that ten minutes before the meeting was supposed to be starting John Rees was on the phone to the local organiser here trying to get him to get the SWP members out of the room to decide on a SWP slate for conference. Fortunately it didn’t happen and we had a reasonably affable meeting, elected the delegates that had come forward wanting to go + a new steering group for the year.

Although SWP members out in the regions are being fed all sorts of rancourous stuff from the centre I’m not sure at the moment that it’s having the same impact outside London as it’s having inside London. We certainly haven’t got to the point you have in Tower Hamlets, but then I suppose we have very little at stake here. I have a huge amount of respect for a lot of the SWP members I’ve worked alongside in Bristol, and I really don’t want them to leave Respect but I also don’t want to be in an organisation that just comes out with the same old ‘Trotspeak’ platitudes that mean fuck all to most people and change nothing. A lot of people who should be in Respect aren’t because they are suspicious of the SWP’s motives and methods of working and all the reports I’m hearing at the moment make me realise why. I don’t want to see the SWP out of Respect and I certainly don’t want to see a ‘Galloway v. the SWP’ aligning of forces. But if the central leadership really don’t know how to work democratically (and they don’t appear to) then maybe its no bad thing if they go, although I’m not (quite) naive enough to not realise that this would be likely to pull Respect to bits too.

But maybe it won’t – and maybe those members of the SWP who have been instrumental in achieving the results that Respect have – not just in elections but in the lives of local communities in which we work, at our best – maybe they will choose to stay with Respect and continue some meaningful political activity rather than chasing themselves up some far left blind alley.

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Andy Newman

October 19, 2007 at 7:45 pm

That’s a very encouraging report gadget Queen.

In manchester they had the manchester South Respect AGM last week (for some reason manchester South seems dominated by the SWP, while manchester North is the non-SWP respect branch), and the report I heard was that the South meeting (in the SWP branch remember) was a bit boring, but no mention of national events or controversy, and they had gone out of their way to get non-SWP there.

So the story is not all doom and gloom.

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bill j

October 19, 2007 at 9:37 pm

The South branch is allied to the students, the North branch was lead by the old socialist alliance oriented SWPers (who were also the main impetus behind the STWC). They basically split from the SWP around a year ago over whether or not they were allowed to stand a Respect candidate in the North.

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Andy Newman

October 19, 2007 at 10:51 pm

That is my understanding as well Bill.

At the manchester South meeting there were about 25 people there, 10 -12 swp but no obvious student swp involvement, the respect councillor from Bolsover (who spoke) with his wife, 4 Socialist Unity, and a handfull of Muslims.

The funniest observation I heard was: Most ironically, and delivered with no sense of what he was saying, was Big Ron (Vietnam vet – SWP member) who declared (about the mainstream parties) that there was a “crisis of leadership”.

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AR

October 20, 2007 at 9:24 pm

Just to show a bloody good example in what can be done in taking Respect forward. They produce a quarterly newspaper in Manchester. The latest version is out now, Below is the email broadcast message from today.
———————————————————

Greater Manchester Respect paper out now
20/10/2007
The latest edition of the Greater Manchester Respect newspaper is now out. Read Salma Yaccob on Why we all need Respect, John Rees on Is Brown your favourite colour?, George Galloway on the legacy of Che Guevara, Ken Loach on his latest fim.

Read Farhat Khan on Victory after seven years of struggle, Michael Lavalette on gun crime and Councillor Ray Holmes on how Respect councilors can make a difference.

Plus articles on housing, the NHS, defending Karen Reissmann, trade unions, Tescos, the US mortgage scandal, community activism in Levenshulme, and much much more.

Download the online version (1.4MB pdf).

Click to access respect_autumn2007.pdf

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Jason

October 21, 2007 at 10:04 am

Well, I’ve read it cover to cover and I think we should question is it really so good?

It has some coverage of important disputes- Karen Reissmann strike, public sector pay and pensions battle (though curiously nothing on the post dispute except a passing aside), an antideportation success- plus some other good topics- climate change, a debate piece on the kind of new left we need (from a non-Respect member John Nicholson), housing, stop the war.

But for the most part it’s just reheated lukewarm left reformism. It doesn’t I’d suggest really connect with people’s lives, or put forward a vision of the working class as being capable of running our own affairs, or even, fairly crucially, much suggestion of concrete next steps of how to take the struggle forward.

Socialism is mentioned how many times? Only twice as far as I could see (in John Nicholson’s and Geoff Brown’s articles and even then only in passing no explanantion) unless you include the acronym which is repeated as a banner under the text Respect for Equality, Socialism and all the rest.

For the most part it is suggested Respect is the answer, ‘Join the new left, Respect’ p11 .

Geoff Brown writes in relation to the current union struggles on pay, condiitons etc : “We need more.” Damn right but limply concludes, ” Respect is the answer to that need.”

But it isn’t.

The answers need to include draing in thousands of workers into struggle and into rank and file networks to control and co-ordinate our own struggles, to win support from the wider working class for concrete action to build up our confidence and rebuild working lcass organisations from top to bottom to take power for ordinary working class people so we- not the private profits of the rich elite but the pressing needs and desires and crreativity and imagination of ordinary working class people can run society and plan for emergency action against the devastations of capitalism.

We need urgently to go out and create that movement by initiating real campaigns- e.g. rank and file networks of workers, mass campaigns against housing sell-offs for public services under our control.

Those currently in Respect will be part of that answer but a lot of hard work needs to be done and not just platitudes of treating the wider working class as election fodder where the only answers are join us or vote for us.

We really need a new left and it will have to be much wider than Respect.

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Liam

October 21, 2007 at 4:42 pm

Is the Respect paper “lukewarm left reformism”? You can certainly make a case to say so. But, by the same token, Jason so was John Mc Donnell’s campaign which your comrades, and most other readers of this site, correctly supported.

From my quick reading it looks like it covers many of the principal areas of the class struggle at the moment and the context is important. It is trying to demonstrate that a Respect paper is required to develop a class struggle programme and to educate the membership. The other striking feature is that it is pulling together a group of class struggle activists around a project, one in which marxists can operate comfortably.

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ARJ

October 21, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Jason
You criticism of the Manchester Respect newspaper are really nit-picking, and you miss the point entirely.
Its not an attempt to reproduce Pravada 1917, or Socialist Worker 2007.
Its newspaper that carries respects news and politics as part of buildig a coalition ( that others seem intent of tearing apart I may add).
13,000 copies have been produced, on shoe string, collectively, to be distributed free.

Does it help or does it hinder, Thats the question
(or do you want to keep your revolutionary virginity intact.)

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LJ

October 21, 2007 at 5:58 pm

Personally though that the Manchester Paper was pretty good managing to cover a wide range of topics and also have dissenting voices (such as John Nicholson) on how to build a left alternative – is Nicholson a member of Respect? I thought he had left.

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Andy Newman

October 21, 2007 at 6:11 pm

I thought he had rejoined – he was certainly intending to last time I spoke to him.

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ARJ

October 21, 2007 at 6:23 pm

One more point about the Manchester paper. Its not meant to be some kind of theoretical journal.
So there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist about that issue, calm down.
it’s produced quarterly, so that’s going to limit what it covers. Its a very large Respect leaflet for want of a better analogy, that deals with local, national, and international issues. There’s nowt like anywhere else up north.
Would it make sense to syndicate it in other parts of the country, yes it would.
Could it help at the moment, yes it could

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bill j

October 21, 2007 at 8:03 pm

Does it help or hinder that’s the question? Good question. Given that it totally ignores the current dispute that’s tearing apart its own organisation, you’d have to say, hinder.
It implies that the inner party struggle has no relevence to its supporters and basically promotes a pretty a-political progressivism, not unlike Respect as a whole really.

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Jason

October 21, 2007 at 10:21 pm

ARJ says “Jason
You criticism of the Manchester Respect newspaper are really nit-picking, and you miss the point entirely.”

I am not intending to be nit-picking at all. I’m just saying that the main solutions offered seem to be join Respect- a very narrow approach that won’t get us far in my opinion.

Of course anyone who supports Respect will want people to join it and will of course see it as part of the answer- fine.

But in almost all cases the only solution offered was join Respect- the main exception being the one artcile written by a non- member, John Nicholson, who left Respect some time ago (unless he’s either rejoined it extremely recently or not told people about it at the last socialist unity meeting) and credit is due to including that piece.

My point is that as a model which someone called AR had put it forward as it doesn’t work- sure it’s quite competent and covers a few areas as I said before- but without any real consideration of concrete steps or socialist politics.

I think what we actually have to do is take up some of the suggestions of John Nicholson and others, and start working together in joint campaigns, without rushing to proclaim agreement or dropping key elements of our politics and have a wide discussion and deabte about how to draw in hundreds and thousands more workers into active campaigns and working class activity, including the absolutely crucial point of beginning to take concrete steps towards rank and file networks in the unions.

Activists who are either in or have been in Respect clearly have a role to play in this – indeed I got my copy ‘hot off the press’ at a rank and file teachers’ meeting in Manchester where probably a good third were of attenders were Respect members. And indeed we had a very fruitful discussion and plan of action to take things forward in the NUT locally.

We should also take up all the recent debates and questions as a very positive chance to really try to think through again many of the questions that have been raised without resorting to the idea that only one particular way is the right way to go.

Instead we need to get over that way of thinking my way or the highway and start working together with joint action and calm, fraternal discussion without accusing anyomne who raises slightly different ideas or criticisms as being revolutionary virgins (“or do you want to keep your revolutionary virginity intact” whatever that strange metaphor is meant to mean) or getting “knickers in a twist” (both from ARJ which may or may not partly account for my supposed revolutionary virginity!)

But perhaps we’ll just put that down to a strange case of mixed metaphors and instead talk about the politics and perhaps ARJ – presuming s/he’s are Manchester based, is AR a different person?- will be at the next socialist unity meeting or at the series of meetings that will be necessary to work out where to go next to draw in hundreds more in Manchester and thousands more nationally into socialist, left and fighting class politics.

Jason

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Liam

October 21, 2007 at 11:10 pm

Bill / Jason, it is not a founding programmatical statement. It is an agitational tool produced by people who want to help create something beyond the Labout Party. That is the way to judge it.

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Jason

October 22, 2007 at 5:51 am

OK, sure. And I honestly don’t mean to be nit-picking about it- obviously people have worked hard to produce a campaigning newsletter to take forward the struggle etc. and fiar enough.

I was just using it as an example- partly because AR had introduced it as one- to tryo to illuminate some of the issues under debate.

My point isn’t to as such criticise this particular paper but to point out some of the limitations of Respect’s politics- in my opinion- not o be critical for its own sake but to try to propose some practical ways forward.

The main proposal is to endorse what John Nicholson and others are saying that we should really try to use the current deabtes as an opportunity to have left unity in action and have a vibrant outward oriented campaigning and open left drawing in new sections of the working class because it is offering practical solutions to real problems or perhaps more accurately and more usefully attempting to practically engage in a variety of ways in active discussion, debate and dialogue about the ways forward.

I ask that my comments be seen in that spirit.

Jason

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Jason

October 22, 2007 at 6:24 am

These possible ways forward are I’d suggest-

1) Trying to convene meetings around the current or looming disputes over pay and other issues in the public sector- having local cross union action committees comprising CWU, PCS, Unison, NUT, RMT, FBU, Unite, NUJ and other union activists to discuss ways to plan active solidarity- fund-raising, public meetings, demonstrations, workplace walk-outs- with disputes, for example with the current mental health workers’ dispute in Manchester.

This could draw on and extend the fighting unions’ initiative- using the lists of contacts and the alliances made- but make it into something active, democratic and campaigning.

2) In each of these unions- where we can (we have to admit that the left is poorly implanted)- try to form strike committees to campaign for yes votes in the ballots, to build basic clas solidarity- i.e. not crossing picket lines, explainbing what picket lines are and why we should not cross them, making sure picket lines are actually mounted and using practical examples of how activists have built unoffical ‘illegal’ strike actions which have won (one example is here http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1577
There’s also a good example from Oldham here http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=10109)

We need to argue that workers can and should take control of our own unions and that it is possible to strike, unofficially or illegally even under some conditions and win. Indeed it has preisely been made illegal because strike action controlled by the rank and file is a veey effective weapon and therefore dangerous for the bosses as opposed to the tokenistic protest strikes that require all the notice and delays of the lwa and ban secondary and effective picketing.

This of course should be seen as part of an attemtp to take first steps towards forming rank and file movements relating to and reviviifying the RMT inititiated shop stewards’ movement.

Most urgently this needs to be done in the CWU where there was/ still is if the rank and file get organised a good chnce of victory but before our very eyes a potentially catastrophic defeat is being imposed by Hayes, Ward and the TUC.

3) Building links between these and working class community based campaigns whether against housing sell-offs, privatisation, deportations (such as the Sukula campaign in Bolton), antiracist campaigns against the BNP, antiwar, against school or hospital closures, against academies (such as the St Athans’ campaign in Cardiff http://cardiffpr.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/wales-does-not-need-the-st-athan-death-academy/, http://permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1102) trying to create sustainable fighting organisations on the ground

4) As part of this using projects like the socialist unity initiatvies in Manchester, Swindon and I’m sure similar such ones in other places I don’t know about to propose practical unity on the ground between e.g. Respect, SWP, SP, other groups and try to bring about not only points 1-3 but to see if it is possible to take steps forward to forming a fighting working class party- as a first step toward this we may wish to consider standing candidates on a fighting program in the upcoming general election, making links to and trying to ressurrect on a fighting basis the Friends of Bob Wareing campaign in Liverpool (http://www.liverpooltimes.net/2007/09/)

They would be some of my suggwstions to begin to flesh out what on rereading looked like fairly abstract general proposal in my post above.

Jason

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Jason

October 22, 2007 at 11:39 am

Hi sorry to post three times in a row but I like having a discussion and if no one else is joining in…

Seriously, though, I just wanted to post because I’ve been on the Karen Reissmann mental health workers’ strike picket line today and it was excellent to see the fighting mood and determination of the strikers and the different people who’ve come out to support her, post workers, teachers, local gov workers, other health workers not in the dispute plus a good showing from the strikers.

Kay Phillips approached me to say she’d been reading my comments and wasn’t entirely happy- she was very friendly- because a lot of hard work had gone into the Respect paper and she thought may be I was at risk of being a bt dismissive of the hard work that had gone into it.

There followed a fruitful discussion about Respect, working together, getting on with things etc.

So (I know it’s unusual on the left but hey) I’m going to say I was wrong in the way I posed the discussion before.

What I should have said and am saying now in response to AR writing:
“Just to show a bloody good example in what can be done in taking Respect forward. They produce a quarterly newspaper in Manchester. ”

Yeah excellent example of what hard work and committed campaigning can do and a good model to have a paper around which to organise.

It included a lot of the current issues around both local to Manchester, national and international.

The only componets I think missing are concrete suggestions of the next steps forward e.g. rank and file action committees, making th elinks between different campaigns to use an election challenge and a workers’ organisation to debate, discuss, organise and co-ordinate taking the class struggle forward. Instead- with notable exceptions e.g. John Nicholson’s article-and to some extent Geoff Brown’s- most of the time the only real solution suggested or im plied is join us. Of course any workers’ political organisation will and should say join us but it has to be more- suggesting concrete actions, rank and file groups to help organise them etc.

It is perhaps not entirely surprising though that a very good campaigning tool- the Manchester Respect paper- does not make these calls yet because Respect is not yet (in my opinion at least) a workers’ party or organisation but something of a fudge between princiupled socialists and activist base and some of the populist leaders at the top such as Galloway and the SW high command.

However, as many SW members tell me Respect is at a cross-roads and we are beginnig perhaps to see the seeds of cross union organisation and struggle then let’s hope the activists in Respect make the right decisions to broaden it out, to involve more trade unionists, to initiate local campaigns and we’ll be with them every step of the way on that and may be out of this creative flux/crisis we can build a new working class organisation/ party to play exactly the role we all aspire to, to be a resource to organise, agitate, educate and win more working class support for the crucial cls struggles ahead and win workers to socialism and fighting class consciousness.

Watch this space.

In this process we’re more than happy to put in lots of hard work and fraternal discussion and I’ll try to be more freindly in my constructive comments in the future, Kay and anyone else who worked so hard on the paper. Cheers Jason

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ARJ

October 22, 2007 at 5:12 pm

Congrats to Jason, for at least showing some humility and saying he might have made the wrong emphasis on the Manchester respect paper.
Something that’s sorely lacking in some quarters in these present ‘interesting times’

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Andy Newman

October 22, 2007 at 5:30 pm

Well ARJ I think there has been an opening up of a lot of reappraisal.

For example, Since Big Brother I had been very negative about galloway, and I concluded he was walking away from politics for a media career.

But no-one would voluntarily put themselves through a gruelling faction fight with the SWP unless they are serious about politics.

Jason has been talkig a lot of sense both here and on the SU blog. I think jason the lack of debate about your ideas, is not because they aren’t interesting, but becasue you are pitching them while people are too distracted by all the bun fights.

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ARJ

October 22, 2007 at 5:58 pm

No disagreement with you here Andy, the events in Respect with the SWP CC death role are unsettling and distracting for a whole range of activist who basically don’t want to see years of work and struggle pissed away. Inside and outside the SWP.
This would set us back a generation.
However, paradoxically, despite the unpleasantness of it all, it does forces us to re-focus and assess literally what the next step should be. Is this what we call dialectics ?

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Jason

October 23, 2007 at 6:17 am

Thanks to both ARJ and Andy on their comments.

I think ARJ is right that despite the unpleasant, stressful nature of these fall-outs, that can sometimes be diverted into very petty and personal levels to even in some cases a very hurtful extent, it does provide an opportunity to really think through our politics, why we belive certain things, do we still belive them, what are the best ways forward, not to look to the party or leaders for answers but to really think them through for ourselves. It can seem frightening even, like going into the wide open sea, but exhilirating and necessary.

I speak here by the way really from my personal experience that I won’t bore poope,l about the details of the Workers Power faction fight that led to our faction being expelled but I believe it is somewhat analagous even while the details are very different.

Is it dialectics? May be. I;ve never quite understood many people’s take on dialectics- sometimes I suspect it can be an excuse to pass over apparetnly irreconciable contradictions and just say, “It’s the daliectical process!” or “It’s dialectics, innit?” (OK perhaps without the innit) like a religious believer might say to justify famine or earthquake , “The Lord moves in mysterious ways!”

However, if the dialectics of Marx and Engels means anything to me it means the idea that change comes about through conflict and that when we analyse things it should be in their movement. In that sense, dailectics is just a part of a science based on testing our ideas out in reality and modifying our ideas when they turn out to be apparently mismatched with our predictions.

So if the current crisis (if that’s not to strong a word) in Respect and the SWP ‘forces us to re-focus and asess literally what the next step should be” then that’s human beings behaving rationallyt and sensibly and yes if you like dialectically.

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Jason

October 23, 2007 at 12:45 pm

One possibility of a next step I think that is urgently posed by events is a national organising fighting unions conference, to organise solidiarity with the postal workers, supporting rank and file networks to in the first instance organise a no vote to the stitch up and also for urgent solidairty with the Manchester mental health workers who have voted to go on all-out indefinite strike action if Karen Reissmann is sacked.

This is an important struggle that the whole trade union movmeent and certainly the whole left should urgently do everything in our power to help win, to make sure Unison national action committtee support it and tie it in with the national demos on Defend the NHS, for quality public services under the democratic control of working class communities and the workers in and users of services

For the reading delight of viewers here I posted a couple of things here http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1747 and here
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1748

After all the title of the thread is nother walk-out. let’s get busy organising for the mental health workers and others like the CWU fighting for all of us

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Liam

October 23, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Jason apologies for not replying to your comments. I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to get the 2nd edition of the Kautsky book ready for the next printing but I’m very grateful for your contributions.

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