Some of the more senior members of the Mac Uaid clan used to mortify their flesh by going on pilgrimage to Lough Derg. It involves fasting, getting by on black tea and dry bread, walking barefoot, and keeping continuously awake for a period of 24 hours. My occasional trips to Birmingham serve the same purpose without improving my chances in the hereafter.
Yesterday’s Respect conference took place in Sparkbrook, the constituency which Salma Yaqoob has a strong chance of winning in next year’s election. There were about two hundred delegates with a pretty good geographical spread from Southend, Dorset and Liverpool as well as the Birmingham and London redoubts. It’s worth mentioning that the conference voted to drop the “Unity Coalition” tag and adopt the new name The Respect Party.
The first part of the conference was marked by a vigorous and mature debate over a couple of major strategic issues. Salma opened the morning session which was themed around “one society, many cultures”. She explained how she had got into politics as a result of the wave of anti-Muslim prejudice after September 11. She rightly attributed the rise of the BNP to the pro-war, pro-capital politics of the three major parties. As if it were necessary she reaffirmed that she was opposed to the attacks on New York and London, as well as any attacks on innocent people. In a backhanded tribute to her local profile someone has taken the trouble to produce a glossy leaflet which has been posted to anyone with a white sounding name on the local electoral register which aims to put her and Respect in the same camp as the demonstrators who protested in Luton at the troops’ homecoming parade. You don’t do a job like that unless you are seriously worried she’s going to win the seat. Accusing Gordon Brown in his recent speech on immigration of pandering to racism she countered that the best way to oppose racism is to tackle it head on and went on to call for investment in housing, infrastructure and and working class people to cut racism at its root.
Racism and the rise of the far right dominated the discussion that followed. One speaker said that in his industry jobs were being taken and wages driven down by skilled workers from Eastern Europe. This is a real concern in sections of the working class and Salma struck the perfect note in acknowledging his concerns by describing the collapse of the manufacturing sector, Labour’s reliance on the City and trickle down theory to create jobs and the failure of union leaders to organise workers to defend their conditions.
Much of the rest of the discussion was over the way to deal with the rise of the far right. On the general principle that a new party is needed for working people there was no dissent expressed. On the issue of whether or not to call for state bans there was disagreement, broadly speaking along the lines that have already been discussed at length on this site and elsewhere. Summarising the debate Salma said “we do not fetishise tactics. At times it’s right to take to the streets.” Some of us might quibble with the weight that she attached to complimentary statements from senior police officers and backing from the Lib Dems. However a point that some lose sight of in this discussion is that Respect’s leadership makes no claims to be revolutionary Marxist and that a relatively new organisation is debating its tactics against the far right in a developing situation.
In victory, magnanimity. Not
The second section was on the theme “resisting the cuts agenda” and had motions on electoral strategy, the crisis, the politics of our election campaign, electoral alliances and the People’s Charter. This was introduced by George Galloway. Revisiting some of the theme’s from the first session he insisted that he was standing only as a Respect candidate and not as part of any alliance with minor parties, specifically the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Asked a direct question as to who Respect supporters should vote for if there is no Respect candidate he said that they should vote Labour, though he did make several exceptions including Caroline Lucas, Peter Tatchell, Dave Nellist and candidates standing against particularly venal ministers like Geoff Hoon, adding that assigning degrees of venality to Labour ministers is no easy thing. The criteria were that they had to have a chance of winning; be credible or opposing one of a small band of Labour ministers. His reasoning was that a Labour government, no matter how bad, is more favourable to working class people than any Tory regime. He also argued that when Respect wins three seats in Westminster next year that it will become the magnet for all those seeking an alternative to Labour and, for this reason, has no need of alliances with the left.
My take on this is that a building strategy based solely on winning elections is as flawed as a financial strategy which relies solely on being lucky at the bookmakers. Salma had already indicated the lengths to which her opponents are willing to go to deprive her of the seat and there is already a well known history of electoral dodgy dealings in Birmingham. Then there’s the small fact that elections are very unpredictable. Effectively this approach requires achieving a set of victories no small party has ever managed before and then assuming that everyone else will want to join it. Or, more precisely, everyone else who is not already on the organised left. A recurring theme in George Galloway’s contributions was use of the phrases “left group”, “Trotskyist” and “far left” as terms of abuse in much the same way you might call someone a “Bon Jovi fan” or a “Tory”.
A vote to take an emergency motion on supporting the child of No2EU was defeated by a margin of just over two to one. The rest of the resolutions were accepted. As in the morning session the debate had been frank but conducted with maturity and without rancour. Then, in a interesting new procedural innovation, George Galloway replied to the debate after the vote had been taken.
One would have hoped that he’d have remembered Churchill’s maxim “in victory, magnanimity”. Instead he decided to give the small group of child of No2EU supporters the same treatment that Socialist Resistance had received from him, John Rees and Lindsey German at the 2005 conference or Neil Kinnock doled out to Militant. It was ugly though at least this time there was not a howling mob ready for a lynching. He asserted than “No2EU had objectively helped Nick Griffin get elected by standing against the Green Party’s Peter Cranie. The good bit was that he shares a healthy distrust of the progressive nature of prison officers as a mass. On the negative side any of the valid criticisms he did make of child of No2EU, including its lack union support, the certainty of its small vote etc were lost in a flurry of contempt for the organised left and the strong sense that a group of the leadership was determined to drive out two newly elected members of the national council and a small number of members in Southwark. It poisoned the rest of the day.
The international debate was squeezed by pressure of time and was followed by some constitutional housekeeping.
On reflection the decision to try to pulverise the supporters of the new coalition was the worst possible choice a leadership could have made. It sent a message that dissenting political views are not something to be given space and time to show that they
are right or wrong. Instead they are something to be ridiculed and isolated. Quite how these methods will attract people looking for a home outside the Labour Party is something that is not apparent.
Liam redux 
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