A debate has opened up in the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) in France about both its disappointing election results and its decision to stand a Muslim candidate, Ilham Moussaïd, who chooses to wear a head scarf.
When you offer an opinion on what’s happened in another country it’s good sense to make sure that you have a firm grip on the facts. Writing in the NPA’s discussion bulletin François Coustal offers the following judgement.
This is my translation of a section from pages 8 and 9:
“…the NPA is not the first radical organisation in Europe to stand a candidate in elections who wears a hijab (voile) and / or believed that to put down roots in working class areas it had to address itself to members of a religious community. There were precedents in Britain and Denmark . The same causes gave the same disastrous results.”
Anyone who can assert that Salma Yaqoob’s high profile for Respect has been “disastrous” is simply wrong. Salma has a much greater public presence in the national press than Respect’s size warrants. Inside and outside the organisation she is considered an impressive and credible figurehead for the party, regularly expressing views that put her squarely on the left side of the debate in British politics.
Coustal gets some major facts right and several crucial ones wrong.
He is correct to say that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) helped convert the anti-war demonstrations into the Stop The War Coalition and very effectively contributed to building the anti-war movement.
He’s also right when he says that Respect was born out of the desire to give a political expression to the social and political struggle against Blair, the personification of New Labour’s sharp move to the right and that it included the SWP and George Galloway who had broken with Labour because of the war. He moves onto less firm ground when referring to Salma Yaqoob. He argues that she was presented as proof that an alliance was possible between the revolutionary left and the “Muslim community” (his phrase and his quotation marks) even though it had not “abandoned its prejudices” (« renonce à ses préjugés »).
Describing the 2007 split his narrative becomes seriously tendentious. He gives the reader the strong impression that the split took place because the SWP had started to find Salma Yaqoob and George Galloway uncontrollable. It’s true that a structural weakness in Respect was and is its lack of collective control over prominent figures. The Labour Party has a similar problem. However the reason for the split had more to do with George Galloway’s perception that the organisation was not being built at a time when an election was thought to be imminent. The MP’s views on abortion or Salma’s religious beliefs were just not part of the debate. When Coustal argues that attitudes to women’s oppression or homophobia were involved he is simply wrong. The debate was around political priorities and organisational conceptions.
The other major error of fact, or perhaps interpretation, is his assertion that the decision to stand candidates who cover their heads was the result of serious debates and democratic decisions. It simply was not an issue which caused any concern. Neither was there any discussion or anxiety about standing candidates who were practising Catholics or members of the Church of England . It was taken for granted that a religious believer who would defend party policy in public was entitled to be a candidate. Purists could even find quotes from Lenin to comfort them.
The concept of laïcité which is provides the backdrop to this debate was once correct and revolutionary. It’s in danger of changing into its opposite as French society changes and militant secularism is used by the right as a transparent cover for Islamophobia. Getting the facts right about the British experience is essential for an informed discussion.
Liam redux 
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