Captain Galloway suppresses Mutiny!

OH DEAR! Trouble at t'sea. Swashbuckling Cap'n George Galloway has had to put down a mutiny in the crew, who heard he planned to sail off again without them. He has threatened to make them walk the plank after suspending two of the troublemakers from the yardarm.

Well, suspending them anyway.

The Bradford West MP, first elected to parliament for Labour as Glasgow Hillhead  MP, later becoming MP for Bethnal Green and Bow as head of his own Respect party, returned to Glasgow for the 2011 Scottish elections, before winning his present seat in March last year. Now he is reported to be considering standing for Mayor of London.
 
The councillors, who were elected to Bradford council last May following Galloway's byelection victory that year, say he should resign as MP if he is serious about running for mayor of London. They may quit Respect and work as independents if necessary.

Galloway's response on Tuesday to their criticism was to suspend two councillors for disloyalty and accuse all five of "conspiring to seize executive power".
Galloway spoke about his mayoral ambitions in a media interview, saying he had a good chance against Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. The Bradford councillors complain they were given no warning of his plans.

 "It's a slap in the face for the people of Bradford," said Ishtiaq Ahmed, a mental health worker who represents the Manningham ward.  He claimed Galloway spent too little time in the city. "People are always asking me: where's George? This weekend I had more than 20 calls from constituents asking me why George is talking about London and not Bradford. As councillors we have only had one strategic meeting with him in the past year... I'm always reading on his Twitter feed about his appearances in Westminster, his Edinburgh Fringe show, his tour in Scotland – it sometimes feels as though he goes everywhere but Bradford."
 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/13/george-galloway-bradford-west-mayor-london?CMP=twt_fd


Galloway says he is in the constituency almost every week, running a regular MP's surgery, and he can point to his recently taking up the defence of Bradford's media museum. But this does not answer concern that his sights are set elsewhere.

Alyas Karmani, a veteran youth worker who is leader of the Respect group in Bradford's City Hall, said: "If he really wants to be mayor of London, the campaigning starts now, and I don't see how he can be a good MP at the same time. In the meantime, he's still got two more years here [until the 2015 general election] and he should be here. We want him to be more visible in Bradford. George does make himself available here, but whether it's at the level we want is debatable."
Ahmed said: "Mr Galloway can't do both. If he says he is committed to Bradford then Bradford should be his priority. If he wants to run for London, he should think about stepping down as MP."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/13/george-galloway-bradford-west-mayor-london?CMP=twt_fd

Galloway insists that he is no worse than any other MP, and asks how much time Ed Milliband spends in Doncaster. But the people who voted for him in Bradford thought he would be better than just any old MP. And with all due Respect, he does not carry the same burden of responsibility as the leader of the Labour Party.

What is most striking is the Respect MP's response to criticism:

When the Guardian contacted McKay on Tuesday morning for a response to the councillors' united criticism, Galloway suspended Ahmed and Shabbir from the Respect party. In an email Galloway accused the five councillors of attempting a power grab.
"Two of your sources for this latest attack... are already in the process of disciplinary action for factional disloyalty. They are jumping from your low bridge before they are pushed. It is a documented fact that for months now all five councillors have been conspiring to seize executive power in the Bradford party, so their motivation is more than a little suspect," he wrote.

He added: "There is high tension between the MP and them that's true. The MP's frustration with them is shared by many party members, and many of their constituents. Two of them are already facing disciplinary action and so I cannot comment on their cases meantime. All five, then unknown, were elected in the wake of my election victory. Does anyone doubt that they would never have been elected but for that? For months now they have been making concerted attempts to take control of the Bradford party, which I have strongly resisted."

I don't know any of these councillors. But I do know that when I visited Bradford some years ago there was already some discontent and frustration among people who would otherwise have been Labour supporters. One of the people I spoke to then was indeed a Labour councillor. I can well imagine that such people might have seen Galloway's candidature as the chance to make a change in local politics as well voting for someone whose anti-war stand and support for international causes they admired. Looking at the councillors with whom Galloway has fallen out, they seem like genuine community activists rather than just careerists out for themselves.

Would anyone only out for self-advancement have taken their chance on joining Respect?   For Galloway to jeer that they would never have been elected without his victory, shows his ego and contempt for the ordinary supporters without whom he would have stood no chance of getting in. But people who saw Galloway as a rebel standing up to New Labour leaders and US senators are now seeing how he treats anyone who rebels against himself. And if the reports are accurate, we are also seeing a political party in which the Leader can suspend people from membership, just like that. Ed Miliband must look on with envy at such powers!

I can remember when George Galloway was under fire for spending more time in the Big Brother House than in the Commons speaking up for his Bethnal Green and Bow constituents' interests. I remember seeing embarrassed SWP members trying to defend him, knowing that though they were at that time in Respect, Galloway had not been concerned in the slightest with what his fellow-members thought. Evidently some of the Respect members in Bradford have got more bottle.

I also keep seeing names prominent in the People's Assembly or this Left Unity effort, of people I remember telling us what a great leader George Galloway was and exhorting us to drop whatever else we were in and join Respect. Some put too much faith in leaders, and some are easily led.

No Respect North of the Border

ANY SEATS GOING? Scottish parliament at Holyrood, during recess.
As empty as Respect's presence or policies in Scotland.

ONE of Britain's newer and smaller political parties held its conference over the weekend. George Galloway's party Respect had to consider motions on the 'Age of Austerity' and response to the government's cuts, on the idea of a 'Robin Hood tax' on wealthy speculators, on Latin America, and on Cuba and the 'Miami 5' - Cubans imprisoned in the United States for spying on right-wing terrorist groups based there.
http://www.therespectparty.net/conf2010.php?category=Motions%20submitted

But it was not one of these resolutions from branches that occasioned most controversy. As announced on the party's website, a few days before the conference, (and over a month after the deadline for motions to be submitted) it was an initiative from the party's leader:

Should George Go North? - Conference debate The Respect Party will this weekend debate whether we should for the first time organise in Scotland. An amendment has been tabled which will open the way for Respect to campaign in elections to the Scottish Parliament. Below George Galloway outlines his arguments in an interview with Scottish Newsnight on BBC. Details of the conference can be found here.
http://www.therespectparty.net/breakingnews.php?id=950

The conference, held at South Camden Community Centre, near St.Pancras in London, adopted the following:

“Conference notes that:

1. There will be elections to the Scottish Parliament in May 2011
2. These elections will be conducted under a form of proportional representation in which some MSPs are elected from a list
3. Respect has not organized in or contested elections in Scotland in the past because of the hegemony of other parties to the left of Labour
4. This hegemony no longer exists
5. In the context of unprecedented cuts by the Condem Coalition and disappointment with the Labour and SNP, there is now an opportunity for Respect to contest elections to the Scottish parliament with a realistic prospect of success

Conference therefore believes

1. National officers should start preparations for Respect to contest elections to the Scottish Parliament
2. Preparations should include immediately registering Scottish Respect as a description that can be used in Scottish elections and seeking to recruit residents in Scotland to Respect.”

So George is going home?

Already, supporters are referring to his "strong roots" in Glasgow, as an augur of success. But how deep do they go? Born in Dundee, where he first made his name - good or otherwise - as a young Labour organiser, he later became Labour MP for Glasgow, Hillhead, defeating the SDP's Roy Jenkins, and then for Glasgow, Kelvin, before his expulsion from the Labour Party as a result of opposing the Iraq war, calling Tony Blair a liar, and calling on British soldiers to refuse to obey illegal orders.

With that, and his stand up to bullying from the US Senate, Galloway became a hero with many people who neither knew nor cared about past controversies in his career, especially when set against the calamity of Tony Blair. Becoming a founder member of the Respect coalition, he gained as allies a large section of the Socialist Alliance, notably the Socialist Workers Party, who were also able to introduce him from Stop the War Coalition platforms as the voice of the anti-war movement. For them, and for other left-wingers who joined Respect, it was enough that Galloway was no longer in the Labour Party, even though some MPs remaining in it had a longer record of opposing the leadership.

Rather than fighting on in Glasgow, or in Scotland, Galloway came down to take the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in London from Labour's Oona King, who had supported the war. Once in it was said that he spent more time in the Big Brother house on TV than in the Commons speaking up for his constituents. (But unlike this time, he didn't ask for his party's advice before making that move, though once in, they, and not least the SWP, felt bound to support him there). Then in this year's election, he unsuccessfully contested Poplar and Limehouse. Now he apparently fancies trying his chances back north of the Border.

Not that he has not kept up an interest in Scottish affairs. When the cracks first appeared in the Scottish Socialist Party over Tommy Sheridan's entanglement with the News of the World, it was Galloway who, via the pages of the Scottish Mail on Sunday, urged Sheridan to team up with him on a "dream ticket", and ignore the SSP's "Trotskyite apparatchniks".
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3510

At that time, Tommy Sheridan rejected Galloway's call, and the Scottish Socialist Party itself accused Galloway of trying to sow a split, and urged socialists within Respect to dissociate themselves from their leader's hostile activity.
http://www.redaction.org/forum/showthread.php?threadid=2016&goto=nextoldest


Still, Sheridan did decide to split, forming his Solidarity party with support from the Socialist Workers Party and encouragement from Galloway. There were rumours this alignment might not last, though admittedly the story on which Dave Osler commented here appeared in the Sunday Times, which as sister paper to the News of the World had its own reasons to welcome someone bringing down Sheridan. The story may now only appear to have been premature, though this time last year George Galloway was supporting Sheridan.
http://davespartblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/respect-galloway-to-knife-sheridan.html

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/JZSNQTWJUlN/Tommy+Sheridan+George+Galloway+Campaign+Ahead

When I was in the Socialist Alliance, we looked north of the border to the Scottish Socialist Party' s success in uniting to break out of the left groups ghetto and raise the red flag of socialism in mainstream politics, with its electoral breakthroughs. Giving it a clear run in Scotland, the Socialist Party in England and Wales had launched the Alliance, and were joined by the Socialist Workers Party which gained the leadership of the Alliance, only to ditch it so as to join Galloway in Respect. Marry in haste, repent at leisure as the saying goes.

Now Respect, a party based in England, and not even widely based here either, decides at its conference in London, that it will try to establish itself in Scotland too. Not that we have heard of any spontaneous grass-roots groups forming there, and delegations coming to plead for Respect to come north. Nor that Respect has any great policy to put before the Scottish voters. All we are told is that the fight against the Con Dem cuts offers an "opportunity", and that "other parties to the left of labour" no longer have "hegemony".

If Galloway has been consistent in anything it has been his attacks on the Scottish Socialist Party - that and his hostile references to Trotskyism.
http://news.scotsman.com/georgegalloway/Galloway-SSP-will-fail-without.2781325.jp


The Socialist Workers Party, widely regarded and claiming to be Trotskyist, managed to keep a thick skin so long as it was in Respect. (SWP in Scotland which was officially under the SSP umbrella opted for Sheridan's breakaway). So, apparently, did Ken Loach, a member of Respect's national council, when George Galloway disparaged his film 'Land and Freedom' as sustaining "slanders" against the Stalinists in Spain. So did Alan Thornett's International Socialist Group/Socialist Resistance, which helped in the move from Socialist Alliance to Respect and participated loyally, even turning its own paper over to be a Respect organ for a time, though it happens to hold the official "Fourth International" franchise in the UK.

When I heard Galloway attacking people who raised gay rights issues in Iran as being warmongers, I wondered how the ISG, traditionally more advanced than other leftists on such issues, could stay silent.
They did show signs of stepping out from Respect to support the Green Party sometimes, and with their comrades in Scotland adhering to the Scottish Socialist Party, they have decided this new move north is too much.

Here, courtesy of Liam McOaid is the text of a leaflet distributed by supporters of Socialist Resistance in Respect.

"We are strongly opposed to the proposition that Respect organise in Scotland, as proposed in amendment E to Motion 1

Socialist Resistance has supported Respect since its inception in 2004 and previously supported the Socialist Alliance. We supported George Galloway’s letter which sought to democratize the leadership of Respect and backed the majority in the ensuing split in the organisation in 2007. We put the resources of our newspaper at the disposal of Respect. We understood that George and Salma , given their role in the anti-war movement had a vital contribution to make in building a political alternative to New Labour.

But were a resolution to organise Respect in Scotland to be passed at this Respect Conference this would make our situation in the organisation untenable. We are against such a resolution being adopted on a number of grounds:

1) A controversial change of a long-held policy that Respect does not organise in Scotland should not be introduced a week before the conference and with no discussion at the National Council or in the branches.

2) The only purpose in organising in Scotland would be for Respect to stand candidates in next May’s Scottish Parliament elections and in subsequent parliamentary and local elections. Respect has no policy positions on the specific situation in Scotland, particularly the issue of devolution and self-determination an issue around which there would be several different positions. To go into a Scottish election with no debate on key political issues would be fundamentally wrong.

3) There are already two left parties in Scotland standing in elections and they intend to continue doing so, namely the SSP and Solidarity. The SLP also stands in elections in Scotland. The last thing the Scottish left needs is another left party standing in those same elections and dividing the left vote still further.

4) In Respect there have always been different views on which party to support in Scotland. We support the SSP. If this conference were to adopt a position on organising in Scotland and to fight elections SR members would be in an impossible situation. For a party to have members who advocate voting for a different party would be untenable – both for Respect and for SR".

http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/why-we-are-against-respect-organizing-in-scotland/

Some Respect supporters are saying why should their party not stand where it likes, ignoring the fact that it has still to establish itself there or even adopt policies. One person I saw said that Scotland needed a good left-wing voice to fight the cuts, at Westminster -ignoring the fact that what Respect is talking about is fighting for a place at Holyrood. They point to the setbacks suffered by the existing Left, but don't explain why adding to divisions would remedy the matter. It is less like someone proclaiming the need to advance a cause, more like the directors of a chain-store seeing the closure of high street shops as their chance to move in. Mind you, one person was kind enough to suggest that if the SSP - which has already announced candidates - really wants unity, it should apply to join Respect -which has not even arrived yet!

I think that Socialist Resistance has made the right move. And I hope they are not the last.

Interserve with Respect?

WITH political donations and party funding in the news, it would appear that in true democratic spirit the minnows are to be given attention along with the greedy pikes. It would be remiss of me not to remark on this intelligence which comes to us from the East London Advertiser by way of fellow-blogger Dave Osler, and Jenny at the Labour Left Briefing discussion list.

It seems that Respect, "the unity coalition" (now bitterly divided), in its 2007 financial statement which had to be filed with the with the electoral commission, reported that it had returned a cheque for $10,000 from a Dubai construction company as an impermissible donation.

The Advertiser reveals that the donor company is owned by one of Britain's biggest private finance initiative(PFI) contractors, headed by Tory life peer who was a senior policy adviser to the John Major government. (PFIs are Gordon Brown's favoured way of involving big businesses in public service investment, usually with more than generous inducements from public resources to guarantee they do well out of it).

Had Respect accepted the cheque from Dubai it might thus have been in line with the tradition of H.M.Hyndman, the Victorian Left who took Tory money to split the anti-Tory vote, though the anti-war Respect would not have shared Hyndman's jingoism. It would also have been in breach of laws forbidding funding from overseas.

The cheque from Khansaheb Civil Engineering, a subsidiary of Interserve plc, came with a letter from a Khansaheb executive saying that he was a great admirer of Respect leader George Galloway, and wanted to contribute to his causes. But Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, used to newspaper accusations over his Middle East links, and facing investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over donations to his Mariam Appeal, suspected the letter might be a set-up. He warned his staff that even if the donation was genuine, accepting it for the party would be illegal.

The MP told his staff to return the cheque and suggested if the donor wanted to make a financial contribution, he should make a new cheque payable to the Stop the War Coalition. That was in January. Respect's National Secretary, John Rees, a member of the Socialist Workers Party with whom Galloway has since fallen out, has confirmed he returned the cheque on January 23. But in his letter, Rees suggested the funds could be resent to the Organising for Fighting Unions (OFFU) campaign. This was set up a couple of years ago, ostensibly to unite trades unionists opposing government policies and supporting the Trade Union Freedom Bill. By seeming to give Respect a footing in industrial struggle which it otherwise lacked, it probably assuaged doubts among SWP militants about their turn to middle class alliances, and was also offered to those in Stop the War who asked what happened to its resolution some years ago on prioritising a trade unionists conference.

Organise for Fighting Unions material showed its headquarters address was that of Respect in Bethnal Green, although its conferences have attracted many trade union activists who are not members of Respect.
But the big OFFU conference in Shoreditch last year ended up with a £5,000 deficit. When Khansaheb sent a new $10,000 cheque made out to the campaign in February, it was used to cover some of the conference debts.

George Galloway says he discovered this in August and pushed for the Electoral Commission to be called in. "I wanted it referred to the commission earlier and that contributed to the split," he is quoted as telling the East London Advertiser. .The Electoral Commission said it was "making preliminary enquiries."

John Rees admits the donation was partially used to cover the conference deficit, but insists he did nothing wrong. "Galloway knew all along we had suggested an alternative destination for the cheque," he said. "He said Stop the War Coalition, we said OFFU." Rees claims Galloway is just using the issue to try to discredit his rivals.

Dave Osler and others are noting the irony of this affair coming out at a time when Socialist Worker has naturally been lambasting Labour over its acceptance of dodgy donations from rich businessmen and lobbyists.
The irony, too, that a campaign by trades unionists should be taking money from the very kind of interests they are fighting against.

"Interserve currently manages a number of PFI-backed schools and hospitals in the UK. The boss is 55-year-old Lord Blackwell, head of Major's policy unit from 1995 to 1997, who was made a life peer when the Tories lost office".

Mention the SWP and finance to some people, as I did at the weekend, and they immediately start reminiscing over the cavalier behaviour with signatures on cheques that was experienced when they were in the Socialist Alliance. To be fair, though it was a serious matter (the chairperson quit in protest after discovering her name had been forged), the sums of money were relatively small, and only a few individuals were involved. But had the SWP leadership dissociated itself from and condemned them it might have spared the rest of its decent, hard-working membership from being besmirched, and the Alliance itself from losing people's confidence. (and they call it "Respect"?).

Of course, I have some knowledge of what can happen when left-wing organisations and leaders start to get hooked on money, or expectations of money, from the Middle East. I worked on the Workers Revolutionary Party's News Line thirty years ago when Gerry Healy was soliciting support from Libya and Iraq (though our printers in Runcorn actually benefitted from British government regional development aid!) It didn't reach the pockets of comrades, nor spare them from desparate fundraising efforts to keep the paper afloat; But it did lead to distortions in what we were allowed to say and what younger members were taught, and probably helped sustain the leadership's increasing remotess from reality, where you have to be grounded if you are going to depend on workers' support.

At least in those days we thought that Libya, Iraq, and the PLO deserved our support insofar as they were standing up to imperialism, although it became difficult for Healy to explain away divisions that cracked that facade. By the end, unbeknown to any of us, after the Observer libel case debacle Healy and a select few acolytes went touring the Gulf trying to raise cash from ruling emirs and wealthy businessmen with no "anti-imperialist" pretence. Respect/SWP seems to have got there in one go without needing time to decline.

I sometimes wonder whether the SWP leaders and others on the Left have learned anything from what happened to the WRP, or if they just think it was all down to a rotund bald-headed Irishman whose sort we are unlikely to see again, and so we needn't worry about. OK, so far we have only heard about one cheque, and I say John Rees will say he can manage it. But. . . It all starts with one puff. And having a trade unionists conference dependent on finance from someone with PFI links is bound to raise questions - even if it's one of those "conferences" with so many platform speakers there's no time for questions to be raised.

Last Respects

WITH the US stepping up sanctions against Iran, Middle East "peace envoy" Tony Blair trying to strike absurd Churchillian airs, Musharaf stamping down on lawyers and other dangerous opponents in Pakistan, and Gordon Brown's weakened government arrogating itself more powers, how is the anti-war Left shaping up?

The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) at its conference at the end of last month backed the leadership's decision to exclude Hands off the People of Iran(HOPI), which has support from left-wing Iranian exiles. Apparently it's not good enough to oppose imperialist threats and aggression against Iran, you must keep your mouth shut about repression in Iran and pretend that President Ahmadinejad is some kind of anti-imperialist progressive.

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/695/stwc%20main.htm

That's why Iranian comrades who'd marched from Birmingham to London were kept off a Stop the War platform a few years ago. For fear they might confuse us simple peace folk; or more to the point, upset some of the Muslim political groups whom leading factions in Stop the War kept wooing. (These conservative elements aren't all that keen on the Iranian regime either, but they'd back it against left-wing secularists).

Although STWC chair Andrew Murray denied in his letter replying to critics that he supported the Iranian regime, this was clearly the issue. There were horrendous reports before conference of a smear campaign against the left-wing Iranians on campuses, reminiscent of Stalinism in its foulest depths, tagging people as pro-US or supporters of the Shah (in reality some were tortured in the Shah's prisons). We could expect this from Stalinists, though nowadays the Communist Party (of which Murray is a member) is assumed to have learned from its past. But the dominant faction in the Stop the War Coalition, particularly among students, is the Socialist Workers Party which affects to be Trotskyist (and has been attacked as such by its erstwhile ally George Galloway).

Indeed the SWP originated in a break with Trotsky's critical defence of the Soviet Union, adopting the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but international socialism" all through the Cold War. I wouldn't want them to say "Neither Washington nor Tehran" now, but next time they are tempted to attack comrades on the left the way others did in the past they should try listening to themselves. At least the old Stalinists thought they were defending the October Revolution, not sticking up for the ayatollahs.

In any case, the whole game has blown apart. It was the SWP that insisted we wind up the Socialist Alliance to join George Galloway in Respect, and proclaimed that Respect was the party of the anti-war movement. They rejected the call for the new party's MPs to only take a worker's wage (like the Scottish Socialist Party's) as a pre-planned attack on George. Basking in the glow of his performance confronting US senators, they had to watch him spend more time playing the fool in the Big Brother House than fighting for his constituents in the House of Commons. And so on, until...

Last week someone asked me what I thought of the latest shenanigans in Respect. I had to confess that I'd been distracted temporarily by the dramatic developments in Eastenders and Coronation Street. (Well, the actors are more convincing and the characters easier to sympathise with). But today I received an e-mail:

Dear Respect Member/Supporter,

Please find below two documents:(1) Renewing Respect, from Linda Smith and Salma Yaqoob (2) An invitation to the Respect Renewal Conference called by Linda Smith, Salma Yaqoob and 17 other National Council members

Apologies to anyone who gets this email twice!

Well by rights, I shouldn't have got it once, as I have never been a Respect member or supporter. I've defended them now and then when they were attacked from the Right, and slandered. I've also felt sympathy for SWP comrades I knew in the Socialist Alliance who have been working just as hard under the Respect banner, and trying to simulate enthusiasm. That's all.

Anyway, here's what they say:.

"Respect was founded to bring together people from divergent political backgrounds in a common struggle for peace, equality and justice. It is now clear, however, that there is a fundamental and irretrievable breakdown in trust and relations between the SWP leadership and other parts of Respect.

"There can be no confidence in the legitimacy of the forthcoming Respect conference. The entire democratic process in Respect has been corrupted. If the conference goes ahead it will do no more than confirm that the SWP leadership is hijacking Respect for its own factional purposes. We will not be attending it.

"This breakdown in relations has occurred because the SWP leadership arrogantly refuses to countenance any situation in which they are not dominant and do not exercise control. They are determined to put the interests of the SWP above that of Respect.

"The sectarianism and 'control freak' methods of the SWP have led us to a situation where Respect is irretrievably split. The SWP leadership has supported the breakaway of four councillors from the Respect group in Tower Hamlets, who then went into coalition talks with the Liberal Democrats.

"We have no intention of giving up the struggle for a pluralistic, democratic and broad left wing movement. We will therefore be holding a Respect Renewal conference to discuss the future for progressive politics in Britain today. We are confident that this conference will attract a broad range of support from those who are interested in discussing how we can work together in pursuit of common objectives."This renewal conference will take place in London on Saturday 17 November, and we urge as many people as possible to attend it.

"Respect, in its current form, cannot continue. But it is in the interests of all us, including those in the wider left and anti-war movements, that this division is carried out in the most amicable manner possible - one that resolves any legal or organisational questions through negotiation".

Signatories of the call for "renewal" include besides Galloway, Ken Loach, Victoria Brittan, Alan Thornett, Jrry Hicks and Nick Wrack, who was recently expelled by the SWP after accepting a job with Galloway.

Meanwhile apparently John Rees, the SWP member who has been Respect's national secretary, appealed to George Galloway and Linda Smith to let Respect officers and staff back into the organisations headquarters, where the locks were changed on Friday. Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, and incidentally John Rees' partner, was due to stand as Respect's candidate for Mayor of London next year, but this looiks doubtful with the split.

Having seen the way the SWP took over and ran the Socialist Alliance only to scuttle it, people could be forgiven some schadenfreud , even find a ring of truth (and deja vu) in the charges of hijacking and control freakery. The breakaway councillors' move to line up with Lib Dems undermines any notion that the SWP must be seen as the principled Left. On the other hand, considering what I heard about Salma Yaqoob in Stop the War, and saw of Nick Wrack and Alan Thornet's role in the Socialist Alliance, plus what I'm inclined to think of Victoria Brittan and Gorgeous Georgie....I think I'll sit this one out.

With due disrespect

WHEN veteran former Communist Party leader Gordon McLennan told George Galloway MP that he had joined his Respect party, George replied "Good, because we are going to need everyone we can get!" That was a few years ago, when Respect was recruiting rapidly, relations between its different elements appeare all sweetness and light, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

So was George anticipating trouble ahead, and planning for the day when like Peter the Great he would have to put down his hitherto loyal streltsi, from the Socialist Workers Party? There were clues. There was George in the Mail on Sunday cheekily inviting fun-lovin' MSP Tommy Sheridan to join him, and take no notice of the "Trotskyite apparatchniks" of the Scottish Socialist Party(SSP).
http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/statement.htm

It raised eyebrows, but little else, considering that Respect, like the Socialist Alliance before it, was supposed to be keeping off the SSP's pitch, and that the Socialist Workers Party is popularly supposed to be Trotskyist. (The SWP and what used to be Militant then hastened to jump on Sheridan's breakaway, only to find him failing to get returned to the Scottish parliament).

There was Galloway wrongfooting his minders by deciding to appear in Channel Four's 'Big Brother' house, without consulting anyone in Respect. The SWP having previously condemned the programme had difficulty defending this, while some hard-line Stalinists more used to defending every twist and turn as they served personality cults took the opportunity to step forward and show loyalty.

Then there was Galloway displaying his own Stalinist credentials for the US journal Counterpunch (editor Alexander Cockburn, son of Claude) with an attack on George Orwell and film-maker Ken Loach over Spain. Loach has been one of Galloway's staunchest defenders, as well as an ally if not a member of the SWP.

Besides, it is not as if this would be the first time a leader with a party built around him has decided to show who is boss by divesting himself of a left-wing faction on which he had previously relied. Arthur Scargill, rated much more seriously as a working class leader than Georgeous Georgie, used first one then another group's support to dispose of those he distrusted, not leaving much of his Socialist Labour Party standing in the process. Scargill had nothing like the Muslim small businessmen and local councillors whom Galloway can fall back on for the time being (some local councillors who claim to represent particular "communities" are notoriously fickle in their affiliations, as Labour in parts of London and other cities has found out, and Respect may be about to discover).

But Galloway's line of attack on the SWP (though he avoided naming them) has led to the suspicion that another left-wing group may be vying for position by helping him out. He seems to have been putting his helpers "in their place" rather than going for a purge. The row has made the East London Advertiser and the BBC, which interviewed Mark Fischer of the Communist Party of Great Britain after their Weekly Worker published George Galloway's document. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/686/galloway.htm

For those unfamiliar with the recent British Left, I should explain that this is not the late party of which Gordon McLennan was once general secretary, but a small group which moves in an out of alliances picking up internal documents and gossip, so that its paper has been called the News of the World of the Left.
Good at showing where other groups have gone wrong, it has defended its leader's two pennuth on TV with an editorial on "free speech". Aw, come on fellas, it was good fun!

A brief SWP document countering criticism appeared on the Socialist Unity site back in August, with comments http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=725
With the Respect annual conference due to take place next month, the SWP has reportedly produced an Information Pack for its members, containing the kind of charges against which it has always defended the MP from criticism. Weekly Worker sneers that it still trying to keep the issues private. 'Not in front of the children', in Weekly Worker, Thursday, September 27:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/690/respect%20swp.htm

The CPGB itself is urging people to support two resolutions for Respect conference calling for "compromise" (a word the SWP has also been using - times must be bad); but in the same issue of Weekly Worker, Peter Manson
predicted Respect's imminent demise
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/689/respect.htm, and by way of further encouragement Weekly Worker has carried a cover story by him saying Respect "must be counted among the living dead".
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/690/respect%20council.htm
For further items on Respect, including what the SWP are saying, see:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/index.html

Leaving the maggots then to crawl in and do their work, what can we say about this unedifying spectacle of the incorrigible SWP leadership in pursuit of the unspeakable Gorgeous Georgie, or the insufferably opportunist left grouplets vying to take its place? Alan Thornett, who was used to sell the "broader coalition" that emerged as Respect to doubting Socialist Alliance branches, has been joined by John Lister to endorse some of Galloway's complaints and talk about the future of Respect. The CPGB, which ran with the hare and the hounds trying to keep its place among Socialist opponents of Respect while joining it, has gone so far as to scapegoat John Rees, the SWP Central Committee member who is National Secretary of Respect, as though all would be well if the SWP dumped him to please George Galloway.

Among those of us who did not agree with Respect in the first place, responses have varied between undisguised joy, I-told-you-so, it- serves- the- SWP right (or at least its leadership), and sadness that the good name of Trotskyism as well as the dedication of some genuine and hard-working socialist militants has been so abused and misled up the garden path.

There has been comment in Mick Hall's blog Organised Rage blog. http://organizedrage.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-galloways-document-tells-us.html as well as Dave's Part.
A writer who did her best to raise the Socialist Alliance's game in its heyday blogs with first-hand knowledge of the SWP leadership (including Rees) and its methods and genuine feeling about the damage they have done to the socialist cause, in Madam Miaow says ...

For my part, I can't forgive the SWP leaders for their deliberate running down of the Socialist Alliance after they took control of it, though they were not alone to blame. In my experience, the branch rarely met between election campaigns, so could not develop a life of its own (any new members were siphoned off to SWP meetings or ignored). Neither the SWP or other factions wanted a Socialist Alliance paper which would rival their own, and suggest the Alliance was serious about becoming a Party. The Socialist Alliance was rendered virtually invisible at the huge Stop the War demonstrations, kept off the platform while George Galloway was given top spot. And then the SWP hacks came to the last Alliance meetings lamenting with crocodile tears that "we are not winning the young".

The Socialist Alliance was not even taken into a broader movement (the "unpopular front" as some dubbed Respect, it was liquidated mercilessly, so that the SWP could get closer to George, defending the leader from any criticism on the left, and opposing anything that might upset his reactionary Muslim allies (such as support for secular or progressive forces among Muslims here or in the Middle East). To what end?

In my area, where to their credit Socialist Workers Party members have been in the forefront of campaigns on issues like health cuts concerning the working class, it has been sad to see them no longer with a Socialist Alliance, but marching under the banner of Respect. Here and elsewhere, some of the successes claimed for Respect could have been made under a Socialist banner, and so much the better. If comrades like these are cast out by Respect, I wonder where they will go.

.

Galloway defender of Stalinism

THIS George told the truth, unlike Galloway.

IN case we were worrying whether George Galloway was working too hard in Parliament (I didn't hear or see of him during last week's Palestine lobby, so guess he must have been busy), or for his constituents, or with his media work and lecture appearances, I am pleased to read that he is working on his new book.

No, it won't be filling the gaps in his previous slim volume of autobiography. This one is going to be about someone else. Galloway says he is writing a historical novel about the poet John Cornford, as "part of the golden generation of the British left who went to fight fascism in Spain". Writing on the Counterpunch website, he says "their memory has been sullied by Orwell's slanders, unfortunately reinforced by Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom, and now lies largely forgotten on the Iberian peninsula"

George Orwell, who was of course one of that generation, is like Cornford, dead. Had they both been with us, it would have been interesting to hear them discuss what happened in Spain. Orwell could have pointed out that his book Homage to Catalonia did not attack the brave young volunteers who went to fight fascism, but told the truth about what happened in Barcelona, and attacked the treacherous Stalinist policies which in his view led to the defeat of the Spanish working class and the fight against fascism.

We don't know what Cornford might have said, or Ralph Fox and others, who died, whether they would still hold the views they held then or rethink them in retrospect. We do know that some International Brigaders who survived changed their minds, and that others escaped a fascist bullet only to receive a Stalinist one when they returned to eastern Europe. Perhaps they knew too much.

The only person doing any slandering here is George Galloway. Having seen how easily he uses "Trot" as a term of abuse for opponents it should not really surprise us that, even fifty years after Khruschev's famous "secret speech" the Respect MP who has tried to explain his fawning over Saddam Hussein should hide behind a dead poet to attack those who stood up to Stalin's policies. We don't like to visit the sins of the fathers upon their children, but might note the appropriateness of setting: Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn is the son of the famous Claud Cockburn, who as "Frank Pitcairn" wrote the lies about Spain in the Daily Worker, from a safe distance. .

The dead cannot choose who writes about them, and we don't know whether anyone else suggested to Galloway that he attempt this novel. Maybe his next one could feature the brave Iraqi communists who died at the hands of the Ba'athist regime.

Though Orwell cannot answer back, Ken Loach should be able to. Having fallen under the spell of the Socialist Workers Party(SWP), he sits on the national council of Galloway's Respect coalition! Come to that of course, if the SWP members have any self-respect they could stop turning a blind eye to Galloway's conduct and utterances. So far while muttering among themselves they have continued pretending for the public that the sun shines out of gorgeous Georgie's rectum. I'll be looking to see what Socialist Worker says. But it has been advertising a fundraiser featuring Galloway and the disturbed sax player Gilad Atzmon, so I'm not holding my breath, I'm holding my nose.