Salma Yaqoob posted by Richard Seymour

This is a big deal for the Left:

Dear friends
It is with deep regret that I have decided to resign from Respect. The last few weeks have been extremely difficult for everyone in the party. I feel necessary relations of trust and collaborative working have unfortunately broken down. I have no wish to prolong those difficulties, and indeed hope that they may now be drawn to a close...

Labels: labour, left, misogyny, patriarchy, respect, socialism, socialist strategy

Galloway to speak at Marxism posted by Richard Seymour

Given all that has happened, this is certainly worth plugging:

Labels: george galloway, labour, marxism, marxism 2012, respect, socialism, swp

Guess who's coming to vote? posted by Richard Seymour

BBC to Galloway: will you represent Muslims or the white working class? Labour to press: we have a problem with incorrigibly reactionary Muslims voting for left-wing Catholics, or with the incorrigibly reactionary white working class who won't vote for a Muslim candidate. Salma Yaqoob:

The fact that Respect won in every ward in the constituency, and won by a massive 10,000 majority, testifies that that disillusionment goes way beyond the Muslim community. In the predominately white, middle-class ward of Clayton approximately 900 votes were cast for Respect compared to 40 for Labour.

Labels: capitalist ideology, george galloway, islam, labour, muslims, respect, social democracy, white working class

Labour loses the East End posted by Richard Seymour

• Lutfur Rahman, Independent - 23,283 (51.76%)
  
• Helal Uddin Abbas, Labour Party - 11,254
• Neil Anthony King, Conservative Party - 5,348
• John David Macleod Griffiths, Liberal Democrats - 2,800
• Alan Duffell, Green Party - 2,300

Labels: blairites, ken livingstone, labour, labour left, new labour, respect, right-wing, tower hamlets

Election summary posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: bnp scum, elections, fascism, liberal democrats, new labour, respect, socialism, tories, tusc

The shade of Labourism posted by Richard Seymour

We on the Left are in a bad shape. We face massive spending cuts and job losses, and an accompanying war on the remaining strongholds of organised labour. We face a far right on the move, not just in this country but across Europe. A constant drumbeat of more or less explicit attacks on Europe's Muslim minority has now been punctuated by the small, cowardly decision by Swiss voters to ban the construction of minarets on the grounds that such buildings constitute a surreptitious Islamic 'colonisation' (this in a country with only four minarets). The far right are in ascendant, and they are abetted by a media and political class opportunistically using their language and validating their politics of resentment. More on that in a future post, but for the moment, consider John Denham's latest remarks. We have beatings, we have cemetery desecrations, we have attempts to march on local mosques. Our ability to meet such challenges is not negligible, but responses have proven to be patchy and fragmented. Organisationally, the left is atomised into some local strongholds in communities, unions, councils, etc. What is ailing us? I am not pedling any voluntarist illusions here - we can't just will mass resistance into being - but we do have to think about what our strategy is for overcoming our limitations.

For the last decade or so, much of the far left at any rate has shared a perspective that there needed to be a drastic realignment on the left, and that the window for this was provided by disaffection with New Labour's right-wing rule. This disaffection has been real enough. It is so severe that the Labour Party saw an unprecedented collapse in membership to below 1918 levels, and lost several heartland seats with previously mountainous majorities. The question would then be whether those former Labour Party members could be provided with a more radical home, and whether the party's angered ex-voters could be given a realistic alternative in the voting booths. It was not realistic to expect such a constituency to immediately break with reformism which, after all, is not a programme but a default disposition. Everyone feels its gravitational pull, especially during periods in which the left is weak. And while political disillusionment was manifest, and particularly evident in street politics, a sudden upsurge in labour militancy could not be counted on as a talisman.

There had been, and continues to be, a general decline in union density, as the working class has been reconstituted, and new sectors of the economy emerged that kept themselves more or less union-free. In addition, workers have become far more mobile. We hear a lot about immigration statistics, but rarely about the other aspects of this story: mass emigration from the UK, and mass migration within the UK's borders. For, in addition to the 427,000 workers who emigrated from the UK in 2008, over 100,000 workers migrated in and out of the North-West alone in 2005-6. 163,000 workers moved into London that year, but 243,000 moved out. This sort of turnover on an annual basis means that models of trade unionism elaborated on the basis of a relatively more static workforce are increasingly difficult to sustain. Days lost to strike action were at an all time low when New Labour were elected, and the number continued to decline for the remainder of the millenium. Traditions of militant trade unionism, 'DIY reformism', that enabled a powerful response to both Labour and Tory attacks in the late Sixties and early Seventies, no longer existed. And given New Labour's abject abasement before every passing millionaire with a friendly wink, it was necessary to fight for the most basic ideas, the class politics, that could articulate demands for a militant response to employers and the government. So, what was sought was a kind of organisation that could relate to the street campaigns (around Jubilee 2000 or the arms trade, for example), plant some feet gingerly in the unions, serenade disappointed Labour members and voters, and articulate popular grievances in socialist language. It was to meet that challenge that the SSP and the Socialist Alliance, and then Respect, were formed. The present remainders of those initiatives constitute most of the fragmentary footholds I mentioned earlier.

Those socialists who were sceptical of such a venture from the start, though, could appeal to a certain bowdlerised version of 20th Century politics. For over 100 years not a single other party has been able to seriously challenge the Labour Party for the loyalty and support of working class people either in terms of votes, members or union funding. No attempt to construct a mass socialist party to challenge Labour has been successful. Think of some of the attempts. The British Socialist Party, founded in 1911 as an explicitly marxist alternative to Labour, did contribute to the building of an initially strong Communist Party following the Russian Revolution. However, the Communist Party more or less abandoned the idea of an independent road to socialism in the early 1950s, with its British Road to Socialism programme, which stressed that socialism could be achieved through the existing parliamentary institutions. In practise, this meant supporting the Labour Party, and by the 1980s it meant supporting the Kinnockite right-wing and its attacks on the left, and adapting/capitulating to the 'New Times' brought about by Thatcherism. The ILP made gains in the 1930s as Ramsay MacDonald led Labour into the National Government, but was squeezed in the postwar period and eventually folded into a pressure group within Labour by the 1970s. A number of very small far left parties stood against Labour in the late 1970s, including the WRP and SWP, and got derisory votes. Arthur Scargill's SLP, launched when just about everyone in the labour movement was swinging behind Blair and Brown to get the Tories out, has rarely received more than derisory votes. Other challenges prior to the present decade are perhaps too recherche and nugatory to mention. Until the millenium, such challenges experienced diminishing returns.

They could go even further. Not only have socialists been unable to successfully challenge Labour for the support of the working class, but about a third of workers have always voted for the right - a higher proportion than in much of the continent. Perhaps, you might argue, the British working class is much too conservative to embrace anything other than a party of gradualist social reform, a party that has never seriously sought to challenge the capitalist framework within which it seeks to deliver such reforms. Given such a diagnosis, it would make sense for left-wing workers to embrace labourism not necessarily out of conviction, but from a belief that the only a broad front including reforming liberals and right-wing social democrats could provide the appropriate vehicle for advancing the interests of workers. Only, that is, a party like the Labour Party. At the very least, they could say, such efforts were premature, undertaken initially before there was the first sign of a real crisis in the Labour Party. It was all very well to attract Labour left-wingers like Liz Davies and Mike Marqusee (before rapidly losing them, ahem-hem, cough cough, moving along). But, so it was argued, that hardly amounted to a substantial split, certainly not enough to base a new party on.

The example of Respect did briefly answer those arguments to some extent. Its founders correctly anticipated that the antiwar movement would, despite the Labour leadership's ironclad grip on the party apparatus, feed into a crisis in the party. The self-defeating decision to expel George Galloway followed from that crisis. It was also obvious that a substantial segment of trade unionists were questioning their funding of and affiliation to a party that repeatedly treated them with contempt. In the same year that Respect was formed, the RMT was kicked out of the Labour Party for allowing its branches to affiliate to other political parties, notably the Scottish Socialist Party. There was, then, an opportunity to win the argument for democratising the political fund and opening it up to more radical competitors. An organisation with a parliamentary presence and some strong local performances under its belt could feasibly win the support of the most militant workers and gain enough funding to build a lasting political machine (though it was unlikely that such a party/coalition would have taken the form of Respect).

But it was a narrow window of opportunity. The coalition was still too small, unstable and ramshackle and ultimately fell apart over a mixture of substantial strategic disagreements and old-fashioned sectariana that has long dogged socialists who have for too long acted in relative isolation. We made utter prats of ourselves, and I exclude no one from that criticism. Part of the problem is that there was not enough of a crisis in Labour. The biggest mass movement in British politics had certainly caused the Blairites some real headaches, but it didn't register on the conference floor. This says a lot about the enervation of any resources of resistance that remained in Labour after years of top-down control and 'restructuring' by the party's Whigs. And the fact that only one MP defected - and then after being forced out - is a warning not to underestimate how seemingly natural the Labour Party has been, no matter how right-wing, as a vehicle for those wishing to deliver reforms.

We now have a left that is Beyond the Fragments, a 'plural' left that may have more organisations than individual members, certainly not capable for the time being of recomposing itself in a new organisation to challenge the Labour Party for its base. In fact, the current state of affairs makes it very difficult for us to resist the coming Tory onslaught. Moreover, absent a movement to relate to, it is not clear that such an organisation would fare even as well as its immediate predecessors. Even so, given that New Labour is not about to reconstitute itself as a party of even old-fashioned right-wing social democracy, given that the Blairites are not relinquishing control but steadily tightening it, it would be prudent not to bet on a revival of the Labour left, (and, if it needs to be said, an entryist strategy would simply be suicidal at this point). If anything, the crisis of Labourism has new chapters awaiting elaboration. And unity on the left, if not immediately achievable in the sense described above, is surely a state to aim for in the interim.

Labels: george galloway, labour, new labour, respect, socialism, socialist alliance, ssp, stop the war coalition, tories, trade unions, working class

Convention of the Left posted by Richard Seymour

Meanwhile, Red Pepper has reported from the Convention of the Left. It seems to have gone well so far:

A contributor from Permanent Revolution caused even more consternation when he said: ‘the elephant in the room ... [pause for dramatic effect] ... is Respect. It collapsed, that’s the truth of the matter. And before that we had the Socialist Alliance.’

‘Why did they fail? We need to ask the question or we risk repeating their mistakes.’

Then Lindsey German was up, doing a decent job of tranquilising that elephant. ‘We can all put our hands up to what we’ve done wrong,’ she said, ‘but there’s no point in sitting here and saying 20 years ago we fell out over this question or two years ago we fell out over that question. We have to find a method of working that unites us and doesn’t divide us.’

Nick Wrack, from the other wing of Respect, shared the sentiment. ‘I’m prepared to debate and discuss what went wrong,’ he said, ‘but what is far more important is that there is more that unites us than separates us.’

‘The working class out there is facing a terrible situation and it’s going to worsen. We don’t need to make differences over tactical issues a dividing line at this moment.’

Labels: convention of the left, left alternative, manchester, respect, socialism

Election sums. posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by 'christian h':

Those pesky preference votes...

First, the conclusion: A Ken (1st) - Third Party (2nd) vote is mathematically equivalent to a Third Party (1st) - Ken (2nd) vote as far as the eventual outcome is concerned. However, the Third Party (1st) - Ken (2nd) option is preferable as any second preference votes of Third Party won't be counted.

Here's how it works.

It's election time in Londongrad. Running for mayor are Dr. Evil (Boris, to his admirers), Mini Me (aka Ken) and Austin Powers (fusion of left-of-Ken candidates). The voting system is "preference voting", also known as "instant run-off voting." Voter X really prefers Austin Powers, but she absolutely doesn't want Dr. Evil to win. What should she do?

The system works as follows: every voter can assign two votes, a 1st and 2nd preference vote. It is legal to leave the 2nd preference blank, but it isn't possible to only vote for a 2nd preference. The votes have to go to different candidates. After polls close, all 1st preference votes are counted. If one candidate obtains more than 50% of those - that is, more votes than both his opponents together - he is declared the winner. Otherwise, all 1st preference votes of the candidate with the fewest votes are discarded and the corresponding 2nd preference votes counted instead. since only two candidates are left in the race, one of them now is guaranteed to win.

Assume there are 100 eligible voters in Londongrad. On election day, 78 come out to vote - the rest are watching football. Of those 78, 40 vote Dr. Evil 1st preference, 37 vote Mini Me, and one (that's X) votes Austin Powers. The next day, the website socialistsplitters.com accuses X of throwing the vote to Dr. Evil. Are they right? No. If X had voted Mini Me 1st preference, Dr. Evil still had 40 votes - more than half. In formulas, if E, M and A denote 1st preference votes for Dr. Evil, Mini Me and Austin respectively, Dr. Evil wins outright if and only if E > A + M. Only the sum of A and M matters, not the individual totals.

... phew, bad dream! Turns out, Dr. Evil got only 38 of the 1st preference votes, Mini Me 37, and Austin Powers got 3 (one of them cast by X). Now Austin has the fewest 1st preference votes, so they are discarded; instead, the 2nd preference votes on those ballots are now added to the totals of Dr. Evil and Mini Me. If at least two Austin-voters did their duty and voted Mini Me with their 2nd preference, Mini Me has 37+2 = 39 total votes to Dr. Evil's 38, and wins. Only if X and her comrades inexplicably decided to leave 2nd preference blank will Dr. Evil walk away victorious.

In formulas, if e, m and denote second preference votes of the Austin Powers voters, for Dr. Evil and Mini Me respectively, Dr. Evil will now win if E + e > M + m.

To recap, Dr. Evil will win if

(a) either E > M + A

(b) or M + A >= E and E + e > M + m. and E + e > M + m.

Since M + A is at least M + m and no Austin voter will vote Dr. Evil with 2nd preference (that is, e = 0), this simplifies to give that Dr. Evil will win if and only if E > M + m. That is, the only number that matters is M + m - a 2nd preference vote for Mini Me is equally as good as a 1st preference vote.

Labels: gla elections, left list, london, mayor, respect

Left List for London posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: ken livingstone, left list, lindsey german, london, respect

Schadenfreude posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: capitalism, left list, neoliberalism, recession, respect, socialism

Another case for nationalisation posted by Richard Seymour

The energy companies register record profits and sky-high prices. It's no good complaining about 'profiteering' among private companies. That's what they're supposed to do. The profit motive is supposed to drive improvements in efficiency, sustained investment and - therefore - lower costs. The fact that it doesn't do so is hardly going to dissuade private energy companies from jacking up the prices as far as they can, and even breaking the law if they have to, in order to improve their returns. It would be a quite modest step to simply take these things into public ownership and introduce substantial price reductions or, alternatively, socialise the cost thoroughly through taxation so that it can be free at the point of delivery. In fact, it is probably the only way that the use of carbon-based energy can be slowly phased out - as long as private capital has a vested interest in keeping us using fossil fuels, we will not be able to make the shift to renewables and other forms of sustainable energy.

Labels: nationalisation, respect, socialism

Respect and the GLA Elections posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by EastIsRed.

Last Saturday, around fifty activists crammed into one of the University of London Union's third-floor rooms to discuss the Respect campaign for the Greater London Assembly elections. The size of the meeting, and the geographical breadth it represented, came as a very pleasant surprise to many. Branches had sent on or two delegates each, which meant that the meeting represented a large and geographically diverse range of branches. Even areas where we are relatively weak, like south-east London, had some representation. Despite the internal arguments of the last few months, Respect activists across London were prepared to throw themselves into the campaign.

Because the possibilities remain: from the incipient recession, to the continuing occupation of Iraq , the space for a non-Labour left has expanded as perhaps never before. One important indicator is that those representing Old Labour values and significant social forces, previously tied exclusively to Labour, have seen where Brown is taking the Party, and have started to look elsewhere – not necessarily to Respect, naturally, but outside of Labour's thinning ranks.

So the large turnout was important. This was pretty much the first chance for Respect activists to meet up since "Respect Renewal" split from the organisation, and the first that provided the opportunity for a serious discussion of our strategy. George Galloway's exit from Respect had proved a distraction from real political work.

Discussion centred on two main points: first, a broad look at our strategy in the campaign; second, getting down to the hard slog of building an organisation and campaigning on the ground. The London elections are complex, by British standards: there's a mayor and a GLA to vote for. Each uses a somewhat different electoral system: you cast a first preference and a second preference for mayor, but you vote for a constituency candidate and then a party list for the GLA.

The party list vote is used to ensure the proportion of seats on the GLA matches parties' proportions of the citywide vote, and so smaller parties can manage to get a seat with a good poll across London. And – importantly – the preference system in the mayoral vote means you can vote for the candidate you actually like, followed by the candidate that will keep the Tories out – current mayor, Ken Livingstone. As he said, back in 2004, calling for a second preference Livingstone vote allowed Lindsey German and Respect to "campaign for her political position without risking a Tory victory."

This matters, because Livingstone's posse have been putting the word out that a left-wing challenge to the incumbent mayor will let the Conservatives take power in London. Either they don't understand the voting system or, more likely, they are being totally disingenuous: standing in the mayoral contest provides a brilliant platform for a candidate, with invites to hustings, media interviews, and so on, as well as London-wide mailshot of the candidate's manifesto. You don't get any of this if you just stand for the Greater London Assembly – a credible campaign for the GLA, in other words, absolutely demands that you also stand a candidate for mayor.

If you're pessimistic about building a non-Labour left, or simply wedded to the Labour Party, a credible campaign by the non-Labour left is the last thing you want to see. But Livingstone needs a left-wing challenge. His combination of nice noises about the war with appeasement for the City of London deserves to meet some opposition from the Left. It's absurd that Livingstone's (correct and necessary) opposition to Islamophobia should be taken as the only test he needs to pass; actually, this is the minimum we should be expecting from the "socialist" mayor of one of the most unequal cities in Europe. We simply have to raise our sights, and start to challenge the revolting concentrations of wealth, power and privilege that exist in London and across the UK.

Respect is unique in being the only electable organisation standing in these elections with anything worthwhile to say about the economy and, in particular, the City. No-one else will touch the bankers and the speculators: Livingstone has bent over backwards to accomodate them for the last eight years; Johnson doubtless fagged for a few at Eton; and the Lib Dems are firmly committed to the City's agenda, proposing (amongst other things) to ban strikes for public sector workers. Even the Green Party in London , as far as can be told, has said nothing on the issue.

So on what is fast becoming the most decisive political question – and the economy is a political question, whatever our neoliberal friends say – the main parties are in consensus: no challenge to the City, no change to the status quo.

This is hugely to Respect's advantage. There's a crying need for someone to stand up to the sort of free-market vanishing-point lunacy that has just seen the Government desperately bribing fat cats with our money to take Northern Rock off its hands. Livingstone and the London Labour Party aren't going to.

Of course, the recent attacks on Livingstone have been unfair: in many ways, I can't think of a better Mayor for the City, one better able to soft-soap his left-leaning constituents into accepting a London Plan written fundamentally entirely around the City's needs, or into tolerating a chief economic advisor (John Ross) who sings the praises of hedge funds. Former Tory candidate Stephen Norris couldn't do it: much of London would be up in arms if this king of PFI tried anything similar. Likewise for Johnson. That Livingstone's vision for the capital has effectively collapsed into City boosterism is a terrible shame – it's not particularly surprising since he's pulled, especially, by his ties to New Labour - but it is still a shame.

As such, there's an air of unreality about the politically unhinged Martin Bright laying into Livingstone for being too left-wing. It goes without saying that Livingstone needs defending from the red-baiting filth Bright and his new Tory friends are hawking about: Bright, this professional Islam-basher and habitual friend of the hard Right, should be treated with the contempt he richly deserves. It should go without saying, too, that Livingstone deserves any left-winger's second preference – better a London mayor who opposes the Iraq war and racism, than a racist who militantly supported the invasion of Iraq. It's perfectly obvious which one is closer to ordinary Londoners.

There's an argument out there that the Left shouldn't even stand against Livingstone for precisely those reasons. It was kind of "Respect Renewal" to confirm everything we said about their split from Respect by having their leadership come out in wholehearted support of Labour's candidate for Mayor. It's perfectly clear, now, that what took place was a left-right split: one side wanted an independent, non-Labour organisation of the Left; the other side was quite prepared to compromise with New Labour, even to the point of ducking key political questions. And the outbreaks of bafflement and consternation amongst the waifs and strays on what we must suppose is Renewal's left-wing show exactly why a new formation of the Left needs a leadership accountable to its members – which was, of course, precisely the point.

Although I strongly suspect those elements of Renewal's leadership now trooping off rightwards to a happy marriage with New Labour would dearly love to really trash Respect on the way, they're not in a good position to do so: they've ruled out a mayoral candidate and they're only standing one constituency candidate in the GLA. However, they've put the word out that George Galloway will be heading up an anti-Respect GLA slate.

This may just be an attempt to put the frighteners on Respect, because it looks distinctly cack-handed otherwise: aside from the lopsidedness of supporting Livingstone, but then opposing his party, I will be amazed if they can mobilise the sort of London-wide political resources they need to run a convincing campaign across the city – especially without the added publicity of a mayoral candidate. One of the perils of relying too heavily on local opportunism is that you end up with the bulk of your membership scarcely bothered by what happens on the other side of Whitechapel High Street, let alone Norwood or Uxbridge.

Last April, when Lindsey German was selected unanimously by a meeting of more than 300 Respect members, the arguments were very different. Responding to a Morning Star editorial, which opposed a Respect mayoral bid, George Galloway MP and Lindsey German wrote a 900 word reply, which the Morning Star reprinted. They expressed surprise that the Star would urge a "free run" for Livingstone. "The Respect candidate came fifth in the last election, beating both the British National Party and the Greens. Yet you do not direct your appeal to the Green Party, which could also be accused of splitting the vote." Further:

The electoral system for London mayor actually makes it very hard for the vote to be split, since it operates on the basis of transfers - all candidates bar the top two have their second preference vote distributed to eventually determine the winner. Respect's candidate was the only one to call clearly for transfers to Ken in 2004 and more than a quarter of those voters responded - a relatively high proportion. And there is no reason to suppose that, if Respect does not stand, its voters will turn out in a greater proportion than our transfers and vote for Ken.

They stressed the importance of a "strong left voice" being expressed on "the issues facing Londoners - the acute housing crisis, which is not being dealt with, the transport system, which is both the most expensive and one of the worst in the world, the privatisation of the East London Line and the business agenda, which is making London a worse place for many of the poor to live". And they added:

Many Londoners are dissatisfied with the record of new Labour in government and will not turn out to vote Labour in the numbers that they once did. A vote for Respect by these people will help the left and can help Ken by lifting the left vote overall from people who might otherwise abstain.

A good vote for Respect will also help to keep the fascist BNP off the assembly. More votes for new Labour will not keep the BNP off the assembly, because the proportional representation system favours the election of smaller parties. So, the only way of keeping the BNP off is to vote for a left-wing, smaller party.

Respect is the obvious candidate for this vote - but its chances will be undermined without the publicity that comes from standing a mayoral candidate.

These arguments are as incisive today as they were in April. The difference is that George Galloway and his supporters are no longer making them. No matter. Respect, as the GLA meeting showed, has activists in place from Newham to Neasden. Reports across the city are promising: Respect members are involved in campaigns to defend victimised trade unionists, against council house stock transfer, and against city academies. In Waltham Forest, north-east London, we face an immediate electoral challenge with a local council by-election. There are very good reason to think we can get a credible vote. There's no guarantee about this, especially with Labour and the Lib Dems throwing themselves into the contest, but if our candidate, Carole Vincent, can get the sort of vote Respect has been achieving up and down the country, we'll be on target for the GLA. (Anybody wanting to help with the campaign can find details here.)

Lindsey German was, after all, just 4,000 votes short of election last time round – and that was when Respect was just a few months old. We beat the BNP and even the Greens into 6th and 7th places on the mayoral vote. Just 0.43% more of the vote would've lifted Lindsey over the magic 5% hurdle, and onto the GLA.

Around 23% of our vote came from the City and East constituency, where Galloway currently has his only activist base. Even if half of that vote disappears as a result of the split, a good campaign across the rest of London still puts the GLA well within our grasp. There is not only a need but a real thirst for a left-wing challenge to the neoliberal consensus. It can be seen all over: from the sold-out film-showing we held last Sunday, to the excellent recent attendances for Respect meetings across the country.

We've also had vastly more experience running elections now, and have a hugely higher brand recognition, and a significantly larger membership and activist base. The split has damaged us, of course, but not as much as might be supposed: and, remember, we elected our first councillor a long time before we elected George Galloway. It was impossible to come away from the GLA planning meeting without thinking that we were in with a shout, giving a voice to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary, working-class Londoners excluded by all the main parties.

The Respect GLA campaign launch is a week today, Thursday, 31 January, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square WC1, from 7.30pm. If you want an alternative in London to the parties of neoliberalism and war, you need to be there.

Labels: gla elections, london, mayor, new labour, respect, socialism

Beyond the Ken posted by Richard Seymour

Look, if anyone asks, I wasn't here. I'm busy. I have things to do. But as it's my coffee-break, allow me to expatiate a bit on this nasty little witch-hunt against London mayor Ken Livingstone. He is, according to creeps like Martin Bright and the Evening Standard crowd, a drunk, a brawler, a cronyist, a confederate of "Trotskyists" (Socialist Action, a tiny group that operates within the Labour Party), and a collaborator with evil (the Muslim kind). As Seumas Milne points out, where it isn't irrelevant, it's largely reactionary whinging. It isn't the first time there's been a media frenzy over Livingstone's alleged failings. There were the allegations of anti-Semitism from the Evening Standard a while ago when Ken Livingstone compared an Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard and the guy happened to be Jewish. The Sun routinely attacks Livingstone, especially over his "shocking anti-US rants". Labour Friends of Israel once tried to undermine Livingstone's mayoral campaign with a dossier accusing him of an "anti-Zionist bias". But the recent spiral of attacks is designed to ensure he is replaced as London mayor by Boris Johnson. There's a section of New Labour opinion that would rather have four years of the tweedy twit from Henley and then get a proper pro-war Blairite figure selected as the Labour candidate next time round. Nick Cohen is such a one. Amazingly, Johnson was just 1% behind Livingstone in a recent poll.

The mayor of London has one or two things going for him. He has resisted, by and large, the Islamophobic agenda of his opponents. He has opposed the war on Iraq. He cut a nice little oil deal with Hugo Chavez which cut bus fares for low income earners. And even though the congestion charge is unfairly applied it did succeed in reducing traffic in Central London, and he is successfully reducing emissions. He also didn't allow himself to be bullied by the pro-pigeon lobby. These things count. On the other hand, he has largely been a pal to New Labour, ditched his efforts to block tube privatisation, pushed neoliberal fiscal policies, and promoted the interests of the City. He has attacked striking tube workers and called on people to cross picket lines. He smeared the tube driver Chris Barrett who was unfairly sacked by London Underground as a "parasite". He has attacked anticapitalist protesters. He has defended the police who shot Jean Charles De Menezes and particularly the Met Commissioner. While he has promoted the idea of a limited amount of affordable housing - a good idea, but drastically short of what's needed - he has decided to allow the market to determine what counts as "affordable". In fact, he usually gives in to pressure from the Home Builders' Federation, as when he abandoned minimum space requirements that were designed to prevent Londoners being cramped into smaller and smaller homes - this matters a lot when, especially in places like Tower Hamlets, few family-sized homes are built by the private sector, and overcrowding is endemic. I might mention that before he became mayor, Livingstone was one of the most disgusting cheerleaders of the war on Yugoslavia. Livingstone doesn't recognise the category of a principle, and is notorious for flopping left or right depending on the circumstances. As he is a creature of the Labour Party electoral machine, he usually flops to the right. Like I say, his strengths do count - they just don't count for much.

However. Livingstone is much better than his bigoted neoconservative opponent, Boris Johnson. Johnson is not merely an old reactionary racist twit, he is aggressively pro-imperialist, aligned with the Ed Vaizeys and Michael Goves of the Tory party, the Henry Jackson wing. When it comes to a contest with the Tories, there is no contest. The Tomb should have something about the upcoming GLA and mayoral elections shortly. I don't know about you, but I will be voting for Respect candidates where I can. That will include putting my cross beside Stop the War convenor Lindsey German for London mayor. However, I will put Ken Livingstone for my second preference, as I did in 2004. My understanding is that the Respect candidate is urging people who vote for her to put Livingstone as the second preference. Interestingly, when Lindsey German stood in the last mayoral election, Livingstone took the trouble to praise her, noting that the non-sectarian way in which she mobilised "allows her to campaign for her political position without risking a Tory victory". He was right. Lindsey was able to beat both the BNP and the Greens and come out fifth, but at the same time the Tories lost by a decent margin. Backing Livingstone for a second preference, in order to properly campaign on the issues that matter while doing nothing to assist a Johnson victory, is obviously the best way to proceed. But right at this moment, and whatever criticisms are justly levelled at the mayor, I think it obvious that everyone on the Left ought to defend Livingstone against this tetra-tsunami of reactionary twaddle. As you were.

Labels: ken livingstone, london, mayor, new labour, respect, socialism

Someone wants him to shut up. posted by Richard Seymour

Third attack on Oli Rahman.

Labels: oli rahman, respect, socialism

The state of the unions. posted by Richard Seymour

Two recent firings of witch-hunted trade unionists, Karen Reissmann and Michael Gavan, bring to light the pressure from the state to break the resistance of public sector unions to pay cuts, diminished working conditions, and privatisation. It also reflects the politicised way in which the Labour government is approaching the problem - both were arguably targeted for being associated with Respect, a systematic challenge to Labour's hold on the left vote. The government can't afford to back down unless it is forced to back down, because a victory for the unions will both strengthen the left and damage the government's strategy of keeping Britain's economy running as a haven for international finance. For the last year, the government has kept public sector pay substantially below inflation, something that hasn't been achieved in the UK since the 'social contract' and the winter of discontent. The run-down of the postal service and other public services is leading to a growing rebellion by workers across the country. So, what are the prospects?

According to recent figures published by Labour Research, the TUC has since 2003 gently reversed its long-term decline in members. The main growth has been experienced in the teaching unions, particularly the NUT which grew by 6%, but also the construction union UCATT, which grew by a similar level. (The figures don't appear to include the RMT, for some reason). The new super-union Unite actually lost members on both sides, and the PCS lost a small percentage probably due to recent cuts - but it has to be said that the loss of 13,000 is very short of the 104,000 Gordon Brown wanted to cut in 2004, so while the fightback has a long way to go, it is holding back the government's attack. The same goes, I suspect, for the slight fall experienced by the CWU, whose members have braved successive attacks from the government brilliantly, despite an often indecisive leadership. The main growth over the last decade is supposedly in "associated professionals and managerial workers" - but this actually includes teachers, nurses, train drivers and media workers, whose conditions are increasingly under attack. It reflects the growing importance of the public sector in the labour movement, where employment has been on the up, while manufacturing has been allowed to crumble. As these jobs are particularly susceptible to government cut-backs, union struggles are increasingly politicised. The problem, regularly now, is a Labour goverment, which is why trade unionists have to keep asking themselves why they are funding the bullies. Unfortunately, the growth isn't keeping up with the growth in the jobs, so unless there is a massive drive to recruit new members, union density is still likely to fall after having picked up slightly.

It looks like there are two models of trade unionism which are competing here. The RMT's militant model is notoriously successful, leading to extraordinary increases in membership and density. It doesn't matter how much the Evening Standard pillories tube workers, you simply can't beat success. The more conciliatory model that seek sweet-heart deals and subordinates the interests of members to those of the Labour Party is not as successful. The old batch of right-wing leaders like the repellent Sir Ken Jackson, exemplified this model until deposed by the emerging "awkward squad". Increasingly, the question is raised among TUC-affiliated unions as to what can be done to take the government on politically. Yet, it is clear - as Mark Serwotka pointed out at the Respect conference - that even many of the more left-leaning union leaders are more concerned about keeping Labour in government than fighting for their members' interests. Only two union leaders explicitly advocate a socialist alternative to Labour - Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow. And there are worries that the Unite union, run by two moderately left-wing leaders both of whom are loyal to the Labour Party, will have an overwhelmingly decisive bloc in the TUC with the largest portion of its members. Unite's leaders are fully aware that Brown's strategy is destroying the manufacturing base they represent, but their answer seems to be propaganda rather than action, and adaptation rather than militancy.

The frontline today is the CWU. The heroic example of the postal workers should inspire others, and if they now oppose the proposed deal and fight on, I believe it will. The ballot closes on Tuesday, and until then the campaign continues up and down the country to send it back and prepare for further action. As Charlie Kimber writes, the sheer audacity of the postal workers in consistently upping their game every time the government and the bosses attacked is remarkable. They haven't had the leadership that they should have had, but still took unofficial action when they felt they had to. And, despite the fact that the government has introduced private competitors, the fact that they all rely on the more efficient Royal Mail to deliver the actual letters has meant that they can't perform when the posties are out on the picket lines. So, the postal workers still have the power to beat the government and its attacks. Yet, the dispute also illustrates why it isn't enough to have left-wing trade union leaders. Even the best of them, like Mark Serwotka, are still captive to their bureaucracy to some extent. No union has engaged in coordinated action with the posties, despite the clear importance of the dispute for all public sector workers. There are encouraging moves to engage in coordinated action in the future, but the basis of this will have to be strong rank and file organisation which enables a measure of independence from a leadership that is always under massive pressure to make concessions to the employers. This point is rammed home by the attempts of the CWU leadership to deflect attention from the Labour government's responsibility for the crisis - they accept Royal Mail's claims that it is in financial peril with pensions, but make no mention of the fact that Royal Mail management created the crisis and the government has a responsibility to protect the pension scheme. Even Billy Hayes has pointed out, somewhat reluctantly, that if this was Northern Rock the government would be pouring in billions. And it follows that the question of political independence can't be resolved soon enough - the unions need a political fund, but the ball-and-chain relationship to the Labour government is proceeding from absurd to masochistic.

Labels: labour, respect, socialism, trade unions

Witches and Russian Dolls: The Crisis in Respect posted by Richard Seymour

My piece for MRZine about Respect's troubles...

Labels: respect, socialism

Respect: Very Live. posted by Richard Seymour

"I was as happy as anyone when George Galloway won in Bethnal Green & Bow, and when the Respect councillors were elected ... I have declined to speak to the Renewal conference, and I'll tell you why. I have always believed in unity. Who is the happiest when some people split from Respect? Gordon Brown. He sees this as an opportunity. My appeal is for unity, but there can never be unity in a left-wing organisation when people attack and witch hunt other socialists." Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union.

The scoop is that Respect isn't going away. I can tell you this with a level of confidence and optimism today that I couldn't have yesterday. There were two events billed as Respect events today. One was the national conference, with 350 elected delegates and observers, resolutions and motions to be voted on. It would have contained more people, but 90 people had to be turned away since Westminster University was unable to provide an overflow room. I was there as a press person to observe and report, and did not participate in the votes. I will provide a run-down of the votes for you, but all passed resolutions will soon be available on the Respect website. The other was a rally held at Bishopsgate, without elected delegates, to which invitations were widely sent. I am told the latter had a decent turnout, 200-300 people mainly from Tower Hamlets, which is one of George Galloway's few strongholds. Two of our speakers, Andrew Murray and Sami Ramadani - both from the antiwar movement - spoke at both conferences, urging the necessity of unity above all when it came to antiwar activity. If anyone in either conference doubts that, they are surely in the decided minority.

This is how the National Secretary John Rees summed up the political framework that shapes the present problem (this is a summary of the key points rather than a transcription - as a rule, the comments reported in this account are far more likely to be strictly word-perfect, and I also expect Adrian Cousins to have full video clips posted on Youtube soon). "There are many issues, but the central thing, the irreducible core of the debate, is how to respond to electoral pressures, especially in areas like Tower Hamlets, and Birmingham, and Preston, and Newham, and wherever we have been successful. It is a debate produced by success. Four years ago, we had no record, we had to hunt for candidates to stand for us, and we had to persuade hundreds of people to fight for a left-of-Labour candidatge simply on the basis of the political arguments - probably not even expecting to win, but believing in the principle of it. That is not now the situation in Tower Hamlets, Newham, Preston or Birmingham. It is now the case, especially in those areas, that the minute we open nominations, tens of people put themselves forward, and sometimes hundreds of people register as members to influence the selection. It is no longer the case that people are only coming to Respect because of principle - now, people are coming because the best way to be elected is in Respect. We want to select and elect people who are as committed to the original vision of Respect as an anticapitalist, antiwar coalition. There has been some cost to us in this - in Tower Hamlets, of 12 councillors elected in May 2006, we have lost two. One of them crossed the floor to become part of New Labour, and the other resigned, causing a bye-election which we won by a small margin. There has been enormous pressure from the Labour machine - several people have been approached to leave Respect and join Labour, not only to be councillors for them, but they have been told that the sitting could be deselected and they could become parliamentary candidates. Michael Lavalette was told that if he would go for Labour, they would work to de-select Mark Hendrick. Now, sometimes George Galloway has resisted those pressures, but at other times, in important and damaging ways, he hasn't. We do have to have a robust attitude toward Respect's democratic procedures - it is not good enough to just select the person supposedly most likely to be elected if six or nine months later, they undermine the project and make us look like any other party. Because the most damaging thing that New Labour has done is to take the politics out of politics - you know what they say, it is no longer about ideology, but about delivery. If you take the ideology away, what's left? Careerism, avarice and opportunism. If we do that, we cease to be a real and radical alternative.

"We know from Labour Party history that you can pass great resolutions and be committed to the best policies, but if you don't elect the people who can fight for them, the resolutions don't make a difference. Part of the problem has come from our strategy - in a first past the post system, we sought to maximise our advantage in the strongest areas, in the hope that other places could follow. But this does create problems. It's been noted that the only people elected were Muslim comrades - and I make no apologies for that. They did what they should have done, what we wanted them to do - but they also realise, as we do, that we needed to be broader. At the 2006 conference, we therefore committed to support the Organising for Fighting Unions (OFFU) conference and get involved directly in the labour movement, and I think OFFU has been one of our success stories. It's been a lie, but a constant theme of our critics, that Respect doesn't stand for gay rights. So, we put this specific emphasis on the Gay Pride parade. This is one of the things that George Galloway has been critical of, but - whatever the technical issues - it was the right thing to do. I think the other side of this debate is pessimistic about where we can go, and want to concentrate on a few areas. I think if an NUM mining official like Ray Holmes can be elected as a Respect councillor in Bolsover, there are no no-go areas for Respect. Additionally, we cannot have forty or fifty members being signed up on one night for a meeting, by one person, with £450 of his own money - that is not the way to proceed. We didn't want this fight, and we don't accept many of its terms, but we always had to face these problems. The truth is that the core of any organisation is not its leadership, whatever the contribution they have made, but the membersip."

Problems...
Members then spoke from the floor. Jackie Turner from Tower Hamlets Respect spoke on some of the issues faced by the local organisation. She spoke of the opportunism that had poisoned Respect's successes. The former Labour councillor Mortuza had signed up with Respect in a bid to be the leader of the group, and left when it didn't work out to stand for Labour (he lost to a Respect candidate). Others tried the same, and left for the Liberals when they didn't get their way. There was a lot of pressure to stand only certain candidates for certain areas - older Bengali men. Lindsey German pointed out that this involved a certain condescending attitude to Muslims, as if they would accept undemocratic practises or couldn't vote for young women - if that attitude had been accepted, Salma Yaqoob couldn't have stood for us. Paddy O'Keefe said: "I've heard us described as the SWP faction - now, look, some of my best friends are in the SWP. But I'm not. However, I value the dignity and restraint of some of the people who have been under attack personally in the blogs and in the media, and sometimes in the face of extreme physical provocation." Rania Khan revealed some of the problems she and her fellow councillors had faced locally, including the often horrible treatment of women and the difficulties working under the local council leadership. She said: "It's been claimed that John Rees was behind us resigning the whip, but I am telling you now that this is not true. He told us to stay in it, to save Respect - I'm sorry John, we tried our best, but the struggles became too hard, and we couldn't continue. The real principles of Respect were being forgotten because the committee meetings were lost to infighting." There was a general feeling in favour of wanting to preserve unity in some way: some grassroots members feeling they didn't pick this fight, and not accepting its terms. One pointed out that she had been ready to bash Rees and Galloway's heads together - until she spoke to some people in the East End and found out what had been happening. Nahella from Manchester added - "no one has asked us, and that's been really frustrating".

"I know where I am. I know I'm at home, in the real Respect." Jane Loftus, president of the CWU.

Kumar Murshid, the former Labour councillor and adviser to Ken Livingstone, provided some background. "This issue of pocket membership is important - you can't have a democratic party when one person buys a number of members. I've seen this before in the Labour Party, and it has a corroding and corrupting impact, and it strips ordinary members of their ability or desire to be active in and have an effect on the party. As far as the mainstream parties in Tower Hamlets are concerned, they have always been cynical. The Labour Party rewarded corruption and incompetence, and used divisions. And we remember the Liberals during their eight years of misrule in the Eighties and Nineties - they ruled in a racially divisive manner, with the effect that the BNP won their first ever councillor there. Respect can and should be a different story. I'm afraid what the other lot are doing is engaging in an elaborate personality cult movement. Many of the people in the other rally are people we have tried to work with, but who don't believe in open democracy. And I have seen this in Tower Hamlets, and we had to take a stand against that."

"I love Respect!" Councillor Lutfa Begum

One of the best speeches of the day was from guest speaker Karen Reissmann: I have some video of it later. I think it's important to be angry about what's happening to the NHS, and some of the details are truly shocking. The hounding of Karen and union activists like her is being conducted against the background of a wasteful PFI initiative, which has quadrupled the cost of beds. Yet, for the duration of the strike, they have sent patients to locked hospitals who shouldn't be locked up, sent them away to hospitals a hundred miles away, and paid for twenty extra beds in the private sector. As soon as the strike is over, they will no longer pay for the beds. The local campaign against cuts and privatisation has been extremely effective, nevertheless, raising £120,000 so far. The local media is sympathetic, the Green Party and the Liberals demand Reissmann's reinstatement, and the only people opposed are - well, who do you think? John Molyneux made what I thought was an extremely important intervention, urging an strong focus on climate change. The latest IPCC report shows that the rate of climate change is even worse than some of the so-called 'doomsayers' have predicted, and this is already beginning to impact on people's lives. We absolutely have to make a strong presence for Respect at the 8th December protest. I'm convinced that there is no answer to this enormous problem that doesn't begin to challenge the distribution of property and political power throughout the whole planet.

This is Michael Lavalette's speech:



Councillor Ray Holmes, displaying his rosette, introduced himself with a breezy "Hi folks!" I like this guy. "I want to say how proud I am of Rees and the others, and I think we are standing by our principles," he said. He explained how brilliant it was to be a Respect councillor and stand against policies imposed by the government, and urged us all to give it a try if we could. "The reason I took part in Respect was because I wanted the people by my side who share the same principles as me - and the attacks on the working class are coming thick and fast, and need the maximum unity to oppose them." Jane Loftus, president of the CWU, was extremely warmly received. The crucial debate taking place in the unions now cannot be overlooked: there are those who still argue that the unions should support Labour, despite all, but that is becoming a much more embattled position - "Even during a strike with 98% solidarity, we got nothing from Labour". And therefore, Respect should be at the heart of that debate, putting itself where hundreds of thousands of people are struggling. Francois Duval of the LCR didn't want to intervene in a dispute in the British left, but he did tell us a great deal about the fight now taking place against Sarkozy's reforms, a mere six months after the victory of the right-wing parties in elections. "Sarkozy is not even living up to his rhetoric," Duval said, "his campaign slogan was 'work more to earn more'. People are working more, but they are not earning more!" Comparing the current critical situation to the miners' strike, he argued that only a full general strike could win the situation. And because the parliamentary left are attacking the protest movement, because they share the prognosis and diagnosis of the right, a political re-alignment is necessary - to that end, the LCR is attempting to form a new broader anticapitalist party, which may come about in 2008 or 2009.

"I want to pay special tribute to one particular person. It's not Lindsey German this time. One person who has been especially important to the antiwar movement, and who has been a real pleasure to work with as a comrade is John Rees. And I must say I don't recognise the man in some of the things that are now being said about him." Andrew Murray, national chair of the Stop the War Coalition

Sami Ramadani spoke mostly about the war: "I waited with some anticipation when Gordon Brown made his first speech in conference, since it was suggested there would be a policy change on Iraq. He only devoted 19 words to the Iraqi carnage in an hour-long speech. Over a million killed since the invasion, 4 million refugees, the health service collapsing, Iraqi children can't go to school any more - only 19 words. They are now dividing Baghdad into thirty military zones, in tactics they learned in Vietnam. They know if they can isolate an area and surround it, they can crush all the resistance within it. 30 military zones - 19 words. They have convinced the media that a withdrawal from Iraq will result in bloody war: this is a lie. The presence of troops is the main reason for the violence. And the American idea of a withdrawal strategy is to leave a puppet regime, a network of military bases and a subdued population - that isn't the withdrawal that Iraqis want." Further, "the same multi-national corporations who are after Iraq's oil are profiting from a system that kills 2 million children ever year from hunger. So, this movement really matters, and I would appeal to you all, when it comes to the antiwar movement, to work together and keep the unity going."

Ady Cousins has posted Karen Reissmann's whole speech:



Solidarity
There was something about the unscheduled nature of Mark Serwotka's arrival and his comportment at the mic which suggested that his speech was going to be a dramatic one. I make no apologies for saying that it was by far the best speech of the day I think he set a context and an analysis that was necessarily broader than the problems of Respect, but as the quote at the top of this post makes clear, he isn't sitting on any fences. I will try and summarise as best as I can: "First of all, can I say I'm delighted to come to conference today. The context of my appearance is the need in this country for a united left alternative to Labour. And after having spoken here today, I am going to speak to the Labour Representation Committee to support John McDonnell, and also especially to urge them to look out more to the non-Labour left. We need industrial unity to resist the attacks of New Labour, but we also need political unity to give people hope. We've got to look at the opportunities today - every time I have met government ministers, and even trade union leaders, and I raise the problems faced by my members, and other workers, the uniform answer is always that no matter how bad it is, the offer from the Tories will be worse. The Labour Party think they can take working class support for granted, and this gives them a tremendous in-built arrogance: it invites them to be more right-wing and stick the boot in more. So, we have to make some important decisions now, because we don't want to be in the same situation in ten years time.

"Three weeks ago in Stirling, the churches were giving out food vouchers to people who couldn't get their benefits. The reason why they couldn't get their benefits is that there weren't enough staff to support them - they are cutting 40,000 civil servants. When it came to those who needed emergency loans, the most desperate people, what should have been available in 24 hours took five weeks to be delivered. It's not an isolated incident - among the cuts, New Labour is delegating welfare to the charities and private companies, increasingly. And I think, this is not Bush's America. It's a Labour government that is doing this to us. People are dying in hospitals because of underinvestment. They're handing hundreds of thousands of pounds to private consultants. And look at EDS - they have a clause in their contract that says if they are ever removed from a contract for poor performance or anything else, they have to be offered another contract. These are clearly corrupt contracts. And when billions are being paid in city bonuses each year, we are being told that public sector workers are the cause of inflation.

"If this was as good as politics could get, then we may as well pack up right now. But it isn't. How do we get from where we are now to something better? I think the first thing is that if you are in a union, I will say this publicly today, you must redouble your efforts to hold your union leaders accountable, especially if they are looking the other way while workers are being attacked. These are not idle thoughts. I have spent months working with comrades to defend our services, some of whom I can see in this hall, and I've seen union leaders turn their back. The PCS, from not striking for years, has now had four strike ballots in three years, and the last one we had three weeks ago had the highest level of support of the lot. And look at the members of the CWU, who showed they were not cowed. They were prepared to fight against their employers and the government, and not only in official strike action either. They took illegal action to defend their conditions. So, we have got to bring the unions together in action to produce the maximum effort. And I say this to Karen Reissmann today, it's almost certain that at our next NEC meeting, there will be a unanimously passed resolution on giving a substantial financial donation to her campaign.

"And the Prison Officers Association. I know they're not the most popular trade union, but they took illegal action. I got phoned at 6.30am when I was on holiday in Wales to be told that they were going to take an illegal strike action. And I take my hat off to them: they faced punitive fines, and possibly the destruction of their union. If the POA are fined, then my union and every other union should put their hands in their pockets and pay the fine, and show the government that we won't let our fellow trade unionists be bullied. We have repeatedly called for coordinated strike action, and a lot of other unions have said they hoped they would have unity - but you must have unity in your sector before you can unite with others. When Gordon Brown has announced that he will be imposing pay restraint until 2011, we need all public sector workers on the picket line, on the same day. if they can do it in France, we can do it here. Now, that may win victories, and we may make progress, but it won't stop the bosses coming back. We need a political alternative. I have seen the SSP prove that with a fair election system and a basic unity, you can overturn the lie that people won't vote for left-wing parties. I was as happy as anyone when George Galloway won in Bethnal Green & Bow, and when the Respect councillors were elected. I call for unity, and it is a sad irony that I am visiting three socialist meetings in London today - the Socialist Party, the LRC and this one. I have declined to speak to the Renewal conference, and I'll tell you why. I have always believed in unity. Who is the happiest when some people split from Respect? Gordon Brown. He sees this as an opportunity. My appeal is for unity, but there can never be unity in a left-wing organisation when people attack and witch hunt other socialists. And I won't hide it, I disagree with Martin Smith and John Rees on a number of things, but we have to find where we agree. We have to tolerate difference, welcome debate, but we need unity.

"We should not see today as a desperate position. We should see it as an opportunity to clear some things up, and move on stronger. And I would urge you - to avoid splits like this consuming your organisation, you need to root it in the organised labour movement. Let me tell yu about the TUC general council in July. Eighteen of us went to see Gordon Brown. I arrived about half an hour early and had to wait in the cabinet room - my son called and thought I was running the country. Brendan Barber and the others arrived, and Brendan asked all of us for a list of ourse concerns. We raised conditions, pay cuts, services and so on. And someone whose name I won't mention - well, he happens to be the general secretary of Britain's biggest trade union, so that'll narrow it down - said, 'I have to stop you all here, this is crazy: we are all forgetting that our priority is to get our government re-elected'. We have always had people in our movement who put Labour before the interests of the movement. But more people are questioning that. We see Bob Wareing standing against Labour, where he has been disgracefully de-selected so that Stephen Twigg - someone who I would argue does not know much about Liverpool - can stand as the Blairite candidate. We see Respect standing elsewhere. And today could perhaps be the day that we recognise what unites us is so much more than what divides us. We need to go out there and build an alternative that gives Gordon Brown sleepless nights, and our children hope for a better future."

You don't even have to take my word for it any more. Happily, Ady Cousins has uploaded the whole speech:



Andrew Murray, who is admired throughout the antiwar movement, and by both sides of this dispute, echoed Sami's plea that we opt for the maximum unity in the antiwar movement - splits happen, sometimes its unavoidable, but the tremendous work that had been done together by all sides including many in the Renewal rally shouldn't be rewritten. "The truth is, we have a responsibility to the British people, and to the people around the world - however big the difference between Westminster and Bishopsgate looks here, it is invisible in Beirut and Baghdad. We have to recall that we are a small margin between life and death for thousands of people" It was because in the Stop the War Coalition we learned to stop shouting at one another that we pulled millions of people beyond the left into activity and struggle in a common cause. He also paid tribute to both John Rees and to the SWP without whom, he said, the remarkable movement the Stop the War Coalition has built could not have happened. "We have real enemies - we have Tony Blair, still. The Middle East Peace Envoy whose first distinction in his role is to call for another war. In the Middle East. I understand he's going to be grilled on the BBC by David Aaronovitch - that'll be a challenging interview: 'is that your halo, my lord, or is it a trick of the light?' And there's Gordon Brown - he should be grateful to us, because we put him where he is today. He spent years wanting to be leader, not knowing quite how to catch onto successive waves of public anger, always passing up the opportunity. And it was only Tony Blair's craven support for Israel's destruction of Lebanon last year that made even the most spineless MPs realise that if they didn't get rid of Blair, they'd be gotten rid of."

Democratising and reaching out.
The procedural and electoral element of today's conference involved a number of planks - most matters to do with specific policies have been remitted to a future council, because today's conference was about setting up a workable constitutional arrangement with a fully elected National Council. I can say that despite some arguments here and there, the main bulk of the resolutions passed with a few divisive resolutions and amendments spurned overwhelmingly. The passed resolutions approved a new National Council, a chair, a national organiser and a national secretary; an amended constitution with single-transferrable vote elections rather than slates; new provisions clarifying the basis of membership to avoid people being signed up in bulk on the night of a particular meeting, and so on. So I can put this to you. We are not closing up shop and abandoning the coalition. It is clear that, despite the defection of some names, those of us supporting a democratic coalition have won over most of the membership. We are not going to turn inward: instead we have to reach out to the workers now under attack by New Labour. We aren't going to rest on our laurels or be content to work with old faces, as welcome as most of them are. We know there is a debate in the trade unions and in the Labour left about where to go now, and we intend to involve ourselves in that. We know that young people are being targeted for restraining orders and ASBOs while their services are cut and schools handed over to the Carphone Warehouse. We know that stop and search policies are targeting black people, anyone who might look like a Muslim, and also increasingly white working class kids. Pensioners are being hit hardest by the closure of post offices across the country, and still have to live with frightening, death-dealing levels of poverty. Muslims are still being targeted for racism, harrassment, curbs on civil liberties - and you better believe that whether the detention limit is 28 days or 56 days or 90 days, it won't stop with Muslims. As long as all those things remain a permanent feature of our landscape, so will we.

Labels: respect, socialism